Billie Holiday

Becoming Billie Holiday Poems by Carol Boston Weatherford, art by Floyd Cooper Wordsong / 117 pages / $19.95 These brief, first-person poems tell the story of Eleanora Fagan, who grew up impoverished on Durham Street in a rough East Baltimore neighborhood, yet became a world-renowned jazz singer. With little education and no vocal training, Billie Holiday (she changed her name when she began singing) had an obsessive love for jazz, an excellent ear for rhythm and a voice that was almost able to float.

Five one-acts by `Tenn' When scholars David Roessel and Nicholas Moschovakis were researching their 2002 book, The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams, they discovered a cache of 20 unpublished scripts in Williams' archives. Now three of those plays - These Are the Stairs You Got to Watch, Escape and And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens - are receiving their world premieres at Washington's Kennedy Center as part of an evening of one-acts jointly titled Five by Tenn. Opening tonight, this first production in the four-month-long festival, "Tennessee Williams Explored," also includes another world premiere, The Municipal Abattoir.

A late morning fire shut down the Eubie Blake Cultural Center on North Charles Street and injured five city firefighters yesterday.The fire started in a second-floor dressing room of the building just after 11 a.m. yesterday, said Capt. Hector Torres, a Baltimore Fire Department spokesman.Captain Torres said three firefighters were trapped briefly after entering the building through a third-floor window and had to escape through the window.Two of the firefighters, Lt. William Hughes and John Buckingham, were treated at the scene for heat exhaustion.

Here's a big look for a local artist: Current b cover star Dunson said he had a lot of collaborations in the pipeline, and the first one, along with a stylized video, dropped today. R&B singer Chrisette Michele (an underrated talent perhaps best known for her breathy hook on Rick Ross' "Aston Martin Music") debuted "Can the Cool Be Loved?" today, a collaboration that includes neo-soul singer Bilal and the Columbia native Dunson. The song is from Michele's "Audrey Hepburn: An Audiovisual Presentation" project, scheduled to be released online Dec. 8. Dunson, happily playing off the Sammy Davis Jr. imagery in the video, spits an unadorned guest verse that sits comfortably in his wheelhouse (the "Would you take Billie Holiday to Holiday Inn?"

A 49-year-old Baltimore historian who taught schoolchildren about Billie Holiday and Thurgood Marshall was working on a rowhouse on the city's west side yesterday when he apparently triggered a building collapse that killed him. Alvin Brunson, who in 2005 was named "Best Community Historian" by the Baltimore City Paper, ran the nonprofit Center for Cultural Education at 541 Wilson St., just around the corner from Pennsylvania Avenue, the one-time cultural...

When I heard the buzz, I was skeptical. According to the international music press earlier this year, Corinne Bailey Rae, a curly-haired ingenue from Leeds, England, was supposed to be The New Thing. Comparisons to Sade, Minnie Riperton, Erykah Badu, Macy Gray, even Billie Holiday peppered just about every review I read on her. I rolled my eyes, but I was still interested. Who is this girl? I received an advance copy of her album months ago. And although Bailey Rae is seriously talented, I think some of the comparisons were a bit overblown.

You might call it "cabaret verite."Center Stage's Head Theater has been totally, convincingly and stunningly transformed into a working cabaret for its production of Lanie Robertson's "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill."The multi-level seating area is filled with tables and chairs; there's a bar at the back, and waiters serve drinks throughout the show. So successful is this concept -- for which credit should probably be divided between director George Faison, set designer Christopher Barreca and Tom Sturge, who created the smoky, evocative lighting -- that it's difficult to imagine this musical biography of Billie Holiday presented any other way.But, in fact, this is an innovative approach to Robertson's 1986 off-Broadway hit, which was conceived as a traditional theatrical presentation.

All that city jazz The latest issue of AAA World Magazine was stuffed inside the seat pockets of a jetliner waiting to take off from Charlotte, N.C., to Baltimore, so why not glance through it during one of those typically long waits to get airborne? It contained some nice ads and featurettes about traveling in these parts. One about Baltimore jazz singer Billie Holiday caught our eye. It was a piece about the 15th annual Mayor's Billie Holiday Vocal Competition on April 24, organized by the city's Office of Promotion & The Arts and held at Center Stage.

Margaret Ann Anderson, a singer and dancer who went from the Frederick County farm of her youth to performing for audiences at Harlem's famed Cotton Club, died Monday of lung cancer at her West Baltimore home. She was 76. Mrs. Anderson, who performed under the name Sylvia Anderson, began singing as a child on her parents' farm and in church choirs. After graduation from high school in Frederick at age 14, she traveled to New York and began dancing at the Cotton Club in the late 1930s. "There weren't many outlets for blacks in those days, and she decided to be an entertainer," said a daughter, Colletta Horton.

Vocalist Ruby Glover, a vibrant link to Baltimore's rich jazz heritage, died Saturday, a day after collapsing onstage during a performance at the Creative Alliance in East Baltimore. On Friday night, Ms. Glover was thrilled to see a full house gathered for a House of Ruth benefit where she was among the performers. With her silver cropped hair, Ms. Glover, 77, appeared as radiant and polished as ever on stage, recalled friend Megan Hamilton. Emcee Stan Stovall from WBAL-TV introduced Ms.