Tag: jazz
Billie Holiday’s last day
Billie Holiday died aged 44 in a New York hospital at 3:10am on Friday 17 July 1959. Some failed to notice. The New York Times published a short obit, but only on page 15. But for those who cared about her and her music, the news was a bitter shock. One of them was Frank […]
Jazz recordings: gwallter’s top ten
A while ago I suggested ten favourite blues recordings you might try. All of them were tracks I’d treasured, most for over forty years. So here are ten more, this time old jazz favourites, in chronological order. Actually, these are numbers three to twelve in my list, because my top choices, Billie Holiday and Lester […]
Me, myself and I
Billie Holiday and Lester Young had as close and creative a musical friendship as any two people could. All agree: the pair themselves, their friends and musical colleagues, their biographers, and anyone else with a view. How can you get a proper sense of that friendship, 70 and 80 years after the event? The scattered […]
Lester Young and ‘Oh! Lady be Good’
At 10 o’clock in the morning of Monday 9 November 1936 – an unlikely day and an even unlikelier hour for jazz musicians – five people assembled in the studios of the American Record Corporation in Chicago. They played just four short pieces. Two of them, the first appearance of Lester Young on record, constitute […]