Music review: A Tribute to Billie Holiday

By Steve Barnes I guess that the first thing to be said about any Billie Holiday tribute is that it’s a good thing. Any time that contemporary listeners are encouraged to pay some attention to one of the greatest singers ever recorded is a plus, especially if those listeners are led back to the source. But having said that, exactly how good of a thing is A Tribute to Billie Holiday (StormVox Records), which was released last week? A compilation of 13 versions of songs associated with Holiday—by artists ranging from ‘80s standby Boz Scaggs to recent Grammy winner for Best New Artist Esperanza Spalding—the CD walks a fine line between overly earnest embalmings of songs and versions that manage to point out the relationship between 21st-century R&B and the world that Holiday inhabited. A Tribute to Billie Holiday has its roots in what might seem to be a strange source. It’s the brainchild of actor Peter Stormare, whose credits include the Coen Brothers’ Fargo and the TV series Entourage. According to the CD’s liner notes, Stormare’s interest in Holiday’s work started when he read her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, when he was a teenager in Sweden. That probably accounts for the overall structure of the CD, which mixes up the songs with excerpts from Holiday’s book, read by Angela Bassett. But while Holiday’s life story was a sad one, and her bouts with drug abuse certainly have some cautionary value, those things have very little to do with why we should still listen to her music today. Holiday was a master at finding the story inside of a song’s lyrics, and at working against the grain of its melodic line just enough to make a listener stand back and get some perspective on what the song is about. That’s a tough feat for a singer to pull off, and it’s one that defeats a few of the singers here. Two young jazz singers, Erin Boheme and Renee Olmstead, offer up versions of, respectively, “Them There Eyes” and “Good Morning Heartache.” Neither version is bad, but they are both much too blandly comfortable. There’s no sense of tension between the singer and the song. Aside from the fact that Billie Holiday sang these songs, there seems to be little connection between the tracks and Holiday’s recordings. That’s not to say that what we want to hear is a singer trying to mimic Holiday’s style, but something that exhibits a similar sense of adventure is definitely a reasonable request. Three young performers do have some success with that. Rocco DeLuca delivers “Lady Sings the Blues” with a contemporary R&B croon that suits the song more than you’d think. Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds gives “Strange Fruit” a dreamy, slightly detached arrangement that sets up a nice contrast with the song’s subject material. And Esperanza Spalding’s slow, airy version of “I’ll Look Around” (you can hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayNWPRD5LY4) is probably the best thing here. Rickie Lee Jones also does pretty well with “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” The only artist here who has an immediately recognizable style, Jones does what projects like this really ought to. She inhabits the song with her boho-chick persona without losing the song’s spirit. It’s a suitable analogy for what Holiday does with her material, and it’s something that A Tribute to Billie Holiday could have done with a little more of. But if you want to listen to some tributes to Lady Day that really hit the mark, there are quite a few available. Among the best: Carmen McRae Sings Lover Man & Other Billie Holiday Classics, Rosemary Clooney’s Tribute to Billie Holiday, Etta James’s Mystery Lady and Abbey Lincoln’s Abbey Sings Billie. They’re all examples of how a great singer’s influence can live on without becoming imitation. And of course you can always listen to Lady Day herself. My own opinion is that two of her last albums, Songs for Distingue Lovers and Lady in Satin, are her best—but that’s a minority opinion. If by some chance, you haven’t listened to her before, there are several compilations that can give you a good overview of her career. Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday has 36 of the best tracks from the early years, when she was recording for Columbia Records. And for the midcareer highlights, The Complete Decca Recordings has 50 tracks she recorded from 1944 to 1950. Her later career at Verve can be sampled on Lady in Autumn—The Best of the Verve Years. But with Holiday, any place you start is a good place, and once you start, you’re almost sure to keep on going.

Steve Barnes is a freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in such publications as ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal.]]>