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• Reviews
13 APRIL 2004
Holiday Love-Affair
PAUL MORLEY
The male history of rock and pop, whether it starts with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry or Robert Johnson, has been told again and again. An equivalent female story is told less often.
Such a story might describe how, say, Billie Holiday pioneered a type of tough and tender confessional
singing that influenced some of the most successful popular music of the past 30 years. In fact, the current
success of Norah Jones, only one of Holiday's rich, comforting descendants, makes 'Billie and Me' an evening at the
Barbican devoted to the singer, songwriter and performing genius, all the more timely and powerful a celebration of
her huge, largely unexplored impact.
'Billie and Me' was originally a six part radio series uncovering the devotion modern female musicians feel
towards a singer whose life and art were so dramatically connected. To capture the many sides and voices of Holiday –
and to transfer a radio series into one night in a London concert hall – required a dozen singers and musicians at the
top of their form.
Lightly linking the various performances were Neneh Cherry (used here, sadly only as a host rather than a singer), and
Farah Jasmine Griffin, an American academic, who read out a sparse narrative illuminating Holiday's dangerous,
exciting and short life. This was not the night, though, to note Holiday's mental and physical decline. This was a
big, lovely, "thank you", emphasising the self-belief, not the self-doubts.
The evening's musical director was Terri Lyne Carrington, a jazz drummer who protectively patrolled Billie's beat,
energetically co-ordinating musical settings that embraced tough blues and sweet soul, sexy bop and brassy swing.
It all explicitly demonstrated how Holiday's style has ended up woven into the texture of buttery MOR soul,
coarse funk, jazz-pop and time stretching trip hop.
Me'shell Ndegeocello as a guest bassist projected the sheer strength of Billie, her fluid abrasive riffs a metaphor
for the way Billie kept her wits about her in a white male world. Lalah Hathaway was the smooth, seductive Billie;
Amy Winehouse was a highly-strung Billie, bursting with peculiar, untamed narcissistic power.
Chrissie Hynde was the ravishing, source less vocal beauty; Carleen Anderson the breathtaking prodigy.
Fontella Bass was the uncompromising, dominant black force; Angelique Kidjo and Susheela Raman the
vulnerable enigma that transcended race, country, time. The presence of the Sri Lankan actress Yolande Bavan,
a friend of Billie, offered deliciously ebullient hints at how Billie might have aged, as a kind of living
legend who would be forgiven all eccentricity.
And all of these Billies were flamboyantly contained within Dee Dee Bridgewater's possessed interpretation of Holiday as a divine, cracking mixture of deep-thinking artist and full-on show business entertainer. A singer who could romp through the high camp of 'Lover Come Back to Me' and feel all the pain of 'Strange Fruit. A singer who could mood-swing from the spirited to the spiritual with sensational grace.
At the end of the evening all the Lady Days for a day lined up to acknowledge that they found their voice because Billie found hers,
and turned 'I'll Be Seeing You' into a love song for Billie, for her voice, her class, her sex. It was girl power to the power of 100.
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The Lady Wins The Day
TIM CUMMING
How to cover the songs of a legend? The Barbican's tribute to Billie Holiday gets to the heart of the business
by making a multi-voiced dialogue of an evening that combines performances from a worldwide collection of divas
with photographic stills, audio excerpts and readings to create a picture not only of the source, but also of the power
that source has had over subsequent generations.
Rocker Chrissie Hynde and new English diva Amy Winehouse join World Music stars Susheela Raman and Angelique Kidjo
and a range of platinum standard R&B and Soul singers such as Fontella Bass, Carleen Anderson and Dee Dee Bridgewater.
The diva meter is off the scale tonight, and the Barbican Hall stage suddenly looks small, but luckily, egos have been
checked at the door along with the histrionics, and 'Billie and Me' proves a thrilling combination of singers hitting their
form behind a band arranged by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Originally a six part radio tribute, Billie and Me's spare
narrative provides a fresh context for songs given some seriously new interpretations, ranging from a West-African riot on
'The Man I love' to Lalah Hathaway's late night take on 'God Bless the Child'.
Mixing strings and brass with crack American players, the band can summon up the smoky Forties small combo sound along
with thick, swampy funk – most vividly on the first half climax of Fontella Bass taking 'Travellin' down a slinky soul
route that screams 'hit single' to any record execs in the audience.
Neneh Cherry has the job of MC and introduces the evening as 'women artists paying tribute to their ancestor'. First
up is the youngest 20-year old Amy Winehouse, fresh from the acclaim for her debut album, fronting with Hathaway on a
powerful, funky rendition of 'Ain't Nobody's Business'.
From the start, it's an evening that holds aloft the memory of a figure often seen as the ultimate victim. Though the
drug use and domestic abuse fetishised by many are touched on in the biographical interludes between songs,
the message of the evening is very much about empowerment over desolation. Like her songs, hardship, racism and abuse speak for themselves.
Chrissie Hynde turns in her elegant rock'n'roll slur on 'I Cover the Waterfront', a perfect fit for the
middle-distance smokiness of her voice. Dee Dee Bridgewater, who won an Olivier for her starring role in 'Lady Day',
apologises before a scorching 'I Hear Music'. "If [Holiday's] voice comes out, excuse me, I can't help it, it's in me". When that voice does emerge it brings much of the audience to its feet.
Each of tonight's singers can dominate any stage they care to walk on to, and the energy level is kept up through a well-drilled set. Angelique Kidjo comes on with an extra bassist to fatten her sound, while Meshell Ndegeocello carries 'Strange Fruit' with Mitch Foreman's skeletal piano. It's a hair-raising performance, and a long, intense instrumental interlude follows, during which Ndegeocello gives a brief speech encompassing American slavery, American wealth, and those charred bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates. Strange Fruit travels a long way, and tonight the song retains all its eerie power.
A crackling blues from Fontella Bass redirects the flow towards a delicate reading of 'For All We Know', from veteran singer Yolande Bavan, who first met Billie in Paris when she was 20. She holds the only direct personal link to Holiday, and her appearance heralds the finale. By the reprise of 'Travellin', all 10 divas are on stage together, the audience is on its feet along with most of the band, and you get the feeling that none of them can quite believe they're there, or that such an ambitious tribute came off so well.
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7 APRIL 2004
Billie Holiday's Ecstatic Glamour Gets Reinvented
JOHN FORDHAM
The jazz cognoscenti spend a lot of time feeling misunderstood, and sometimes they secretly enjoy it. But few things
make jazz-lovers groan louder, and with more justice, than media enthusiasm for heartache, heroin and horror stories
from jazz life. Sarah Cropper, the British musician and radio producer, triumphantly explored an alternative recently
with the BBC radio-doc series 'Billie and Me' - a reappraisal of Billie Holiday as a positive, complex,
life-embracing genius rather than the usual tragic victim. The show was rousingly reworked as a concert in the
Barbican's Only Connect series on Monday.
Thirteen female guest artists performed singly, in duets and finally all together before a punchy supporting band showcasing excellent Memphis saxophonist Kirk Whalum and pianist Mitch Forman, driven and directed by Terri Lyne Carrington on drums. Neneh Cherry and academic Farah Jasmine Griffin narrated, and powerful images of Holiday - many showing her as a working musician at ease with star contemporaries like Lester Young and Count Basie - appeared behind the performers.
Reinventing Holiday's contribution as an ecstatic clamour of gratitude rather than the familiar whispered heartbreak undoubtedly turned the evening over to a great deal of storming contemporary funk, with Dee Dee Bridgewater's chillingly entranced account of 'Strange Fruit' being one of the rare visits to the haunting and dangerous slow lyricism that was central to Holiday's work. The point was not Holiday mimicry, but a celebration of her life through the lives of working female performers today, doing what they do best.
Amy Winehouse and Lalah Hathaway respectively contributed edgy urgency and stately soulfulness to 'Ain't Nobody's Business', and Carleen Anderson sang with awesomely controlled soul and blues power all evening, particularly on 'Fine and Mellow'. Holiday's friend Yolande Bavan came closest to the star's fragility with a delicately moving 'For All We Know'.
Dee Dee Bridgewater blew the roof off twice in the first half - on 'I Hear Music' and 'Lover Come Back to Me' - with the jazziest and most instrument-like virtuosity of all the singers, and Angelique Kidjo and the electric bassist Meshell Ndegeocello clattered exhilaratingly through a drum'n'bass account of 'The Man I Love'. The finale brought everybody on, swapping phrases through the gospelly 'Travellin''. The collective roar from the audience had to struggle to match a tour de force of an ending.
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6 APRIL 2004
Sweet Sound of Billie's Blues
JACK MASSARIK
Who would have thought a radio documentary about Billie Holiday could evoke such powerful streams of female consciousness? Having invited a diverse group of modern singers to reassess the tragic American diva, producer Sarah Cropper was surprised by the intensity of their feelings. As the stars' tributes grew, Cropper realized that all this music and emotion just had to take to the stage.
Last night it finally did, with an eloquent narrative co-presented by Neneh Cherry and US academic Farah Jasmine Griffin, a superb cast of female vocal talent and predictably sensational results. From the opening number, 'Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do', there wasn't a false note.
Some might have wondered what young Amy Winehouse was doing up there with the honey-voiced Lalah Hathaway, but the London teenager, looking absolutely star struck, kept things snappily real.
Chrissie Hynde made tidy work of 'I Cover the Waterfront' before the irrepressible Dee Dee Bridgewater cranked things up a gear. "Excuse me if I start sounding like Billie" said Dee Dee, who had portrayed her in 'Lady Day' at the Donmar Warehouse, "but she's just in me". In fact,
apart from an appropriately somber version of 'Strange Fruit', her storming style, as always, owed more to Ella Fitzgerald.
In the second half, Meshell Ndegeocello punched some bass, world music stars Angelique Kidjo (The Man I Love) and Susheela Raman (I'm a Fool to Want You) revealed the jazz in their soul, the venerable Yolande Bavan reminisced about Billie, and Carleen Anderson, playing piano, shared a fine blues medley with Hathaway and the stately Fontella Bass.
Tenorist Kirk Whalum, so boring on his smooth-jazz albums yet so sensual and helpful behind these singers, was the star of a fine Anglo-US band led crisply from the drums by Terri Lyne Carrington. The commentary was kept light, a wise decision considering the vocal riches on stage and the impact of the giant back-projections of Billie, whose every picture told a story. Her expressive face radiated emotions – joy, melancholy, grief, fear of death – with such disturbing clarity.
As the cast took their final bow, they turned in line to salute her black and white image, a gesture that was thematically absolutely right. "Thank you for your music, your beauty and your life" said Cherry as applause swelled.
A memorable one night stand and, who knows, possibly a future West End hit. Stranger things have happened.
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WED APRIL 7TH
Holiday's Tribute Bears Strange Fruit
LISA VERRICO
Last year Neneh Cherry narrated a radio series about Billie Holiday. This week she helped to transfer the acclaimed women-only
production to a packed Barbican stage. Often such ideas are better in theory than in practice, but this one worked.
There were changes, of course – mainly less talk, more music, which meant a potted Holiday history, rather than the attempt of
the original series to reassess the legend's life. There were slides of the singer, snippets of her talking in interview and
Cherry's narration, which didn't ignore Holiday's turbulent personal life but focused on her risk-taking, groundbreaking career.
The draw of the evening, however, was more than a dozen covers of Holiday songs. Unfortunately, not all of the artists who
contributed to the radio show could make it – so no Debbie Harry, Jill Scott or Mary J Blige. But the lineup was still superb.
After Cherry's introduction, the newcomer Amy Winehouse teamed up with Lalah Hathaway on 'Ain't Nobody's Business'. Winehouse
wore a black, crepe, sleeveless dress and looked much more at ease than she did during her own recent shows. Then
again, she did have 11 A-list musicians behind her.
Next on was surprise guest Chrissie Hynde, whom the audience was clearly pleased, if a little
perplexed to see. Hynde isn't an obvious Holiday devotee, and it was odd to hear her perform a slow,
jazzy version of 'I Cover the Waterfront, backed by brushed drums, tinkling piano and sax.
It was even stranger to watch her stand still in a sober suit, then shuffle off without uttering a word.
In fact, that was the one flaw of the evening. Had the singers explained what they like about Holiday,
or how they had discovered her, it would have been more intimate. The veteran jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater
finally broke the ice by chatting about playing Holiday in the stage musical 'Lady Day'. She also gave
three of the night's best performances, of 'I Hear Music', and 'Lover Come Back to Me' in the first half of the show
and the seminal 'Strange Fruit', just after the interval. Bridgewater not only came closest to sounding like Holiday,
she had the moves down pat, swaying in a floor-length green dress and playing with an old-fashioned fan in her hand.
Among the other guests were Me'shell Ndegeocello, Carleen Anderson, who sang a smoky jazz cover of
'Some Other Spring', and Fontella Bass, who turned 'Travelin'', into a broody R&B number. The night ended with an ensemble performance of 'I'll Be Seeing You', for which even Cherry left her lectern and joined in.
If the ladies have their way, a Holiday revival won't be far off.
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