7. Billie Holiday
Perhaps the finest female singer of all time, even if jazz may no longer be a genre that people gravitate towards. Though there has been a fine array of other women to rival Billie Holidays legacy, none of them have been quite so strangely distinctive. When jazz reigned supreme in popular culture, Holiday was the go-to artist for many songwriters in America, her throaty, haunting voice able to take lyrics to places nobody had ever ventured before. The highly talented jazz bands that supported Holiday were able to conjure new forms, influenced by her ghostly tones that emanated from a body that had experienced a great deal of pain and suffering. Born on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Harlem, Holiday grew up in a dangerous world of poverty, drugs, and prostitution, which undoubtedly had a profound effect on her musical character and disposition later in life. In spite of much adversity and struggle, both in her undiscovered years and during the pinnacle of her eminence, Holiday was widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of her generation, so much so that Frank Sinatra said she was the greatest single musical influence on me.