[Dixielandjazz] Billie Holiday at 100: Concerts, Musicians Honor Singing Legend

[Louis Lince]

Robert,

You are not alone! I, too am ducking for cover.

best

Louis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>
To: <louislince at neworleansmusic.demon.co.uk>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 8:23 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Billie Holiday at 100: Concerts,Musicians Honor 
Singing Legend


>I know I’m committing harracy but I’ve never been a fan of Billie Holiday. 
>Her phrasing and singing behind the beat makes me uncomfortable.
>
> -Bob Ringwald, ducking for cover...
>
>
> Billie Holiday at 100: Concerts, Musicians Honor Singing Legend
>
>
> by Andrew Gilbert
>
> San Jose Mercury News, July 2, 2015
>
>
> Why is it so hard to take measure of Billie Holiday? On April 7, the 
> occasion of her 100th birthday, numerous articles surfaced on the Internet 
> assessing the jazz legend’s legacy. Far too many missed the mark, focusing 
> more on her troubles than her sublime music.
>
>
> Second only to Louis Armstrong as a foundational figure in jazz vocals, 
> Holiday wielded her voice like an improvising horn player, imbuing Tin Pan 
> Alley lyrics with infinite gradations of longing, desire, pain and bliss. 
> Her graceful and poised pas de deux with consummate musicians such as 
> pianist Teddy Wilson, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and particularly tenor 
> saxophonist Lester Young (who famously dubbed her Lady Day) set a still 
> unsurpassed standard for vocalist/instrumentalist interplay.
>
>
> From her first recordings in 1933 at the age of 18 with a studio band led 
> by a then-unknown clarinetist named Benny Goodman to her last sessions 
> with the Ray Ellis Orchestra, three months before her death in 1959 at the 
> age of 44, she helped define the American Songbook’s parameters, turning 
> numerous tunes into standards. And she had a hand in writing several 
> standards herself, including “God Bless the Child,” “Fine and Mellow” and 
> “Don’t Explain.”
>
>
> Far beyond jazz’s ken, she forced America to confront its most disturbing 
> legacy, evidencing uncommon bravery in recording and insistently 
> performing the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit” at a time when an 
> anti-lynching bill couldn’t even get through Congress. She accomplished 
> all this while struggling with heroin addiction and pervasive racism that 
> made her highest profile gig, touring with clarinetist Artie Shaw’s white 
> jazz orchestra at the peak of his popularity in 1938, an endless fight 
> against blatant discrimination (as much in the North as in the South).
>
>
> In the coming week, some of the finest jazz singers in the Bay Area are 
> turning their attention to Holiday’s music. On Sunday afternoon, the 
> Stanford Jazz Festival presents A Billie Holiday Celebration featuring 
> Clairdee and Lady Bianca, a pairing of two very different singers that 
> highlights the expansive nature of Holiday’s influence. And on July 17, 
> Kim Nalley, who describes Lady Day as “one of the most important musicians 
> in the 20th century, period,” presents “The Music of Billie Holiday” at 
> SFJazz’s Miner Auditorium.
>
>
> Lady Bianca spent the first half of her career as a top-shelf backup 
> singer working the proverbial 20 feet from stardom, touring and recording 
> with Frank Zappa, Van Morrison and blues greats such as John Lee Hooker 
> and Willie Dixon. Better known in recent years as a blues powerhouse than 
> a jazz vocalist, she earned praise in the early 1970s playing the role of 
> Billie Holiday in jazz vocal legend Jon Hendricks’ popular show “Evolution 
> of the Blues.” Immersing herself in Lady Day’s music, Lady Bianca absorbed 
> her “laid back” phrasing.
>
>
> “She took her time with the lyrics and expanded it until you know what she’s 
> saying and you really got the point,” Lady Bianca says. “Some singers just 
> sing the lyrics. You don’t get the feeling of the song. She took your 
> complete attention, and I noticed that it worked for me to take a little 
> more time when I sing.”
>
>
> Like many people growing up in the 1970s, Clairdee first became aware of 
> Holiday via the mostly apocryphal 1972 biopic “Lady Sings the Blues,” 
> which starred Diana Ross. When she went to check out Holiday’s recordings, 
> Clairdee first heard the icon’s work from the 1950s when her voice could 
> sound frayed.
>
>
> “I wasn’t impressed at all, and I just didn’t listen to her for many 
> years,” Clairdee says. “It wasn’t until an extended tour in Japan in 1999 
> that I heard her earlier work from the 1930s and I was completely blown 
> away. Then I started doing a lot of focused listening, studying her 
> phrasing and the emotion that she put into a single word, or turn of 
> phrase.”
>
>
> Kim Nalley had almost the reverse experience with Holiday’s music. Growing 
> up in a household suffused with jazz, she found the beauty in Holiday’s 
> late, vulnerable recordings, particularly the 1958 album “Lady in Satin.” 
> She got turned on to Holiday’s swing era recordings a little later, then 
> delved deeply into her discography when she was cast in C.J. Verburg’s 
> musical “Lady Day in Love.”
>
>
> At the time, she was ambivalent about Holiday, whose addiction and 
> often-abusive relationships with men seemed to make her an ill-fitting 
> role model for contemporary artists. But as Nalley completes her Ph.D in 
> history at UC Berkeley, she’s found a different perspective on Holiday, 
> recognizing the strength, fortitude and self-possessed musical vision 
> behind her incalculable creative achievements.
>
>
> “I became much more proud of her,” Nalley says. “It took me a second to 
> realize what a big deal it was to do ‘Strange Fruit.’ This song was 
> written by a communist and published in communist newspapers. The guy who 
> wrote it, a Jewish man Abel Meeropol, published it under a pseudonym. 
> Billie is attaching her name to a song when even the writer won’t do 
>  that.”  -30-
>
>
> Bob Ringwald Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet
> Fulton Street Jazz Band
> 916/ 806-9551
> www.ringwald.com
> Amateur (ham) Radio K6YBV
>
> I got caught taking a pee in the swimming pool today. The lifeguard 
> shouted at me so loud, I nearly fell in.
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