“I can’t remember when I first heard Billie Holiday. It would have been before my memory begins, when I was still in the womb. One of my favourite stories about Billie Holiday is a family one. As a kid, my dad, Don Cherry, used to roller skate all over L.A. Him and his best buddy would make their way down to a jazz club and stand out the back and watch the music through the slats in the windows.
“One of these times, Billie Holiday was playing there. Between sets she opened the back door and found Don and his friend there. She gave them some money and asked them to go buy her some candy at the store. Then she looked down at my dad and said, “You sure is skinny. If there’s no bad luck, then there’s no luck at all.”
“The sound of Billie Holiday singing has always felt like a part of me. I can’t say that I just like her voice. That’s not enough. She is all in her voice; her life, fragile, strong, timeless, whole, and bleeding at the same time. Billie Holiday once said that she wanted to sing like Louis Armstrong’s playing, so sometimes I just listen to the sound of Billie’s voice as an instrument.
“Billie really played well with her musicians. She listened to them and had a unique sense of timing and space. She didn’t just sing her songs. She lived in them, told the stories, and brought them to life with her spirit. With great sensitivity she always made others’ songs her own.
“Her song, Strange Fruit, is one of the most powerful political anthems ever written. The fact that she sang this song gives us insight into her convictions and her purpose, but there is also the heartbreak at the core of her story, the world she was born into.
“I’m not a specialist on her life. All I know is that she wore her heart on her sleeve. To me, that is the real beauty of the music, like life was making the most sense as she was singing. As she got older the hardships took their toll on her voice, she gave all of herself, everything she had and I give thanks for all of it.
“I’ve always felt that we owe so much to Billie Holiday and the great blues queens. They were the real pioneer feminists who paved many roads for us. They made anything possible. Don’t forget, Bessie Smith had her own custom-built railroad car. They fought, they lived, they did it all and they sang their hearts out.
“Billie had a hard life. Times were hard then for black people, for women, for artists. She was all of those things. Her story is deep and touching, and that lives on forever in her music, That was her gift to us. That is what’s important. Billie Holiday’s legacy goes on forever, whether we are emulating the young Billie or the old Billie is not the point, as long as we make it our own, and pay her the respect that the Lady Day is due.”
As told to Andrew Male.
This article originally appeared in MOJO 259.
Photo: Billie Holiday records Lady in Satin at the Columbia Records studio in New York, December 1957.(Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)