The odds were stacked against Eleanora Fagan, who was born to unwed teenage parents in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915. But she would become perhaps the most influential jazz singer ever, Billie Holiday, whose centennial is being celebrated with new albums honouring her legacy.
Unlike Ella Fitzgerald, Holiday lacked the vocal technique that would have seen her past the early rounds of American Idol. But nobody did it better when it came to interpreting and plumbing the emotional depths of a song.
Billie Holiday – The Centennial Collection (Columbia/Legacy) offers an introduction to 20 of Holiday’s finest recordings from 1935-44.
Holiday likened her voice to a horn, and her inventive phrasing and sense of swing enabled her to seamlessly mesh her vocals with the instrumentals. These recordings pair Holiday with top Swing Era horn players including Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Buck Clayton, Ben Webster and her musical soulmate, tenor saxophonist, Lester Young.
These early recordings show a more optimistic Holiday in peak voice, playful and flirty on such tunes as What a Little Moonlight Can Do. Her mood turned darker after tours of the Jim Crow South in the late 1930s, leading to the searing anti-lynching song Strange Fruit.
The collection concludes with more melancholic recordings from the early 1940s reflecting a greater sense of pain and loss, including the self-penned God Bless the Child, Gloomy Sunday and Fine and Mellow.
Cassandra Wilson acknowledged Holiday’s influence by opening her Grammy-winning 1996 album, New Moon Daughter, with Strange Fruit. She has released a musical homage, Coming Forth by Day, offering a fresh take on 11 songs of Holiday’s.
Wilson again blends jazz with folk, blues, country, R&B and rock. Her approach is reinforced by involving non-jazz artists — rock and pop producer Nick Launay, Van Dyke Parks, who did the lush string arrangements; producer T Bone Burnett, who plays the guitar on several tracks; and drummer Thomas Wydler and bassist Martyn P Casey of The Bad Seeds.
Wilson’s smokey vocals are enhanced by the electro-acoustic sonic backdrops on such tunes as All of Me, the sensual The Way You Look Tonight and You Go to My Head.
Wilson brings Strange Fruit to a rousing climax. Her original Last Song (for Lester), imagining what a heartbroken Holiday might have sung had she been allowed to perform at Young’s funeral, matches her tender vocals with Robby Marshall’s mellow tenor sax. – AP