Billie Sunday, no. 1

No, this isn’t a post about that Dead song with Billy Sunday (and “the shotgun ragtime band”) in the lyrics. And it’s definitely not one about Billy Sunday, the anti-booze Christian crusader. Instead it’s the first in what I hope will be a series of last-day-in-the-week posts on Billie Holiday. When the thought first arose of doing this blog, I knew that I wanted to have a regularly-scheduled “feature” on an artist I love. And perhaps more than any other musical artist I’ve had the pleasure of listening to, Billie encapsulates the (desperate) hope articulated in the Dylan lyric used for the title of this blog. For while it sometimes seems that her life went from “bad to worse,” in her music Lady Day’s virtuosic singing provided her a space of personal control and power and provided for her audience, especially during her first phase which coincided with the great depression, a rapturous moment of escape and an enactment of bodily fulfillment.

I claim no special knowledge of Billie (or jazz in general), certainly not an exhaustive knowledge. She produced, while working with the greatest jazz artists of her day, a large body of work -- look here, here, here, or here -- and I’m going to use this blog as a means of deepening my understanding and love for her accomplishment. (And I promise that all the posts won’t be this long!)

The kick-off song (and my personal favorite), “I Must Have That Man,” from 1937 was recorded during the first phase of her career. Here we find her in the company of close friend and simpatico tenor saxophonist Lester Young (whom she gifted with the nickname “Prez”), clarinetist Benny Goodman (whom, somehow, she was romantically involved with!), Buck Clayton (t), Teddy Wilson (p), Jo Jones (d), Freddie Green (g), and Walter Page (b). All the musicians here are in top form, with Young, Clayton, and Goodman putting-in masterful performances. As with many other songs associated with her, this is a tale of sexual longing for a man who may not treat her quite right but still possesses so much charm (“a lady’s not safe in his arms when she’s kissed”) and other skills your mother didn’t tell you about, that the singer simply can’t live without him. There’s so much to say about Billie’s performance here, but I’ll just mention two things. What strikes me about Billie’s interpretation of the “it’s just unlawful how that boy can cheat” line is her worldliness. She’s singing about a man cheating on her, yet with her generous understanding of human foibles and “the ways of men” (and much more than that) Billie sings the line with a knowing smile. Some might want to quarrel with her acceptance of a cheating-man’s ways, but one of the supreme achievements of Holiday’s art is its containment of ambiguity. The line reads one way, but her interpretation grants it a whole new meaning. And then when Billie growls low (Bessie Smith style) that “he’s only human if he’s to be had,” we get a a bit of bluesy-poetry on the sly, earthy pleasures of incarnation. Oh Lady, Sing.

Billie Holiday - I Must Have That Man