Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”, which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca.
Billie Holiday, aged two, in 1917:
By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. She was a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Because of personal struggles and an altered voice, her final recordings were met with mixed reaction but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. Holiday died of cirrhosis on July 17, 1959, at age 44.
Holiday won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. 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”. Several films about her life have been released, most recently The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).
Billie Holiday performing at the Club Bali, Washington,
with Al Dunn (drums), and Bobby Tucker (piano) in 1948:
By early 1959, Holiday was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Although she had initially stopped drinking on her doctor’s orders, it was not long before she relapsed. By May 1959, she had lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg). Her manager, Joe Glaser, jazz critic Leonard Feather, photojournalist Allan Morrison, and the singer’s own friends all tried in vain to persuade her to go to a hospital. On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York for treatment of both liver and heart disease. According to writer and journalist Johann Hari, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Harry J. Anslinger had been targeting Holiday since at least 1939, when she started to perform “Strange Fruit”; However, this allegation has been disputed, with historian Lewis Porter noting that “there was no federal objection to the song “Strange Fruit,” nor was there any campaign to suppress it” and Holiday was instead pursued by Bureau of Narcotics mainly for her history of drug use. Narcotics police went to her hospital room, claiming they had found heroin in her bedroom. A grand jury was summoned to indict her, and she was arrested, handcuffed to her bed, and placed under police guard.[95] According to Hari, after ten days, methadone was discontinued as part of Anslinger’s policy; Hari accused Anslinger of being responsible for her death. On July 15, she received last rites.[98] She died at age 44 at 3:10 a.m. on July 17, 1959, of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
In her final years Holiday had been progressively swindled out of her earnings by McKay and she died with US$0.70 in the bank. Her funeral Mass was held on July 21, 1959, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. She was buried at Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. The story of her burial plot and how it was managed by her estranged husband, Louis McKay, was documented on NPR in 2012.
Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times, who was the announcer at Holiday’s 1956 Carnegie Hall concerts and wrote parts of the sleeve notes for the album The Essential Billie Holiday (see above), described her death in these sleeve notes, dated 1961:
Billie Holiday died in Metropolitan Hospital, New York, on Friday, July 17, 1959, in the bed in which she had been arrested for illegal possession of narcotics a little more than a month before, as she lay mortally ill; in the room from which a police guard had been removed – by court order – only a few hours before her death. She had been strikingly beautiful, but her talent was wasted. The worms of every kind of excess – drugs were only one – had eaten her. The likelihood exists that among the last thoughts of this cynical, sentimental, profane, generous and greatly talented woman of 44 was the belief that she was to be arraigned the following morning. She would have been, eventually, although possibly not that quickly. In any case, she removed herself finally from the jurisdiction of any court here below.
When Holiday died, The New York Times published a short obituary on page 15 without a byline. She left an estate of $1,000, and her best recordings from the 1930s were mostly out of print. Holiday’s public stature grew in the following years. In 1961, she was voted to the Down Beat Hall Of Fame, and soon after Columbia reissued nearly one hundred of her early records. In 1972, Diana Ross’ portrayal of Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe. Holiday was posthumously nominated for 23 Grammy awards. (wikipedia)
Most of this excellent CD features one of Billie Holiday’s finest concert recordings of the 1950s. Recorded in Europe before an admiring audience, this enjoyable set finds Lady Day performing seven of her standards with her trio and joining in for jam session versions of “Billie’s Blues” and “Lover Come Back to Me” with an all-star group starring clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, vibraphonist Red Norvo and guitarist Jimmy Raney. These performances (which find Holiday in stronger voice than on her studio recordings of the period) have also been included in Verve’s massive CD box set. This program concludes with Holiday’s four rare sides for Aladdin in 1951 (between her Decca and Verve periods) which are highlighted by two blues and “Detour Ahead,” and her 1942 studio recording of “Trav’lin’ Light” with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. (by Scott Yanow)
Personnel:
Carl Drinkard (piano)
Billie Holiday (vocals)
Elaine Leighton (drums)
Red Mitchell (bass)
+
Beryl Booker (piano on 10. + 11.)
Sonny Clark (piano on 10. + 11.)
Buddy DeFranco (clarinet on 10. + 11.)
Tiny Grimes (guitar on 12. – 15.)
Heywood Henry (saxophone on 12. – 15.)
Red Norvo (vibraphone on 10. + 11.)
Mike Pingitore (guitar on 16.)
Jimmy Raney (guitar on 10.+ 11.)
Artie Shapiro (bass on 16.)
Bobby Tucker (piano on 12. – 15.)
+
unknown bass & drums on 12. – 15.
Tracklist:
01. Announcement by Leonard Feather (in German) 0.29
02. Blue Moon (Hart/Rodgers) 2.15
03. All Of Me (Marks/Simons) 1.43
04. My Man (Charles/Pollack/Willemetz/Yvain) 2.51
05. Them Their Eyes (Holiday) 1.40
06. I Cried For You (Arnheim/Freed/Lyman) 3.22
07. What A Little Moonlight Can Do (Woods) 2.45
08. I Cover The Waterfront (Green/Heyman) 3.31
09. Billie’s Blues (Holiday) 11.34
10. Lover, Come Back To Me (Hammerstein II/Romberg) 6.39
11. Blue Turning Grey Over You (Razaf/Waller) 2.02
12. Be Fair With Me Baby (Darnell) 2.36
13. Rocky Mountain Blues (Haywood/Tucker) 3.04
14. Detour Ahead (Carter/Ellis/Freigo) 3.03
15. Trav’lin’ Light (Mercer/Mundy/Young) 3.17
Tracks 2 to 11 recorded live in Köln, Germany on January 5, 1954
Tracks 12 to 15 recorded in New York City on April 29, 1951 for Aladdin Records
More from Billie Holiday:
Duke Ellington was the most important composer in the history of jazz as well as being a bandleader who held his large group together continuously for almost 50 years. The two aspects of his career were related; Ellington used his band as a musical laboratory for his new compositions and shaped his writing specifically to showcase the talents of his bandmembers, many of whom remained with him for long periods. Ellington also wrote film scores and stage musicals, and several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. In addition to touring year in and year out, he recorded extensively, resulting in a gigantic body of work that was still being assessed a quarter century after his death. (by William Ruhlmann)
Duke Ellington’s work cannot possibly be summed up in one CD. Even his most important and influential work could barely make up a three CD collection. When I was beginning to get interested in Jazz, though, I wanted an album that, for a low price, would best represent what he has done for the world of jazz and music in the twentieth century.
And now I will start with a collection of 30 CD´s … and I´m talkin´about the legendary Sun Studos and Records in Memphis:
Manina, la fille sans voiles, released in the US as Manina, the Girl in the Bikini, and in the UK as Manina, the Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, is a 1952 French film directed by Willy Rozier and starring Brigitte Bardot, Jean-François Calvé and Howard Vernon. The film is one of Bardot’s first film roles, at the age of 17, and was controversial for the scanty bikinis worn by the young Bardot in the film, one of the first occasions when a bikini had appeared in film and when the bikini was still widely considered immodest.
In 1992, Prestige/Fantasy combined both of Miles Davis’ Live at the Barrel LPs on a 74-minute CD titled Our Delight. For hardcore collectors, the release of Our Delight was very good news. However, there are various reasons why this CD can hardly be called essential. The performances, which find Davis and tenor saxman Jimmy Forrest joining forces in a St. Louis club called the Barrel, are competent and likable but not mind-blowing. And the sound quality, although listenable, is not great (by early-’50s hi-fi standards). So when you add those things up, there is no way that Our Delight should be recommended to anyone who isn’t a serious collector. Nonetheless, these performances are not without historic value. Davis and Forrest (who are joined by a St. Louis rhythm section that consists of pianist Charles Fox, bassist John Mixon, drummer Oscar Oldham, and an unknown percussionist) did not play together very much, and Our Delight gives listeners a rare chance to hear them playing side by side on familiar standards like “All the Things You Are,” Tadd Dameron’s “Our Delight,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia.” The CD also contains a dusky performance of the ballad “What’s New,” although ballads are not a high priority. And the type of funky, groove-oriented soul-jazz and honker music that Forrest was famous for is excluded; the musicians don’t perform “Night Train” (the saxman’s biggest hit), and they stick to a bop/standards program. Our Delight certainly isn’t bad, but it doesn’t deserve five-star praise either (unlike much of the bop and cool work that Davis offered in the ’50s). Even so, collectors will find Our Delight to be interesting — shortcomings, flaws, and all. (by Alex Henderson)
Johann Strauss II (born Johann Baptist Strauss; 25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger, the Son (German: Sohn), son of Johann Strauss I, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as “The Waltz King”, and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century.
Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. The book British Hit Singles & Albums states that he was “Britain’s most successful album act before the Beatles…the first act to sell over one million stereo albums and [have] six albums simultaneously in the US Top 30 in 1959”.
Mantovani recorded for Decca until the mid-1950s, and then for London Records also owned by the Decca Company. He recorded in excess of 50 albums on that label, many of which were Top 40 hits. His single tracks included “The Song from Moulin Rouge”, which reached Number One in the UK Singles Chart in 1953;[2] “Cara Mia” (with him and his orchestra backing David Whitfield) in 1954; “Around the World” in 1957; and “Main Theme from Exodus (Ari’s Theme)” in 1960. In the United States, between 1955 and 1972, he released more than 40 albums with 27 reaching the “Top 40”, and 11 in the “Top Ten”. His biggest success came with the album Film Encores, which attained Number One in 1957.
Boris Christoff (Bulgarian: Борис Кирилов Христов, romanized: Boris Kirilov Hristov, IPA: [bɔˈris ˈkirilɔf ˈxristɔf]; 18 May 1914 – 28 June 1993) was a Bulgarian opera singer, widely considered one of the greatest basses of the 20th century.
Christoff had an excellent voice with a distinctive dark tone. Although it was not as large as some other bass voices, he had no trouble making an impact in big auditoria, like the San Francisco Opera. Owing to his stage presence and dramatic temperament, he was a worthy heir to the grand tradition of Slavonic basses exemplified by Fyodor Stravinsky, Lev Sibiriakov, Vladimir Kastorsky, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Kipnis and Mark Reizen, among others. He sang mostly in Verdi and the Russian repertoire, and was also a refined performer of vocal chamber music. Among his most famous roles were those of Tsar Boris (Mussorgsky – Boris Godunov), Philip II (Verdi – Don Carlo), Mephistopheles (Gounod – Faust and Boito – Mefistofele), Ivan Susanin (Glinka – A Life for the Tsar), Zaccaria (Verdi – Nabucco), Tsar Ivan (Rimsky-Korsakov – Ivan the Terrible), Dosifei (Mussorgsky – Khovanshchina), Gomez da Silva (Verdi – Ernani), Fiesco (Verdi – Simon Boccanegra), Attila (Verdi – Attila), Padre Guardiano (Verdi – La forza del destino), Galitzky and Kontchak (Borodin – Prince Igor) and others.
While he was a grand performer on stage, Christoff had difficult off-stage relations with fellow singers and producers, which sometimes grew into public scandals. In 1955 he fell out with Maria Callas during the performances of Medea at the Rome Opera and in 1961 his contract with La Scala was terminated after an open conflict with fellow Bulgarian Nicolai Ghiaurov whom Christoff blamed for collaborating with the Bulgarian communist regime. Herbert von Karajan tried to make him sing the title role in Don Giovanni which would have been inappropriate for his range; this prompted him to sever relations with von Karajan.
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American singer, actress, dancer, and vaudevillian. During a career that spanned 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961).
Although her film appearances diminished thereafter, Garland went on to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Star Is Born (1954), and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). She also made record-breaking concert appearances, released eight studio albums, and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show (1963–1964). At age 39, Garland became the youngest and first female recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema.
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