TIME Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.

Current subscribers for full access. Not a TIME subscriber? .

Music: Strange Record

Billie Holiday is a roly-poly young colored woman with a hump in her voice. Dance-hall crowds have heard her with Count Basie's Orchestra, radio audiences with Artie Shaw. She does not care enough about her figure to watch her diet, but she loves to sing. She also likes to listen to records of her singing.

Last spring Billie Holiday went to the Manhattan studios of the Vocalion Company, which has her under exclusive contract, to make a batch of records. One number, which she had been singing at a new downtown hotspot called Café...

Time.com on Digg

POWERED BY digg

For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.