When Lady Day Chased The Blues Away, Again And Again-“Billie
Holiday: Embraceable You”-A CD Review
CD Review
By Music Critic Seth Garth
Billie Holiday: Embraceable You, Billie Holiday, 2 CD set, Polygram
Everybody, at least the everybodies who came of age in the
1950s and 1960s, had at least heard the sad life story and junkie death of the
legendary blue singer Billie Holiday. Knew that information either from having
read her biography, the liner notes on her records (vinyl for those younger
readers who have not become hip to the beauties of that old-fashion way to
produce recordings in the current retro revival of that method), newspaper
obituaries, or from the 1970s film starring Diana Ross (lead singer of Motown’s
The Supremes). So everybody knew that Lady Day had come up the hard way, had
had a hard time with men in her life and had plenty of trouble with junk, with
heroin. Had turned her into some hustling gal with dark lights out of a Nelson
Algren story about her daddy making her blues go away, had the “fixer” man making
the pain going away for a moment. (I believe that the Prez, the great
saxophonist Lester Young who himself blew many a high white note out to the
China seas as the phrase went on the West Coast when he was “on” gave her that
name. Put lady and day together and it stuck. He backed her up on many
recordings, including here, and in many a venue, including New York café
society before they pulled her ticket. The name fit her as did that eternal
flower arrangement, sweet gardenia speaking of sexual adventures and promise, in
her hair)
Yeah, that is the sad part, the life and times part. But if
you listen to this CD under review like the other ones in this series and other
compilations that I am reviewing at this time while I am in a “from hunger”
wanting habits mood about Lady Day’s work like I get into every once in a while
about music that moved, moves, me, spoke, speaks, to me. If you listen through
this double CD you will also know why in the first part of the 21st
century guys like me are still reviewing her work, still haunted by that voice,
by that meaningful pause between notes that carried you to a different place,
by that slight hush as she envelopes a song which kept your own blues at bay. I
repeat kept your blues away whatever she suffered to bring that sentiment forward.
That last statement, those last two sentences are really
what I want to hone in on here as I have previously since Billie Holiday is an
acquired taste, and a taste which grows on you as you settle in to listen to
whole albums rather than a single selection spending half the night turning
over vinyl, flipping tapes, changing CDs if you don’t have multiple CD
recorder, or grabbing the dial on an MP3 player. Here is my god’s honest truth
though. Many a blue night when I was young, hell, now too, I would play Billie
for hours, tune that vinyl over in my case, and my own silly blues would kind
of evaporate. Nice right.
Here is the not nice part, maybe better the not respectful
part for a sanctified woman’s voice and spirit. Once a few years ago I was talking to some
young people about Billie and, maybe under the influence of the Diana Ross film
or from their disapproving parents, kind of wrote her off as just another
junkie gone to seed. I shocked them, I think, when I said if I had had the
opportunity I would have given Billie all the dope she wanted just for taking
my own blues away. That is why we still
listen to that sultry, slinky, sexy voice today.
Is everything in this CD or in her overall work the cat’s
meow. No, toward the end in the 1950s you can tell her voice was hanging by a
thread under the strain of all her troubles, legal and medical. But in the
1930sand 1940s, the time of her time, covering Cole Porter, Gershwin and Jerome
Kern songs with a little Johnny Mercer thrown in, the time of Tin Pan Alley
songs which seem to have almost been written just for her she had that certain
“it” which cannot be defined but only accepted, accepted gratefully.
Some of
the songs here may be a little more uneven that her later work when she teamed
up with serious jazz and blues players like the aforementioned Lester Young
blowing out high white notes to the China seas while she basked in the glow of
the lyrics. But just check out Our Love
Is Here To Stay, One For My Baby, the title track Embraceable You and Day In
Day Out and you will get an idea of what I am talking about. And maybe get
your own blues chased away
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