By Paul Alexander A new book chronicles the woes and wins of Billie Holiday’s final year. Billie Holiday’s heartbreaking tale is a familiar one for jazz lovers. Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, Holiday survived a hardscrabble, harrowing childhood and adolescence to become one of the most celebrated jazz singers of all time. However, even as
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Recording dates for Lady in Satin were set for three late-night sessions on February 18, 19, and 20 at the Columbia 30th Street Studio, which pleased Billie. A former Presbyterian church converted into a studio, the reason it was nicknamed “the Church,” it was considered by many members of the music industry — from Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein to Miles Davis and Charles Mingus — to be among the finest recording facilities in the country because of its superior acoustics. If there were no complications, the album could be released by early summer. After all these years in the music business, after recording more than 300 songs and logging — literally — countless live performances, Billie Holiday was finally being afforded what she felt she was due — the opportunity to record a studio album accompanied by a full orchestra with strings. As a professional accomplishment, it may not have seemed like much, but for Billie, it was everything she wanted.
“Love is funny.”
She stood in a small nook that had been created for her to the right of the conductor’s stand, where [Ray] Ellis — clad in dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt and wearing a pair of headphones — hovered before the orchestra playing at full volume. As she sang into the microphone hanging from a boom in front of her, the luxuriant music washing over her in waves of sound, Billie had no sooner sung the line than she was unhappy with it. She stopped.
“Can I get another start?” she said hesitantly into the microphone. “I’m sorry.”
It was after midnight on the first recording session for Lady in Satin, and Billie was feeling her way through a song. Ellis had scheduled the start time for late in the evening at an hour when Billie would have normally been onstage in a nightclub gig. She was told to arrive at the studio at 10:00 p.m., so she assumed the actual call time was 11:00 p.m. She got there at 11:30. Irving Townsend later remembered she was “all dressed up … looking great, as if she were going to perform in public.” In fact, she was not wearing an evening gown — the wardrobe choice in which she usually performed, often accented by a mink stole, especially for an outside concert like a jazz festival — but a handsome outfit reminiscent of business attire. Ellis introduced her to the orchestra, more than 30 musicians plus three players she sometimes used to accompany her — Mal Waldron on piano, Osie Johnson on drums and Milt Hinton on bass. The orchestra gave her a warm round of applause, signifying to Ellis that “the musicians dug her,” which was not always the way musicians felt about a singer.
As soon as Billie settled into the studio, she was consumed by the self-doubt she often felt when she performed, a nervous apprehension so powerful that, according to Townsend, “she fortified herself with gin.” A cup was placed nearby on a stool when she sang. Gin was often the drug she used when she wanted to avoid something harder; tonight, it was what she needed to get through the session.
With expensive studio time passing, Billie launched into the first song of the evening — “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” a melodious tune that Ellis had arranged with an emotive, dramatic introduction followed by, midway through the song, a haunting trumpet solo played by Mel Davis. But Billie was uncertain of the lyrics, and it took four takes before Ellis felt they could move on. The session’s second number was “I’ll Be Around,” an affecting tune about waiting for a lover to be available again (“I’ll be around no matter how you treat me now/So I’ll be around when she’s gone”). A mournful violin started the song before a full complement of strings came in periodically to add to the mood. Once again, Billie was tentative, this time requiring eight takes before she produced a usable version.
The main problem, Ellis later admitted, was that Billie did not sound anything like she did on the older records, to which he had listened studiously as he wrote the arrangements. To Ellis, Billie’s voice, rough and unvarnished, clashed with the rich, luscious sound of the orchestra. He also mistook her paralyzing nervousness for lack of preparation and at one point took her aside and berated her. “I was so mad at her. I was saying, ‘You bitch! You sing so great, and you don’t know what you’re doing! You’re blowing the whole goddam thing!’ It was an ego thing with me, because I’d slaved over the arrangements, picturing the way she was going to say it, and she wasn’t singing it the way I’d thought, and I hated her. I literally hated her. I think I treated her badly.”
Billie did not lash out at Ellis in response. After all, it was she who demanded he become involved in the project; she could hardly get into a verbal altercation with the one person she insisted work on the album. She had no choice but to live with his behavior. Even so, she was hurt by the way he treated her. The session had to proceed, however, so they moved on to the third number, “For Heaven’s Sake,” a love song about two lovers “alone in the night” who believe “heaven is here in a kiss.” It was the kind of song she had performed numerous times before — a tune that would have been rendered sentimental by most singers but, with Billie, evolved into a touching plea for romance. It required only two takes before Billie fully captured the song.
The final number of the session was “But Beautiful,” written by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen. After a string-heavy introduction, Billie barely finished the first three words — “Love is funny” — when she stopped, unsatisfied with the way she delivered the line. She asked for another take.
Most of the orchestra ceased; some violins played on for a few additional notes. Billie rehearsed the line amid ambient chatter among the musicians. “Love is fun-ny.” A beat. “Love is fun-ny.”
“Take two,” a voice said from the control booth over the public address system.
“Oh, it’s sad,” Billie continued. “Love is fun-ny.”
More chatter; a handful of musicians practiced several notes; soon it was time to proceed.
“Love is fun-ny,” Billie practiced the line one last time.
“Take two,” the voice repeated.
There was silence; then the orchestra began.
“Love is funny,” Billie sang, as she launched into the song’s first section, which built to a climax — “And I’m thinking/If you were mine/I’d never let you go” — when the music reached an emotional peak. An interlude followed first featuring violins, colored by a three-person choir singing faintly in the background, next a melancholy trumpet solo, again played by Mel Davis, before Billie continued with the second vocal portion of the song, concluding with the speaker declaring how she would feel if she had her lover with her: “And that would be/But beautiful/ I know.” A melodic outro — highlighted by violins and the angelic ooo’s of the small choir — completed the song. It was the most successful number of the night.
It was now 2:30 in the morning, and Billie had been drinking gin since the session began. She was noticeably slurring her words, but the gin allowed her to get through four songs. At points during the session, she had gone into the control booth to listen to playbacks, which made her so sensitive about the quality of her voice she refused to allow the playbacks to be shared with the musicians over the speakers in the studio. She did not want the orchestra members to hear what they were playing behind. By the end of the session, she was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. She was more than ready to go home.
Once the session concluded, once Billie left and the musicians packed up their instruments and departed, Ellis remained behind to listen to all the playbacks in the control booth. As he did, he became increasingly upset. “When he heard the playbacks,” says Marc Ellis, his son, “he thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is going to ruin my career. What am I going to do?’ He hated what he heard. He thought he was sold down the river on the project. He didn’t know what Billie’s condition was. He thought he was going to get the Billie Holiday from 1945. Now he felt this was going to be the end of his musical career” — and it had just started. Ellis was so distraught, so consumed by dread and despondency, he reacted physically to how he was feeling. Abruptly bolting from the booth, he rushed to a nearby bathroom and threw up.
Regardless of any misgivings Billie may have had about the previous night, she returned to the studio the next evening for the second session, again scheduled to start at 11:00 p.m. The first song, “For All We Know,” required five takes; the second, “It’s Easy to Remember,” nine. The best song of the session was the third — “I’m a Fool to Want You” — an evocative ballad about being hopelessly in love with someone who is unfaithful. Written by Frank Sinatra, Joel Herron and Jack Wolf, the song was Billie’s homage to Sinatra, who was, after all, the inspiration for her making the album. Billie poured her heart into the song. “I would say,” Ellis wrote, “that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of ‘I’m a Fool to Want You.’ There were tears in her eyes.”
For the session’s fourth song, Billie attempted to record “The End of a Love Affair.” After three tries, plans changed because Billie, as music journalist Phil Schaap later reported, “wasn’t comfort- able about singing [the song. So] it was decided to give her a day to learn the lyrics, but the band recorded the song without her … [an] instrumental version [that would] subsequently be added to by overdubbing.” The following night, the final session for the album started out with Billie overdubbing her vocals to the track. Ten takes were required before a finished song was produced. After that, “Glad to Be Unhappy,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well” and “Violets for Your Furs” went much better. But the best song of the evening, perhaps the most successful song of all three sessions, was “You’ve Changed,” a last-minute addition Ellis included after he and Billie made a 3:00 a.m. trip to Colony Records the night before to find sheet music for one final song. Ellis finished the arrangement just before the third session started. Still, it had all come together, and Billie’s sad ballad about a failed affair was heartbreaking.
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