MUSIC CLIP - OSCAR PETERSON, “MOONGLOW”

Welcome to Afterglow, a show of vocal jazz and popular song from the Great American Songbook, I’m your host, Mark Chilla.

On this show, we’ll be taking a look at the legendary Billie Holiday, but exploring some work that she’s not generally known for: fronting a big band. Holiday grew out of the Big Band Era, yes, but many of her most well-known records feature small ensembles, like with Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra early in her career, or with her own orchestra a little later. Coming up, we’ll hear some recordings she made with the big bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and more, as well as some other rare broadcasts and recordings.  

It’s Billie Holiday and the Big Bands…coming up next on Afterglow.

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “SWING, BROTHER, SWING”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “THEM THERE EYES”

Billie Holiday with “Them There Eyes,” a song by Maceo Pinkard, recorded there with a big band for the Decca label in the summer of 1949. Before that, we heard Billie Holiday with Count Basie’s big band, a summer of 1937 recording made at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City, and the Clarence Williams song “Swing Brother Swing."

MUSIC CLIP - BENNY GOODMAN , “WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO”

Mark Chilla here on Afterglow. On this show, we’re celebrating Billie Holiday by looking at some of her records where she was fronting a big band.

Billie Holiday isn’t generally thought of as a big-band singer, but she did perform and record with a number of them, especially early in her career, including those of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman.

Holiday is one of the most beloved jazz vocal icons of the 20th century, and she was very much a product of the big-band era. However, for reasons we’ll get into, she didn’t RECORD much with the big bands. Let’s begin with something she did very early in her career, 1935, when she was only 20 years old. She had been recording for record producer John Hammond and the Brunswick label for just a little while, when she appeared in a film with Duke Ellington—a short film called Symphony In Black. Holiday’s part basically consisted of her confronting her lover, who was coming out of a building with another woman. After the lover rudely pushes her to the ground, she then proceeds to sing this song, backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. 

Here’s Billie Holiday with Duke Ellington and “Saddest Tale” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND DUKE ELLINGTON, “SADDEST TALE”

Billie Holiday with Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and the song “Saddest Tale.” That comes from Ellington’s 1935 film Symphony In Black. That was the only studio recording that Holiday ever made with Duke Ellington.

In 1937 Billie Holiday joined Count Basie’s big band as their singer. He hadn’t had a female singer in the band up until then, and for most of that year he toured with Holiday helping to front the band. 

Billie Holiday made quite a few small-group recordings with members of Basie’s band—most famously with tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who gave her the nickname “Lady Day”. But there aren’t ANY studio recordings of Billie Holiday with Count Basie’s full orchestra, which is unfortunate, as they were quite a dynamic combination. 

The problem was, Billie Holiday was recording for Vocalion and Brunswick — Columbia-owned labels — and Count Basie was signed to Decca…so they were not allowed to record together. The only preserved evidence we have of their performances comes from some airchecks of radio broadcasts that were done at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City in 1937. 

We’ll hear a couple of those now. First up, this is Billie Holiday and Count Basie’s Orchestra with “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” on Afterglow: 

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND COUNT BASIE, “THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND COUNT BASIE, “I CAN’T GET STARTED”

Billie Holiday in 1937 with “I Can’t Get Started” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” both performed with Count Basie’s big band at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City in 1937. Those radio airchecks the only preserved evidence of Holiday’s time with the Basie big band in the late 1930s, although you can hear her with several members of the band on numerous small-group recordings that she made during those years…but because they were on different labels, Holiday and Basie himself unable to make any studio recordings together.

Billie Holiday eventually left the Basie band around 1938 over a dispute over which songs to sing. Later that year she joined up with clarinetist Artie Shaw, who was rapidly ascending to a position of fame and fortune in the big-band world. It was a big step forward for Holiday’s career, plus a provocative and progressive move for Shaw, hiring a black singer to lead his white orchestra. But there were problems here too. 

For one, not every audience responded positively to Holiday and her more liberal vocal style, which led Shaw to hire white singer Helen Forrest to balance things out with a more conservative pop style. 

There were also label issues. Shaw was signed to the Victor label and Holiday still with Vocalion. She recorded only one song with Shaw, the song “Any Old Time,” from July 1938. This was the same session that produced Shaw’s famous recording of “Begin the Beguine,” the record that would rocket Shaw to stardom and become, in some ways, the bane of his existence. Vocalion, Billie’s label, allowed her to record with Shaw, as long as Shaw’s recording came out on Victor’s more expensive label. Billie Holiday’s records were cheaper on Vocalion….so Vocalion didn’t view this as competition if Shaw released the same music at a higher price. But then Victor turned around and released this song on their budget Bluebird label, which caused Holiday’s label to call off any future recordings with Shaw. To add salt to the wound, about a year later, Victor withdrew this recording and made Shaw re-record the number with his newest singer Helen Forrest. 

Here’s Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw with that one song now, “Any Old Time” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND ARTIE SHAW, “ANY OLD TIME”

Billie Holiday with Artie Shaw and “Any Old Time,” recorded in the summer of 1938, the only known recording of her time with Artie Shaw.

She left Artie Shaw’s Orchestra later on in 1938 because as a black singer in an all-white band she was enduring a lot of grief on the road…low pay, racism, problems caused by her having to sleep in different areas, or not being allowed to sit on stage with the band when they were in the South. Finally, after enduring really bad racism from the staff at the Lincoln Hotel in New York City, where Shaw had a long-term engagement, Billie Holiday ended up leaving the band. Her personal relationship with Shaw never fully recovered.

She’d been doing mostly small-group dates throughout the 1930s, and she went back to doing mostly small-group dates, for the Brunswick and Commodore labels, including her famous recording of the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.” But we’re going to hear her now with somebody with whom she’d done her very first recording date, back in 1933: Benny Goodman. Goodman and Holiday actually had a relationship at one point, though it seems like an unlikely pairing in retrospect.

On January 17, 1939, Billie Holiday joined the Benny Goodman orchestra on the Camel Caravan, which was a very popular big-band radio program. 

We’ll hear two recordings from this program now. First up, this is Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman’s Big Band with the song “I Cried for You” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND BENNY GOODMAN, “I CRIED FOR YOU”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND BENNY GOODMAN, “JEEPERS CREEPERS”

Billie Holiday, joined there by a few different singers Johnny Mercer, Martha Tilton, and Leo Watson, who was part of a great vocal group called the Spirits of Rhythm. That was “Jeepers Creepers” with Benny Goodman’s big band on the Camel Caravan radio show in January of 1939. Before that, Holiday alone with Goodman’s orchestra doing “I Cried For You.”

MUSIC CLIP - TEDDY WILSON, “THEM THERE EYES”

We’ll have more big-band music featuring Billie Holiday in just a few moments. Stay with us.

I’m Mark Chilla, and you’re listening to Afterglow

MUSIC CLIP - DUKE ELLINGTON, “BLACK BEAUTY”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY AND BENNY GOODMAN, “YOUR MOTHER’S SON-IN-LAW”

Welcome back to Afterglow, I’m Mark Chilla. This time around on the program, we’re playing music that singer Billie Holiday did in a big-band setting.

We just heard Billie Holiday’s very first commercial recording, from on November 27, 1933, performing “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law,” with Benny Goodman & his Orchestra—she was just 18 years old in this recording, and you can tell that she was a bit nervous. The ensemble wasn’t Goodman’s full group, but rather just a pick-up ensemble of nine players, featuring Charlie and Jack Teagarden and Gene Krupa. Just a few members short of a true big-band, but not quite a small ensemble either. We’ll hear more from these “little big bands” in just a bit.

In the first half of the show I talked about some of the contractual obligations that kept Holiday from making more, or ANY, recordings with Artie Shaw and Count Basie…and that kind of conflict crops up again with the next track we’re going to hear, one she did with Paul Whiteman. Whiteman was called “The King of Jazz” in the 1920s, a commercially successful star who debuted George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and helped jumpstart the careers of Hoagy Carmichael, Bing Crosby, and trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke. 

Just before retiring, Whiteman made one of his last-ever big band dates with Billie Holiday. She recorded the song “Travelin’ Light” with Whiteman’s orchestra in 1942 for the newly-launched Capitol label. However, she was still under contract to Brunswick, and so she was forced to record that track under the name “Lady Day” for legal reasons, although I’m not sure they were fooling anybody.

Let’s hear that song now. This is Billie Holiday with Paul Whiteman doing the Johnny Mercer and Jimmy Mundy song “Travelin’ Light,” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “TRAVELIN’ LIGHT”

Billie Holiday in 1942 with an orchestra led by Paul Whiteman, and the song “Travelin’ Light.”

I mentioned earlier that Billie Holiday was doing mostly small-group recordings throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s for the labels she was on. Her producer for the Commodore label, Milt Gabler, was also something of a talent scout for the Decca label, and he ended up bringing Billie to Decca in 1944. She ended up staying with Decca for about 6 years, making quite a few records for them. Some of these records had a somewhat fuller instrumental complement of trumpets, saxophones, and rhythm section to create lush sound sometimes referred to as a “little big band.”

Let’s hear a few of these large ensemble songs she recorded with Decca now. First up, this is Billie Holiday in 1947 with “Deep Song,” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “DEEP SONG”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “EASY LIVING”

Billie Holiday in 1947 with “Easy Living.” and “Deep Song.” Both of these songs were recorded for Decca Records with mid-sized ensembles sometimes called “little big bands” back in the day, connoting a band somewhere between a small group and a full-blown orchestra.

Billie Holiday made several full-blown big-band recordings for Decca during her stay there, including one session that included some of her friends from the 1930s Basie band. Many of the songs were originally part of blues singer Bessie Smith’s catalog, and some historians and fans have claimed was intended to be part of a tribute album to Smith—though Milt Gabler, Billie’s producer at Decca, said that wasn’t the case.

One of those songs, “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” from 1922, has proven to be one of the more controversial ones in the Billie Holiday catalog. The controversy stems from the lines “I’d rather my man hit me/than to jump and quit me” and “I swear I won’t call no copper/if I’m beat up by my poppa.” These depictions of domestic violence sound quite distressing, especially to modern ears, although some modern-day scholars such as Angela Davis argue that the song is actually a protest against such behavior, or a 1920s version of female working-class self-assertion.

The words, for what it’s worth, were written by male songwriters, but they evidently struck some kind of a chord with Billie Holiday. She kept it in her repertoire for much of the rest of her life. Let’s hear it now. This is Billie Holiday in 1949 with “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do” on Afterglow.

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “T’AIN’T NOBODY’S BUSINESS IF I DO”

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “NOW OR NEVER”

Billie Holiday with “Now or Never” from a spring 1950 Decca big-band session. Before that, Billie with the song “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,” from an August 1949 Decca date that may have been part of an intended tribute to blues singer Bessie Smith. That song became a kind of anthem for Billie Holiday, who frequently performed it live. Holiday’s old Basie bandmates Lester Young and Buck Clayton were playing in the big band there.

Earlier this hour, we heard Billie Holiday’s very first commercial recording, and we’ll close out this hour of Afterglow with one of her last recordings. In the final year and a half of her life, she sat down for two sessions with producer and arranger Ray Ellis. The first of these sessions from 1958 became her album Lady in Satin. Technically, this is not a “big band” in the traditional sense, but it’s likely the biggest ensemble that Holiday worked with in a studio setting, featuring over 30 musicians, most of them string players. Her intent was to create lush orchestral arrangements of songs she never performed before, much in the vein of Frank Sinatra in his Capitol recordings from that time or Ella Fitzgerald, in her songbook series. 

Let’s hear one of those songs now. This is Billie Holiday in 1958 with the Rodgers and Hart tune “It’s Easy to Remember” on Afterglow:

MUSIC - BILLIE HOLIDAY, “IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER”

Billie Holiday and “It’s Easy to Remember,” with Ray Ellis and his 34 piece orchestra in 1958. That’s from her final record with Columbia Records, Lady in Satin, and one of her final recording sessions.  

Thanks to David Brent Johnson for his contributions to this episode. And thanks to you, for tuning into this Billie and the Big Bands edition of Afterglow.

MUSIC CLIP - TEDDY WILSON, “SWEET LORRAINE”

Afterglow is part of the educational mission of Indiana University and produced by WFIU Public Radio in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. The executive producer is John Bailey.

Playlists for this and other Afterglow programs are available on our website. That’s at indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow.

I’m Mark Chilla, and join me next week for our mix of Vocal Jazz and popular song from the Great American Songbook, here on Afterglow