hit.
The band carried on recording with Petty for several good reasons. ‘The studio had really good equipment, it was cheap – seems like our first demos cost $15 each – there was no time limit, Petty was a good engineer, and Vi Petty was a great lady who made everyone feel comfortable.’
Over the next few months Petty consistently coaxed the best from Holly’s idiosyncratic, quavering tones – part country, part blues, sometimes vulnerable, often boyishly confident. The tracks could then be released by Buddy as a solo artist or as a member of The Crickets – a good way to double airplay and income. ‘The atmosphere around the studio was pretty laid back at first. The process changed a lot after we got the record deal. Then we’d do a song twenty times and it got to be like work. And after we went on the road Petty dubbed on the backing vocals, which were not particularly thrilling to us.’
Interestingly, the band also recorded four of the album tracks, including the melancholic mid-tempo rocker Maybe Baby, while out on that road – Petty dragging his gear up to Oklahoma for the purpose. Allison still jibs at the ‘schmaltzy’ backing vox which characterise The Crickets as opposed to the Holly material, and justifiably complains about dodgy songwriting attributions: ‘I co-wrote Not Fade Away, and I’m still bitching about the lack of a credit!’ But the eerie, spartan, Bo Diddley vibe of that very number, the raucous pop-rockabilly of Oh Boy and the R&B spice of Chuck Willis’s It’s Too Late helped send Holly and his band right to the front of rock music’s early leading pack.
Billie Holiday
Lady In Satin
The life of jazz’s greatest singer, laid desperately bare.
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Irv Townsend
Recorded: CBS Studios, New York; February 18–20, 1958
Released: Autumn 1958
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Billie Holiday (v); with the Ray Ellis Orchestra
Track listing: I’m A Fool To Want You; For Heaven’s Sake; You Don’t Know What Love Is; I Get Along Without You Very Well; For All We Know; Violets For Your Furs; You’ve Changed; It’s Easy To Remember; But Beautiful; Glad To Be Unhappy; I’ll Be Around; The End Of A Love Affair
Running time: 44.32
Current CD: Sony CK65144 adds: I’m A Fool To Want You; The End Of The Affair; Pause Track
Further listening: Billie’s Greatest Hits (1998) – the best of the singer’s US Decca recordings, songs that formed the basis for the Lady Sings The Blues soundtrack, except that these are the originals and far superior to Diana Ross’s interpretations
Further reading: The Life And Times Of Billie Holiday (Donald Clarke, 1995), the most thoroughly researched Lady Day biography; www.cmgww.com/music/holiday/
Download: iTunes
Billie loved the Ray Ellis string sound and played Ray’s Ellis In Wonderland album continuously. After getting together, the duo began selecting the songs for the three-day session, Ellis later observing: ‘I didn’t realise that the titles she was picking at the time were really the story of her life.’ Billie was in poor shape and was about to face a trial for drug possession. The once beautiful woman had become one of the living dead, haggard, stooping, with a voice that cracked and failed to hold notes. Producer Townsend, who’d earlier worked with Mahalia Jackson, admitted: ‘Billie was closer to the end than most stars, but she was Billie Holiday with a style and a voice like no other woman ever had.’
Ray Ellis revealed that the sessions were nothing if not problematic. The singer would turn up completely stoned – in the case of The End Of A Love Affair she professed not to know the song at all. Eventually the backing track for the side had to be recorded without a vocal, Billie adding a top line at a later date. But the juxtaposition of sandpaper on satin worked marvellously well. Though the voice had to be constantly lubricated by tots of gin, and the imperfections were apparent to all, somehow the result was beauty of an inestimable kind, as Billie poured pain over careworn classics like Glad To Be Unhappy and I Get Along Without You Very Well: pure emotion expressed by a voice that virtually disintegrates before your ears.
When the record was released, Holiday-lovers became locked in conflict. Many voiced the opinion that Lady In Satin should never have been released because it was tantamount to recording someone in their death-throes. Others, including one-time Holiday accompanist Jimmy Rowles, felt it was the singer’s greatest achievement, the most revealing album ever made. She would make one more album, again with Ray Ellis. But it would be her last: by July 17, 1959 the legend born Eleanora Fagan was dead.
Mahalia Jackson
Live At Newport 1958
Maybe the most famous gospel album of all time.
Record label: Phillips
Produced: Cal Lampley
Recorded: Newport Jazz Festival; July 6, 1958
Released: November 1958
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Mahalia Jackson (v); Mildred Falls (p); Lilton Mitchell (o); Tom Bryant (b)
Track listing: Introduction; An Evening Prayer; A City Called Heaven; It Don’t Cost Very Much; He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands; The Lord’s Prayer
Running time: 17.19
Current CD: Sony SNY536292 adds: I’m On My Way; Didn’t It Rain; When The Saints Go Marching In; I’m Goin’ To Live The Life I Sing About In My Song; Keep Your Hand On The Plow; Walk Over God’s Heaven; Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho; Jesus Met The Woman At The Well; His Eye Is On The Sparrow
Further listening: Home in on the classic Columbia years with Mahalia Jackson’s Greatest Hits (1988)
Further reading: Just Mahalia, Baby (Laurrain Goreau, 1984); www.geocities.com/bourbonstreet/2675/ (fan site)
Download: iTunes
It’s said that when Mahalia Jackson began singing the jaunty spiritual Didn’t It Rain during her Sunday morning slot at the ’58 Newport Jazz Festival, the soft summer drizzle suddenly stopped. We know from Mahalia’s stage patter that it was actually still raining at the end of the concert, but it’s testament to the truly unique spirit of her music that folks should insist some divine intervention took place. As her friend the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr commented, a voice like hers came only ‘once in a millennium’.
By 1958, Mahalia – then aged 46 – was a household name in America, following a string of crossover hits and a sensational performance on the Ed Sullivan Show two years earlier. Though she had made some
