Judy

No matter whom you sleep with, or whether you’re a fan of the Metropolitan Opera or the Grand Ole Opry, practically everyone in the second half of the twentieth century (in America and around the world) has grown up with Dorothy and _The Wizard of Oz_; just as Garland was the major musical icon who started as a child star (even more than a headliner, like Sammy Davis Jr. or Buddy Rich), she’s the only performer in the Sinatra-Fitzgerald-Crosby league who captures most of her audience while they’re still little kids. Everybody knows who Garland and Dorothy are by the time they’re ten, even before they know who Elvis (or, more recently, Lady Gaga or Eminem, not to be confused with Auntie Em) is—she’s the one adult pop icon with an even younger demographic than most kiddie pop stars. Like a favorite aunt or a best friend, Garland is part of our childhoods.

Yet she’s also part of a unique musical aesthetic. One is tempted to describe it as a jazz-based tradition, but clearly it’s larger than that. You can’t describe it as purely an American phenomenon, since it also includes such overseas artists as Edith Piaf. Indeed, Garland, Piaf, and the more purely jazz-and-blues-based BIllie Holiday form a unique triumvirate of female vocalists. Theirs was a bittersweet legacy of happy songs (even from the often gloomy Piaf and Holiday, particularly in their early years) tainted by short lives crammed with abusive relationships. Perhaps the price for moving an audience is a penchant for self-destruction. If their songs told us to get happy, their lives told us otherwise.

From Will Friedwald’s BIographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers