Billie Holiday: The Truth About Her Guitarist Father's Life and Death, (1 of 2)

I’ve previously shown that Billie Holiday did indeed create the book Lady Sings the Blues, working closely with William Dufty. But I also noted that, as with most autobiographies, the book does contain some factual errors. For example, the stories that Billie Holiday told about her father’s illness and death were wrong. But that was not her fault—she had been misinformed. On the other hand, the many authors who have repeated these stories for 70 years are indeed to blame, because they copied what she wrote and did no research at all. It is bizarre to see that the same writers and teachers who falsely claim that Billie did not write her memoir, then proceed to quote from it as though it is proven truth. Out of the many books about Billie Holiday, two stand out for their emphasis on original research: the biographies by Donald Clarke and by Stuart Nicholson. In these essays I will refer to them on occasion, as well as to my own research of course.

Billie’s father was the banjoist and guitarist Clarence Earnest (sic) Holiday (born Holliday, sometimes wrongly listed as Halliday, 1898-1937), best known for his time with the Fletcher Henderson band from fall 1928 to summer 1933 (except for an absence due to illness in late 1932). I only know of two photos. The one on the left is probably him in his youth. The one on the right is definitely him, excerpted from a photo of the Henderson band in Atlantic City, July 1932:

However, there is a complication regarding Billie’s parentage: A man named Frank Deviese, who lived about four blocks away, is listed as the father on Billie’s birth certificate. It appears that her mother Sadie listed him for reasons of her own, which I will explore in a later essay. But please set that aside for now. As Donald Clarke wrote:

…[N]obody had doubted that guitarist Clarence was the baby’s father— not Sadie, not Eleanora [aka Billie], and certainly not Clarence, who bragged about it to his friends…Clarence’s wife, Fannie, who he married in 1927, and all their circle of friends and acquaintances took for granted Clarence’s paternity.

In short, the topic of this essay and the next one is, “What did Billie write about Clarence Holiday, and how accurate were those statements?” (Not “Do some people today think that Deviese was her father?” I will address that in a separate essay.) Since Billie’s parents were never married, and she never lived with Clarence or had much interaction with him, she relied on what she was told by others. Here’s what Billie wrote about her father’s experience in the First World War:

Pop always wanted to blow the trumpet but he never got the chance. Before we got one to blow, the Army grabbed him and shipped him overseas. It was just his luck to be one of the ones to get it from poison gas over there. It ruined his lungs. ..Getting gassed was the end of his hopes for the trumpet but the beginning of a successful career on the guitar. He started to learn it when he was in Paris.

This tale is all backwards and upside down—wrong on every count. Let’s come back to this after we review his beginnings:

Clarence Earnest Holliday (sic) was born on July 23, 1898 in Baltimore. Luckily for us, that city was one of the first to use birth certificates, so I am able to show you that rare document:

There are a few things to note here: Believe it or not, in those days the certificate did not ask for the name of the child. But I know this is Clarence because his parents were indeed Nelson and Mary, and the date is correct, as I will confirm later. The mother’s maiden name is given here as Johnson, and their marriage certificate from February 1, 1900 says the same. I’ve seen the names Hodges and also Gant on other documents, but she was born in 1865 so she could certainly have been married before or after she was with Nelson. In fact, at the top it says this was her fourth child, but the 1900 census reports that Clarence was her only child, so it’s likely that the three other children had a different father. (It’s unclear whether they were still alive.)

Also, please notice that Clarence was born in a hospital, attended by an M.D., at a time when most Americans—about 95%—were born at home. That institution was the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital, founded in 1889, which was just a mile from their home address given on the birth certificate. That form was usually filled out by the person who delivered the baby, in this case the doctor.

I have more information about Clarence’s family history—his parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. But our concerns here are the issues that Billie addressed: his early music background, his experiences in World War I, and how he later died. As for music, there is no reason to think that he had originally wanted to be a trumpeter. He was a banjoist from the start, and later a guitarist. Stephanie Stein Crease, in her biography of Chick Webb, writes:

[Fellow banjoist Elmer] Snowden, born in 1900, befriended Holiday in school, and Eubie Blake once hired Snowden over his friend because Holiday couldn’t read music yet.

Wikipedia and other websites add that Clarence and Elmer both attended the same boys’ school, and that they played with various Baltimore jazz bands, including Blake’s. Crease pointed me to another source for a bit more information:

[Clarence] had worked at Mary’s Casino, on Preston Street, with Elmer Snowden. Holiday confided to Snowden that he had become the father of a daughter, and Snowden remembered meeting the girl when she was about three years old. (From Musical Maryland, by Hildebrand and Schaaf, 2017, pp.138-9)

Overall, it’s fair to say that there is a consensus that Clarence had played banjo since his youth, and that later he added guitar.

As for the Army, Nicholson reported the beginning of Clarence’s service as follows:

…Clarence Holiday registered with the Draft Board…He gave his date of birth as 23 July 1895. This was crucial; since Clarence was born on 23 July 1898…he was not required to register.

July 23 is indeed the date on the birth certificate above, which confirms that he was the baby born to Nelson and Mary that day. Below is his registration card, filled out on June 5, 1917 by a draft board employee during his interview, as is usual. The draft that began that day was for men 21 to 30. By giving his birth year as 1895, Clarence presented himself as 22 years old. (Remember, there were no I.D. cards back then.) So it appears that he was eager to enlist. Perhaps he wanted the income, because, as he stated at his registration, he was supporting his grandmother. He was already employed as an “elevator conductor” (operator) at the famous Hutzler Brothers department store. Here’s the card:

Nicholson refers his readers to a condensed summary of Holiday’s army record in the book Maryland in the War: Military and Naval Service Records Vol. 1 (Maryland War Records Commission, Baltimore, 1933, p. 968). Here is that summary, which we will analyze below:

Here his last name is spelled “Holiday.” This was not the spelling on his registration—as we will see, he changed it in 1918. His birth year is given as 1895, based on his own registration card above. He began duty in the N.A. (National Army, as it was then called) as a Private on November 25, 1917, and assigned to the Stevedore Regiment Barrack (Bks) in Washington, D.C. But, for unknown reasons—perhaps issues with his grandmother or others in his family, two days later he deserted! By August 21, 1918, whatever had caused him to leave was apparently resolved, as he reapplied and was inducted again. Apparently he continued to use the 1895 birth year, probably because in reality he was still too young. It wasn’t until September 12, 1918 that the draft was expanded to include men as young as 18, and as old as 45. However when the Army checked and found that he had already been inducted a year earlier, this second induction was voided. (That was the “misapprehension of status” listed above.) He simply continued on his previous status, apparently without any punishment.

This time, Clarence was assigned to the 54th Company of the 153rd Depot Brigade in Fort Dix, New Jersey. His name appears in the long list of drafted men who were sent there by train on Thursday, August 22, 1918, as reported the next day by the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Union Station, mentioned here, is now Baltimore’s Penn Station. This is the first record of Clarence using the spelling “Holiday.”:

At this time, Depot Brigades provided new soldiers with uniforms, equipment, and initial military training. From September 11, 1918, Clarence served in Black company I (“I” as in India, not “one”) of the 811 Pioneer Infantry regiment. The Army was segregated—the soldiers in each company were either all Black or all white. The 811 Regiment included white companies as well. A company had 6 officers (usually white, even for Black companies, but sometimes Black companies had Black officers), and 250 soldiers. A full regiment was 112 officers and 3720 soldiers.

Clarence became a bugler on October 1, 1918. His role as a bugler is the closest he ever got to playing trumpet, and that is probably where that part of the story came from. A background on one instrument always helps in learning a new one. And he had been playing banjo and guitar since he was a youth. So there’s no reason to think that he wished he could have played trumpet instead.

From Fort Dix, Clarence was sent to Camp Mills, then located in Hoboken, New Jersey, from which he traveled by ship, with many thousands of others, to France on October 20, 1918. His company worked there as stevedores—dock workers, loading and unloading and other work at the docks, and he possibly continued as a bugler. (See Chapter XXII of this 1919 book for details of the Black stevedores’ contributions to the war.) The war ended on November 11, about three weeks later. He never fought in any battles—few Black men did—and he was never exposed to poison gas or mustard gas. His company’s duties in France ended on June 28, 1919. He received an honorable discharge on July 7, 1919 and returned to Baltimore.

To sum up: Billie was misinformed. It’s not true that “Pop always wanted to blow the trumpet but he never got the chance.” Since his youth he had played banjo. He did play the bugle in the Army, but that was his only connection with brass instruments. However she also says “He started to learn [guitar] when he was in Paris.” We don’t know when he took up the guitar in addition to the banjo. It is possible that he did first try the guitar in Paris.

Billie was also told that “It was just his luck to be one of the ones to get it from poison gas over there. It ruined his lungs.” This was incorrect. Given his Army record shown above, and the roles assigned at that time to Black men, it is impossible that he was involved in any fighting or that he was ever exposed to gas.

Next time we will look at how Clarence Holiday died.

All the best,

Lewis