Ghosts of Yesterday: Billie Holiday and the Two Irenes (a Jazz Mystery)
Posted in Shows on Nov 5th, 2007
In 1939 and 1940 Billie Holiday recorded a handful of poignant songs co-written by a good friend of hers, Irene Wilson (later known as Irene Kitchings). Wilson was grieving over the breakup of her marriage to pianist Teddy Wilson, and “Some Other Spring,” in particular, was said to have been inspired by her loss. Before her marriage to Wilson (whom she influenced in many ways, introducing him to classical music and accelerating his development as a piano player), she had worked in Chicago (under the names of Irene Armstrong and Irene Armstrong Eadie) as the leader of an all-female jazz trio called Three Classy Misses…
The Subterraneans, the only novel of Jack Kerouac’s to be adapted to film so far, was released in 1960, when the media fever surrounding the Beat Generation (much of it inspired by the publication of Kerouac’s On the Road in 1957) was still at a high pitch. Hollywood took great liberties with Kerouac’s story…
On this edition of Night Lights it’s “Java Jive: Jazz Coffee Songs,” a caffeinated brew of music to help keep your weekend warm. The program includes classics such as Sarah Vaughan’s “Black Coffee” (as well as Sonny Criss’ mid-1960s instrumental version) and obscurities such as the Larks’ “Coffee, Cigarettes and Tears,” in addition to Jeri Southern’s “Coffee, Cigarettes and Memories”…
Although there had been tribute LPs to other artists before Billie Holiday–Bix Beiderbecke and Fats Waller among them–the concept really took off in the two years before and after Holiday’s death in 1959, as six albums dedicated to the iconic singer…
