Description
Up For Sale Today is
Lady Sings the Blues
by
Billie Holiday with William Duffy
Hardcover. 8vo. Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1956. 250 pages. Chronological discography.
Bound in maroon cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. A very curious previous owner's inscription present to the half-title page. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.
Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Billie Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon.
We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.
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Book formats and corresponding sizes | ||||||
Name | Abbreviations | Leaves | Pages | Approximate cover size (width × height) | ||
inches | cm | |||||
folio | 2º or fo | 2 | 4 | 12 × 19 | 30.5 × 48 | |
quarto | 4º or 4to | 4 | 8 | 9½ × 12 | 24 × 30.5 | |
octavo | 8º or 8vo | 8 | 16 | 6 × 9 | 15 × 23 | |
duodecimo or twelvemo | 12º or 12mo | 12 | 24 | 5 × 7⅜ | 12.5 × 19 | |
sextodecimo or sixteenmo | 16º or 16mo | 16 | 32 | 4 × 6¾ | 10 × 17 | |
octodecimo or eighteenmo | 18º or 18mo | 18 | 36 | 4 × 6½ | 10 × 16.5 | |
trigesimo-secundo or thirty-twomo | 32º or 32mo | 32 | 64 | 3½ × 5½ | 9 × 14 | |
quadragesimo-octavo or forty-eightmo | 48º or 48mo | 48 | 96 | 2½ × 4 | 6.5 × 10 | |
sexagesimo-quarto or sixty-fourmo | 64º or 64mo | 64 | 128 | 2 × 3 | 5 × 7.5 | |
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