- 每年的Labor Day, 芝加哥的华盛顿公园都要举行传统的黑人艺术节。这一带的黑人开着大卡车，搭起帐篷，又唱又跳又烧烤，一共三天。因为就住在附近，歌声不停地飘进我的房子里。现在正在放 Billy Holiday 的爵士乐和蓝调（Jazz and blues），听得我又头疼又心酸。 干脆贴几首她的歌。尽管她已经死了几十年了，还实在没有唱过她的那。她的Life就是一首Blues。她也非常美丽漂亮。
- posted on 09/02/2007
ZT Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday remains (four decades after her death) the most famous of all jazz singers. "Lady Day" (as she was named by Lester Young) had a small voice and did not scat but her innovative behind-the-beat phrasing made her quite influential. The emotional intensity that she put into the words she sang (particularly in later years) was very memorable and sometimes almost scary; she often really did live the words she sang.
Her original name and birthplace have been wrong for years but are listed correctly above thanks to Donald Clarke's definitive Billie Holiday biography Wishing on the Moon. Holiday's early years are shrouded in legend and rumours due to her fanciful ghost written autobiography Lady Sings the Blues but it is fair to say that she did not have a stable life. Her father Clarence Holiday (who never did marry her mother) played guitar with Fletcher Henderson and abandoned his family early on while her mother was not a very good role model. Billie essentially grew up alone, feeling unloved and gaining a lifelong inferiority complex that led to her taking great risks with her personal life and becoming self-destructive.
Holiday's life becomes clearer after she was discovered by John Hammond singing in Harlem clubs. He arranged for her to record a couple of titles with Benny Goodman in 1933 and although those were not all that successful, it was the start of her career. Two years later she was teamed with a pickup band led by Teddy Wilson and the combination clicked. During 1935-42 she would make some of the finest recordings of her career, jazz-oriented performances in which she was joined by the who's who of swing. Holiday sought to combine together Louis Armstrong's swing and Bessie Smith's sound; the result was her own fresh approach. In 1937 Lester Young and Buck Clayton began recording with Holiday and the interplay between the three of them was timeless.
Lady Day was with Count Basie's Orchestra during much of 1937 but, because they were signed to different labels, all that exists of the collaboration are three songs from a radio broadcast. She worked with Artie Shaw's Orchestra for a time in 1938 but the same problem existed (only one song was recorded) and she had to deal with racism, not only during a Southern tour but in New York too. She had better luck as a star attraction at Cafe Society in 1939. Holiday made history that year by recording the horribly picturesque "Strange Fruit," a strong anti-racism statement that became a permanent part of her repertoire. Her records of 1940-42 found her sidemen playing a much more supportive role than in the past, rarely sharing solo space with her.
Although the settings were less jazz-oriented than before (with occasional strings and even a background vocal group on a few numbers) Billie Holiday's voice was actually at its strongest during her period with Decca (1944-49). She had already introduced "Fine and Mellow" (1939) and "God Bless the Child" (1941) but it was while with Decca that she first recorded "Lover Man" (her biggest hit), "Don't Explain," "Good Morning Heartache" and her renditions of "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes" and "Crazy He Calls Me." Unfortunately it was just before this period that she became a heroin addict and she spent much of 1947 in jail. Due to the publicity she became a notorious celebrity and her audience greatly increased. Lady Day did get a chance to make one Hollywood movie (New Orleans) in 1946 and, although she was disgusted at the fact that she was stuck playing a maid, she did get to perform with her early idol Louis Armstrong.
Billie Holiday's story from 1950 on is a gradual downhill slide. Although her recordings for Norman Granz (which started in 1952) placed her once again with all-star jazz veterans (including Charlie Shavers, Buddy DeFranco, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Ben Webster), her voice was slipping fast. Her unhappy relationships distracted her, the heroin use and excessive drinking continued and by 1956 she was way past her prime. Holiday had one final burst of glory in late 1957 when she sang "Fine and Mellow" on The Sound of Jazz telecast while joined by Lester Young (who stole the show with an emotional chorus), Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan and Roy Eldridge, but the end was near. Holiday's 1958 album Lady in Satin found the 43-year old singer sounding 73 (barely croaking out the words) and the following year she collapsed; in the sad final chapter of her life she was placed under arrest for heroin possession while on her deathbed!
Fortunately Billie Holiday's recordings have been better treated than she was during her life and virtually all of her studio sides are currently available on CD.
- posted on 09/02/2007
A FINE ROMANCE Lyrics
Dorothy Fields / Jerome Kern
A fine romance, with no kisses
A fine romance, my friend this is
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes
But you're as cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes
A fine romance, you won't nestle
A fine romance, you won't wrestle
I might as well play bridge
With my old maid aunt
I haven't got a chance
This is a fine romance
A fine romance, my good fellow
You take romance, I'll take jello
You're calmer than the seals
In the Arctic Ocean
At least they flap their fins
To express emotion
A fine romance with no quarrels
With no insults and all morals
I've never mussed the crease
In your blue serge pants
I never get the chance
This is a fine romance
- posted on 09/02/2007
AM I BLUE? Lyrics
Harry Akst / Grant Clarke
It was a morning, long before dawn
without a warning I found he was gone
How could he do it
Why should he do it
He never done it before
Am I blue
am I blue
ain't these tears, in these eyes telling you
How can you ask me "am I blue"
why, wouldn't you be too
if each plan
with your man
done fell through
There was a time
when I was his only one
but now I'm
the sad and lonely one...lonely
Was I gay
untill today
now he's gone, and we're through
Am I blue
- posted on 09/02/2007
MY MAN Lyrics
Channing Pollock/Maurice Yvain / Albert Willemetz/Jaques Charles
It cost me a lot
But there's one thing that I've got
It's my man
It's my man
Cold or wet
Tired, you bet
All of this I'll soon forget
With my man
He's not much on looks
He's no hero out of books
But I love him
Yes, I love him
Two or three girls
Has he
That he likes as well as me
But I love him
I don't know why I should
He isn't true
He beats me, too
What can I do?
Oh, my man, I love him so
He'll never know
All my life is just despair
But I don't care
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright
All right
What's the difference if I say
I'll go away
When I know I'll come back
On my knees someday
For whatever my man is
I'm his forevermore
- posted on 09/02/2007
Strange Fruit
Lewis allen
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
"Strange Fruit" is a song most famously performed by Billie Holiday that condemns American racism, particularly the practice of lynching and burning African Americans that was prevalent in the South at the time when it was written.
"Strange Fruit" began as a poem about the lynching of two black men written by a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx Abel Meeropol, who used the pen name Lewis Allan (the names of his two children, who died in infancy). Meeropol and his wife were also the adoptive parents of the children of the executed spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the 1950s. "Strange Fruit" was written as a poem expressing his horror at the lynchings, and was first published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol/Allan often asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music he set Strange Fruit to music himself and the song gained a certain success as a protest song in and around New York. Before Holiday was introduced to the song, it had been performed by Meeropol, by his wife, and by black vocalist Laura Duncan, who performed it at Madison Square Garden.
Meeropol said later that he had been inspired by seeing Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. "Strange Fruit" was eventually heard by Barney Josephson the founder of Cafe Society, New York's first integrated nightclub, who introduced it to Billie Holiday. Holiday performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939, a move that by her own admission left her fearful of retaliation. Holiday later said that the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded her of her father's death, and that this played a role in her persistence in performing it. The song became a regular part of Holiday's live performances.
Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about recording the song, but her producer John Hammond—the man credited with originally discovering her—did not support her choice, and Columbia refused to record the song. Holiday arranged to record it with Commodore, Milt Gabler's alternative jazz label in 1939. She would record two major sessions at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. "Strange Fruit" was highly regarded and in time became Holiday's biggest selling record. Though it became a staple of her live performances at the time, Holiday's accompanist, Bobby Tucker, later commented that Holiday would break down after every performance of it.
In her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, Billie Holiday suggests that she, together with Lewis Allan, her accompanist Sonny White and arranger Danny Mendelsohn put the poem to music, though the claim is dismissed by David Margolick and Hilton Als in 'Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song as "an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch". When challenged, Holiday - whose autobiography had been ghost-written by William Dufty - claimed "I ain't never read that book."
The "strange fruit" referred to in the song are the bodies of African American men hanged during a lynching. They contrast the pastoral scenes of the South with the ugliness of racist violence. The lyrics were so chilling that Holiday later said "The first time I sang it, I thought it was a mistake. There wasn't even a patter of applause when I finished. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping and cheering."
The club owner immediately recognized the impact of the song on his audience and insisted that Holiday close all her shows with it. Just as the song was about to begin, waiters would stop serving, the lights in club would be turned off, and a single pin spotlight would illuminate Holiday on stage. During the musical introduction, Holiday would stand with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.
The song was ultimately to become the anthem of the anti-lynching movement. The dark imagery of the lyrics struck a chord, and can be said to have planted one of the first seeds of what would later become the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s.
The song became an instant success and came to be the piece most identified with Holiday, though it has been performed by countless others including Josh White, Sting, Robert Wyatt, UB40, Tori Amos, Pete Seeger, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cassandra Wilson, Nina Simone (on Pastel Blues), Lester Bowie, Antony and the Johnsons, Jeff Buckley, Cocteau Twins, Sounds of Blackness, This Bike is a Pipe Bomb, John Martyn, The Twilight Singers, Karate, and Tcheky Karyo (in Ce lien qui nous unit) and remixed by Tricky. In October 1939, Samuel Grafton of The New York Post described Strange Fruit: "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise."
The photograph that was cited by the songwriter as the inspiration for the song: Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930.
- Re: Billy Holiday 鐨勭埖澹箰锛圝azz)posted on 09/02/2007
出去走一圈， 照点照片。。。
- Re: Billy Holiday 鐨勭埖澹箰锛圝azz)posted on 09/02/2007
lucy wrote:
出去走一圈， 照点照片。。。
Dido to that. - Re: Billy Holiday 鐨勭埖澹箰锛圝azz)posted on 09/03/2007
年轻的时候不喜欢这样的音乐，最近几年才能品位出爵士的好处，近乎于热爱了。：）
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