AS for drugs informing the work of Billie Holiday..

Posted: 8/20/05 at 6:10pm

Holiday did not need any drugs to "inform" her work - or to use , god help me, "collective memory" nonsense...

Here's a rundown:

Born out of wedlock to a mother who was never there

Raped at age eight

Sent to reform school at age nine

Molested by older girls at above reform school

Moved to Harlem and became teen prostitute

Arrested on morals charges

Subject to disgraceful indignacies of being black on the road with white swing bands and on radio

Watched a lynching...

Married to three a-holes who beat her senseless many times..

The woman did not need drugs to inform anything.....What the booze, smoke, pot and heroin (snorted - which is all but acid on vocal cords) did was take a moderate but well controlled voice backed with a dead on sense of swing and turned her voice into shreds and her mind into mush...

Listen to the early Columbia sides with Lester Young - Like two angels spreading joy into the night.....all before the drugs hit!
Updated On: 8/20/05 at 06:10 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/20/05 at 8:54pm

Of course I enjoy the early Columbia swing recordings, as well as the mid-career Commodore recordings, but I adore as guilty pleasures the last two albums she did with Ray Ellis--LADY IN SATIN and the posthumously released eponymous BILLIE HOLIDAY.

Hearing her sing "I'll be Around" or "The End of a Love Affair" or "I'll Never Smile Again" and realizing that she WON'T be around or that one too many love affairs has ended or that she WON'T smile again is much like hearing Prospero speak "Our revels now are ended" at the end of The Tempest: life statements from someone who has seen and lived through just too much.

Quiet, please, there was a Lady Day onstage.

[PB ENT.]

Posted: 8/20/05 at 9:55pm

I had the pleasure of seeing "Lady Day Sings The Blues" with Chris Calloway, daughter of the late Cab Calloway. Talk about a legend portraying a legend. It was a Barrymore wining performance a few years back at the Bristol Riverside Thea. A brilliant and rivetting tribute to a wonderful, brave lady.

Hi Anthony, nice to see you!


pati b

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/20/05 at 11:04pm

Do you mean "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill"?

[Justice]

Posted: 8/20/05 at 11:40pm

Her latter recordings are quite amusing...You can actually hear her falling asleep at the mic in reaction to the heroin she had just shot up...

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/21/05 at 12:22am

On which song?

[Justice]

Posted: 8/21/05 at 12:31am

Oh gosh...I'm supposed to remember...this was years ago that I heard it - and had the cd that was taken from me in my divorce. I want to say I first heard it in "Don't Explain" - but the only reason I'm saying that is becase that's the only BH song running in my head right now....
But, like I said, if you lisen to her later recordings, you can definately hear her getting very "lazy"...

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/21/05 at 11:00am

I think "falling asleep" is an exaggeration.

Posted: 8/21/05 at 11:10am

It never happened - please read the new book "With Billie" for details on her last recording dates - she never fell asleep....

[PB ENT.]

Posted: 8/21/05 at 2:39pm

"Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill"?

Yep. Thanks!

[Justice]

Posted: 8/21/05 at 5:50pm

Okay...falling asleep may have been an exagerration....

but still she was getting sleepy...