The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert

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The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert
Live album from Billie Holiday

Publication
(s)

1961

Label (s) Verve Records

Format (s)

LP / CD

Genre (s)

Swing , mainstream jazz

Title (number)

13/18

running time

34:40 (LP) / 44:40 (CD)

occupation

production

Seth Rothstein , Richard Seidel (Reissue)

Location (s)

Carnegie Hall , New York City

chronology
Body and Soul
1960 		The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert Ladylove
1962

The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert is the recording of a concert that the singer Billie Holiday gave on November 10, 1956 in New York's Carnegie Hall . The recordings were first released on LP in 1961 by Verve Records after Holiday's death . An expanded version with the interim narratives by Gilbert Milstein from Holidays' autobiography Lady sings the Blues was released on compact disc in 1989 .

The album

The concert was the second (and last) at New York's Carnegie Hall; the first concert on April 27, 1948, took place ten days after she was released from prison after nine and a half months for a drug offense. In her autobiography she later wrote:

"The Carnegie Hall concert was the biggest thing that ever happened to me."

The second concert took place almost eight years later. In May 1956 there were first rehearsals in a New York apartment with Tony Scott (here at the piano) for the concert, which was intended as a marketing event for her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues , which she had written with William Dufty. In June 1956, studio recordings with Tony Scott's orchestra took place in New York.

Public interest in Billie Holiday grew rapidly after the book was published in the fall of 1956; her two concerts (the first at 8 p.m., the second started at midnight) at Carnegie Hall were both sold out.

Billie Holiday sang thirteen numbers that Saturday night in November, including some well-known standards from her repertoire such as Body and Soul , Yesterdays , I Cover the Waterfront , It Ain't Nobody's Business or I'll Be Seeing You , which she had last recorded in 1944 , otherwise mostly her own songs, including the new song Lady Sings the Blues , which she had written with Herbie Nichols , between her program, in which she was accompanied by a group around drummer Chico Hamilton , read Gilbert Millstein, journalist and music critic of New York Times , passages from her autobiography. Swing veterans Buck Clayton , Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins were added to the band on six tracks .

Track list

LP edition 1961

  • Billie Holiday: The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve Records - V-8410)

A1 Lady Sings the Blues 2:38

A2 It Ain't Nobody's Business 2:30

A3 Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone 1:43

A4 I'll Be Seeing You 2:18

A5 I Love My Man 3:18

A6 Body and Soul 2:40

B1 Don't Explain 2:26

B2 Yesterdays 1:01

B3 My Man 3:13

B4 I Cried for You 3:09

B5 Fine & Mellow 3:15

B6 I Cover the Waterfront 3:46

B7 What a Little Moonlight Can Do 2:43

Billie Holiday, 1949
Photo: Carl van Vechten

CD edition 1989

  • Billie Holiday: The Essential Billie Holiday - Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve Records - 833767-2)
  1. Reading from Lady Sings the Blues - 2:52
  2. Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday, Herbie Nichols) - 2:38
  3. Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do ( Porter Grainger , Everett Robbins) - 2:33
  4. Reading from Lady Sings the Blues / Trav'lin 'Light ( Trummy Young , Jimmy Mundy , Johnny Mercer ) - 0:44
  5. Reading from Lady Sings the Blues - 2:06
  6. Billie's Blues (Billie Holiday) - 3:20
  7. Body and Soul ( Edward Heyman , Robert Sour , Frank Eyton , Johnny Green ) - 2:41
  8. Reading from Lady Sings the Blues - 0:55
  9. Don't Explain (Billie Holiday, Arthur Herzog, Jr. ) - 2:30
  10. Yesterdays ( Jerome Kern , Otto Harbach ) - 1:16
  11. Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone ( Sam H. Stept , Sidney Clare , Bee Palmer ) - 1:43
  12. I'll Be Seeing You ( Sammy Fain , Irving Kahal ) - 2:28
  13. Reading from Lady Sings the Blues - 2:50
  14. My Man ( Jacques Charles , Channing Pollack, Albert Willemetz , Maurice Yvain) - 3:13
  15. I Cried for You ( Gus Arnheim , Arthur Freed , Abe Lyman ) - 3:09
  16. Fine and Mellow ( Billie Holiday ) - 3:15
  17. I Cover the Waterfront ( Johnny Green , Edward Heyman ) - 3:46
  18. What a Little Moonlight Can Do ( Harry M. Woods ) - 2:49

reception

When the album was released in 1961, Billboard magazine called it “a real collector's piece ”. Despite the fact that jazz recordings with an interrupting narrative are usually completely boring and do not lead to the second playback, Holidays' concert recording is worth listening to, wrote the author of the Music Journal in 1962.

View of the stage at Carnegie Hall

The jazz critic Nat Hentoff from Downbeat was with the Carnegie Hall concert there and wrote in the liner notes of the original album on Billie Holiday's appearance:

“Throughout the night, Billie was in superior form to what had sometimes been the case in the last years of her life. Not only was there assurance of phrasing and intonation; but there was also an outgoing warmth, a palpable eagerness to reach and touch the audience. Other what mocking wit. A smile was often lightly evident on her lips and her eyes as if, for once, she could accept the fact that there were people who did dig her. [...] The beat flowed in her uniquely sinuous, supple way of moving the story along; the words became her own experiences; and coursing through it all was Lady's sound - a texture simultaneously steel-edged and yet soft inside; a voice that was almost unbearably wise in disillusion and yet still childlike, again at the center. The audience was hers from before she sang, greeting her and saying good-bye with heavy, loving applause. And at one time, the musicians too applauded. It was a night when Billie was on top, undeniably the best and most honest jazz singer alive. "

“Billie was in great shape all night, which was sometimes the last few years of her life. There wasn't just her confident phrasing and intonation ; There was also an open-minded warmth there, a noticeable will to reach and touch the audience. And she was interested and funny. A smile often seemed to appear on her lips, and her eyes seemed to be receptive to how she realized that there were people there who understood her. [...] The beat flowed along the story [of her life] in her unmistakably curvy and smooth path; the words became their own experiences; and running through all of this was the Lady [Day's] sound - a texture that was as steel-hard as it was inside; a voice that was mostly unbearably wise in its disillusionment and at the same time like that of a child, once again in the center. The audience was hers before she sang, greeted her and said goodbye with great, loving applause. And suddenly the musicians also applauded. That was the night Billie was on the summit, arguably the best and most adored living jazz singer . "

According to Holiday biographer Donald Clarke, the concert version of the song Lady Sings the Blues is "the best recording of the piece." For Melanie E. Bratcher, the recording of Holidays highlights the "mature voice".

Allmusic rated the album with three stars ( An excellent live set. Holiday in wonderful form. ) As did the Penguin Guide to Jazz .

Billie Holiday made her first appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Photo William P. Gottlieb

Holiday's concerts of 1948 and 1956 in the venerable temple of the Muses were “a final public recognition of jazz as an art form and of the black musician as an artist. Life and art became interchangeable. And life and art became a kind of voyeuristic tragedy for the audience and a self-conscious artist. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In 1948 Holiday was accompanied by the pianist Bobby Tucker , Remo Palmieri (guitar), John Levy (bass) and Denzil Best (drums) when she performed at New York's Carnegie Hall . See Donald Clarke: Billie Holiday , p. 334
  2. ↑ a b Robert G. O'Meally (ed.): The Jazz Cadence of American Culture . Columbia University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-231-10449-9 , p. 427
  3. ↑ Billie Holiday, William Dufty: Lady sings the Blues . German translation by Frank Witzel, was reprinted in 2013 in Edition Nautilus , Hamburg.
  4. ↑ The Verve album Lady Sings the Blues was created during the recording ; contributing musicians were Paul Quinichette , Wynton Kelly , Kenny Burrell , Aaron Bell and Lennie McBrowne .
  5. ^ Matthew C. Whitaker: Icons of Black America: Breaking Barriers and Crossing Boundaries . 2011, ISBN 0-313-37642-5 , p. 393
  6. ^ A b Donald Clarke: Billie Holiday . Two thousand and one, p. 475 f.
  7. ↑ Discographic information at Discogs
  8. ^ Billboard , October 16, 1961
  9. ^ Music Journal , Volume 20, Elemo Pub., 1962
  10. ↑ Nat Hentoff, Original Liner Notes des Alb <ms
  11. ↑ Melanie E. Bratcher: Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone . 2007, p. 111
  12. ↑ Review of Ron Wynn's album at Allmusic (English)
  13. ↑ Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, Stephen Thomas Erlewine (Eds.): All Music Guide to Jazz: The Definitive Guide to Jazz Music . P. 606
  14. ^ Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .