The Guard at the Hospital Door
Umbria Jazz dates five days in Orvieto and puts Brad Mehldau alone at the piano for three of them. Then New York, 1959, where a police guard stands outside Billie Holiday's hospital door.
LioraUmbria dates five days in Orvieto, and Brad Mehldau plays three alone. Tonight, Nashville sells a happy hour for fourteen dollars. Later, a guard outside Billie Holiday's hospital door. It's Thursday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Thursday, October 22nd. 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: Umbria Jazz posts its thirty third winter festival
LioraUmbria has dated its winter, and it is already on sale.
The festival posted it yesterday. Umbria Jazz Winter, the thirty third edition, five days in Orvieto, December thirtieth to January third.
The scale, in the festival's own line: five venues, eighty five concerts, about a hundred thirty hours of live music.
The music starts at half past eleven in the morning, with the Funk Off street parade through the historic center, and runs, the festival says, until the early hours.
Brad Mehldau is the headline. Three solo piano nights at the Teatro Mancinelli, half past nine, January first, second and third.
Split Decision brings the Vincent Herring and Eric Alexander Quintet, with Mike LeDonne, John Webber and Lewis Nash.
LioraThen one free morning, January second at ten. Ashley Kahn puts Eric Alexander and Vincent Herring through a blindfold test, in collaboration with DownBeat.
DownBeat ran Kahn's summer test on Tuesday, taped in Perugia, with Terence Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane in those chairs.
The festival prints no ticket price anywhere.
Two. Listen to This: Joshua Redman's new single is Billie Holiday's 'God Bless the Child,' built on Sonny
LioraToday's record is a tribute to a tribute, and it leads into tonight's Bridge.
Blue Note shared the single on the ninth of this month. Joshua Redman plays "God Bless the Child," with Gabrielle Cavassa singing, Peter Bernstein on guitar, Christian McBride on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums.
It comes off his Sonny Rollins tribute, "If Ever You Would Leave Us," out November twentieth on Blue Note.
Here is the tip. Rollins cut that song himself, on his 1962 album "The Bridge." Redman's band kept his harmonies and his form. Rollins lamented Holiday. Redman mourns Rollins.
One credit. Blue Note calls it Billie Holiday's signature song and names nobody else. The Library of Congress prints the title page line: words and music by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Junior.
LioraAnd one party today. Intakt plays Anna Webber's nonet record on Bandcamp this afternoon, and gives the album no release date.
Now New York, 1959. Billie Holiday lies in a hospital bed with a police guard outside her door. Tonight on The Bridge: how the guard got there, card game and all. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: In 1959 Billie Holiday lay in a New York hospital bed with a police guard outside her
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasNew York, Sunday, May 31st, 1959, two in the afternoon. Billie Holiday collapses at home while her protege, a young singing hopeful named Frankie Freedom, serves her custard and oatmeal. Six days earlier she made her last public appearance, at a benefit concert, and Jet said people "were shocked at her gaunt appearance." She is "hardly more than 95 pounds." Her doctor, Dr. Caminer, sends her to Knickerbocker Hospital, with Freedom beside her in the ambulance. There they diagnose her as a case of "drug addiction and alcoholism," and put her in another ambulance.
LioraWait. They sent her away?
SilasWhen Dr. Caminer gets there, Down Beat says, "Billie was gone." He finds her at Metropolitan Hospital at 5:30, "lying on a stretcher," and has her put in an oxygen tent at once. Down Beat wrote, "Nobody at either hospital apparently knew that the patient was the Lady Day." That Wednesday, Metropolitan's officials confirm what her doctor said first: her illness "had no connection with drugs." The papers say she is dying. She answers, "Some damn body is always trying to embalm me."
LioraSo how does a hospital bed turn into an arrest?
SilasMid June. Two sources say the 12th, one book says the 11th. Here is the 1959 account in Jet. A nurse "became suspicious when she saw some of the white powder on Miss Holiday's face," and took a package from her. It proved to be heroin. Holiday's version, as police told it: she found it "in the bottom of her pocketbook." Police suspected a visitor brought it in, and said she admitted she occasionally took heroin. The charge is possession. She is "booked by telephone." One biography says she could not be moved, so a guard was stationed outside her door.
LioraA police guard. At a hospital room.
SilasJet reported more. Police took away "her comic books, magazines, record player and radio." Her husband, Louis McKay, needs a letter from police every time he visits. Jet quoted what she told him: "I didn't know they could be this cruel to nobody, Daddy." In Jet's words, "Billie was as much a prisoner as a patient." Even so, the two of them keep "a running tonk game going." Tonk is a card game. She's ahead by a dollar seventy-five.
LioraOf course she's winning. Does the guard stay?
SilasThat part is disputed. One later account says an officer stayed until a few hours before she died. Jet, at the time, reported otherwise. By late June she is out of the oxygen tent and eating solid food, and she "had the police guards removed," paroled in her lawyer's custody pending arraignment. She is arraigned in her hospital bed while members of the Mid-Harlem Narcotic Committee picket the hospital. Later she relapsed. She died at 3:10 in the morning, Friday, July 17th, 1959, about five weeks after the arrest. She was 44. The official cause was "congestion of the lungs complicated by heart failure." Her bank account held 70 cents. Down Beat put it plainly: "Cops came to Billie's hospital room and, on the bed in which she was already preparing to die, put her under arrest."
LioraA guard at the door, a card game at the bed, and Lady Day ahead by a dollar seventy-five. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Nashville sells a gypsy jazz happy hour for fourteen dollars
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Nashville, and it is fourteen dollars.
Rudy's Jazz Room runs two shows. Hot Club Happy Hour, Gypsy Jazz Thursdays, six to a quarter past eight, fourteen in advance and fifteen at the door. The club credits one man, Brook Sutton.
Then the Rory and Nalani Jazz Trio, nine to a quarter past eleven, fourteen in advance, sixteen at the door. Rory Hoffman on piano and guitar, Nalani on bass. The club bills a trio and names two.
Now the sweep.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has the Preservation All-Stars with Wendell Brunious. Three sets, five, quarter past six and quarter to nine, all sold out, and no price published.
LioraIn Seattle, Jazz Alley opens four nights with Brian Culbertson. One set tonight, half past seven, doors at six, ninety five dollars with the handling fee in, and it is sold out.
And in New York, Smalls has three bills. Adi Meyerson and the Dark Matter Quartet at six and half past seven. The Tim Ries Trio at nine and half past ten. Thirty five in advance. Then a jam hosted by Matt Snow, quarter to midnight to four in the morning, no cover for musicians.
Five. One More Note: Fifty seven years ago tonight a South African pianist played Copenhagen
LioraFifty seven years ago tonight, a South African pianist played a club in Copenhagen, and the tape became a record.
The French national library keeps the paperwork. Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, October twenty second, 1969. The record is "African piano," on Japo, number six zero zero zero two.
And the library files that one evening under two men. The 1973 pressing credits Dollar Brand. The 2014 reissues credit Abdullah Ibrahim.
He died this year. The library gives the year and a place in Germany, no day. Jazz Journal says the fifteenth of June, at ninety one.
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 Thursday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.