Billie Holiday: The Life and Artistry of Lady Day

Is twenty-seven minutes too little time to present the life and artistry of the best jazz vocalist in music history? Certainly, but some contemporary viewers view twenty-seven minutes as a lifetime, itself. It is difficult to convince a modern audience to watch or listen to artists just for what they have contributed, no matter how massive the artistic contributions are. Perhaps the fact that it contains some of her most memorable filmed performances is thanks enough for Billie Holiday: The Life and Artistry of Lady Day. All the biographical facts are there, presented in a straightforward manner with archival photographs and narration: rape at age ten, prostitution at fourteen, racism, the drugs and alcohol. But also here are the artistic triumphs that defined a style of music and singing admired by the entire world. Even in here last years, sadly her early forties, her voice ravaged from time and abuse, the best jazz musicians, producers, arrangers still wanted to work with Lady Day. Her voice was never the best. Ella and others outshone her tone. But her masterpiece record album Lady in Satin proved phrasing and interpretive creativity wins artistry every time. Not only is it still in print after fifty years, but also has been reissued dozens of times.

Musical film clips include those from the feature film New Orleans in which Billie reluctantly agreed to play a maid in order to appear and perform with her friend Louis Armstrong; rare television appearances including her final one singing "Fine and Mellow" from the Voice of Jazz CBS special (1957) with Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatam, Vic Dickensen, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Mal Waldron, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson, and the dazzling though incomplete "Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life" with Duke Ellington. The sound throughout the DVD is remastered (smoothed) and the video quality of the clips varies. Extras like the discography and bibliography are woefully incomplete. Though Billie Holiday: The Life and Artistry of Lady Day is a good introduction, a much better choice for a comprehensive collection is Lady Day–The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (Kultur, D1292; 2003, 1991).