On April 7, 1915, Eleanora Fagan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The little girl would have a difficult childhood and later a tragic life, but she would grow up to brighten the world as Billie Holiday, or as jazz saxophonist Lester Young nicknamed her, “Lady Day.”
In honor of Holiday’s 100th birthday, several articles reflect on her life, such as CBS Sunday Morning, a Daily Telegraph listing of her top 10 songs, and a MacLean‘s article about “the voice that launched a thousand voices.” But of course the best celebration is to listen to her music.
In this video, Holiday performs “Fine and Mellow” on CBS in 1957. [Update: the video and a BBC documentary about her life are no longer available.]
Happy birthday Lady Day.
What is your favorite Billie Holiday song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On June 28 in 1928, Louis Armstrong created one of history’s landmark musical recordings in Chicago with “West End Blues.” The composition was written and originally recorded by Armstrong’s mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, but Armstrong established himself as a genius and major influence of American music with the recording he made that day. Among other acknowledgements, NPR lists “West End Blues” as one of the 100 most influential musical works of the twentieth century.
The 26-year-old Armstrong and his Hot Five that day recorded the piece with a piano solo by Earl “Fatha” Hines and included one of the first recordings of scat singing by Armstrong. Most historians, though, recognize that what made the recording so special was Armstrong’s 15-second trumpet introduction and his eight-bar solo toward the end of the piece.
Composer and historian Gunther Schuller wrote about Armstrong’s first four notes of “West End Blues” in Early Jazz: Its Roots and Early Developtment (1986): “The way Louis attacks each note, the quality and exact duration of each pitch, the manner in which he releases the note, and the subsequent split second silence before the next note – in other words, the entire acoustical pattern – present in capsule form all the essential characteristics of jazz inflection.” (p. 116)
Billie Holiday summed up the impact of the song a different way, writing that sometimes “West End Blues” made her so sad, she’d “cry up a storm.” But “[o]ther times the same damn record would make me so happy.”
Ken Burns’s TV series Jazz features a great discussion of this composition named for the West End on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. While the segment is not available on YouTube, the series is available on Netflix streaming. For a more detailed discussion of the music in the piece and its legacy, check out this excellent post from The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong blog. Or just close your eyes and listen to “West End Blues” again.
On April 7 in 1915, Eleanora Fagan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young 13-year-old girl, Eleanora learned songs and began singing while working in a brothel. After getting arrested and serving time in a workhouse, the girl began seeking a singing career and adopted her new first name from the actress Billie Dove and her last name from a jazz guitarist who was her father, Clarence Halliday (although that name later transformed into “Holiday”).
By 1946, Billie Holiday was so well-known for her singing that she appeared in the film New Orleans with Louis Armstrong, where she sang “The Blues are Brewin’.”
After a lifetime of facing racism, drug abuse, drinking, and abusive men, Holiday died in 1959 suffering from liver and heart disease. She was only 44. While she was in the hospital dying, police raided her room and arrested her for drug possession. Despite her troubled life, she had a unique influence on American music, much like Louis Armstrong. Thanks Eleanora.
