Billie Holiday
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performances “live phrase to phrase”: Chilton, Billie’s Blues, p. 232.
singing in Chicago and Frank Sinatra was there: Earl Wilson, New York Post, May 26, 1944, quoted in Vail, Lady Day’s Diary, p. 70.
developed a kind of speech-song: Hao Huang and Rachel Huang, “She Sang as She Spoke: Billie Holiday and Aspects of Speech Intonation and Diction,” Jazz Perspectives 7, no. 3 (December 2013), pp. 287–302.
Piaf, for example, sometimes stops singing: Rutkowski, “Cabaret Songs.” Another Euro speech-song form occurs in early-twentieth-century works by Viennese composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, who called on singers of their vocal works to deliver some lines in Sprechstimme, a form of spoken singing with relative pitch. But there seems to be no relation between this modern classical practice and either the Euro cabaret style or Holiday’s style.
tempting to look for the source of Holiday’s style: Ashton Stevens, music critic for the Chicago Defender, raved about Ethel Waters’s performance in Plantation Days in 1924 by comparing her singing favorably to Yvette Guilbert.
Jefferson suggests that this emotional distance: Ken Burns’s Jazz Transcripts, www-tc.pbs.org/jazz/about/pdfs/Jefferson.pdf.
“Lester sings with his horn”: Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 66.
Gordon sometimes spoke a few lines of a song: Hear Dexter Gordon, Live at Carnegie Hall, Columbia/Legacy 65312 CD.
Holiday and Young each chose to avoid: See the comparison of Holiday and Young’s improvisations on “These Foolish Things” in André Hodier, Toward Jazz (New York: Grove, 1962), pp. 191–95.
Holiday’s and Young’s shared musical affinity: Will Friedwald, A Bibliographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers (New York: Pantheon, 2010), p. 224.
recording and alternate take of “Me, Myself, and I”: This is not the song of the same name recorded by Beyoncé in 2003.
a fully improvised, freshly created solo: Among other examples of the same musical relationship are “I’ll Never Be the Same” (1937), “Time on My Hands” (1940), “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” (1937), and “He’s Funny That Way” (1937).
“the only ones who can take a solo”: Feather, “Lady Day Has Her Say.” My discussion of obbligato and Billie Holiday is indebted to an invaluable tutorial with Loren Schoenberg.
Hurston heard in preachers’ prayers: “Spiritual and Neo-Spiritual,” in Cheryl A. Wall, ed., Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), p. 862.
Hurston goes on to say: Ibid. Buck Clayton, the elegant trumpet player who also accompanied Holiday on many of these early recordings, seemed to have a different view of the obbligatos they played: not as an essential part of the music, but as a decorative option, and used only to fill in the blanks: “When she would record I would watch her mouth and when I saw that she was going to take a breath or something I knew it was time for me to play between her expressions. It’s what we call ‘filling up the windows.’” Yet the recordings show that he, too, improvised distinct, related lines at the same time as she sang, and seldom if ever played only between her phrases.
Compare the versions of “All of Me”: Cynthia Folio and Robert W. Weisberg, “Billie Holiday’s Art of Paraphrase: A Study in Consistency,” in New Musicology (Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology) (Poznan, Poland: Poznan Press, 2006), pp. 247–75; Huang and Huang, “She Sang as She Spoke”; Robert Toft, “Lady Day the Torch Singer: The Vocal Persona of a ‘Woman Unlucky in Love,’” in 12th Biennial IASPN International Conference, Montreal 2003 Proceedings, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, pp. 916–22, www.sibetrans.com/public/docs/Actas_IASPM_Montreal.pdf.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Songs I
“instrumental[ized] the material at hand”: Schuller, The Swing Era, p. 116.
so powerful and affecting in the best of Holiday’s art: Ronald Schleifer, Modernism and Popular Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 164–69.
“In those days 133rd Street”: Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 37.
such small venues could have significant influence: Shane Vogel, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
points of attraction for white musicians: Rudolph Fisher, “The Caucasian Storms Harlem,” American Mercury, August 1927, pp. 393–97.
don’t take this recording seriously: Kate Daubney, “Songbird or Subversive? Instrumental Vocalization Technique in the Songs of Billie Holiday,” Journal of Gender Studies 11, no. 1 (2002), pp. 22–23.
“The Teddy Wilson small group sessions”: Teddy Wilson, Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz (London: Cassell, 1996), p. 24.
“Good” jazz songs do not always make for great jazz: John Szwed, “Doctor Jazz,” liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax, Rounder Records 11661-1888-2 BK01, 2005, p. 19.
Holiday sings it in a key high enough: Schuller, The Swing Era, p. 538.
version of “Porgy” she sang was extracted from the opera’s duet: Steven Lasker, liner notes to Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings, MCA D2-601, 1991.
“I just made some records for Decca”: Interview on the Curfew Club radio program, recorded in late December 1948 and broadcast on January 8, 1949, on Billie Holiday at Stratford ’57, Baldwin Street Music BJH 308, 1999, track 16.
she did own records by Gershwin: Blackburn, With Billie, p. 97.
At one point Aronowitz asked Billie: Al Aronowitz, “The Saddest Song Ever Sung,” First of the Month, www.firstofthemonth.org/music/music_aronowitz_saddest.html.
She avoids the birdcall-like dips: Humphrey Lyttelton, The Best of Jazz (New York: Taplinger, 1978), pp. 209–11.
All the while she is phrasing across the beat: A second take of the song at a slower tempo exists but has less energy behind it. In a radio interview Phil Schaap asked Eddie Durham, the guitarist on the record, why the tempo was dropped on the second take. Durham replied that they’d taken a break to smoke a joint.
Preston Love said that she always listened: Preston Love, A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motown and Beyond (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), p. 219.
“Fitzgerald, entering the microphonic arena”: “Chick, Basie Battle,” New York Amsterdam News, January 28, 1938.
“The reason for her dismissal”: “Hammond Did Not Have Holiday Fired!” Down Beat, September 1938, p. 6.
Shaw wrote a short story: Artie Shaw, The Best of Intentions and Other Stories (McKinleyville, CA: Daniel and Daniel, 1989); Willie the Lion Smith, Music on My Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1964).
“In a corner sat a distinguished-looking fellow”: Timme Rosenkrantz and Inez Cavanaugh, liner notes to Billie Holiday’s Greatest Hits.
“I gave her a record of Debussy’s”: Blackburn, With Billie, p. 97.
“She treated me well”: Helen Forrest, I Had the Craziest Dream: Helen Forrest and the Big Band Era (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1982), pp. 58–59.
nightspot without racial barriers: “Mixed Band at Café Society: Joe Sullivan Organizes 1st Name Negro-White Orchestra Downtown,” New York Amsterdam News, November 25, 1939, p. 1.
“I always looked on Billie as a finished performer”: Kuehl manuscript, Rutgers University–Newark.
Holiday’s recording of “Strange Fruit” was released: The best source for information on this song is David Margolick’s Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000), but additional material has been added here from the author’s research. See also Nancy Kovaleff Baker, “Abel Meeropol (a.k.a Lewis Allan): Political Commentator and Social Conscience,” American Music, Spring 2002, pp. 25–79.
earlier pieces such as Bessie Smith’s “Haunted House Blues”: Adam Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the
Blues Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Lead Belly’s “Hangman’s Blues” and “The Gallis Pole”: New Masses, January 1931, p. 17; Lawrence Gellert, Negro Songs of Protest (New York: American Music League, 1936), pp. 10–11; Workers’ Song Book, No. 2 (New York: Workers’ Music League, 1935), pp. 23–26.
the night in 1958 that she sang it for Maya Angelou: Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman (New York: Random House, 1981), pp. 13–14.
“spell out all the things that had killed Pop”: Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 94.
She undoubtedly also knew the widely told account: Chris Albertson, Bessie, revised and expanded edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 255–71.
A few years later James Baldwin would write: James Baldwin, “Many Thousands Gone,” Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 25.
“separating the straight people from the squares”: Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 95.
interview that Holiday gave to PM newspaper: Harriott, “The Hard Life of Billie Holiday”; Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 94.
PM’s editors printed a response: “Letters: ‘Strange Fruit,’” PM, September 23, 1945, p. 19.
Herzog Jr., a publicist and writer of song lyrics: When the book first appeared, Herzog said that he had written a piece that would give “an accurate accounting of what occurred referring to incidents Billie presents quite differently,” which he’d titled “Blue Lady Sings Off-Key.” It was apparently never published. Letter from Arthur Herzog Jr., to Leonard Feather, August 31, 1956, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University–Newark.
“If Allan wants to come into court with his sheet music”: Letter from William Dufty to A. D. Weinberger, Esq., October 21, 1956, p. 2, H. Dennis Fairchild archive. As far as Milt Gabler was concerned, the band at Café Society had worked up the music.
“nothing happened until Miss Holiday did the song”: Letter from William Dufty to Le Baron Barker, Doubleday and Co., October 26, 1956, p. 1, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.
“When black face is lifted”: Gellert, Negro Songs of Protest, pp. 10–11.
“For years both American fellow travelers and the FBI”: Dufty to Barker, October 26, 1956, pp. 1–3, H. Dennis Fairchild archive.
“We give this statement to clarify the facts”: www.icollector.com/BILLIE-HOLIDAY-D-S_i559529.
“I can understand the psychological reasons”: Quoted in Margolick, Strange Fruit, pp. 128–29.
not based on making a social statement: Gilbert Millstein, “For Kicks: I,” New Yorker, March 9, 1946, p. 34.
there are downward arcs of notes: Robert Cogan, New Images of Musical Sound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 35–37.
The melody she creates is quite different: William T. Dargan, Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 218–20.
White had never met Billie: Josh White, “A Fighter: That’s the Billie I Remember,” Melody Maker, August 8, 1959, p. 5.
An article titled “Strange Song”: “Strange Record,” Time, June 12, 1939.
African American press was far more sympathetic: Atlanta Daily World, June 19, 1939, p. 2.
Breit later wrote in a review: Harvey Breit, “Implanting Bitterness,” New York Times, July 21, 1956.
“It was one of the first modern blues”: Kuehl notes, Rutgers University–Newark.
the music she told him she wanted to sing: Milt Gabler quoted in John McDonough, “On Disc: The Three Voices of Billie,” Wall Street Journal, December 16, 1991, p. A12.
The original version of “Gloomy Sunday”: “Gloomy Sunday” was composed in 1933 by Rezso Seress, whose title in Hungarian translates as “The World Is Ending.” A later version with new Hungarian lyrics was written by László Jávor and retitled “Sad Sunday.” “Gloomy Sunday” was first recorded in English with lyrics by Sam M. Lewis, and rewritten again with another set of English lyrics by Desmond Carter. Billie Holiday’s version used Lewis’s lyrics.
It could also be played by an orchestra: Paul Bailey, “Tong Sung Long,” Times Literary Supplement, October 29, 2004.
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Songs II
“But then he contradicted himself”: Clarke, Wishing on the Moon, p. 191.
“We changed the lyrics in a couple of spots”: Holiday and Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, p. 101.
“Trav’lin’ Light” was an instrumental tune: Thomas A. DeLong, Pops: Paul Whiteman, King of Jazz (Piscataway, NJ: New Century, 1983), pp. 251–52.
It is a song that has had a long life: For a deeper look at this song, see the excellent chapter on Holiday’s and Crosby’s versions of “I’ll Be Seeing You” in Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music, pp. 54–74.
feelings she may have had about her drug use: Albert Murray interviewed by Robert O’Meally, unpublished, n.d., Robert O’Meally archive.
The song on the other side of the Decca single: “Roger Ramirez” in Stanley Dance, The World of Swing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), p. 327.
She paused frequently: Maya Gibson, “Alternate Takes: Billie Holiday at the Intersection of Black Cultural Studies and Historical Musicology,” PhD dissertation, 2008, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Mistinguett, Mistinguett: Queen of the Paris Night (London: Elek Books, 1954).
she remained in a torch mode: Toft, “Lady Day the Torch Singer,” pp. 917–21.
“She’d walk over”: Quoted in Chris Ingham, Billie Holiday (London: Unanimous, 2000), pp. 30–31.
“We never had time”: Ibid., p. 102. An amateur recording of a 1955 Rowles-Holiday rehearsal is included in The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, 1945–1959.
“display the complete interplay between us”: Ibid., p. 96.
best audiences had been white: Blackburn, With Billie, p. 302.
The strings were a comfort: Ibid. For the record, Marilyn Moore, a singer with the Woody Herman and Charlie Barnet bands in the late 1950s, said she was very close to Billie at the time this record was being made and claimed that Billie said she had nothing to do with the planning of the Lady in Satin album, did not know who Ray Ellis was before this, and hated the songs she did with violins because there were too many of them and she couldn’t hear herself. When the record began to get airplay and reviews, however, she changed her mind about it (Ted Ono, liner notes to Billie Holiday at Stratford ’57). There is a possibility that this is true, since Ellis said when she first saw how many string players there were she left the studio in tears and had to be talked into coming back. Such contradictions in accounts such as this one are not uncommon when the subject has not given many interviews and most of what we know of her comes from others.
The “ideal accompaniment for a jazz vocal”: Glen Coulter, “Billie Holiday,” in Martin Williams, ed., Jazz Panorama (New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962), p. 147.
Brooks’s comments for the same CD reissue: Michael Brooks’s notes were dropped from the digitally remastered CD reissue in 1997.
The results may sound a bit weird: My thanks to Andrew Homzy for his discussion of this recording on the Jazz Research List, August 29, 2013.
If that was so, Billie suggested: Earle Zaidins, quoted in Blackburn, With Billie, p. 307.
“I’m Billie Holiday”: Max Jones, Talking Jazz (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 257.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
“A Sailboat in the Moonlight,” 138–39
Adès, Thomas, 40
Afro-Latin music, 118
albums
Billie Holiday, 194–96
Essential Billie Holiday
: Carnegie Hall, 47–48
Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday, 191
Lady in Satin, 128, 168, 191–95
Lady Sings the Blues, 46–48
Last Recording, 191, 194–96
alcohol use, 3, 24, 39, 44, 51, 68, 127, 192
Alexander, Willard, 146, 148, 155
Alhambra Grill (Harlem), 28
“All of Me,” 121, 128
Allan, Lewis, 158, 160–63, 167
“Am I Blue?,” 89, 171
American Federation of Musicians, 176
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), 172–73
American South, 35–37, 64, 69, 78, 83, 86, 126, 151–53, 165
Anderson, Marian, 157, 163
Angelou, Maya, 44, 158–59
“Any Old Time,” 152–53
Apollo Theater (Harlem), 95, 101, 146, 187
Armstrong, Louis, 27, 35, 42, 89, 123, 188
autobiography of, 15, 57
Holiday’s duets with, 186
influences Holiday, 4, 98–99, 108, 110–11
on film/TV, 56–59, 61–63
Aronowitz, Al, 143
Astaire, Fred, 82, 132, 145
audiences, 1, 28, 47, 110, 168, 198
African American, 49, 83, 93, 98–99, 127, 154
and Holiday’s shows, 102–3, 107–8
Holiday’s views on, 50
national/worldwide, 127–28
white, 50, 80–81, 83, 134–35, 154–55, 164, 192
“Autumn Leaves,” 92
Avakian, George, 168
“Back in Your Own Backyard,” 145–46
“Backwater Blues,” 85–86
Bailey, Mildred, 60, 87–88, 90, 147–49
Baldwin, James, 66, 143, 159
Balliett, Whitney, 11, 63, 117
Baltimore Afro-American, 23
Baltimore, Maryland, 4, 12, 18, 23, 34, 67, 77
Bankhead, Tallulah, 22, 32, 34–38, 60, 100