The Last Song of the Night
Philadelphia counts down nine days to John Coltrane's hundredth birthday with a citywide season, and Verve's own store puts Miles Davis in defense of Billie Holiday's late records. Then Sekou tells the story of Cafe Society, a Bronx schoolteacher's poem, and the song Holiday's own label refused to record.
LioraPhiladelphia is nine days out from John Coltrane's hundredth birthday, and the city has built a whole season around it. Verve's own store puts Miles Davis in defense of Billie Holiday's late records. And the song Holiday's own label refused to record. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, September 14th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Philadelphia builds a citywide centennial around John Coltrane's hundredth birthday on
LioraToday, a city.
John Coltrane was born September 23rd, 1926. Nine days from now he turns a hundred, and Philadelphia has built a citywide season around the date. It is called Coltrane 100 Philly: performances, exhibitions, education programs, community events. State Senator Vincent Hughes announced the lineup in July and put twenty seven thousand dollars behind a community performance grant.
Ars Nova Workshop takes the birthday week. The Sun Ra Arkestra plays Coltrane's music at Solar Myth on the 23rd. Terri Lyne Carrington on the 24th. Irreversible Entanglements plays Ascension on the 25th. The Immanuel Wilkins Quartet on the 26th, Marilyn Crispell and Tyshawn Sorey on the 27th.
LioraNPR reported on the 5th that the North Philadelphia rowhouse Coltrane bought in 1952 is becoming a cultural heritage site. Ravi Coltrane stood in the second floor bedroom there and told NPR, "This is the room where he went cold turkey. He quit heroin and had a spiritual awakening."
Two. Listen to This: Billie Holiday's All or Nothing At All, on Verve
LioraToday's record points at tonight's story. All or Nothing At All, Billie Holiday, on Verve.
The label's own store has it as a 180 gram LP in the Acoustic Sounds Series, transferred from analog tapes. Twelve tracks, recorded in five sessions over 1956 and 1957, released in 1958. Barney Kessel on guitar, Ben Webster on tenor, Harry "Sweets" Edison on trumpet, Jimmy Rowles on piano.
Verve's own copy says some claimed she was past her peak by then. It quotes Miles Davis countering that this was "actually her most effective time," with her "deepest understanding and control" of the songs.
The tip. Play the title track first, then start the record again from the top and listen for what Davis meant.
LioraNow the release desk. ECM brings the Stanley Cowell Trio's Illusion Suite back on vinyl on the 18th, in its Luminessence series, as ECM 1026.
Greenwich Village, New York. A nightclub called Cafe Society, opened by Barney Josephson, described as New York's first fully integrated nightclub, where Black and white audiences sat and mixed together. Billie Holiday has sung there since about December 1938. At the end of every show, the same thing. The waiters stop serving. The lights go down, all but one spotlight on her face. She sings a song. A Bronx schoolteacher wrote it as a poem, and her own label refused to record it. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, a poem by a Bronx schoolteacher
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouGreenwich Village, New York. A nightclub called Cafe Society, opened by Barney Josephson, described as New York's first fully integrated nightclub, where Black and white audiences sat and mixed together. Billie Holiday has sung there since about December 1938.
At the end of every show, the same thing. The waiters stop serving. The lights go down, all but one spotlight on her face. She sings a song about a lynching. No encore. Ever.
LioraWhere does a song like that come from?
SekouA Bronx schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol, pen name Lewis Allan. In the 1930s he saw a photograph of a lynching. His words: "It was a shocking photo and it haunted me for days. As a result I wrote Strange Fruit as a poem. I set it to music and my wife, Anne, sang it around at small gatherings."
The photograph is most widely documented as Lawrence Beitler's picture of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Sold on postcards, by the thousands.
He published the poem in 1937 in the teachers' union magazine. He wrote the words and the music himself. How it reached Billie Holiday, accounts differ: Josephson bringing him in to play it for her, or a floor manager who heard it first.
LioraAnd she wanted to sing it?
SekouShe was reportedly reluctant at first. Her own words: "I was scared people would hate it. The first time I sang it I thought it was a mistake."
Josephson set the rules himself. Always the last song. No service, no light except the spotlight, no encore. In his words: "People had to remember Strange Fruit, get their insides burned with it."
Then the club advertised it: "Have you heard 'strange fruit growing on Southern trees' sung by Billie Holiday at Cafe Society?"
LioraShe's afraid of it, and the club is selling it. Did her label want the record?
SekouColumbia said no. The fear was Southern record stores, and the CBS radio stations tied to the label. So Columbia let her out of the contract for one session. She takes it to Milt Gabler, who ran a small label, Commodore, out of his record shop. Gabler's account: "She came in the store very unhappy that Columbia Records was hesitating."
April 20th, 1939. The Cafe Society band. Gabler worries the song will run too short for a ten-inch side, so he has the pianist, Sonny White, improvise a long introduction. The label credits it: "Piano Interlude by Sonny White." Commodore 526. On the other side, "Fine and Mellow," which she did write.
LioraThe famous one isn't even hers.
SekouNo. Within weeks it was the best seller of her career to that point. Time magazine reviewed it that June, and opened not with the song's subject but with her body: a "roly-poly young colored woman." The magazine called the record "a prime piece of musical propaganda."
The Black press heard something else. The New York Age printed the lyrics and where to buy the record, and quoted Walter White of the NAACP: the music "very beautiful," her delivery "with extraordinary power." By one account, copies went to every member of the United States Senate.
Historian David Margolick writes only that few radio stations dared play it. No documented official ban.
She closed with it for the rest of her career. Her pianist Mal Waldron said, "if things were not going right she would sing that tune."
LioraOne spotlight. One song. No encore, so the room has to carry it out the door. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Dance Floor Night at the Green Mill in Chicago, plus New York, Washington
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's Chicago. The Green Mill has Dance Floor Night with the Joel Paterson Quartet, eight to midnight, ten dollar cover.
Now the sweep. In New York, the Blue Note has Emily Bear, two sets, eight and ten thirty, a twenty dollar minimum per person and no ticket price on the club's own pages. In Washington, Blues Alley has the Claudio Rubio Quintet in its Chilean Jazz Series, seven and nine thirty, twenty five dollars plus seven in fees. In Denver, Dazzle has the Denver Jazz Orchestra at six thirty. In Austin, the Elephant Room has Jon Blondell and Friends at six, free before eight, then Gil del Bosque's jazz jam at nine for five dollars.
LioraThree rooms are dark tonight. Baltimore's Keystone Korner, Philadelphia's Chris' Jazz Cafe and Detroit's Cliff Bell's all print Monday closed on their own sites.
Five. One More Note: September 14th, 1956: Cecil Taylor's first session as a leader
LioraSeptember 14th, and a first.
The Smithsonian's jazz calendar credits this date in 1956 as the day Cecil Taylor made his first session as a leader, with Steve Lacy, Buell Neidlinger and Dennis Charles. Blue Note's own page says that quartet played the Five Spot Cafe for six weeks in 1956, and that after Taylor formed it, he was never a sideman again.
Two birthdays share the date. Joseph Jarman, saxophone, born in 1937 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Bill Berry, trumpet, born in 1930 in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
Cecil Taylor played piano. Put one on today.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.