Back in 2009 when we began writing this column under the caption “Jazz Extra” in another newspaper, we indicated that we were inspired among other things by the election of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the USA. We also said at the time, that his election was the highlight and hallmark of the culmination of contributions by African Americans to the rich history of the United States.
President
Obama’s success is the result of the steady but at times turbulent growth of
American democracy, and one of the cultural foundations of this democracy is
Jazz.
Now
that there is a new President heading the political ensemble in Washington,
it
is significant to mention that the growth of jazz is synonymous to the growth
of American democracy. Jazz became
America’s most effective export in the early 1900s and played an important role
for American diplomacy during the cold war.
It
has been part of the White House for various Presidents, as Duke Ellington performed
there during the presidency of Richard Nixon, and Wynton Marsalis also
performed there with President Clinton playing saxophone.
President
Obama has told Rolling Stones Magazine that he keeps the music of John Coltrane
among others in his iPod, and President Bush once said that the story of jazz
mirrors the story of the American nation.
Jazz
musicians indeed played a key role as cultural ambassadors during the cold war
and still continue to promote the values and virtues of the American
experience.
It
is said that the essence of jazz is the same as that of democracy, because it
offers “the greatest amount of individual freedom consistent with a healthy
community”.
Jazz
is democracy in sound through endless repetition, as each musician is allowed extraordinary
liberty during solo, and is then expected to conscientiously back up the other
musicians in turn.
Jazz
has been described as democracy in sonic motion, for in it; one can see, hear
and experience concepts that are fundamental to democracy.
In
fact, the study of jazz is now being used as a metaphor to teach the tenets of
American democracy in elementary schools. This experiment started in California
and is gaining ground in other states throughout America. Hence, the story of
jazz is now not only historical and entertaining, it has also become
pedagogical. Comparison of jazz to democracy is now a project in the U.S.A.,
and it is gaining momentum.
Meanwhile,
let us return to our focus on women in jazz and continue with a portrait of one
of the most intriguing jazz personalities of her time. She was
born
Eleanora Fagan on April 7th 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Her
occupation was that of jazz singer-song writer, with a vocal style that was
greatly influenced by jazz instrumentalists. She was more of a singer than a
songwriter, consequently, she co-wrote only a few songs during her career, but
a few of them became jazz standards.
Billie
Holiday had a difficult childhood which followed her into adulthood until her
death in 1959. Her mother’s name was Sadie Fagan and her father was Clarence
Holiday, a local musician. They never married, nor lived together and when
Eleanora was born, her mother (Sadie) arranged for the child to stay with her
half-sister who lived in Baltimore.
Eleanora
suffered from the absence of her mother for most of her early life and would
get involved in truancy and other activities which resulted in her being taken
to juvenile court when she was not even ten years old. By the age of eleven,
Eleanora had dropped out of school, and was working long hours at her mother’s
restaurant.
In
1926 Eleanor was a victim of rape by a neighbor. The neighbor was arrested and
Eleanora was placed under protective custody. She was released in 1927 and
together with her mother; they began working for a madam. It was during this
period when she first heard of the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.
In
1929, Eleanora took the pseudonym “Billie” from an actress she admired, and
Holiday from her father Clarence. She started performing at clubs and teamed up
with a tenor saxophone player called Kenneth Hollan. They stayed together from
1929 to 1931 working clubs in the New York area, and by the end of 1932 at the
age of seventeen, Billie was performing full time at a club called Covans on
West 132nd Street in Harlem.
While
working at Covans, a producer called John Hammond heard Billie sing for the
first time, and was so impressed, that he arranged for her to make her
recording debut with Benny Goodman in 1933. She was only eighteen years old at
the time, but succeeded in singing two songs “Your mother’s son-in-law” and
“Riffin the Scoth” which became her first major hit selling 50,000 copies at
that time.
In
1935, Billie returned to the studio with Goodman and a group led by pianist
Terry Wilson. She was signed to Brunswick Records by John Hammond and with
Wilson; she took traditional pop tunes such as “twenty-four hours a day” and
“Yankee Doodle never went to Town” and turned them into jazz classics. By now,
Billie was in her twenties; she also worked closely with saxophonist Lester
Young with whom there was special rapport. It was Young who called her “Lady
Day” while she referred to him as “Prez”.
In 1937, Billie played at the Clark Monroe
Uptown House for three months and had brief stints as a big band vocalist with
Count Basie and Artie Shaw. This made her among the first black women to work
with a white orchestra which was a rarity at that time. In 1938, she recorded a
single “I’m gonna lock my heart” which became a hit and set the stage for more
success.
Billie’s
contract with Brunswick Records was short lived and she went on to do some
recordings with Columbia Records while continuing to play the club circuit. It
was during this period that she met Barney Josephson, proprietor of Café
Society which was an integrated night club in Greenwich Village, in downtown
New York City.
Barney
would later introduce Billie to a song called “Strange Fruit” which was based
on a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish School Teacher from the Bronx. The
poem was about lynching and described the hanging of black bodies from trees as
‘Strange Fruits’. It was a controversial song, and Billie was reluctant to play
it, but she was eventually convinced by Barney and ended up playing the song at
the Café Society in 1939.
The
subject matter of the song was too sensitive, and Columbia Records decided not
to record it, but in 1939, a producer called Milt Gabler agreed to record it on
his Commodore label. The song would remain in Billie’s repertoire for the rest
of her career and her popularity took a huge jump after the release of the
record. In 1944, she returned to the studio and recorded some of the songs she
made with Terry Wilson in the 30’s. She also recorded a version of the famous
song ‘Embraceable You’ which would later be inducted into the Grammy Hall of
Fame in 2005.
Billie
was becoming relatively successful and would use some of the money earned while
touring with bands, to assist her mother in the restaurant business. However,
one day, Holiday needed money and went to the restaurant for some cash, her
mother refused and Billie stormed out of the restaurant hollering “God bless
the child that’s got his own”.
With
the help of a pianist called Arthur Herzog, the two wrote a song based on the
line “God Bless the Child”. The song was recorded and it became her most
popular recording.
In
1976, it was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame. Still working with Gabler,
Billie moved to Decca Records and recorded another hit song “Lover Man”. While
with Decca, she recorded three more songs: “That Ole Devil called Love”, “Big
Stuff” and “Don’t Explain”, a song she wrote after seeing lipstick on her
husband’s shirt collar.
In
1946, she recorded “Good Morning Headache” one of her most critically acclaimed
songs and also co-starred with Louis Armstrong in the film ‘New Orleans’. This
experience was not a happy one and Billie was not pleased of the role she was
asked to play.
However,
she recorded some of the songs for the soundtrack and made a surprise
appearance at Louis Armstrong’s Carnegie Hall concert which was intended to
promote the film.
Holiday
was addicted to drugs and this was becoming a growing problem for her work. In
1947, she was arrested for possession of narcotics in her New York apartment.
She was tried, convicted and sent to jail.
In
1948, she was released for good behavior and soon after her release; she
performed a comeback concert at Carnegie Hall which was sold out before the
show. Later that year, she would appear in the Broadway production; “Holiday on
Broadway”.
In
that same year, Billie recorded Gershwin’s “I love you Porgy”which was very
popular at the time. The song was heard by upcoming Nina Simone who recorded it
later in 1958 and it became Nina’s only top 40 hit in America.
In 1950, Holiday appeared in a short film with
Count Basie and his sextet, and sang “God Bless the Child “on the set. By now,
her drug abuse and drinking coupled with abusive relationships with men was
causing her health to deteriorate.
In
1957, she married Louis McKay (a mafia enforcer), who in spite of being abusive
as the previous men in her life, did try to get her off drugs. Her
autobiography “Lady Sings the Blues” was written and published the previous
year and she released an album with the same title to accompany the book.
During
this period, she also toured Europe with a band as part of a Leonard Feather
package. Her last recording was done in 1959 with MGM Records, which was
released under the title, “Last Recordings”.
In
the same year, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan hospital in New York suffering
from liver and heart disease.
While
being taken to the hospital, she was again arrested for drug possession as she
lay dying on her hospital bed.
She
died on July 17th 1959, dead broke with 70 cents in the bank and 750 dollars
wrapped in 50 dollar bills hidden on her body.
Billie
Holiday’s life was one of extreme circumstances that were full of intrigue and
tough challenges.
