Billie Holiday

[Williams225]

I am just listening to a Billie Holiday CD I got from the library which reminded me of a recent Billie Holiday story which I thought you may find interesting to read.

My friend who recently visited San Francisco stayed at the Ramada Inn on Taylor Street in Union Square. After checking in and getting a room in second floor, he was very much taken by the little sign outside the room, "Billie Holiday stayed in this room in January 22, 1949". Inside the room, there is a framed copy of a San Franciso newspaper dated January 23rd 1949 with a news item: 'Police busted into that room yesterday and arrested Billie Holiday for drug possession. She was going to perform at the Filmore today'. Also hanging on the wall was framed copy of another news article describing the life and musical story of her, often brilliant and at times sad.

My friend who has introduced to Bille Holiday music just a couple of years back was just stunned at the fact he got that particular rooom by chance.

Anyone else who knew about this? Anyone stayed at the Ramada inn there and at that room? The hotel staff seemed to be pretty normal about it, they were not pushing it as a speciality thing or anything like that, but just a tasteful little sign in the front and some wall hangings to round out the story.

[Pete C]

Some friends of mine stayed at the Stanhope recently, and the staff refused to say what room Bird had died in. They all claimed they didn't know. Yeah, right.

What in 1937 was the Afro-American hospital in Clarkdale, Mississippi, has for many years been the Riverside Hotel. People come from as far away as Japan to stay in the room in which Bessie Smith died.

[hglord]

Right now - from 8 PM to midnight on Thursday, April 7 - "Jazz ala Mode" on WFCR 88.5 MHz FM out of Amherst, Massachusetts, is playing a tribute to Lady Day, who would have been ninety years old today.

When she was nineteen years old in 1935, in a group led by Teddy Wilson, including Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, and Roy Eldridge, she shines like an enormous sun among stars. She starts to sing and the others pale. It's absolutely amazing. "What a Little Moonlight Can Do." Wow!

No, I don't work for WFCR; I just love Billie.

[Il Anto]

WKCR in NYC, Columbia U.'s station is playing Lady Day, non-stop from April 1 to the 15.

Once you start listening to her, you can't turn her off!

[jazzy mary]

I love her, of course, and I'm betting most folks around here do too. Has anyone been listening ot the "Round the clock Billie" on WKCR? I have to admit, I was late for work this morning and I mean I was running LATE but I was listening to the program and they played "Deep Song" (oh, it was too beautiful. I think that is the saddest song on earth). Then they started talking about the period when she was in prison. Does anyone know what prison she was in? Then they were going to play her first recorded appearance, with the Lionel Hampton band, after she got out. I seriously thought I should just go but I thought "now what's more important, being somewhat late for work--a gig I go to every day--or taking the 15 minutes to hear about Billie's life and then listen to "I Cover the Waterfront" w/ Hamp's band and I may never be able to hear this again!" You can guess what I chose.

My b-day is next month and I tore out the ad for the "Ultimate Billie Holiday" cd-dvd on Hip-o records as a very obvious hint for my girls. I was surprised how reasonable it is on Amazon. Does anyone have this or has anyone heard/seen it?

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by jazzy mary

My b-day is next month and I tore out the ad for the "Ultimate Billie Holiday" cd-dvd on Hip-o records as a very obvious hint for my girls. I was surprised how reasonable it is on Amazon. Does anyone have this or has anyone heard/seen it?

JM--

There's an album called The Ultimate Billie Holiday, but the name of the box set that you mean is The Ultimate Collection.

[jazzy mary]

That's the one I want! I for sure want the box set w/ the dvd-cd. The one I put on my wish list on Amazon was around $30.00 I hope that's the right one!

[John L]

You might also consider The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia. There doesn't exist a better box set of music (IMO).

[Al in NYC]

The Billie Holiday weeks on WKCR have been beautiful indeed. I've been listening to it intermittently, but intently, as I drive around the area on my daily rounds.

[clinthopson]

Originally Posted by John L

You might also consider The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia. There doesn't exist a better box set of music (IMO).

You are absolutely right John!

The collection contains some of the greatest jazz ever recorded.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

There's a German boxed set, also 10 CDs, I think -- how does it stack up against the Columbia? It's a fraction of the cost!

[John L]

Originally Posted by Squaredancecalling Steve

There's a German boxed set, also 10 CDs, I think -- how does it stack up against the Columbia? It's a fraction of the cost!

Columbia did an extraordinary job of remastering for this boxed set. They produced sound quality that was incomparably better than anything that came before it. I had been listening to this music for many years in what I thought was unavoidably poor sound quality, and just couldn't believe my ears when I first heard this set.

There was a complete Billie Holiday set on Affinity in Europe that I owned before the Columbia set came out. There is no comparison. The difference in sound quality is huge.

On the other hand, this music is in the public domain in Europe. So I imagine that releases that have come out subsequent to the Columbia set have ripped off the new Columbia masters. So there probably now do exist European sets with comparable sound quality for less money.

[HLJ]

Listen some last night and this morning.Today they played a recording of a rehearsal from 1954.Billie sounded "tore out the frame".Maybe this was near the end.Peace and all that

[stevebop]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 10, 2005

Play Me Some Billie Holiday (for 360 Hours, to Be Exact)
By COREY KILGANNON

In the wee hours yesterday, three undergraduates buzzed the front door of WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University in Manhattan.

The students said they had heard that their classmate Patrick Jarenwattananon, a WKCR D.J., was playing Billie Holiday records and they wanted to wind down after their night of revelry by listening to the singer known as Lady Day. They sat on the floor of the studio and watched Mr. Jarenwattananon, 19, a sophomore English major, place a phonograph needle onto an LP. Out came the buttery voice of Billie Holiday singing her famous blues, "Fine and Mellow."

Afterward, Mr. Jarenwattananon, took the microphone and identified the station as "Billie Holiday Radio" and announced that the station, as "our tribute to the music and the legacy of Billie Holiday," was in the midst of playing two weeks of Billie Holiday. The students looked at each other incredulously.

They heard him right. WKCR-FM (89.9) is playing Holiday's music 24 hours a day for 15 days straight - 360 hours of Lady Day with a bit of station fund-raising in between. The festival opened April 1 and will end the night of April 15.

Holiday died in July 1959 at age 44; Thursday would have been her 90th birthday.

She died of kidney failure in a Manhattan hospital, said Phil Schaap, 54, the jazz historian and longtime WKCR D.J. who played his first Holiday record at the station 35 years ago as a Columbia freshman. At the time, he said, she was under arrest for narcotics and was handcuffed to the hospital bed.

Mr. Schaap said he believes the station is playing all of the known Holiday recordings, from her first (on Nov 27 , 1933) to her last (April 26, 1959).

Many of the recordings belong to the station, which has some 25,000 jazz records, and to Mr. Schaap, who has about 20,000, as well as those of other WKCR D.J.'s Some were borrowed from the Institute of Jazz Studies. Others were recently bought on Internet.

The station D.J.'s labored to search out every live and studio recording, not to mention outtakes and obscure interviews, radio performances and audio tracks of her television appearances.

WKCR regularly plays multiday marathons dedicated to a single jazz artists, including 11 days of John Coltrane a year ago. But this is the longest marathon in the station's 63-year history. There are no commercials, but the D.J.'s have been begging listeners to call in with donations to alleviate the debt of the station, which is partly funded by the university.

About 2 am yesterday, Mr. Jarenwattananon sat at a radio console cluttered with LP's and CD's and large bags of throat lozenges. From the bins of Billie Holiday records, he had taken one of a 1952 Carnegie Hall concert. He put on "I Cover the Waterfront" and the students leaned against the wall drinking it in as Lady Day sang, "Will the one I love be coming back to me?"

"Not that you'd want to listen to Billie Holiday 24 hours a day for two weeks straight," said one of them, Tessa Paneth-Pollak, 19, a Barnard sophomore who is taking a jazz history class. "But you could if you wanted to. "

Through a large window into the spacious studio next door, one could see a young man with a wild head of curly hair and bleary eyes laid out on a couch. It was the station manager, Matthew Herman, and he said he was taking two weeks off from his academic schedule for the festival, and had not truly slept since it began.

"After it's over, I'll sleep for a week and then deal with finals," he said. "I've learned more at the station than I've learned in class anyway. Well, it's a different kind of learning."

The room around him was littered with takeout food bags, paper cups and empty Snapple bottles. Next to his head was a 500-tablet container of aspirin.

The D.J.'s and fund-raising volunteers gather in this room. Scrawled in marker on the window looking into the main studio was an organic chemistry equation. The students take turns working the overnight shift, but since the station has no windows and many D.J.'s have been skipping classes and been virtually living at the station, they frequently lose track of day and night.

Some of the most unusual calls come late at night, Mr. Herman said, including older listeners disputing historical details announced on the air.

"The other night around 4 a.m., some guy called in and said he wanted to pledge $44 million," said Mr. Herman, 20, a Columbia junior majoring in American studies.

He laughed and said that serious pledges have come in from all over the country, and there have been contributions from jazz artists including Charles Lloyd, Jimmy Heath and Roy Haynes, according to Mr. Schaap.

The WKCR studios, in a campus building on Broadway near 114th Street, hardly resemble a Bohemian jazz den. There is no sign of Scotch and cigarettes, and the interior has all the coziness of a dentist's office.

But as the music wafts softly throughout the studio - first "Travlin' Light," then "Good Morning Heartache," then "Autumn in New York" - it is clear that Billie Holiday continues to cast her unique musical spell over the Ivy League undergraduates. Here the love for Lady Day is evidenced not in finger-snaps or foot-taps, but technical discussion about the recordings from students almost too tired to lift a record.

"Just being around the music is enough," said Dan Wong, 19, a Columbia sophomore who is the station business manager and a news programmer. He was sitting at a table in the studio eating a slice of ziti-topped pizza. "Just being here, you feel part of it."

Copyright 2005*The New York Times Company

[kedoane]

It is very interesting that students are interested in Billie.

A few weeks ago, I started on show on KSJS with "Strange Fruit." I got a phone call from a listener who had never heard of Billie. I told this caller who she was and where to get her material. I got a kick out of this since I follow a hip-hop show.

[bruce massey]

My first experience with Billie was actually the second Blood Sweat & Tears album. My favorite cut was God Bless the Child and I couldn't figure out which one of the guys was Billie Holiday. A few months later I was in a grocery store and there in a cheesy discount grocery store record bin was Billie Blues-The Original Recordings of Billie Holiday for 99 cents.

Took it home, put it on and I was GONE!

[HLJ]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

JM--

There's an album called The Ultimate Billie Holiday, but the name of the box set that you mean is The Ultimate Collection.

Get to the crib after my second job and laying on my side of the bed was The Ultimate Billie Hoilday CD/DVD set.Couple of weeks ago me and my wife were in Barnes & Noble and I mention I wouldn't mind having that.BAM she hooked a brother up called it an early anniversery present.I have a GREAT WIFE .Peace and all that.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by bruce massey

My first experience with Billie was actually the second Blood Sweat & Tears album. My favorite cut was God Bless the Child and I couldn't figure out which one of the guys was Billie Holiday. A few months later I was in a grocery store and there in a cheesy discount grocery store record bin was Billie Blues-The Original Recordings of Billie Holiday for 99 cents.

Took it home, put it on and I was GONE!

Billie was good, but she was no David Clayton Thomas.

[jazzy mary]

Originally Posted by HLJ

Get to the crib after my second job and laying on my side of the bed was The Ultimate Billie Hoilday CD/DVD set.Couple of weeks ago me and my wife were in Barnes & Noble and I mention I wouldn't mind having that.BAM she hooked a brother up called it an early anniversery present.I have a GREAT WIFE .Peace and all that.

That's sweet, HLJ. How do you like it?

[l p]

does anyone know where i can find this

Video info: Title: The Genius of Lady Day - Billie Holiday - Part 3: TV appearances and Clips
Code: ErorFilms 2869029
Year: 2004
Mediumtype: DVD
Total Time: 0h46'16''

thank you

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by l p

does anyone know where i can find this

Video info: Title: The Genius of Lady Day - Billie Holiday - Part 3: TV appearances and Clips
Code: ErorFilms 2869029
Year: 2004
Mediumtype: DVD
Total Time: 0h46'16''

thank you

cduniverse has it for $24.99. The company is Efor Films, not Eror. But it's apparently the same film as the one marketed as "The Life and Artistry of Lady Day" which is available at Amazon for less.

Entertainment for Home Video's (aka Efor Films) Billie Holiday: The Life & Artistry of Lady Day now finds itself part of the Jazzmemories series from Music Video Distributors, here given the alternate title The Genius of Lady Day. On the front cover MVD uses a Scott Yanow quote from AMG, which -- plus a few more paragraphs on the back -- is just about all of the written information the viewer can expect on this otherwise generous package of Billie Holiday film clips merged with a 30-minute biography. The narrator's name is not revealed (sounds like the same uncredited voice on MVD's Nat King Cole package) and his commentary is adequate for those who want a quick sketch of the legend's life, though an accompanying booklet would have been more welcome. Outside of that, this is an audiovisual feast for fans of Holiday as well as those who would like to know more about the vocalist. Her story was, strangely enough, brought to life on Lou Reed's hard rock masterpiece Rock 'n' Roll Animal, and Reed's live version of the "Lady Day" track from his Berlin album is a good reflection of the story told in this documentary: dark and full of sadness. There are generous bonus tracks here -- selected books, a selected discography, the chilling lyrics to "Strange Fruit," a list of Holiday's musical compositions, 13 TV appearances and clips, as well as four scenes from director Arthur Lubin's 1947 film New Orleans. The "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" is mesmerizing on this release and the imperfections and age of the video material only add to its charm. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide

[l p]

thank you. according to the http://www.billieholiday.be discography, The Life & Artistry of Lady Day doesn't have as many tv appearances as 'genius of..'. but that may not be correct.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Pete C

The company is Efor Films, not Eror.

To er is human.

[HLJ]

Originally Posted by jazzy mary

That's sweet, HLJ. How do you like it?

Its great Jazzy.The video of Billie is wonderful.I only wish "Autumn in New York" was on it.Peace and all that.

[Vince Kargatis]

The Lady Day complete Columbia box seems to be out of stock everywhere, which implies to me out of print. Are there currently available sources for the same masterings, domestic or foreign (origin)?

[bluenoter]

Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944)
Legacy, 2001 (10 CDs)

It's a 2001 box, so it might indeed be out of print. Have you looked at these sellers of new and used copies?

Sellers at Amazon.co.uk

Sellers at Amazon.com

Are you interested in a used copy?

Edit: That's all I saw, not counting sellers that want about $500 for a new copy. Tower.com (which I didn't know still existed) claims an availability of some number of weeks, which I'm sure means, "Believe that, fool." (As for sources of equivalents, I have no idea.)

I see that Legacy also put out a box in 2007:



Lady Day: The Master Takes and Singles
Legacy, 2007 (4 CDs)

Here's the AMG page for it.

[Pete C]

I'd bet the master takes set is from the same remasters.

Billie was one singer who didn't vary her performances much from take to take actually, so the real difference is the instrumental solos in the alternates.

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by Pete C

I'd bet the master takes set is from the same remasters.

Based on my interpretation of AMG's blurb and whatever I glimpsed on Google, yes, it is.

[John L]

Originally Posted by Pete C

I'd bet the master takes set is from the same remasters.

Billie was one singer who didn't vary her performances much from take to take actually, so the real difference is the instrumental solos in the alternates.

With people like Lester Young and Buck Clayton, that difference is often big. The masters are a tremendous sequence, however. The large box set programmed the masters before the alternates, and that worked a lot better.