by Len Weinstock
There were three phases in Billie Holiday’s career that were so distinct as to give the impression that we were listening to different singers. The first was the carefree swinging Billie who recorded some 120 sides on equal terms with some of the best soloists and improvisers of the 1930, using a natural and relaxed sense of swing. The “second Billie” emerged after she recorded the protest song Strange Fruit, a deeply depressing song of lynching and death sung with much feeling and emotion.
This event immediately altered the course of her career by 180 degrees. She now became a dramatic, serious singer and cut her most famous recordings of heavy, non-swinging material like Gloomy Sunday, God Bless the Child, Am I Blue, I Cover the Waterfront and I got a Right to Sing the Blues. These songs were sung with profound artistry and are considered by many to be her best work, but their value as Jazz is diminished since they were performed with musicians who served only as background accompanists. Finally, in the last sad years of her life in the 1950’s Lady Day’s voice lacked the glow and intonation of former. She sang in a rough, dark style but all the while maintaining her artistry.
Begging forgiveness from Billie, who would have felt I was renaming her “Lady Yesterday”, the “first” Lady Day of the 1930’s, when Swing and Billie were both young, is by far the most important in terms of Jazz history. In 1935 the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. During the previous five years the Jazz recording industry was reduced to only five percent of its 1927 peak. New Orleans/Chicago style was no longer in favor and all the public wanted was to waltz to sweet music. A few Jazz leaders like Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman were trying to make a go of Big Band Swing but things were not going well.
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