Jazz

Here’s a link to a feature on Billie Holiday that was posted by the CBC last week.  It includes an interview that was conducted by Toronto radio host Dick MacDougall.  The CBC gives it a...

I’m preparing a guest lecture for Professor Jason Robinson’s Jazz Film class at Amherst College tomorrow.  I’ll be speaking on the Hollywood bio pics “Lady Sings the Blues”...

LADY DAY IN NEWARK, 1957 The New York Times last week posted an album of rarely seen photos of Billie Holiday. The pictures were taken by Jerry Dantzic in 1957 during her engagement at Sugar...

So much of Billie Holiday’s art, including her fondness for the French ballad “My Man,” underscores the pathos of her life and the masochistic tendencies that kept her involved and often enthralled with...

If you don’t love Billie Holiday already, this should do it. For everyone else who knows what it is to be in her thrall, this will break your heart all over again. Lady Day in Paris, November 18, 1958,...

Billie Holiday died 53 years ago today.  Frank O’Hara famously commemorated the occasion in his poem, “The Day Lady Died,” which concludes, “I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of/leaning on the john...

Today is Billy Eckstine’s 100th birthday anniversary. The renowned “Mr. B” was born in Pittsburgh on July 8, 1914, and died there in 1993 at the age of 78. Eckstine had all the qualities of...

Billy Higgins was born 80 years ago today in Los Angeles. Guided by his mother, Higgins began drumming at the age of five and knew by eight that he was going to make it his profession. “Smilin’...

It’s Billy Strayhorn’s centennial today. The great composer was born in Dayton, Ohio, on November 29, 1915. He grew up in Pittsburgh, where he attended Westinghouse High School and did additional study...

I squired my sister Sue around Harlem a couple of Sundays ago after visiting her art studio on 118th Street. We stopped at Sylvia’s for brunch; bought fruit at an open air stand at the fork between...