“What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Good Morning Heartache,” “Autumn in New York” and the unforgettable ballad turned Civil Rights Movement anthem “Strange Fruit” are among the songs that have been seared into the memories of generations listening to the legendary jazz and swing singer Billie Holiday.
Born in 1915 in Philadelphia as Eleonora Fagan and known throughout her career as “Lady Day,” Holiday died in New York at just 44 after a turbulent life immortalized in songs, books and the 1972 film “Lady Sings the Blues,” starring Diana Ross.
Holiday will be brought to life in “Lady Ain’t Singing No Blues” at the Laguna Woods Performing Arts Center on Sunday, March 22, co-sponsored by the African American Heritage Club and Community Bridge Builders.
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Leslie McCurdy, a Canadian-born actress, playwright, singer and dancer, embodied abolitionist Harriet Tubman at the Laguna Woods Performing Arts Center in 2025.
(Courtesy of Leslie McCurdy)
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Leslie McCurdy, a Canadian-born actress, playwright, singer and dancer, embodied abolitionist Harriet Tubman at the Laguna Woods Performing Arts Center in 2025.
(Courtesy of Leslie McCurdy)
The musical stars Leslie McCurdy, the Canadian-born actress, playwright, singer and dancer who so masterfully embodied abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, in “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” at the Performing Arts Center last year.
McCurdy said she chose to portray Holiday because she had already performed in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” a play by Lanie Robertson focused on the singer’s later life, just months before her death.
“Every time I did that play, I did more research and found that (Holiday) was far more than a play could be,” McCurdy said in a recent phone interview.
“Billie called herself a ‘race woman,’ fought discrimination against Blacks as a singer, and was the first Black singer to tour the South with an all-white band. ‘Strange Fruit’ was an anti-lynching ballad. By defying a ban on singing it, she was making a point.”
Holiday was targeted by the federal government, which tried to prevent her from singing the haunting lyrics of “Strange Fruit” after the song’s release in 1939. The song arose from a 1937 protest poem by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan) after the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana.
McCurdy wrote “Lady Ain’t Singing No Blues” 10 years ago, she said, but a bicycle accident in 2016 kept her from performing it for eight years.
“The accident took my voice – I stopped singing,” she said. “The trauma and my anger at fate stopped me from singing. I tried to expand my range, and all of that was gone.”
She is working on her singing with voice coach Charlotte Lefrank, who travels with her.
“Charlotte teaches me to use my voice better than before,” McCurdy said.
“Lady Ain’t Singing No Blues” is not meant to be a show, but a play based on imagining a couple of hours in Holiday’s day, McCurdy said.
“Billie takes a few minutes of her life to share in the form of a few songs,” she said. “I have not changed the script but have had time to think of who Billie Holiday was. Now, the show is definitely performed differently from the way I performed it at first. I attribute that to Charlotte, who helped me find more in it.”
McCurdy described her writing technique as somewhat unorthodox: “Sometimes I write stuff but don’t know exactly what I have written. The way I wrote this play, I made notes from book research on cue cards that ended up looking like a pathway. … I used some phrases that are Billie Holiday’s, from her books.”
She structured the show much like Holiday’s performances.
“The show is divided into three short sections instead of two with a full intermission,” she said. “When Billie Holiday became popular, she did three sets a night and six songs a set.”
McCurdy cautions against classifying Holiday as a blues singer and pigeonholing her into an age and culture.
“Billie’s music is relevant to any culture or age. Everyone thinks she’s singing the blues because her story was bluesy – she was a drug addict, she had been abused. Ultimately, she was the first singer to improvise jazz the way she did; she was a bit of a torch singer. That is the Billie I will give you a glimpse of.”
Willie Phillips, vice president of the African American Heritage Club, was instrumental in bringing McCurdy back to Laguna Woods.
“From my perspective, Leslie McCurdy is a phenomenal one-woman gang of an actress, singer, dancer and storyteller. Some of us witnessed that in her tribute to Harriett Tubman here last year. Secondly, Billie Holiday’s life and music is saturated with ‘strange fruit.’ When those two come together on March 22, Leslie is going to take our breath away.”
“Lady Ain’t Singing No Blues” will be at the Laguna Woods Performing Arts Center on Sunday, March 22, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $20, $30 and $40, available at the PAC box office or online at tickets.lagunawoodsvillage.com. For more information, call Willie Phillips at 310-877-2819 or Rebeca Gilad at 714-833-4888.