C. Weatherford: Hello. This is Carole Boston-Weatherford. Billie Holiday or Eleanora Fagan, as she was known then, grew up in my hometown of Baltimore. My father was a jazz fan who played her recordings. I fell under her spell after seeing the film, Lady Sings the Blues at age 16. Somewhere along the way she also became my muse. In 2006, Billie enlisted me to write Becoming Billie Holiday, but it was an eighth grader admiring Billie's likeness at Baltimore's Great Blacks in Wax Museum who actually convinced me to write the book, which covers Billie's first 25 years.

The poems titled after Billie's songs and written in her voice poured out of me as if I channeled her. This first poem is from Billie's time in reform school. She first went to reform school for skipping school.

"It's a sin to tell a lie. The sisters of the Good Shepherd took in laundry and raised chickens to make ends meet. We girls all had chores washing and ironing linens, making beds, mopping floors, feeding chickens, gathering eggs, peeling potatoes, and scouring pots. 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop,' the nuns said, 'and confession is good for the soul.'

Once in a Five and Dime store a pair of silk stockings called my name. 'Eleanora, want to dance?' When the clerk wasn't looking I balled up those stockings, stuffed them in my pocket, and waltzed outdoors with my heart pounding. That wasn't the only time I stole."

Billie had a love of movies and often used the money that she made scrubbing marbles steps to indulge herself in a bargain matinee. This poem is called, I Wished on the Moon.

"I may have been poor, may have been orphaned half the time, but for five cents I could lose myself in a bargain matinee. Sitting front row center at the colored theater I imagined myself a damsel in satin, dripping in diamonds, safe in the hero's arms. Those movies may have been black and white, but my dream was technicolor. I left the dark theater squinting in broad daylight, stars in my eyes."

Now I'm reading the next to the last poem in the book in which a 25-year-old Billy Holiday envisions her future

. "If dreams come true I will bathe in spotlights and sleep on satin. Gardenias will bloom year-round in my backyard. Sadie's Rib Joint will make rich folks lick their fingers. Pres and I will do 10 dozen duets. Crooners will sing my praises between the lines of songs. Horn men will trumpet my arrival and claim me as their own. Piano players will secretly pine for me as my solos move them to tears. Singers will try but fail to mimic my tempo and phrasing. My biography will light the silver screen. My myth inseparable from my music. Cats will groove to my blues long after I'm gone, a legacy in wax. History will hail me and the same breath as Duke and Count, jazz royalty. I will reign over Swing Street and have found the love I crave."