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The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. Almost fifty years after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylize... Read More

Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong

Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, CocoRosie, Nellie McKay, Aretha Franklin, Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple, Carmen McRae, Peggy Lee, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Amina and Monica Zetterlund