BILLIE HOLIDAY : USA JAZZ SONGS 1920-1940s
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Billie Holiday (1915-1959, ‘Lady Day’), blues-jazz songs 1933-1959
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In the 1930s, Billie Holiday was a singer in New York clubs and cabarets where she was nicknamed “Lady Day” and played notably with Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Louis Armstrong and many other blues-jazz giants. Her trademark was a unique performing style of intimate jazz songs, like her own versions of ‘Summertime‘ (1936), ‘Strange fruit‘ (1939) or ‘Don’t explain‘ (1944). Lady Day died at the age of 44, poor, sick, afflicted in love and having known the pangs of segregation, drugs, prison and loneliness. Statistics on the website ‘billieholiday.be’ indicate that she has recorded no less than 1’150 versions of 334 songs, and that these have been published in 1’300 albums totalling more than 20’000 tracks.
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Film clips :
∙ 1935 ∙ Symphony in black / A rhapsody of negro life (Duke Ellington) ∙ 1946 ∙ The blues are brewin’ (ft Louis Armstrong Orchestra) ∙ 1947 ∙ New Orleans (ft. Louis Armstrong Orchestra) ∙ 1950 ∙ God bless the child (orig. 1941) ∙ Now or never ∙ 1956 ∙ Fine and mellow (orig. 1939) ∙ 1958 ∙ Don’t explain (TV Jazz party, orig. 1944) ∙ What a little moonlight can do (TV Jazz party, orig. 1935) ∙ My man (TV Martha Raye show, orig. 1937) ∙ 1959 ∙ Strange fruit (orig. 1939) ∙ I loves you Porgy (orig. 1948) ∙
Audio clips :
∙ 1933 ∙ Your mother’s son-in-law ∙ Riffin’ the scotch ∙ 1935 ∙ Miss Brown to you ∙ What a little moonlight can do ∙ 1936 ∙ Summertime (Gershwin 1935, ‘Porgy & Bess’ opera) ∙ I cried for you ∙ Pennies from heaven ∙ Billie’s blues (I love my man) ∙ 1937 ∙ Easy living ∙ They can’t take that away from me ∙ I can’t get started ∙ Swing it brother swing ∙ My man ∙ 1938 ∙ Any old time ∙ I’m gonna lock my heart ∙ 1939 ∙ Strange fruit ∙ Fine and mellow ∙
∙ 1941 ∙ God bless the child ∙ I cover the waterfront ∙ Solitude ∙ 1944 ∙ Lover come back to me ∙ Lover man (oh where can you be) ∙ Don’t explain ∙ 1945 ∙ You’d better go now ∙ 1948 ∙ (I loves you) Porgy ∙ 1949 ∙ Crazy he calls me ∙ Somebody’s on my mind ∙ You’re my thrill ∙
∙ 1955 ∙ Everything happens to me (orig. Frank Sinatra 1940) ∙ 1957 ∙ But not for me ∙ The end of a love affair ∙
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