She uses a few of those slides but doesn’t lean into it as she does later in her career. Here, the sound is clean and bright without distortion. They toured the South of America, and although Shaw stuck up for Billie, she faced a lot of the realities of segregation and racism. She takes this cleaner sound even further into 1938 when she records When You Are Smiling, a song made famous by Louis Armstrong.īillie would almost certainly have heard Louis 1929 recording when she recorded this, and at this time, she was working with Artie Shaw as the first black woman to perform with a white orchestra. Although that style is there it is less pronounced, the style is cleaner than both her earlier and later work. I think you can hear that in Yours and Mine. However, it is reported that she refused to change her style for the band. There are many reasons sighted for her firing. She dealt with her grief by throwing herself into work, landing a gig with Count Basie, from which she was eventually fired. She was devastated despite her relationship with him. By the time he did manage to get the treatment, it was too late. He developed a lung disorder and was refused treatment at a local hospital on account of his race. In 1937, Billie's father had died after being exposed to mustard gas in WW1. Some situations in her life also contributed to her style at this time. This track was the second of these and was her first hit, selling 5000 copies. When Billie turned 18, he arranged for her to work with Benny Goodman on two tracks. He was a talent scout for Columbia Records, discovering and signing talents like Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. One night record producer and talent scout John Hammond who loved Monette Moores voice, turned up to listen to her. Soon she was asked to replace singer Monette Moore at a club called Coven. It was here where she cut her teeth, moving between tables, singing for hours and improvising melodies as she went, something that became a feature in her vocal style. Riffin’ The Scotch (1933)Īt age 17, Billie worked as a singer for a few years in Nightclubs in Harlem. To understand Billie and her voice, you need to understand her journey, so rather than heading straight to her later work, I’m going to start at the beginning. I’ve picked some songs that I think show Billie’s vocal journey and explain why she connected to many people. But why is her voice so relevant over 60s years after her death in 1959? What makes Billie Holiday so great? Billie Holiday has one of the most distinctive voices of all time she inspired many artists Frank Sinatra, Andra Day, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin and Etta James.
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