God Bless the Child
God Bless the Child is a 1941 song by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr. that became the jazz standard .
Features of the song
The song, interpreted in medium temp, is structured in the song form AABA, with the A parts all in a major tonality and the B part in a minor tonality. The harmony sequence is based on a series of plagal cadences (IV-I). The included A-section shortened to ten bars Blues - Chorus gives the piece some of the "fascinating character of an archaic folk blues number."
Billie Holiday sang the song for the first time in 1941 in a bluesy parlando with extremely delayed timing . The title refers to a Bible verse ( Gospel of Luke chapter 2, verse 40). However, the lyrics say: "Mama may have, Papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own!"
History of origin
The song was created at the time when the American collecting society ASCAP was on strike by the radio stations; For radio appearances, the artists therefore had to fall back on songs whose authors were not ASCAP members. There are two versions of the making of God Bless the Child , Arthur Herzog's and Billie Holiday's.
Herzog recalls the genesis of the song as follows: “It was supposed to give me some old-fashioned southern idiom that could be made into a song, like 'Water Boy'. She scratched her head and couldn't think of anything. In conversation we came up with her mother, Sadie, and that they are now without concession wanted to open a restaurant late, and therefore constantly demanded money from Billie, and Billie had no desire to constantly give her some. And suddenly it burst out angrily: "God bless the child!". And I was like, "Billie, what does that mean?" She replied, "Well, you know, we usually say that when your mother has money, your sister has money, your cousin has money, but as long as you don't have one, God bless the child who has his own." And I said: "That's exactly it, Billie!" And we only needed twenty minutes for the song as it exists today. ”For this (minimal) participation and for the fact that she recorded the song, Herzog gave her 50% of the copyrights.
According to Holiday's version, her mother hadn't asked for any money, she didn't want to give it herself. She was so annoyed about it that the song was written in her for weeks and kept maturing. Then she went up to Herzog and sang it to him, who then picked it up note by note on the piano and put it on paper.
Impact history
The interpretation by Billie Holiday was so successful that God Bless the Child was later covered by many musicians; however, female vocalists shied away from singing the song during Holiday's lifetime. Mention should be made of cover versions by Lou Rawls (1962), Ella Fitzgerald , Carmen McRae , Gladys Knight , Abbey Lincoln , Ernestine Anderson , Diane Schuur , Aretha Franklin , Sondra Williams , Richie Havens and Stevie Wonder .
The song was also interpreted by numerous instrumentalists such as Eric Dolphy (who presented the piece five times between 1961 and 1963), Sonny Rollins (1962), Freddie Hubbard or Blood, Sweat & Tears , of course also by Holiday's last pianist, Mal Waldron , together with Jackie McLean (1976). Other saxophonists such as Stanley Turrentine (1963, 1995), Archie Shepp , Heinz Sauer or David Murray took on the song as did Wes Montgomery or Keith Jarrett .
There is also a version by Lisa Simpson on the Simpsons album The Simpsons Sing the Blues.After all, it even formed the basis for a children's book in which Holiday's text is related to the story of a family in the Great Depression and is illustrated by Jerry Pinkney .
The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1976 and is on the Songs of the Century list published by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001 .
Discographic notes
- The Quintessential Billie Holiday , Vol. 9 (Columbia)
- Carmen McRae Sings Lover Man and Other Billie Holiday Classics (Columbia CS-8530)
literature
- Donald Clarke: Billie Holiday , Frankfurt, Zweiausendeins, 1995
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Song portrait (jazzstandards.com)
- ↑ a b c Schaal, Jazz-Standards, p. 168ff.
- ^ Sharron R. Blezard God Bless the Child The New Testament
- ↑ cit. after Donald Clarke, p. 232 f.
- ↑ Secondhand Songs ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Powells
