The Supply Chain Adventures of "Lady Day": A Late Journey for a Billie Holiday Photography Book

Nichelle Gainer had planned to release her curated book of photographs and tributes to music legend Billie Holiday on April 7, what would have been Holiday's birthday. However, the first batch of pre-ordered books didn't reach readers until more than two months later. On the original release date, instead of promoting the book, Gainer tweeted about the unusual predicament she had learned of from her publisher's freight forwarder.

"Lady Day: Body & Soul" was stuck in the mud of the Chesapeake Bay.

Gainer spent about two years researching, compiling, and editing this 100-page coffee table book, only for it to end up in a container on the "Evergreen Ever Forward" on its release date—a ship that had run aground on the Maryland side of the largest estuary in the United States.

The book's journey illustrates some common and less common problems facing international supply chains, and it gave Gainer a deep appreciation for a lesson industry insiders already knew: supply chain disruptions don't happen in isolation.

"My book is just one part of it," Gainer said in April. "But who knows what else was on that ship?"

Watching the news headlines, waiting for updates

"Lady Day: Body & Soul" set sail from Shenzhen, China, earlier this year, avoiding the COVID-19 lockdowns that shut down the manufacturing hub in March. The books were destined for New York, where the container would be unloaded and then trucked to a warehouse in Pennsylvania.

The ship's month-long ordeal in the mid-Atlantic began on March 13, when it ran aground in several feet of mud north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge after a stop in Baltimore. The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the incident.

Workers spent a month unloading hundreds of containers to help refloat the cargo ship, finally succeeding on April 17. By this time, Gainer and her publisher were facing a frustration common to many businesses in complex supply chains: limited visibility.

After receiving the initial notice of the grounding, they had little means to track the container. They didn't deal directly with Evergreen Marine, and the freight forwarder couldn't tell them how much longer the books would be delayed, or whether their container was among those being lifted onto barges by cranes.

"They were going to try and refloat the ship, that's all we knew," Conway said. "From there, we were just getting updates from various news websites."

After the "Evergreen Ever Forward" was refloated in the Chesapeake Bay without damage and reloaded with the containers that had been removed, it sailed to Norfolk, Virginia. The cargo ship then queued outside the Port of New York, waiting at sea again before it could unload the container holding the books.

"It's frustrating that it's taking this long," Gainer's publisher, Rocket 88 Books, tweeted on May 9 in response to an inquiring customer. "Probably another week or so."

On May 30, Gainer announced that the books had successfully been unloaded in New York.

A tribute to 'the essence of cool'

Gainer gathered photos and quotes from numerous magazines, museums, and collections for "Lady Day: Body & Soul."

Whoopi Goldberg wrote the foreword for the book, calling Holiday "one of the most moving women we have ever seen and heard."

Jazz and blues luminaries emphasized Holiday's influence. Miles Davis said her voice "didn't need a horn; she was a horn." Etta James said she grew up listening to her mother play "nothing but Billie Holiday." Duke Ellington called Holiday "the essence of cool."

The photographs capture a range of elegant and everyday moments from Holiday's life. Some show her singing into a microphone or rehearsing with band members at the piano; in others, she lies in a robe, laughs with friends, and cuddles her beloved boxer, Mister, and Chihuahuas Pepé and Chiquita.

The result is a powerful photographic ode to the life and legacy of the legendary Baltimore-born singer, whose struggles with addiction sometimes overshadowed her achievements.

"The Billie Holiday I grew up hearing about was a drug addict who had a tragic life," Gainer said. "You would think she had this horrible, sad life with no joy in it at all... I really wanted to focus on her art and her creativity, not the tragedy."

Gainer worked with the independent publisher and moved the project forward in partnership with the Billie Holiday Estate. Rocket 88 sells and distributes its books directly, focusing mainly on music, and had previously published two of Gainer's "Vintage Black Glamour" series books.

John Conway, general manager of Rocket 88, said some of the publisher's other ocean shipments had encountered bad weather or congestion outside busy ports. On one occasion, a container waited three weeks for a truck to pick it up.

He said the publisher had become accustomed to "general COVID issues" disrupting shipping schedules, but "Lady Day: Body & Soul" was the first shipment stuck on a grounded ship. Most other situations, Conway said, "weren't as dramatic."

'I didn't expect it to arrive immediately'

Tara Haynes received her order in California in mid-June, about 10 weeks after the original release date. She had pre-ordered the book from the publisher's website late last year, and the wait didn't bother Haynes, "because it's beautiful," she told Supply Chain Dive on Twitter.

Despite the delay, her pre-order received email notifications when it shipped and was delivered, Haynes said. "Given the pandemic and supply chain issues, I wasn't too surprised," Haynes wrote about the wait, adding, "It's not Amazon, so I didn't expect it to arrive immediately."

Douglas Kent, upon learning about "Lady Day: Body & Soul," also said he would order a copy. Kent, executive vice president of strategy and alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management, said the book's journey reflects cascading disruptions hitting carefully orchestrated supply chains.

"These shocks make it nearly impossible to have any smooth, predictable process," he said.

While global shipping hasn't become more reliable, it has become more expensive. Kent said container freight rates are 8 to 10 times higher than two years ago, and air freight rates have tripled in the past six months. When he placed his order, Kent noticed that shipping for "Lady Day: Body & Soul" cost £26 (about $31), while the book itself was £66 (about $79).

"Almost every mode of transportation is unpredictable these days, whether it's supply assurance—is it going to arrive when I expect it?—or the cost associated with it," Kent said. "Companies are getting smarter, trying to analyze different scenarios to determine... 'When should I reconsider that network?'"