Just A Few Stray Thoughts on Billie Holiday
Friday is fun because it's about music. And there's always a playlist. Today, Billie Holiday. One day, I'd love to write a book about her. But it would take longer than one day, I'm sure...
The image is of Billie Holiday, with a gardenia in her hair. That image might night tell you that she wanted a husband and children, but it’s the truth. That image might not have ever told you that she could live 100 days in a single night, but that was also, and far too often, the truth.
Billie and the gardenia, singing “God bless the child that’s got his own…” and she never had her own. Spent days dreaming and nights detached. The only happy marriage she knew was of that one in the crook of her arm, and then wearing the flowers like a crown. Singing, sometimes as if in pain – because she lived with a pain. Or at least we like to think so. It makes it all more palatable. Sad. Unbearably sad. But somehow still more palatable.
Maybe the truth is that she liked fucking anyone and everyone, that she enjoyed the chance to escape herself. But the official story is that it was a sad life. Because she had suffered abuse, and then went on to inflict even more upon herself – and on others. She peaked early, then crumpled up, her voice crumbling, and dying broke and broken-hearted, empty-voiced, and lonely. And all well before she was 50.
In any interview, she would point out she’d had a hell of a good time – for a start she went from nothing to being one of the queens of jazz. And she had had so many men, and a lot of women too. She’d loved all the drinking and taking drugs. It was a good time. And she was good for it; good at it and, anyway, the self-destructive streak was a switch somebody else triggered. She owned it all. But she never apologised. She sang out her cries from the heart and burst open her soul. She gave life a fair fist, shook mightily at it. Died when it got her back. And right by the throat.
Sometimes it’s almost too much to hear her voice – crying out like a horn, a bell, a piano even, anything but a human voice. Not quite an expression of pain but in an expression of the pain, the memory of so many types of pain all still so close. Her voice right there in your ear. Whispering like a trumpet. Whispering like a saxophone. Like a hi-hat creeping down deep into the tune. Just her name alone brings the voice right to you.
You can’t listen to her singing Strange Fruit just once. That song will replay straight after – even if you’ve walked away from the speakers. You’ll carry that with you.
The very thought of Billie Holiday brings up her singing The Very Thought of You. Or I’ll Be Seeing You. Or Love Me or Leave Me or Lover, Come Back to Me or I’m a Fool to Want You. The entire Lady in Satin album, in fact.
CLICK HERE to check out an RNZ feature I did talking about Billie Holiday and playing some favourites
Here is a poem I wrote about Billie Holiday.
Now, if that’s far too much Billie Holiday for you, we’ll talk about that later! Here, is Vol. 101 of our regular weekly playlist to give you a bunch of other music.
Happy Weekend!
Love this music thanks 🎵🎵