Two Songs From Billie

Seeing that today is the 101st anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth, here is audio of her 1956 appearance on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen.  She performs two songs, "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" and "(I Don't Stand A) Ghost of a Chance" and also promotes her upcoming stint at Club Pablo in Washington, D.C.

Don't Explain

Billie Holiday performing "Don't Explain" in 1958. By this point I think she was in pretty bad shape, but this is still one of my favorite Billie Holiday songs.

Happy 100th Birthday Billie

To recognize today as Billie Holiday's 100th Birthday, here is "It's Easy To Remember"

God Bless the Child

Billie Holiday performing "God Bless the Child".

For Billie

Justin Townes Earle performs the song he wrote for Billie Holiday, "White Dress, White Shoes and White Gardenias".

Fine and Mellow

I think I posted a version of this before, but it is gone now. This 1957 TV Broadcast of Billie Holiday performing Fine and Mellow is probably one of the best recording of Lady Day..

Billie Holiday Covers

To finish out the week, a couple covers of songs that Billie Holiday also did.

First, Elvis Costello's version of "Gloomy Sunday". I don't think I have yet posted any songs about suicide, so now we also have that covered.



From one of my favorite singers of the 80's, Alison Moyet performing "That Ole Devil Called Love".



And from one of my favorite voices of the current century, Madeleine Peyroux performing "Sunny Side of the Street".

Billie Holiday

This weekend I went to Philadelphia. On Saturday night I saw Lizz Wright and the Danilo Pérez Trio do a Billie Holiday Tribute concert. On Sunday I saw Billy Crystal perform his one man show "700 Sunday". Both performances were incredible. It just so happens that Billie Holiday was a friend of Billy Crystal's Family. Crystal's father and uncle were in the Jazz record business. Billie Holiday actually took Billy Crystal to see his first movie, "Shane". He was five years old at the time.

So here are a couple videos of Billie Holiday. Lizz Wright performed this first song, "I Love You Porgy", at the concert last night.



Here is a video of "Fine and Mellow". The video starts with part of an interview with Billie Holiday.



Finally, here is Billie doing the song for which she is probably most famous, "Strange Fruit". The record of this song was produced by Billy Crystal's Uncle, Milt Gabler. Because this song is about lynching in the South, Holiday's record company, Columbia, would not let here record it. There was fear of a backlash against the company if they released this song. Holiday convinced Gabler to record the song for her, and it was released on another record label. In 1978 the recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.