Palace of Nostalgia

‘The only thing better than singing is more singing’, she once said. She always showed joy and yet she had a childhood so miserable and awful that many blues artists could use it as a lifelong inspiration. First she was abused by her stepfather. Later, when she was living on the street as an orphan, she ‘entertained’ passers-by and ran errands for a brothel. And when she auditioned for Chick Webb as a chubby teenager, he reacted with disgust: ‘You would not think that I am going to put that in front of my orchestra?!!!’ Until she began to sing. And the rest is history, as people say. For decades she has been the undisputed ‘first lade of song’.