From a discussion in the What Are You Doing thread: ETA: Frank Sinatra was one of the songwriters on this, by the way.
Useless fact: That character is completely made up, and the lady on the cover is just a stock photo model.
Are you a fan? I have about twenty-seven hours of Billie on CD, everything she ever recorded in four sets plus three discs of greatest hits from the two bigger collections. Oh, and a short stack of vinyl, of course. She's my favorite artist of all time, which is partially noteworthy because I probably listen to about ten times more indie, alternative and classic rock than I do jazz. My top twenty would mostly be those. Love her though!
Very much so. I only own a couple of her CDs, but my Spotify and Apple Music playlists are loaded with her stuff, as are my YouTube recommendations. My musical preference ratio is similar to yours but Billie's my all-time favorite. In my rock and roll novel, "Don't Explain" plays in the background of a pivotal scene because the MC, Tori, is such a fan. Not sure who my second fave would be...Sinatra is up there, along with Peggy Lee and Edith Piaff. It's usually individual songs, though. This is one of my all-time favorite vocal performances (great arrangement, too):
The MC in my novella has sci-fi amnesia (that's a medical term,) and I'm enjoying introducing her to all of my favorite music and cinema and literature. I get to throw in little micro-critiques everywhere. There's a Billie Holiday scene. They have a crazy, souped up record player, and she listens to Lady Sings the Blues. I've never seen that Billie performance. Man, you can just tell she's about to die, but her voice is still so beautiful. God, what a tragedy. Yeah, I dig Nat King Cole too. Of course, I love Peggy Lee! She and Rosemary Clooney and Dinah Washington are my favorite jazz ladies after Billie. I've never been as into Ella for some reason. I like her. I don't love her. I usually hate any modern mix of a classic (old jazz with a hip-hop beat makes me want to throw things,) but this Dinah Washington/Max Richter mashup blew my mind just a little. The orchestra in the NKC was what made me think of it. You may have heard it. It was on the Shutter Island Soundtrack.
That was amazing! Thank you for posting that. I feel exactly the same about the other jazz ladies you mentioned. I saw Rosemary Clooney at the Hollywood Bowl a few years before she died, and she was fantastic. Motley Crue was another of my Bowl favorites. Billie Holiday is great for scenes. Good choice. Yeah...She had less than a year to live and was in obviously bad shape. But there's also a strange sort of poignant dignity to that performance. By then everybody knows she's an addict, she's been arrested, and been publicly humiliated. But Lady Day puts on her pretty dress and goes to work and does not give up. In a weird way, even though she lost the battle in the end, I always think of Billie as a survivor because she survived so many things that would have destroyed a lot of other people.
I really hope that was in the same show. A lot of people have a preference, early Billie or late Billie. I love it all, her earlier brighter tones and upbeat tunes, and her later heroin and tobacco ravaged voice with two additional decades of the hard life poured right into the mic. Pennies from Heaven is one of my favorites. It's one of the ones that wanders into my mind and sets up camp even when I haven't heard the song in months or more. This is almost off-topic, it's so different, but have you heard the Louis Prima version? Everything Prima does is cool. Plus, he was King Louis in The Jungle Book! (I wanna be like you-oo-oo...)
