Billie Holiday

　　《strange fruit》

　　《God bless the child》

　　《巴黎的四月》

　　《Georgia on my mind》

　　《Gloomy Sunday》

　　《Easy Living》

　　《黑色星期天》

　　若论演唱技巧，billie比不上另一位天后级的爵士歌手ella fitzgerald,但从诠释歌曲深度方面来说，确实无人能与之相比。听billie唱歌，很少有人不被感动到落泪的。与其说她是在唱歌，还不如说她是在娓娓道出令人心碎的故事来得更确切，她的音域虽不宽广，但却渗透出生命幻灭的悲壮，令她在离开多年后。仍被无数歌手视作最崇敬的对象。

　　Billie Holiday的一生和她的音乐一样苦涩晦暗；来自破碎的家庭，出生的时候父母都还是未婚的毛头小鬼，在平民窟里挣扎长大，十岁被强暴后就沦为雏妓，直到十五岁在纽约一家Club里表演被制作人John Hammond发现，Billie Holiday的日子才有一点光采。虽然她的歌唱技巧不是顶佳完美的，但是嗓音里有一股自信和许多历练的记号，以致后来许多作曲编曲及乐手主动和她合作录制唱片。她的嗓音有另外一个特点就是“拟乐器化”，扁扁平平但是饱满丰富的次中音saxophone特别相像。 1930年到1940年间Billie Holiday录制了好几首在爵士乐史上占有非常重要位置(也奠定她在爵士乐史上位置)的歌曲；例如和saxophone大师LesterYoung的作品集、和摇摆大乐团指挥CountBasie及ArtieShow的作品，以及1939年所发表的StrangeFruit和非常富有蓝调感觉的Fine&Mellow等作品。Strange Fruit(日本歌手chara最新专辑名称也取为Strange Fruit，大概灵感也来自这里吧)是最受争议的一首曲子；所谓的“奇异果”其实指的是美国中南方三K党及种族极端主义者把黑奴吊死在树上的景象，Billie Holiday把黑人的怒气爆发了出来，不只赢得了黑人的同感也赢得白人的尊敬。

　　虽然Billie Holiday的事业已经达到了巅峰，却也加速了她的死亡；她一直逃不出她童年悲苦命运的阴影，只好从酒精及麻药中去寻找避难所，20多岁就有严重酗酒的记录，直到最后一天的日子里，她的生命里就只有唱歌、烈酒、大麻和海洛因，还有无数令她伤心欲绝的男人。1959年她44岁，病毒发作死在医院里，身边也没有亲人，只有一群原本要捉她去戒护所的警察。但是这一切无法掩盖她的作品对所有喜欢爵士乐的人的影响力和重要性，你下次若有机会到美国Balfimore市(Billie Holiday的故乡)去玩，在Pennsylvania和Lafayette大道路口有一座3公尺高的Billie Holiday铜像，去看一看，再到附近的咖啡馆点一杯espresso，再听听她的音乐。

　　Billie Holiday’Introduction

　　The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. Almost fifty years after her death, it’s difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday’s highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie’s big sound and Pops’ feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.

　　With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday’s technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday’s best performances ("Lover Man," "Don’t Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances.

　　Billie Holiday’s chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday’s mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.

　　In New York, Holiday helped her mother with domestic work, but soon began moonlighting as a prostitute for the additional income. According to the weighty Billie Holiday legend (which gained additional credence after her notoriously apocryphal autobiography Lady Sings the Blues), her big singing break came in 1933 when a laughable dancing audition at a speakeasy prompted her accompanist to ask her if she could sing. In fact, Holiday was most likely singing at clubs all over New York City as early as 1930-31. Whatever the true story, she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. After recording a demo at Columbia Studios, Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother’s Son-In-Law."

　　Though she didn’t return to the studio for over a year, Billie Holiday spent 1934 moving up the rungs of the competitive New York bar scene. By early 1935, she made her debut at the Apollo Theater and appeared in a one-reeler film with Duke Ellington. During the last half of 1935, Holiday finally entered the studio again and recorded a total of four sessions. With a pick-up band supervised by pianist Teddy Wilson, she recorded a series of obscure, forgettable songs straight from the gutters of Tin Pan Alley in other words, the only songs available to an obscure black band during the mid-’30s. (During the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs strictly in the hands of society orchestras and popular white singers.) Despite the poor song quality, Holiday and various groups (including trumpeter Roy Eldridge, alto Johnny Hodges, and tenors Ben Webster and Chu Berry) energized flat songs like "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" and "If You Were Mine" (to say nothing of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town"). The great combo playing and Holiday’s increasingly assured vocals made them quite popular on Columbia, Brunswick and Vocalion.

　　During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then returned to New York for several more sessions. In late January 1937, she recorded several numbers with a small group culled from one of Hammond’s new discoveries, Count Basie’s Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who’d briefly known Billie several years earlier, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were to become especially attached to Holiday. The three did much of their best recorded work together during the late ’30s, and Holiday herself bestowed the nickname Pres on Young, while he dubbed her Lady Day for her elegance. By the spring of 1937, she began touring with Basie as the female complement to his male singer, Jimmy Rushing. The association lasted less than a year, however. Though officially she was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable, shadowy influences higher up in the publishing world reportedly commanded the action after she refused to begin singing ’20s female blues standards.

　　At least temporarily, the move actually benefited Holiday less than a month after leaving Basie, she was hired by Artie Shaw’s popular band. She began singing with the group in 1938, one of the first instances of a black female appearing with a white group. Despite the continuing support of the entire band, however, show promoters and radio sponsors soon began objecting to Holiday based on her unorthodox singing style almost as much as her race. After a series of escalating indignities, Holiday quit the band in disgust. Yet again, her judgment proved valuable; the added freedom allowed her to take a gig at a hip new club named Café Society, the first popular nightspot with an inter-racial audience. There, Billie Holiday learned the song that would catapult her career to a new level: "Strange Fruit."

　　The standard, written by Café Society regular Lewis Allen and forever tied to Holiday, is an anguished reprisal of the intense racism still persistent in the South. Though Holiday initially expressed doubts about adding such a bald, uncompromising song to her repertoire, she pulled it off thanks largely to her powers of nuance and subtlety. "Strange Fruit" soon became the highlight of her performances. Though John Hammond refused to record it (not for its politics but for its overly pungent imagery), he allowed Holiday a bit of leverage to record for Commodore, the label owned by jazz record-store owner Milt Gabler. Once released, "Strange Fruit" was banned by many radio outlets, though the growing jukebox industry (and the inclusion of the excellent "Fine and Mellow" on the flip) made it a rather large, though controversial, hit. She continued recording for Columbia labels until 1942, and hit big again with her most famous composition, 1941’s "God Bless the Child." Gabler, who also worked A&R for Decca, signed her to the label in 1944 to record "Lover Man," a song written especially for her and her third big hit. Neatly side-stepping the musician’s union ban that afflicted her former label, Holiday soon became a priority at Decca, earning the right to top-quality material and lavish string sections for her sessions. She continued recording scattered sessions for Decca during the rest of the ’40s, and recorded several of her best-loved songs including Bessie Smith’s "’Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes," and "Crazy He Calls Me."

　　Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday’s emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-’40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn’t last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York’s Town Hall and a small film role as a maid (!) with Louis Armstrong in 1947’s New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother’s death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.

　　Unfortunately, Holiday’s troubles only continued after her release. The drug charge made it impossible for her to get a cabaret card, so nightclub performances were out of the question. Plagued by various celebrity hawks from all portions of the underworld (jazz, drugs, song publishing, etc.), she soldiered on for Decca until 1950. Two years later, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz, owner of the excellent labels Clef, Norgran, and by 1956, Verve. The recordings returned her to the small-group intimacy of her Columbia work, and reunited her with Ben Webster as well as other top-flight musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Charlie Shavers. Though the ravages of a hard life were beginning to take their toll on her voice, many of Holiday’s mid-’50s recordings are just as intense and beautiful as her classic work.

　　During 1954, Holiday toured Europe to great acclaim, and her 1956 autobiography brought her even more fame (or notoriety). She made her last great appearance in 1957, on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz with Webster, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins providing a close backing. One year later, the Lady in Satin LP clothed her naked, increasingly hoarse voice with the overwrought strings of Ray Ellis. During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time. Her cult of influence spread quickly after her death and gave her more fame than she’d enjoyed in life. The 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues featured Diana Ross struggling to overcome the conflicting myths of Holiday’s life, but the film also illuminated her tragic life and introduced many future fans. By the digital age, virtually all of Holiday’s recorded material had been reissued: by Columbia (nine volumes of The Quintessential Billie Holiday), Decca (The Complete Decca Recordings), and Verve (The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959).

　　比利Holiday’Introduction首流行爵士乐歌手与时激烈，观众的经典蓝调个人的感受，Billie Holiday的改变了美国流行声乐艺术永远。她去世后将近50年，很难相信她的出现，爵士乐和流行歌手前被捆绑到蒂恩帕恩阿传统，很少个性化他们的歌曲，像贝西史密斯和马雷尼只蓝调歌手实际上给人的印象是他们经历过他们在唱。 Billie Holiday的高度程式化的传统阅读本蓝色革命传统的流行音乐，撕掉了两堵，拒绝妥协，无论是歌曲或带她的艺术歌曲长达数十年的传统。她清楚她的债务，贝西史密斯和路易斯阿姆斯特朗（在她的自传，她承认：“我一直想贝西的大声音和流行音乐’的感觉”），但实际上她的风格几乎是她自己，不少在一个通用的年龄休克低音歌手和乐队的歌手。在她的光辉，通过对每一个记录的精神，假日的技术专长相比也表现出色，她同时代的绝大多数。通常由陈旧蒂恩帕恩阿她被迫早在她的职业生涯纪录的歌曲无聊，假日愚弄与周围的节拍和旋律，节拍措辞背后，往往振兴与她最喜欢的喇叭播放器，阿姆斯特朗借来的旋律和声标准和莱斯特年轻。 （她经常说她想唱像一个喇叭。）她的私人生活中臭名昭著的虐待关系，物质成瘾系列，抑郁症的时期无疑帮助她的传奇地位，但假日的最佳表演（“情人人”，“不要解释“，”怪果“，她自己组成”上帝保佑孩子“）中仍然有记录以来的最敏感和完成声乐表演。以上技术能力，纯度超过语音，是什么让比利假日本世纪容易的艾拉或法兰仙纳杜拉等于最好的歌手之一，是她不懈个人主义者气质，优质，彩色每一个细致入微的表演，她不断地之一。 Billie Holiday的混乱的生活已开始就在巴尔的摩于1915年4月7日（少数报道说，1912年），她出生时埃利诺拉费根歌赋。她的父亲，克拉伦斯假日，是一个十几岁的爵士吉他和班卓琴的球员后来发挥弗莱彻亨德森的乐团。他从来没有娶了她母亲，塞迪费根，离开，而他的女儿还是个婴儿。 （她后来碰到他在纽约，虽然她签约她的会议之前，他在1937年去世许多吉他手，她总是避免使用他。）休的母亲也是当时年轻的少年，以及是否因经验不足或忽视，往往留下了她的女儿漠不关心的亲戚。假日被判处天主教学校在改革的10岁，据说她承认被后。虽然被判留到她成为一个成人，一个家庭的朋友帮助她获得释放后短短的两年时间。与她的母亲，她于1927年，先后不久，新泽西州和纽约布鲁克林。在纽约，假日帮妈妈做家务，但很快就开始作为额外收入兼职。根据重Billie Holiday的传说（取得了众所周知的猜测之后，她的自传蓝调歌唱夫人），她在1933年突破大唱来时在一家非法经营的可笑的舞蹈试演促使她伴奏，问她，如果她能唱更多的信任。事实上，假日是最有可能在纽约市所有在俱乐部早在1930年至31年歌唱。无论真实的故事，她第一次获得了在1933年初，当唱片制作人约翰哈蒙德只有三年的宣传比自己年龄较大的假日，仅仅在一个传奇的职业生涯开始说她在一列的旋律和设备，以使本尼古德曼1她的表演。之后在哥伦比亚制片厂录音示范，假日参加了一个小组，由各古德曼领导就11月27日她的商业亮相，以“你母亲的女婿1933年。”虽然她没有回过一年的工作室，比利提出了1934年假日花了竞争纽约酒吧现场的梯级。到1935年初，她在她的阿波罗剧院首演，并与艾灵顿公爵的一个矫正机电影出现。在1935年下半年，假日终于再次进入录音棚录一共有4个会议。由钢琴家特迪威尔逊监督回升乐队，她在记录中30年代的一个模糊的，忘记的歌曲，换句话说的锡盘沟弄直，唯一的歌曲提供给一个不起眼的黑色带系列。 （在挥杆的时代，音乐出版严加在社会流行乐团和歌手的白人手中的最好的歌曲。）尽管歌曲质量差，假日和各种团体（包括小号手罗伊埃尔德里奇，约翰尼霍奇斯女低音，男高音和本韦伯斯特和楚贝里）活力，如“月光什么能够做一个小单位的歌曲”，“二十四小时一节”和“如果你属于我”（更遑论“Eeny Meeny Miney武无”和“胜利之歌从来没有向城市“）。伟大的组合演奏和假日的歌声使他们越来越放心在哥伦比亚比较流行，布伦瑞克和Vocalion。在1936年，假日参观由吉米伦斯福德和弗莱彻亨德森，领导小组随后返回了几会，向纽约。 1月下旬1937年，她录制了从哈蒙德的新发现，贝西伯爵的乐团之一扑杀一小群几个数字。莱斯特年轻的男高音，谁知道会简要比利几年前，和小号手巴克克莱顿的人，成为特别重视假日。没有他们的三个最好的记录工作中的每一天，在30年代后期，和假日自己赋予年轻的昵称普雷什，而他配音，她的优雅她的夫人日。到1937年春天，她开始与Basie的巡回演出，女性补充他的男歌手，吉米拉欣。该协会历时不到一年的时间，但是。虽然正式她被开除的气质和不可靠的，更高的阴影影响了世界报的出版指挥的行动开始后，她拒绝唱女布鲁斯乐队20年代的标准。至少暂时，此举实际上受益离开Basie的假期后不到一个月，她被阿蒂肖的流行乐队雇用的。她在1938年开始组，一位黑人与白人女性群体中出现的第一个实例中的一个唱歌。尽管整个乐队的持续支持，但是，显示推动者和电台赞助商很快就开始反对假日根据她非正统的演唱风格几乎和她的比赛了。经过一系列升级侮辱，假日退出乐队厌恶。再次，证明了她的判断有价值;添加的自由让她去上髋关节一新的俱乐部演出名为咖啡协会，第一个是跨种族的观众欢迎的夜总会。在那里，比利假日学到的歌曲，她的职业生涯将弹射到一个新水平：“怪果”。该标准由咖啡协会定期书面和刘易斯艾伦永远绑假日，是一种强烈的种族主义依然在南方持续痛苦的报复。虽然假日最初关注加入此一秃，不妥协的歌给她演奏的疑虑，她一把扯下来在很大程度上要归功于她的细微差别和微妙的权力。 “怪果”很快成了她表演的亮点。虽然约翰哈蒙德拒绝记录在案（不为政治，而是其过于刺鼻的图像），他让假日的杠杆作用位记录的Commodore，标签由爵士乐记录店主米尔特加布勒拥有。一旦释放，“怪果”被取缔后，许多无线电商店，虽然增长点唱机行业（以及优良的“优雅柔和的翻转列入”）已相当大，虽然有争议，击中。她继续为哥伦比亚唱片公司录制，直到1942年，并击中她最有名的组成，1941年的“上帝保佑孩子大了。”加布勒，谁也工作了德卡的A&R，签署了1944年的标签记录“情人人”的书面她和她的第三大受欢迎，尤其是一首歌曲。整齐的副作用加强音乐家工会禁令折磨她的前标签，假日很快成为一个优先考虑的德卡，赢得她会向高品质的材料和奢华的弦乐组的权利。她继续录制德卡分散会议期间，40年代的休息，并记录了她最喜爱的歌曲，包括一些贝西史密斯的“那还不至于没水喝如果我能做到的，”“他们有眼睛”和“疯狂他呼吁我。“虽然她的艺术高峰，比利假日的感情生活开始于1940年代中期动荡的时期。已经进入大量酒精和大麻，她开始吸食鸦片早在10年与她的第一任丈夫，杜琪峰梦露。他们的婚姻并没有持续，但炎热来到紧跟其后的第二次婚姻吹鼓手乔盖伊和转向海洛因。尽管她的胜利音乐会在纽约大会堂及作为女仆（小电影的角色呢！）与路易斯阿姆斯特朗在1947年的新奥尔良，她失去了一个很好的协议运行的钱她与乔盖自己的乐队。她的母亲去世后不久，她的深入，1947年受影响，她涉嫌藏有海洛因，被判处8个月监禁。不幸的是，假日的麻烦不仅继续在她的释放。该药物收费，不可能为她获得歌舞表演卡，所以夜总会表演，出了问题。由来自阴间的所有部分（爵士乐，毒品，歌曲出版等）的各种名人鹰派的困扰，她soldiered为德卡直至1950年。两年后，她开始为爵士乐企业家诺曼葛兰兹，唱片公司老板的优秀录音谱号，Norgran，1956年，神韵。这些录音回到她到她的哥伦比亚工作小组亲密关系，并回归本韦伯斯特她以及其他一流的，例如奥斯卡彼得森，哈利“糖果”爱迪生，音乐家和查理剃须刀。虽然艰苦的生活造成的破坏已开始她的声音就其收费，假日的中不少是50年代的唱片一样激烈，因为她的美丽的经典之作。在1954年，假日参观欧洲大获好评，她带来了她1956年的自传更加名声（或恶名）。她让她上一次是在1957年伟大的外观，在CBS电视台提供了一个特殊的密切支持与韦伯斯特，莱斯特杨，和科尔曼霍金斯爵士的声音。一年后，在夫人穿着缎子唱片与光线埃利斯的雕饰字符串她赤身露体，越来越嘶哑的声音。在她的最后一年，她在5月之前在欧洲的心脏和肝脏疾病1959年倒塌的两个出场。不过采购海洛因而在她临终，假日涉嫌藏在她的私人房间和7月17日死在同一时间，她的战斗系统都无法完全撤出和心脏病。她邪教组织的影响力迅速蔓延，她去世后，给她的名气比她更会在生活中享受。 1972年的传记片夫人蓝调歌唱特色戴安娜罗斯努力克服假日生活冲突的神话，但这部影片还照亮她的悲惨生活和未来提出了许多球迷。到了数字时代，几乎所有的假日的记录材料已重新印发：哥伦比亚（9册典型的比利假日），达艺（完整德卡录音），和Verve（Billie Holiday的完整的神韵1945年至1959年