Billie Holiday, 44, Negro blues singer, whose husky, melancholy voice reflected the tragedy of her own life; in Manhattan. Though the remembrance is a short one, it neatly sums how much money did bilie holiday make the legend that still follows the singer known as Lady Day, on what would have been her th birthday. She had a tough childhood. But the too-short life encompassed in those sentences was even more complicated than that — and that the brief nature of that obituary is part of the story, explains John Szwed, author of the brand-new book Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth. The harsh upbringing and drug-addled adulthood are only the tip of the iceberg, in fact. And the shorthand story of being raised in a brothel elides an even harsher truth that was mostly covered up during her life, according to Szwed: that when she and her mother moved to a New York brothel after they left Baltimore, when Billie was 16, Szwed says, the two were both working as prostitutes. Still, the ide...