Billie Holiday. Born Eleanora Fagan, April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia and died on July 17, 1959 in New York City.
I don’t think there is a singer who looms larger in popular culture. She a musician who garners much devotion and celebration. It seems like every few years we get another pop star who music journalists call “a modern Billie Holiday” or “Billie Holiday for this generation” or some variation. Or a major pop star will cite Billie Holiday as an influence or a passion.
These comparisons to Billie usually seem limited and the pop star praisings sometimes disingenuous. Not always. But it seems like more folks know about the cultural symbol that is Billie Holiday than know her music. It seems generally known that she had a tragic life, but most folks don’t know the details.
I wanted to do something “special” for Thanksgiving. In the wake of current events, it feels like a bittersweet Thanksgiving. Lady Day…..
Howdy and welcome to my weekly Jazz bloggings here on Daily Kos and the intertubes. I try to publish a diary about Jazz or related music every Sunday around 10pm EST. IF you are finding me for the first time today, comments are welcome and encouraged.
Solitude
When one is a 15-17 year old boy--in the 1980s--discovering complex music and Coltrane and Miles, learning to play and desiring the virtuosity of the greats, you are aware of Billie Holiday but probably don’t listen to her a whole lot. That certainly described me. Her music sounds old fashion compared to Wayne and Elvin, conservative compared Pharaoh Sanders or Eric Dolphy, and it’s not swinging as hard as Max or Wynton Kelly. But if one considers themselves a student of the music, you investigate her. You pay attention. Figuring out which recordings are the good ones was hard. Eventually you have a satori in headphones and see the subtlety, hear the beauty, empathize with the pain.
You don’t know what love is
Billy Holiday was one the earliest singers who sang like an instrumentalist. This basically refers to her phrasing, the way she floats over the bar lines. Does she sing like Lester Young plays saxophone? Perhaps.
My diaries are always too long....er and this one is one of the longest... I’ld prefer to include Lester Young clips to accentuate how the two had been in love for a while in the 1930s, though never married. There was a break up of some sort and then the two not speaking for a decade or more, to be reunited on stage on television at the end of her life. (Hey Hollywood, there’s the framing device for your Billie Holiday movie. I’m available for a development deal to generate projects for movies about music.)
It's also important to note that much of the music is exactly how Billie wanted it. By this I mean that she rehearsed the bands and had them do things her way. She was in charge of her music, though perhaps not her career.
Official Site
Wikipedia—
….Her mother often took what were then known as "transportation jobs", serving on passenger railroads. Holiday was left to be raised largely by Eva Miller's mother-in-law, Martha Miller, and suffered from her mother's absences and leaving her in others' care for much of the first ten years of her life….
…. Holiday frequently skipped school and her truancy resulted in her being brought before the juvenile court on January 5, 1925, when she was nine years old. She was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school….After nine months in care, she was "paroled" on October 3, 1925, to her mother, who had opened a restaurant called the East Side Grill, where she and Holiday worked long hours. By the age of 11, Holiday had dropped out of school…..
Holiday's mother returned to their home on December 24, 1926, to discover a neighbor, Wilbur Rich, attempting to rape Billie, but failing….Officials placed Billie in the House of the Good Shepherd under protective custody as a state witness in the rape case. Holiday was released in February 1927…. She found a job running errands in a brothel….By the end of 1928, Holiday's mother decided to try her luck in Harlem, New York, and left Holiday again with Martha Miller.
…. Holiday's mother became a prostitute and, within a matter of days of arriving in New York, Holiday, who had not yet turned fourteen, also became a prostitute….On May 2, 1929, the house was raided, and Holiday and her mother were sent to prison….her mother was released in July, followed by Holiday in October, at the age of 14.
Billy also started performing at age 14 as a singer. In 1933, John Hammond heard her and arranged for her to record with the Benny Goodman band when she was 18.
Riffin’ the scotch
And in 1935 she appears in a Duke Ellington short where the band plays Duke’s “A Symphony in Black” and her song is called “Saddest Tale”. She was also an extra in "Emperor Jones".
From 1935 through 1938, Billie recorded several dates with the great pianist Teddy Wilson. These were dates set up by John Hammond and done for the Brunswick label (now properties of Columbia records) and for Columbia.
What a Little Moonlight Can Do
There are several recording sessions. The specifics for each date can be found online—who played what on which tunes etc—but that is very tedious work to do and I havn’t for each of these cuts. Milt Hinton is often the bass player. And Lester Young is often the Tenor player. It is Lester who gives her her nickname, "Lady Day"
These foolsh things--1936
The Way You Look Tonight—This one with Ben Webster and not Lester and also Gene Kupra is on drums.
The band needed music to play. Written arrangements. These cost money and Brunswick records had none. The band essentially improvised the arrangements which saved the label much money. The label also paid Billie (and assume everyone else) a flat fee for the dates and they received no royalties. And those dates include this tune…for which this version was the most successful recording until rock bands starting covering it (some forgotten 60s band had a hit with it before Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company)
Summertime
These include sessions made in her name
A Fine Romance
In 1937, Billie was with the Count Basie band for a brief period. There are no recordings, but the tunes she would perform with the band included “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “I Can’t Get Started”.
They Can’t Take That Away from Me--1937
Mean to Me, 1937. This one most definitely has Lester Young
Nice work if you can get it
I Can’t Get Started—1938. Definitely with Lester
I’ve posted a few versions of I Can’t Get Started in past diaries. To a past generation, this composition was often called the greatest pop song ever. It was voted as such several years in a row by the listening audience of WNEW AM.
You Go To My Head
(I’m having a hard time trying to decide which tunes not to include so that the diary won’t be too insanely long…..)
Easy Livin’—This was a big hit for Billie
Billy was out of the Basie band by February ’38. But this happened in January….
Wikipedia--
Holiday found herself in direct competition with popular singer Ella Fitzgerald….Fitzgerald was the vocalist for the Chick Webb Band, who were in competition with Count Basie. On January 16, 1938, the same day that Benny Goodman performed his legendary Carnegie Hall jazz concert, the Count Basie and Chick Webb bands had a battle at the Savoy Ballroom. Chick Webb and Fitzgerald were declared winners by Metronome magazine. Down Beat magazine declared Holiday and Basie the winners. A straw poll of the audience saw Fitzgerald win by a three-to-one margin.
A month after being fired from Basie’s band, Billie was hired by Artie Shaw. There are no recordings. However, Billie is one of the first black women to perform with a white band. Shaw supported her. She would be prohibited from sitting on stage with the white singers, Shaw insisted she be on the band stand. Gigs in the south…and one especially in Kentucky…would often result in lots of heckling and racist name calling. Billie got pissed in Kentucky and had to be escorted off stage.
Wikipedia—
In November 1938 Holiday was asked to use the service elevator at the Lincoln Hotel, instead of the passenger elevator, because white patrons of the hotels complained. This may have been the last straw for her. She left the band shortly after. Holiday spoke about the incident weeks later, saying "I was never allowed to visit the bar or the dining room as did other members of the band ... [and] I was made to leave and enter through the kitchen."
Im Gonna Lock My Heart—the 6th most played song of September 1938
And then comes 1939. IN 1939, Billie is presented with a haunting tune which has been called “The Song of the 20th Century”. In light of Ferguson and so many other police shootings in recent weeks and months...years….well, its remembering this song that got me started on the whole Billie Holliday diary in the first place….
Strange Fruit (Grammy Hall of Fame 1978. National Recording Registry, Library of Congress, 2002)
Just to tie some loose ends you might know….Billie was under contract to Columbia records at the time, but Columbia found the subject matter of Strange Fruit to be too controversial. Enter Milt Gabler who agreed to record the tune for Commodore records. Milt was comedian Billy Crystal’s uncle.
Fine and Mellow was the B-side to the single.
Billie had been supporting her mom, funneling money to her so that she could open a restaurant in Harlem. Billie was in a situation where she needed some cash and went to her mother for some from the restaurant. Her mother refused, the two got into a fight and Billie is said to have shouted at her mother “God Bless the Child who has their own!” Billie took this phrase and, along with pianist Arthur Herzog, turned it into Billie’s most successful recording.
God Bless the Child--1941
This tune reached number 25 on the charts, was third in Billboard’s song of the year calculations, sold over a million copies (I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if that means in 1941 only or a wider timer frame) and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1976.
In 1942, she records “Travlin’ Light” with Paul Whiteman for Capital records. Because she was still under contract to Columbia, she records as “Lady Day”. It hit 23 on the pop charts and was number one on the Harlem Hit Parade…the forerunner to R&B charts.
In 1944 she begins to record for Decca records which happens to have Milt Gabler as an A&R man. (Gabler is pretty interesting. He also happens to sign Bill Haley to Decca records, overseeing “Rock Around the Clock” and later on he is involved with the production and recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Decca turned down signing the Beatles, but I don't think that was Gabler's call.)
Lover Man—Billy insisted there be strings on the record. Milt feels he helps Billie become a true pop star with this cut. This was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1989.
Don’t Explain—written by Billy after she caught her husband, Trombonist Jimmy Monroe, with lipstick on his collar.
Speaking of husbands….I get quite confused trying to figure who Billy was with when. She was married to Jimmy Monroe from 41 through 47. She marries her second husband, Trumpeter Joe Guy, in 51 and they stay married until 1957. But I’ve seen Joe Guy referred to as her boyfriend as far back as 1944. And I’ve also seen it suggested that it is with Joe Guy that she starts to do heroin. Guy is reported to be have been a drug dealer. But quite possibly, Lester Young was the true love of her life and I am fairly sure they did not speak at all in the 1940s. Her mother dies in 1945 and that is said to have increased her drinking and heroin use.
Good Morning Heartache was released in 1946. It did not chart at all, but it remained in her live repertoire
She also makes the film “New Orleans” with Louis Armstrong in 1946. Which includes her singing…
Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans
1947 was possibly the height of her commercial career. Wikipedia tells me she earned about $250K from 44’-’47. What could go wrong?????????
May 16, 1947 Billy is arrested for narcotics possession and is sent to Federal prison and was released on March 16, 1948.
Wikipedia--
On March 27, 1948, Holiday played Carnegie Hall to a sold-out crowd. There were 2,700 tickets sold in advance, a record at the time for the venue…. During the show, someone sent Holiday a box of gardenias. "My old trademark," Holiday said. "I took them out of box and fastened them smack to the side of my head without even looking twice." There was a hatpin in the gardenias and Holiday, unknowingly, stuck it into the side of her head. "I didn't feel anything until the blood started rushing down in my eyes and ears," she said. After the third curtain call, she passed out…
On April 27, 1948, Bob Sylvester and her promoter Al Wilde arranged a Broadway show for her. Titled Holiday on Broadway, it sold out….But it closed after three weeks.
Holiday was arrested again on January 22, 1949, in her room at San Francisco's Hotel Mark Twain.
Though in ’48 she records one my favorite tunes, I Loves You Porgy. Billy does not sing the words in Gershwin’s broken plantation dialect and uses correct English grammar instead.
And 1949 sees another classic, “Crazy He Calls Me” (Grammy Hall of Fame 2010)
And then comes the 50s. She appears on television in 1950
And then in 1952 re-records many of her classics and creates a new classic.
Autumn in New York
Here is what I meant when I said earlier that it’s hard to tell which the good tunes are. Her voice is starting to sound thinner and older. Abusive men, racism, life on the road, too much booze, heroin…it takes its toll. In my opinion, and it is shared by many, while there are inspired recordings from the 52 sessions and later…the best stuff is in the 30s and 40s. And if one just types song titles into Youtube, the 50’s versions of the tunes seem to be higher up on the listings than the originals. You tube “Strange Fruit” and a 1959 performance is above the 1939 one. And Billie looks fragile.
It would be in 1953 (maybe 54) that a 5 or 6 year old Billy Crystal was taken to see "Shane" by and with Billie Holiday.
In 1956, she releases her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. A record comes out of the same name as a companion to the book and she rerecords some tunes and also records a few new ones.
Sophisticated Lady
Speak low
As well as getting more TV spots—“STARS OF JAZZ”
And there is a major concert at Carnegie Hall
And then there is this in 1957. Live television with some of her old friends…..including reuniting with Lester. Watch this, Lester is the one in the Pork Pie Hat. Remember, these are old lovers who have not spoken in what I think is nearly 20 years, reunited on stage on live television.
Also in 57 she marries her third husband. Wikipedia—
On March 28, 1957, Holiday married Louis McKay, a Mafia enforcer. McKay, like most of the men in her life, was abusive, but he did try to get her off drugs. They were separated at the time of her death, but McKay had plans to start a chain of Billie Holiday vocal studios, à la Arthur Murray dance schools
In 1958 she records her last album, Lady in Satin.
You’ve changed
Her voice is not as full as it once was….but its still damn good. She gets more TV.
And she appears at the Monterey Jazz Festival
In 1959 she also gets more television. I do believe this is British TV.....
Wikipedia—
In early 1959 Holiday had cirrhosis of the liver. She stopped drinking on doctor's orders, but soon relapsed.By May she had lost 20 pounds….
On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York with liver and heart disease. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided. Police guarded her room. Holiday continued staying under police guard. On July 15, she received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church, before dying two days later from pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959, at 3:10 am. In her final years, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person. Her funeral mass was at Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City on July 21, 1959. She was buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery.
NYTimes Obituary of Billie Holiday
Which stars today will be remember 55 years after their death? Pfft…who actually plays anything in popular music today? I am not going to rant…this is perhaps the longest diary I’ve written. Heck, I’m even wiping a few tears away in a way that I havn’t since six months ago when I wrote about the tragedies in Bill Evans’ life or since the last time I wrote about Clifford Brown’s untimely death…which of course happened to be last week. I’m a sensitive guy! Some of these diaries become emotional rollercoasters as I lay out various life histories.
There isn’t anything else to add, except that I know we will remember the life and music of Billie Holiday for decades to come. And here on Thanksgiving weekend, I ask myself…what am I thankful for?
Music. American Music. African-American Music. Jazz.
Thanks for listening everyone. I am not sure if I’ll be able to get a diary done for next Sunday, I’ll be in Washington DC most of the week for the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. But maybe I’ll get one done….sort of depends on what time I get home Saturday.
Please support your local jazz musicians and all local live music. And please stop calling new singers the next Billie Holiday. They aren’t and they never ever will be. Ever.