The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

It seems sometimes like Eleanora Fagan Gough suffered just so Billie Holiday could sing. After a functionally parent-less childhood that was punctuated two incidents of rape, and after working briefly at a brothel, she began performing for tips - and taking on the persona of Holiday - in New York nightclubs when she was in her late teens. The Suffering Artist is by no means a new concept, but many of our poets and singers endure a more existential, less tangible sort of pain.