billie holiday

 

  • She also recorded new songs that were popular at the time, including, “My Old Flame”, “How Am I to Know?

  • [60] A month later, in November, Holiday returned to Decca to record “That Ole Devil Called Love”, “Big Stuff”, and “Don’t Explain”.

  • [47] Holiday returned to Commodore in 1944, recording songs she made with Teddy Wilson in the 1930s, including “I Cover the Waterfront”, “I’ll Get By”, and “He’s Funny That
    Way”.

  • [61] Holiday did not make any more records until August 1945, when she recorded “Don’t Explain” for a second time, changing the lyrics “I know you raise Cain” to “Just say
    you’ll remain” and changing “You mixed with some dame” to “What is there to gain?”

  • Other songs included in the movie are “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?”

  • Wilson, Holiday, Young, and other musicians came into the studio without written arrangements, reducing the recording cost.

  • However, after “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” was successful, the company began considering Holiday an artist in her own right.

  • Because she was under contract to a different record label and possibly because of her race, Holiday was able to make only one record with Shaw, “Any Old Time”.

  • Producer John Hammond, who loved Moore’s singing and had come to hear her, first heard Holiday there in early 1933.

  • However, Shaw played clarinet on four songs she recorded in New York on July 10, 1936: “Did I Remember?

  • Although Shaw admired Holiday’s singing in his band, saying she had a “remarkable ear” and a “remarkable sense of time”, her tenure with the band was nearing an end.

  • [60] She may also have wanted strings to avoid comparisons between her commercially successful early work with Teddy Wilson and everything produced afterwards.

  • She recorded two songs: “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law” and “Riffin’ the Scotch”, the latter being her first hit.

  • Hammond was impressed by Holiday’s singing style and said of her, “Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical life, because she was the first girl singer I’d
    come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius.”

  • “[60] On October 4, 1944, Holiday entered the studio to record “Lover Man”, saw the string ensemble and walked out.

  • “It reminds me of how Pop died, but I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still
    happening in the South”, she wrote in her autobiography.

  • Holiday sang 32 songs at the Carnegie concert by her count, including Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” and her 1930s hit, “Strange Fruit”.

  • He also drew on the work of earlier interviewers and intended to let Holiday tell her story in her own way.

  • She later said that the imagery of the song reminded her of her father’s death and that this played a role in her resistance to performing it.

  • [67] 1947–1952: Legal issues and Carnegie Hall concert[edit] By 1947, Holiday was at her commercial peak, having made $250,000 in the three previous years.

  • “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child” were called classics, and “Good Morning Heartache”, another reissued track on the LP, was also noted favorably.

  • The Commodore release did not get any airplay, but the controversial song sold well, though Gabler attributed that mostly to the record’s other side, “Fine and Mellow”, which
    was a jukebox hit.

  • 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.”

  • The album featured four new tracks, “Lady Sings the Blues”, “Too Marvelous for Words”, “Willow Weep for Me”, and “I Thought About You”, and eight new recordings of her biggest
    hits to date.

  • He later wrote: The narration began with the ironic account of her birth in Baltimore – ‘Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married.

  • This association placed her among the first black women to work with a white orchestra, an unusual arrangement at that time.

  • By the late 1940s, despite her popularity and concert power, her singles were little played on radio, perhaps because of her reputation.

  • [25] Brunswick did not favor the recording session because producers wanted Holiday to sound more like Cleo Brown.

  • A recording of a live set in Germany was released as Lady Love – Billie Holiday.

  • [72] Holiday at the Downbeat Jazz Club, New York,[73] c. February 1947 Holiday was released early (on March 16, 1948) because of good behavior.

  • Ella Fitzgerald named “You Better Go Now” her favorite recording of Holiday’s.

  • [44] “The version I recorded for Commodore”, Holiday said of “Strange Fruit”, “became my biggest-selling record.

  • This was also the first time a black female singer employed full-time toured the segregated U.S. South with a white bandleader.

  • Holiday in court over a contract dispute, late 1949 In October 1949, Holiday recorded “Crazy He Calls Me”, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.

  • Their first collaboration included “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Miss Brown to You”.

  • [15] Around this time, she first heard the records of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

  • [63] Holiday and her dog Mister, New York, c. 1946 In September 1946, Holiday began her only major film, New Orleans, in which she starred opposite Louis Armstrong and Woody
    Herman.

  • “They had taken miles of footage of music and scenes”, Holiday said, but “none of it was left in the picture.

  • [30] The traveling conditions of the band were often poor; they performed many one-nighters in clubs, moving from city to city with little stability.

  • [48] “God Bless the Child” became Holiday’s most popular and most covered record.

  • [2] Several films about her life have been released, most recently The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).

  • Her tunes included “I Must Have That Man”, “Travelin’ All Alone”, “I Can’t Get Started”, and “Summertime”, a hit for Holiday in 1936, originating in George Gershwin’s Porgy
    and Bess the year before.

  • The two later became friends.

  • By the late 1930s, Holiday had toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, scored a string of radio and retail hits with Teddy Wilson, and became an established artist in the
    recording industry.

  • [86] In his 2015 study, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth, John Szwed argued that Lady Sings the Blues is a generally accurate account of her life, but that co-writer
    Dufty was forced to water down or suppress material by the threat of legal action.

  • In 1950, Holiday appeared in the Universal short film Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet, singing “God Bless the Child” and “Now, Baby or Never”.

  • Holiday found herself in direct competition with the popular singer Ella Fitzgerald.

  • “Holiday is in good voice now”, wrote the reviewer, “and these new readings will be much appreciated by her following”.

  • Other songs recorded were “Big Stuff”, “What Is This Thing Called Love?

  • “The regular music critics and drama critics came and treated us like we were legit”, she said.

  • Although the song failed to chart, she sang it in live performances; three live recordings are known.

  • [32] Holiday was unable to record in the studio with Basie, but she included many of his musicians in her recording sessions with Teddy Wilson.

  • Shaw was also pressured to hire a white singer, Nita Bradley, with whom Holiday did not get along but had to share a bandstand.

  • It was also during this period that she connected with her father, who was playing in Fletcher Henderson’s band.

  • [9] Holiday was raised largely by Eva Miller’s mother-in-law, Martha Miller, and suffered from her mother’s absences and being in others’ care for her first decade of life.

  • She used money from her daughter while playing dice with members of the Count Basie band, with whom she toured in the late 1930s.

  • “I Can’t Get Started”, “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”, and “Swing It Brother Swing” are all commercially available.

  • [38] In September 1938, Holiday’s single “I’m Gonna Lock My Heart” ranked sixth as the most-played song that month.

  • She was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, though not in that genre; the website states that “Billie Holiday changed jazz forever”.

  • Her songs “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Easy Living” were imitated by singers across America and were quickly becoming jazz standards.

  • As her reputation grew, she played in many clubs, including the Mexico’s and the Alhambra Bar and Grill, where she met Charles Linton, a vocalist who later worked with Chick
    Webb.

  • On the final note, all lights went out, and when they came back on, Holiday was gone.

  • “I left two years later as a star.

  • She complained of low pay and poor working conditions and may have refused to sing the songs requested of her or change her style.

  • Hammond compared Holiday favorably to Armstrong and said she had a good sense of lyric content at her young age.

  • [78] Holiday said she began using hard drugs in the early 1940s.

  • [56] Her first Decca recording was “Lover Man” (number 16 Pop, number 5 R&B), one of her biggest hits.

  • Her manager, John Levy, was convinced he could get her card back and allowed her to open without one.

  • The success and distribution of the song made Holiday a staple in the pop community, leading to solo concerts, rare for jazz singers in the late 1940s.

  • In particular, Holiday cited “West End Blues” as an intriguing influence, pointing specifically to the scat section duet with the clarinet as her favorite part.

  • Metronome reported that the addition of Holiday to Shaw’s band put it in the “top brackets”.

  • According to Hammond, Brunswick was broke and unable to record many jazz tunes.

  • [10] Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, published in 1956, is sketchy on details of her early life, but much was confirmed by Stuart Nicholson in his 1995 biography
    of the singer.

  • The drug possession conviction caused her to lose her New York City Cabaret Card, preventing her working anywhere that sold alcohol; thereafter, she performed in concert venues
    and theaters.

  • [90] The liner notes for this album were written partly by Gilbert Millstein of the New York Times, who, according to these notes, served as narrator of the Carnegie Hall
    concerts.

  • Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing.

 

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Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pareeerica/2351206867/’]