What kind of woman was she?

Some people see her as a victim, hounded by the FBI over her drug use; others prefer to see her as a political activist who sang one of the first songs about a lynching. You have to view her drug and alcohol use in the context of her turbulent childhood.

Her mother was just a teenager when she gave birth to Billie, who was raped as a child, sent to a Catholic reform school for girls and subsequently became a sex worker.

What made her a hero?

Despite her hellish childhood, she had huge strength of character, and went on to achieve great success and critical acclaim. Her voice is a bit Marmite: you either like it or you don’t.

I loved it from the start – it pushed all my buttons – and I wasn’t the only one who was smitten. Frank Sinatra used to go to listen to her sing – and his whole phrasing, which lagged behind the beat, owed a great debt to her melancholic, jazzy vocal style.

What was her finest hour?

Performing ‘Strange Fruit’ – a riposte to racist America that would ring down the years – for the first time at Café Society, New York City’s first integrated nightclub, in 1939. She ended her set with that song and, when she’d finished and everybody began clapping, she just walked off stage. There was no coming back for an encore.

Sadly, she was persecuted by the FBI for the rest of her life – the Bureau even tried to arrest her on her deathbed! Following her 1947 arrest and imprisonment for possession of narcotics, her New York ‘Cabaret Card’ was taken away, preventing her from working anywhere in the city that sold alcohol.

Is there anything that you don’t particularly admire about her?

Her choice of men sucked. She was quite emotionally needy, and most of the men in her life abused her physically, bled her dry financially or were ‘pushers’, keeping her drugged up.

Can you see any parallels between her life and your own?

We were both female singers of colour in times of racial prejudice – Britain in the late 1970s, in my case. I once played her on stage at the Tricycle Theatre, and she also influenced me in wanting to make anti-racist music, albeit in the ska/2-tone style.

What would you ask Holiday if you could meet her?

To sing the jazz classic ‘Fine and Mellow’, lamenting her treatment at the hands of her ‘man’, just for me.

Pauline Black OBE is the singer of ska band The Selecter, who are playing at Glastonbury on 29 June. Her documentary Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story is streaming on Sky Arts, Freeview and NOW.

This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine