Billie Holiday

Born in 1915, Elinore Harris was basically on her own by the time that she was a teenager. Turning to prostitution only yielded more problems. Amongst them, drugs. What Harris’ early life career choice did for her, though, was to put the nascent singer in various situations where jazz served as the soundtrack. Alongside pulling johns, Harris began developing her singing in brothels and other disreputable venues. Taking the last name of her estranged father and coupling it with an actress she admired, Harris became Billie Holiday in front of audiences as her music career began.

Holiday’s voice hasn’t ever been deemed as remarkable as Sarah Vaughn’s. But in a guttural and less traditional conception of singing, Holiday’s crooning was able to express emotions that other’s seemed incapable of. Today, the singer’s more associated with “Strange Fruit” than any other composition despite the enormous catalog she amassed over the duration of her career.

Even as Holiday achieved international notoriety performing alongside Lester Young and a few other jazz greats, her recurring heroin problem eventual landed her in jail. As a result of the incarceration, Holiday was barred from performing in clubs around New York for a few years. Though, the latter portion of her life seems nothing short of depressing, the substantial impact that Holiday exerts over one of America’s purest art forms can’t be understated.

Sidney Bechet

Working with King Oliver a bit in NOLA made Sidney Bechet one of the earliest and most important improvisers on the clarinet. Bechet’s acclaim was on par with anyone of his era and even resulted in an offer to record prior to Louis Armstrong.

Most associated with “Summertime” and a spate of danceable jazz tracks, Bechet remained en vogue for the better part of three decades. The torrid pacing of his songs were a sublime match for the roaring ‘20s and even the ‘30s as there needed to be some sort of uplifting music during such a trying time.

With changing tastes in the genre as be bop began to rear its head, Bechet was soon relegated to a second tier player. A part of what contributed to the clarinetist’s falling out of favor was his temperament. Bechet was apparently not a pleasant man to work with. Displaying the volatile side to his personality, the band leader was even jailed in Paris after an altercation led to gun fire.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Rarely mentioned outside of obsessive music historians, Jeffrey Lee Pierce led one of the truly visionary punk bands that was a part of the early ‘80s Los Angeles scene. Today, listeners might be nonplussed by the Gun Club’s amalgam of punk, blues and ‘50s rock ‘n roll, but there were only a handful of groups in the world working with those components a few decades back.

Issuing Fire of Love in 1980 via Slash Records, the Gun Club wasn’t able to find the audience that it deserved amidst the growing throngs of hardcore bands that were cropping up across the country. The ensemble issued a few more albums and disbanded, in part, due to Pierce’s growing instability, which should be connected to his use of heroin.

Pierce recorded for a few more years as a solo act and was even embraced in Europe, echoing jazz players of the preceding half century. Eventually, in 1996, the guitarist and singer’s drug habits caught up with him when he did of a blood clot.