Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin

The recent and widely voiced opinions that 'Blackstar' the final album from David Bowie is his best ever, started me wondering whether people were being influenced by the circumstances surrounding the recording and release of this record. To be honest I even made a similar claim myself in an earlier post, though I would like to think that I was being objective about the quality of the music and not the circumstances of it's release. Whether it is deemed Bowie's finest work will I guess, only be judged in the fullness of time - perhaps in the next five or even ten years.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate on what influences us on the merits of not just music, but all kinds of art. For example, last year I spent a full day in London's National Gallery and was exposed to numerous paintings that I had never seen "in the flesh" so to speak. Some of them had previously left me unmoved, yet when witnessing them in all their glory, while armed with a guide book and the obligatory audio guide, I came to realise why they were so highly regarded. Given an understanding of the background, what the artist was trying to achieve and perhaps what was in the artist's mind at the time, gave me a fuller understanding of those great works. 

And so it can be with music.

For example, last week I listened for the first time to the Billie Holiday LP, 'Lady in Satin'. I was less than impressed and found myself agreeing with many of the contemporary commentators of 1958 (the year of it's release), that Holiday had lost much of the upper range of her voice and that she was just a shadow of her former self. Such comments were of course quite factual. Holiday had endured many years of addiction to hard drugs and alcohol and had even served a spell in prison for possession of drugs. Her lifestyle had adversely affected her health and of course her voice.

My mistake however, was in listening to the record unemotionally with only my ears.

Later, while listening again, I also read the informative notes that accompany my copy of the record. I then learned the real background to this recording.

Having heard an album called 'Ellis in Wonderland' by conductor and arranger, Ray Ellis, Billie Holiday declared an interest in making a recording with him backed by an orchestra with string section. This was something Holiday had not done before but Ellis was delighted and after agreeing which songs would be recorded, he set about arranging them. The recordings took place at late night sessions (to suit Holiday's lifestyle) at Columbia Studios in New York over three consecutive days beginning on 19th February 1958. At the first session, four songs were recorded beginning with the Gene DePaul / Don Raye classic 'You Don't Know What Love Is'. Upon arrival, Holiday had seemed nervous and unsure of herself having never recorded in this format before. Nevertheless, fortified with neat gin she sang her heart out and the recordings were deemed successful.

It was on the second session, during the recording of a further four tracks that cracks appeared as Holiday arrived in an already intoxicated state with a bottle of gin in one hand. She was totally unfamiliar with the arrangements and Ellis became angry with her and described the session as a complete mess. In his own words; "I had broken my back to create the arrangements, trying to imagine how she'd sing the pieces and she wasn't able to sing them the way I'd conceived the tunes - and for that I hated her." 

What Ellis (and many others) overlooked at the time was the fact that Holiday had carefully selected these songs not because she was familiar with singing them but because the lyrics reflected her own personal life. She had recently published her autobiography 'The Lady Sings The Blues' a candid account of her life written in collaboration with William Dufty. That process caused her to reflect on her own tragic life and consequently she chose to record songs that were lyrically almost personal to her. 

One of the songs recorded at that second session was  'I'm a Fool to Want You'. The words had been written in 1951 by Frank Sinatra on the subject of his tumultuous marriage to Ava Gardner, but during this performance, Holiday managed to make the song her own. Upon listening to the playback with Holiday present, Ray Ellis later confessed, "I would say that was the most emotional moment. There were tears in her eyes." Later Ellis listened to the whole album himself and only then realised just how great her performance really was.

Opinions about the merits of this album are still divided. True, the voice of Billie Holiday is not what it once had been but her phrasing is sublime and throughout she sings from the heart. The album may be correctly classified as jazz, yet Holiday reveals a blues sensibility. After all is singing from the heart not what the blues is all about? So, thanks to becoming more aware of the background to this recording, I can now listen not only with my ears but also with my heart and doing so has transformed my listening experience. Certainly there is pain within this recording, but there is also great, emotional beauty.

Have a listen to the opening track 'I'm a Fool to Want You' and judge for yourself.

'Lady in Satin' was to be Holiday's penultimate record and the last to be released during her lifetime. She died aged 44 on 17 July 1959.