Indigenous Music

...I'd heard that in her singing...

...Between songs, Billie—with pianist Jimmy Rowles and bassist Artie Shapiro as her audience—talks about how she auditioned for a gig when she was thirteen and got kicked out because she didn't know what a key was...

...Gram Parsons died, young, in 1943...

...A package comprising all nine of these LPs is available for only $39.99 (plus $3 for postage) from an enterprising source of all kinds of good sounds, Blue Angel, Inc., P.O...

...But the tastemakers of classical music in Britain did not like Bridge's compositions—in part, / believe, because they were too intensely lyrical...

...You also might want to get the label's quite remarkably heterogeneous catalogue—Nonesuch Records is at 962 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069...

...Another singular and invaluable small label—but all alone, unlike the corporately linked Nonesuch—is Sierra Records, about which I'll be writing in detail in a future column...

...I make a date for golf and you can bet your ass it rains...

...For instance, / Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone (Giants of Jazz 1001, c/o Glendale Records, 3015 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90029...

...I'd advise you to send for their catalogue, which cuts across the usual musical categories—from huge Bach collections to French chansons to the long out-of-print Esquire Jazz Concerts with Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Billie Holiday, and others...

...But when Tracey Sterne, its venturesome director, was fired a couple of years ago, there were lamentations—by me, too—and grim predictions that the label, if it survived at all, would move to Fritz Kreisler and yet another Beethoven Fifth, this time by a newly found Bavarian police orchestra...

...Along with such vintage Ellington classics as "Black and Tan Fantasy," "Ko-Ko," and "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," there are historic performances of "Black, Brown and Beige," "Perfume Suite," and "Liberian Suite...

...And most amazingly, there are some sounds we never even knew were there...

...She could turn a lyric—even if it had come out of a Tin Pan Alley remainder bin—and give it the taste of all too personal remembrance...

...And this set of live performances by Gram and that band are indispensable for anyone more than peripherally involved with American popular music...

...I mean the listener's remembrance...

...But if you wanted some mystery, with or without the lights on, you'd go to Billie...

...Her wit, laid-back and ready to pounce, was not surprising...

...We were all wrong...

...Part of the Parsons legend is a band Gram led and toured with: the Fallen Angels...

...Lady Day—as Lester Young nicknamed her—was, to say the least, subtle...

...It exemplifies British critic Iain Lang's observation that in comparison with Lady Day, all other women singing about love "sound like little girls playing house...

...M Choice Cuts For many years, the least predictable and often most imaginative of classical labels was Nonesuch (part of Warner Communications...

...She did it by her sound, which was in no way "pretty" but which was in every way real...

...A case in point is Frank Bridge: Piano Quintet...

...The former includes interviews with Billie by Tex McCreary and Mike Wallace, and the latter has, among other performances, two rare tracks from a 1944 radio broadcast with Ben Webster and Roy Eldridge...

...Bridge, a wondrous viola player, teacher (Benjamin Britten was a pupil), and conductor, was also a composer...

...If you wanted it all spelled out for you, you'd go to Frank Sinatra, who, though influenced by Billie, is not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is...

...But as of now, to get a flavor of the Sierra style and sound, I'd strongly suggest its new release of Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels (Sierra Records, GP 1973, P.O...

...She had what is called bad luck with men...

...When she was a young girl, Billie once said, she heard Louis Armstrong: "It sounded like he was making love to me...

...This one may be hard to find, but it's worth the search...

...And most of all, in her music, there was the sensuality...

...Box 137, Charlottesville, VA 22902...

...Also worth having is Billie Holiday at Storyville, a series of broadcasts from the once and former Boston jazz club where I was one of the announcers (Jazzman JAZ 5005, First American Records, Inc., 73 Marion Street, Seattle, WA 98104...

...In time I'd come to know her as a pungently accurate mimic—of club owners, booking agents, and others of the crude middlemen of her profession...

...Nonesuch has continued to be surprising and has not in the least lowered its admirable standards of performance and recorded sound...

...Box 5853, Pasadena, CA 911070853...

...Sitting in a living room, she was less the knowing, mocking, searing presence on recordings than she was a woman trying to make it out here, day by day, as best she could...

...By no means was it all up front...

...And for some twenty-five years after his death in 1941, Bridge's pieces were hardly heard at all...

...After you listen to these two, I expect you'll find you'll need more...

...She also lectures on how she possesses a song, and not only in terms of rhythm and melody...

...And Billie Holiday "On the Air" (Totem 1037, Totem Records, P.O...

...Phantasie Trio with the Music Group of London (Nonesuch 71405...

...Box 724, Redmond, WA 98052...

...On more and more small labels, the sounds of the jazz past keep being regenerated...

...She did it by her timing—more than anyone, she knew how to make the beat breathe so that each story was fully told...

...In recent months, a surprising cache of previously unreleased—or long unavailable—Billie- Holiday recordings have been issued...

...When we first started making those small combo dates in the 1930s," Teddy said, "I was so struck by Billie's sound...

...Parsons, though not nearly so well known as his lively and penetrating musical intelligence merited, has been a pervasive influence on some of the more lyrical rock and new country performers...

...That was dismissed as just a fan's hyperbole, and so, years later, I was pleased to have my reaction confirmed by the imperturbably cool Teddy Wilson, who has known and measured just about everybody in this music...

...They so complemented each other it was as if each were singing inside the other's head...

...This was a wholly real person, not just an entertainer, and in her music she was telling you about her life, from girlhood on to the argument with her current man just before show time...

...And when it's that way, you can't blame anybody but yourself...

...In one bonanza of a package, Fantasy has assembled nine LPs of those celebrations of high culture—from January 1943 to December 1947...

...But here was the very best jazz singer there had ever been—that was the vote from the inside, from the musicians— and there was nothing in the least regal in her manner or in her expectations...

...In addition to his own ar-restingly natural, easefully lyrical singing, Parsons is joined by the then quite young Emmylou Harris...

...As Emmylou said, he was "an updated Hank Williams...

...She could just say 'Hello' or 'Good morning' and it was a musical experience...

...The most extraordinarily creative musical events of the 1940s were Duke Ellington's annual Carnegie Hall Concerts, for each of which he composed new works...

...But that's not the way Billie put it: "I was as strong, if not stronger, than any of them...

...The closest you can come to hearing Billie as she was while reminiscing with friends is A Day in the Life of Billie Holiday (Different Drummer DD1003...

...After meeting Billie, I used to tell anyone who'd listen that just hearing her talk was of more musical interest than listening to most professionals actually sing...

...And do not miss the Verve/Polygram reissue, after all these years, of Stay With Me (Verve UMV 2598...

...That's how I wanted to sing...

...But when she did sing, oh my...