[78-L] Your Mother's Son-In-Law - BG and Billie Holiday on Columbia Blue Shellac

[Mark Bardenwerper]

On 5/7/2011 5:52, Tim Huskisson wrote:
> If Teddy Wilson was complimentary about Sarah Vaughan and not Billie
> Holiday, I suspect it had something to do with Sarah Vaughan's musicality.
> Don't get me wrong; BOTH were great, but for different reasons. Billie
> Holiday's greatness was in her ability to make a song 'her own' by the way
> she phrased, and didn't stick closely to the published melody. Her approach
> was not unlike Louis Armstrong's, but nevertheless quite revolutionary among
> singers for the time. But Teddy Wilson, the consummate musician that he was,
> may have been far more impressed by singers who understood the
> technicalities of the music. The harmonic content. I don't know, but I think
> it possible that for all Billie Holiday's greatness, she may have struggled
> to pitch difficult songs, and needed some help. Sarah Vaughan's musicality
> may even have been in advance of Teddy Wilson's own, and he would have
> recognised her greatness in this respect.
> More often than not, the 'best' singers are often great for reasons OTHER
> than their technical musical ability.
>
Here's another possibility: most of us have never seen any of these 
singers live. Was Billy Holiday able to carry an audience as well as, 
say Fitzgerald? Or is that what you mean by "pitch?"

-- 
Mark L. Bardenwerper, Sr. #:?)
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