Billie Holiday with Count Basie´s Orchestra

[EKE BBB]

In his memoirs Basie mentions that, though BH was for almost a year touring with the band, she only recorded two sides with the orchestra (of course I know she recorded profusely with guys like Pres, Buck Clayton and Jo Jones, and with Count Basie and his Sextet, Count Basie and Brass Sections... but I mean the whole orchestra!!!).

These two sides were recorded for air checks on 06/30/1937 (New York City- Savoy Ballroom (Harlem)-MBS Broadcast by WOR): "They can´t take that away" and "Swing brother swing" (Columbia CL 1759). A few more tracks were recorded that day (including Jimmy Rushing on vocals), but BH was not featured.

Revising my BH discography, I found there´s another track BH recorded with CB Orchestra: "I can´t get started" (03/11/1937, Meadowbrook Lounge, Cedar Grove, NJ CBS Broadcast by WOR). Basie forgot it.

I have a copy of The Complete BH on Columbia 1933-44 10CD box-set and these three sides are included of Disc 8. Wonderful music! It´s a shame they didn´t record together a lot more (due to label´s contractual matters, I guess).

PS: you can fin these three tracks as well:

-Masters of Jazz (vol.4: 1937) for the first two tracks and Masters of Jazz (vol.5: 1937-38) for the third one.

and

-The Complete Lady Day Box."B. H. Live and Private Recordings In Chronological Order" (CD1)

BH was quickly replaced by Helen Humes when she left the band (Basie was "accused" to let her go. He states she went to "earn much more money").

Just wonderin´ what could´ve been a larger recording romance...

[Shrdlu]

Billie had a recording persona of the badly treated woman, wronged by her man (not surprisingly, considering her awful real-life experiences). She wanted to sing songs consistent with this. This was not really Basie's thing to a large degree, and I think that's why they didn't last long together.

[brownie]

There are a couple more reunions of Billie Holiday with the Basie crew.

One was the making of several soundies in August 1950 which produced two Lady Day appearances with the Count Basie sextet (Clark Terry, Buddy de Franco, Wardell Gray, Basie, Freddie Green, Jimmy Lewis and Gus Johnson). She sang 'God Bless the Child' and 'Now, Baby, Or Never'.

The soundies are notorious because the distributors did not want to have films with an integrated orchestra and Buddy de Franco was replaced by Marshall Royal for the visuals.

Lady Day also appeared with the full Count Basie orchestra on September 25, 1954 at Carnegie Hall (with her accompanist Carl Drinkard subbing for Basie on piano). Seven songs appeared on the Roulette 'Carnegie Hall Concert' album.

[EKE BBB]

Lady Day also appeared with the full Count Basie orchestra on September 25, 1954 at Carnegie Hall (with her accompanist Carl Drinkard subbing for Basie on piano). Seven songs appeared on the Roulette 'Carnegie Hall Concert' album.

You´re right, brownie. The featured name was "Count Basie Reed and Brass Sections". They played :

-All of Me

-Ain´t Nobody´s Business If I Do

-Lover Come Back To Me

-My Man (Mon Homme)

-Them There Eyes

-Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)

[mikeweil]

She can be seen watching the Basie Band on the 1957 Sound Of Jazz TV film.

[brownie]

She can be seen watching the Basie Band on the 1957 Sound Of Jazz TV film.

Not only she watches the Basie band, she whispers in Basie's ear right in the middle of Basie's solo on 'Dickie's Dream'.

Billie could be very good looking but she looked BEAUTIFUL in the show. I read somewhere she bought a very expensive gown to appear on the show but was told by the producers that the musicians would appear in regular clothes. Billie looks gorgeous in her white jersey and splendid in her pants ensemble later in the show.

Does anyone have the DVD release of the show? Heard it's not really an improvement over the original video that looks horrible and sounds terrible? I have a taped copy of the video and get upset everytime I watch it because of the bad quality. What a shame ! This is one of the greatest moment in jazz history!

[mmilovan]

How can we know there are not any of live recordings with early Basie and early Billie, when so much titles remained unissued?

Only time can tell.

[king ubu]

There are a couple more reunions of Billie Holiday with the Basie crew.

One was the making of several soundies in August 1950 which produced two Lady Day appearances with the Count Basie sextet (Clark Terry, Buddy de Franco, Wardell Gray, Basie, Freddie Green, Jimmy Lewis and Gus Johnson). She sang 'God Bless the Child' and 'Now, Baby, Or Never'.

The soundies are notorious because the distributors did not want to have films with an integrated orchestra and Buddy de Franco was replaced by Marshall Royal for the visuals.

. . .

These soundies recordings were recently reissued on a nice Sagajazz CD I just picked up and posted about here.

This is the session info:

Then I just picked up "Count Basie Septet & Octet - On Film & Live". This has the following tracks:

Hollywood, late August 1950: Clark Terry - t, Buddy DeFranco - cl, Wardell Gray - ts, Basie - p, Freddie Green - g, Jimmy Lewis - b, Gus Johnson - d, Billie Holiday - voc (-1)

GOD BLESS THE CHILD (-1)

NOW, BABY, OR NEVER (-1)

FELANGES

ONE O'CLOCK JUMP

Universal film shots, directed by Will Cowan.

brownie, in the liners of this CD, they state that by the time the films for these soundies were made, Royal had replaced DeFranco. The music was usually (again according to the liner notes of the Saga CD) recorded some time before the soundies were shot, and for the soundies, they just used the tapes, so the musicians appearing on the screen represent a different stage of the Basie septet, and have, in fact nothing to do directly with what is heard on the film. Seems this was the usual way to do it: two different "sessions".

Royal's playing on the Saga disc, by the way, strikes me as very good, upon first listening to it!

ubu

[Lazaro Vega]

The first time I saw the Sound of Jazz it was being projected on a record warehouse wall from the film collection of Bob Kester, and it was fabulous in the film version. The video tape is about 100th generation. They need to remaster it from a better source, but as the material is public domain, there's no real effort being put into it. It's easier to just find something and put it out, no matter the quality.

[medjuck]

Unfortunately The Sound of Jazz is not public domain. Owned by CBS. I worked with some CBS/Fox video people on putting it out legitimately and adding Milt Hinton photos but ran into AFM problems. There's a good print int he UCLA archives.