The United States vs. Billie Holiday: a Late Contender

These days, jazz is probably a little too dependent on the support of elite cultural institutions. It has its own constituent organization within the Lincoln Center and it is taught at many of the finest universities (like Julliard and Berklee). Wouldn’t Harry Anslinger, the notorious jazz-hating Narc, be surprised. He made of point of targeting jazz musicians in his war on drugs, settling on Billie Holiday as his prime focus. That aspect of Holiday’s tragic story comes to the fore in Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday, based on Johan Hari’s nonfiction book (primarily this excerpt here), which premieres today on Hulu.

Holiday had a difficult life that she made even more painful through her own decisions. While most jazz musicians closed ranks around each other, largely stymying Anslinger’s prosecution/persecution attempts as the chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (a precursor to the DEA), Holiday perversely kept getting involved with the wrong sort of men, who were only too willing to betray her. Her determination to keep singing the searing anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” further inspired Anslinger’s wrath. Weirdly, Holiday defiantly performed it much more frequently than Suzan-Lori Parks’ screenplay give her credit for. However, Daniels is quite shrewd to hold off showing her characteristically devastating performances until roughly midway through.

Essentially, the film starts with Holiday well into her post-Basie fame, periodically flashing-back to scenes from her harrowing early years in Baltimore. We understand why she continues to fall into cycles of abuse, choosing the wrong men over and over. Jimmy Fletcher was recruited to be one of them, but the undercover agent will fall in love with Holiday, even while he builds a case against her. At least when he collars Holiday it is a legitimate bust, but he still regrets it.

Daniels and Parks will please real jazz fans because they also give considerable screen time to her great platonic love, tenor legend Lester “Pres” Young. Tyler James Williams is terrific as Pres, playing him in a more forceful and engaged manner than he is often presented (many thanks for that). Yet, it seems like a lost opportunity not to depict their final bittersweet reunion on the classic Sound of Jazz broadcast. Instead, US VS leaves them on bad terms.

Regardless, Andra Day lives up to the awards hype as Lady Day, especially in her scenes opposite Williams and Trevante Rhodes, who fully conveys the depth and extent of Fletcher’s conflicting angst, guilt, regret, and lust. The natural inflections and intonations of Day’s voice are almost an eerie dead ringer for Holiday’s—so much so older jazz fans might assume it is a deliberate imitation. Dramatically, she gives a raw and fearless performance, on both physical and emotional levels.

Unfortunately, Garrett Hedlund is definitely the weak link of the film. Daniels unambiguously places him in the center of a racist government conspiracy, not without justification. Yet, his Anslinger lacks the subtlety to be a realistically compelling character or the flamboyant scenery chewing to be a memorable villain. He is just too bland and boring.

Billie, on DVD

Billie Holiday didn't just sing her songs. She lived them. She never wanted to be a “blues” singer, but she had plenty of blues too. Her voice was never “prefect,” but its sad beauty made her just about every jazz fan’s favorite vocalist. Journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl was on of them. She conducted hundreds of interviews with Holiday’s colleagues and friends for a book she never lived to finish. Later biographers made use of her tapes, but they have gone unheard by the general public until now. Director James Erskine uses their voices and her music to tell her story in Billie, which releases today on DVD.

Everyone sort of knows a bit of Holiday’s story thanks to the questionable Diana Ross movie, Lady Sings the Blues and the scandalous details of her ghost-written (but better than you might have heard) tell-all memoir on which it was sort of based. She had terrible taste in men, bordering on outright masochism. She also struggled with drug addiction throughout her life, self-medicating for the stress of her abusive relationships and a hostile press.

Of course, she was also a terrific performer, as viewers can plainly hear throughout the film. We also hear the voices of numerous musicians—some famous in their own right, like Count Basie, Charles Mingus, Milt Hinton, and Artie Shaw, who tried to employ her as his band vocalist at a time when integrated bands were not widely accepted. Yet, some of the more interesting and candid reflections come from lesser-known sidemen, like Al Avola, a clarinetist in Shaw’s band and her former accompanists Jimmy Rowles and Bobby Tucker. However, nobody is as blunt-spoken as veteran Basie band drummer Jo Jones.

Holiday only speaks through her music in Erskine's doc, but that is more than sufficient to convey the truth of her life. Billie is nicely constructed, marrying up telling archival video of Holiday and her era with the disembodied testimonials on Kuehl’s tapes. Erskine choses some apt footage (but strangely not her haunting appearance with the legendary tenor-player, Lester Young on The Sound of Jazz.)

Lady Day: Dee Dee Bridgewater is Billie Holiday

Many other jazz vocalists had stronger voices and better technique, but it is Billie Holiday we love best. It is complicated—you just have to hear it in her music.  Grammy and Tony Award winner Dee Dee Bridgewater helps illuminate that Holiday mystique in the musical character study Lady Day (promo here), now running at the Little Shubert.

If you do not already know the basics of Billie Holiday’s life then go hang your head in shame.  Like many jazz artists of her era, she had addiction issues, plus her own peculiar talent for getting involved with the wrong men.  Despite her headliner status, Holiday’s legal problems caused her cabaret card to be revoked, preventing her from working in New York nightclubs. Robert, her pseudo-manager and indomitable champion, hopes a high profile London concert will lead to an American comeback.  Although she fully recognizes the importance of the gig, Holiday is still running maddeningly late for the afternoon rehearsal.

When Holiday finally arrives, she is carrying the full weight of her accumulated insecurities.  However, when she gets down to business with her band, the old magic is clearly there: “A Foggy Day,” “Miss Brown to You,” “All of Me,” and “Strange Fruit”—all great.  Unfortunately, the audience can see the demons inside her growing restive.

Even with all the fantastic music, many patrons just will not get Lady Day, precisely because it understands Holiday so well.  Granted, some of the first act flashback-reveries are a little awkward.  Nevertheless, playwright-director Stephen Stahl makes the difficult but ultimately correct choice opening the second act with a gin-fortified Holiday sabotaging the very concert the first act had been building up towards.  It is not an easy task for a consummate artist like Bridgewater, but she stays true to character, performing some appropriately ragged renditions of Holiday standards.  Yet, when we see her slowly center herself and gut out the rest of the disastrous show, we understand why we love Billie Holiday.  It is exactly because of those acutely compelling pyrrhic victories.

Bridgewater has recorded Holiday tributes before and her affinity for the Lady shines through in every song and sequence.  She goes beyond merely matching Holiday’s exquisitely vulnerable cadences, exposing her haunted soul.  Obviously, she is the front-and-center star, but the quartet nicely backs her up, both musically and dramatically.  Led by pianist Bill Jolly, they swing the standards vigorously and sensitively, as the circumstances require, while also convincingly portraying all the subtle backstage (or in some cases, on-stage) frustrations of gigging with Holiday.  As thankless as the role of Robert looks on paper, David Ayers also invests him with a surprisingly degree of empathy and presence.

There is talk of moving Lady Day to Broadway, which would be great in many ways, but this show is best seen in as intimate an environment as possible. At times, the audience genuinely feels like it is watching a rehearsal in a nearly empty concert hall.  Unlike some previous Swing Era inspired book musicals, Stahl’s production really shows a keen understanding of how to present jazz on stage.  Highly recommended for fans of Holiday and Bridgewater (admittedly two sets that probably have significant crossover), Lady Day runs until March 16^th at the Little Shubert Theater.

(Photo: Carol Rosegg)