When Lady Day Chased The Blues Away, Again-“The Quintessential
Billie Holiday (Volume 2)”-A CD Review
CD Review
By Music Critic Seth Garth
The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Volume 2,
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 who have
not become hip to the beauties of that old-fashion way to produce recordings in
the retro revival of that method), newspaper obituaries, or from the 1970s film
starring Diana Ross (lead singer of Motown’s 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 me, spoke to me. In this second volume in the series 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 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
1930s, 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. Don’t believe
me and just check out A Fine Romance, The
Way You Look Tonight, The Foolish Things and the classic Summertime from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess you will get an idea of
what I am talking about. And maybe get your own blues chased away
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