Billie Holiday in Lowell

By Leo Racicot

I never “got” Billie Holiday’s voice; it sounded to me like nails on a chalkboard or a cat in heat. Whenever friends ooh-ed and ah-ed over her, I’d close my ears. After seeing Lady Sings the Blues, my friend, Joe couldn’t stop singing What a Little Moonlight Can Do for weeks and was ga-ga over the fact that Arthur Howe owned an autographed photo of Billie. had met her and kissed her hand backstage after a concert. When the photo disappeared in the aftermath of Arthur’s death, I thought surely his circle of friends was ready to put the F.B.I. on the case. Recently, I learned the last performances Billie gave before she died were right here in Lowell, Massachusetts at The Flamingo Lounge which led to my renewed interest in Billie. I also learned from relatives that my mother and her gal pals had seen Holiday at The Commodore Ballroom on Thorndike Street, billed as an “added attraction” with Artie Shaw and his Orchestra there in April 1938. Even more of an eyepopper was finding out that my parents saw her at one of those last Flamingo performances (May, ’59) along with two other couples, Lillian and Leo Bourassa & Tessie and Louie Proulx. Amazing. None of them are left for me to talk with about these performances. By all accounts, stand-up comic, Norm Crosby aced his set but Billie’s singing was “erratic”. She wasn’t at her best, sick, depleted from years and years of self-abuse. abuse from others. Mary Sampas who, for years wrote a column for The Lowell Sun under the pen name, Pertinax, published what is a-near elegy to Holiday following the Flamingo appearances. Sadly, no photos of these appearances exist. Below is one from a gig at Boston’s Storyville Club a month before in April. She passed away on July 17th, 1959, at the age of 44.

All this delving into Holiday led me to give another listen to her music. A quote I’d come across from jazz great, Miles Davis, woke me up to Billie’s nonesuch artistry. Davis, in response to criticism of the horns section at one of her concerts said, “Billie doesn’t need any horns. Billie’s voice is the horn.”  And then I “got” her. I got the voice. Excuse me while I go spend this sultry summer day listening to her sultry summer horn. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Billie Holiday. Photo by Oren Levine