YOU’RE INVITED TO THE COLUMNS HOTEL ON MARCH 13!
Greetings. We want to make you aware of two exciting events in New Orleans, on Wednesday, March 13th, to celebrate Paul Alexander’s new book that honors the life and legacy of jazz artist Billie Holiday. Paul and I have been friends since 2001, when Paul hosted the Alexander and Batchelor radio show on WABC in New York, and I served as Rep. Eliot Engel’s press secretary, where the Congressman was a regular guest.
The first event is at The Garden District Book Shop, at 6pm. Paul will be interviewed by Grammy Award winning producer, Scott Billington. For more information about that event, click here. Immediately after, there will be a cocktail party at The Columns Hotel, located at 3811 St. Charles Avenue, from 7:30-9:30 pm. Hosted by Meltz Communications, this will be a great chance to speak to the author about his book, get a drink, and enjoy some hors d’oeuvres. We hope you can make it!
About the Book:
In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander–author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger–gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life–with relevant flashbacks to provide context–to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.
During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop–a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching–limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.
Reviews:
Click here to read the Boston Globe review
Click here to read the New Yorker review
Click here to read the Kirkus review
Click here to read the Baltimore Banner review
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