Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill April 23, 2010

It's around midnight in a small bar in Philadelphia in March, 1959. Jazz singer, Billie Holiday, washed up but still charismatic, is making one of her final appearances. In the sleazy surroundings of her old friend Emerson's bar, she begins her evening cabaret almost as an automaton, but between songs she gradually pours out the story of her life, the triumphs alongside the vicious, grinding existence of what is generally perceived to be a second class citizen.