Happy Birthday....George Clinton!

From: AMG
By: John Bush

Born: Jul 22, 1940 in Kannapolis, NC

The mastermind of the Parliament/Funkadelic collective during the 1970s, George Clinton broke up both bands by 1981 and began recording solo albums, occasionally performing live with his former bandmates as the P.Funk All-Stars. Born in Kannapolis, NC, on July 22, 1941, Clinton became interested in doo wop while living in New Jersey during the early '50s. He formed the Parliaments in 1955, based out of a barbershop back room where he straightened hair. The group had a small R&B hit during 1967, but Clinton began to mastermind the Parliaments' activities two years later. Recording both as Parliament and Funkadelic, the group revolutionized R&B during the '70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-'60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the '70s, capturing over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and recording three platinum albums.

By 1980, George Clinton began to be weighed down by legal difficulties arising from Polygram's acquisition of Parliament's label, Casablanca. Jettisoning both the Parliament and Funkadelic names (but not the musicians), Clinton signed to Capitol in 1982 both as a solo act and as the P.Funk All-Stars. His first solo album, 1982's Computer Games, contained the Top 20 R&B hit "Loopzilla." Several months later, the title track from Clinton's Atomic Dog EP hit number one on the R&B charts; it stayed at the top spot for four weeks, but only managed number 101 on the pop charts. Clinton stayed on Capitol for three more years, releasing three studio albums and frequently charting singles -- "Nubian Nut," "Last Dance," "Do Fries Go With That Shake" -- in the R&B Top 40. During much of the three-year period from 1986 to 1989, Clinton became embroiled in legal difficulties (resulting from the myriad royalty problems latent during the '70s with recordings of over 40 musicians for four labels under three names). Also problematic during the latter half of the '80s was Clinton's disintegrating reputation as a true forefather of rock; by the end of the decade, however, a generation of rappers reared on P-Funk were beginning to name check him.

In 1989, Clinton signed a contract with Prince's Paisley Park label and released his fifth solo studio album, The Cinderella Theory. After one more LP for Paisley Park (Hey Man, Smell My Finger), Clinton signed with Sony 550. His first release, 1996's T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. ("the awesome power of a fully operational mothership"), reunited the funk pioneer with several of his Parliament/Funkadelic comrades from the '70s. Clinton's Greatest Funkin' Hits (1996) teamed old P-Funk hits with new-school rappers such as Digital Underground, Ice Cube, and Q-Tip. [See Also: Parliament, Funkadelic]

Walter Trout...."Ride Til I'm Satisfied"....The DVD!

From: BluePower.com
By: John Rhys

A couple of years ago, BluePower finally managed to wrest Walter Trout and the band away from their busy schedule to come into Rotund Rascal Studios in North Hollywood to record half a dozen songs live to two track.

While they were doing this, Steve Altman shot the session with one camera so that we could preserve the moment for posterity.

Later, Steve took it upon himself to put together one song with the video. It took a great deal of finagling to get the DVD to come out right as utilizing only one camera, he had to pull shots from other sections of the video in order to piece together the song.

BluePower used the DVD in a contest in which over 5000 people entered to win one of four DVD's made.

Here is that DVD with all it's foibles. However; if you're a guitar player, there are some amazing shots of Walter and the fingerboard during the main solos. A must for any guitar player in the process of learning to play leads.

Click here to view...."Ride Til I'm Satisfied!

....Quicktime Format Required

Hello fret2fret.com....Are You There?

From: BluePower.com
By: John Rhys

Since posting the new BluePower, I have had the exemplary pleasure of watching Google ads roll by as I checked the site day by day. The first time I saw what those tiny ads had attributed to our bank account, I decided to check the ads myself just to add the extra penny (we need all the cash we can find) per click through.

I enjoy doing this as it is quite new to me. It's not a lot by any means, just pennies, but it's verification that the net can pay if you work it. And I love to work it.

Tonight, whilst adding 5 cents (clicking five ads) to my bank account, I discovered something that intrigued me. An ad professing to give incredible guitar skills in just 45 minutes. I thought it would be interesting to see if the method really works and looked for a place to email the gentleman owning these remarkable teaching skills. Alas....there was no way of reaching this man, company....whatever. You could however; go directly to PayPal to purchase the product when you clicked what you thought was the email link.

Now you have to understand, I am suspicious by nature as I have been in the music business most of my life. All I wanted to do was ask the gentleman to let me review the technique and rate it.

If anyone knows the gentleman running this site, please have him write to blupwr@sbcglobal.net. I would love to improve my guitar skills and I'm sure a lot of our viewers would as well.

This is simply an invitation to see if what he claims really works as I have great pride in what ads float around on our site. I wouldn't like them to be misleading for our viewers sake.

Perhaps the site is new and has a few bugs. This is not a challenge but a test to see if those claims are true. It would be wonderful if they were.

Shall we see?

Georgie Woods....The Guy With The Goods!

From: RBM News
By: Craig Moerer

Born in Georgia on Friday, May 11, 1927, George Woods (known to everyone as Georgie) was a top R&B jock and became a true legend in every sense of the word. Georgie passed away June 18, 2005.

At 25, Woods received his first broadcast job (12 midnight to 1 am) at WWRL (1600 on AM) in New York, New York. As Georgie would say, “so nice, they had to name it twice.” That job lasted only a short time. “Maybe three months,” Georgie Woods laughed. “I went to WHAT (Philadelphia) on January 7, 1953.” WHAT Radio, at that time, was owned by Billy & Dolly Banks. The City of Brotherly Love would be his broadcast home for the rest of his half-century career.

In 1955, Georgie Woods moved to the station that most would remember as his broadcast home, WDAS, owned by the late Max M. Leon. In 1957, Woods led the nation by breaking a new record by former gospel singer (The Soul Stirrers) Sam Cooke. The song was “You Send Me.”

A few years later, George nicknamed Jerry Butler “The Ice Man” because he was “so cool on stage.” In 1962, Georgie Woods started playing on WDAS a “new” group called “The Beatles.” The song was “Please, Please Me” on the African-American owned label, Vee-Jay (the same label Butler recorded for).

Two years down the road, in 1964, Woods coined the phrase “blue-eyed soul” referring to The Righteous Brothers. Six years later, the term got heavy use for the Osmond Brothers’ hit, “One Bad Apple,” when the group sounded very similar to the Jackson 5.

George at that time was known as “Georgie Woods, the man with the goods.” Later, when “the man” took on a different meaning, he became “the guy with the goods.”

One day in 1964, Georgie and WDAS management had a dispute, and the next day he was back on the aire at WHAT Radio. The Banks family welcomed Georgie Woods, a superstar in the Philly market, back with open arms. Woods recalled, “I stayed there for several years until just after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.” In the spring of 1968, Georgie Woods returned to WDAS where he would stay until the fall of 1990 when he again returned to WHAT.

Former Operations Manager for WDAS, Gerry Wilkinson thinks back to 1978 -- “It was about this time that George’s show turned from music to a talk show. George comes across as your average Joe, but he’s brilliant. He can talk with you about anything and he always did his homework.”

At that time, in the late seventies, the ratings for music stations switched from AM to FM. While WDAS-FM numbers were climbing (the number one music station, general market, in Philadelphia by 1980), WDAS AM’s ratings were tumbling. “Management thought that a talk format for George would do the trick,” said Wilkinson, and it did. Georgie Woods saw his talk-show ARB numbers double. Before leaving WDAS, Woods would end up the AM station’s Program Director.

In the fall of 1979, the WDAS stations were sold to Unity Broadcasting of Pennsylvania (owners of the “National Black Network”). Bob Klein, WDAS’ General Manager for 3 decades retired and his assistant, W. Cody Anderson, took over the reigns as GM. Ten years later, Cody purchased WHAT (Bob Klein was a consultant for Anderson) and Georgie Woods moved back to radio 1340, WHAT on Monday, September 10, 1990.

George was on 10 am to 1 pm following Mary Mason who returned to WHAT just the week before from WCAU. He left WHAT in 1994 and started playing music again on WPGR, Geator Gold radio when Jerry Blavat owned the station. But Woods wasn’t just a radio personality; he also hosted his own dance party TV show for several stations in town, first starting with Channel 17, WPHL-TV in 1966. A couple years later, the program moved over to WIBF-TV, Channel 29. It lasted for another several years after Taft Broadcasting took over, re-naming the call letters, WTAF-TV.

During the late sixties, Georgie Woods ran for Philadelphia City Council and won, only to have it taken away from him in a recount. However, it wasn’t just a run for political office; it also meant no radio income for the best part of a year. He had to go off the air because if he remained, the radio station would have been required to give free equal time to his political opponent even though George was just playing music.

However, Woods was an activist much earlier, and was very much involved in the civil rights movement. George was one of the first broadcasters to have the controversial Malcolm X appear on his program. During the hectic sixties, he led 21 buses of area residents southward to March with Dr. Martin Luther King in Alabama and later Washington, DC.

One of the bus captains on that trip was a young 23-year old college student from Cheney State College, Ed Bradley (of 60 Minutes fame). Bradley had previously met Woods when Georgie visited the mostly black school. Georgie Woods allowed Bradley to “hang around” the station and run errands. Later, Bradley was doing news for WDAS until 1967 when he moved to New York City.

A few years ago, Bradley said, “I remember the first time I heard Georgie Woods on the air as a teenager…. I heard him say same time tomorrow and I set up the radio the next day at the same time and waited to listen to Georgie Woods…. Many years later I went to work there…. It was my first experience in broadcasting. I cut my eyeteeth as a journalist at WDAS and I think in many ways if WDAS hadn't been there for me, I wouldn't be on 60 Minutes today.”

Georgie also hosted so-called “Freedom Shows” at Philadelphia’s Uptown and Nixon Theaters to raise money for civil rights activities. George became well known hosting great shows at the Uptown -- on one show one could see: Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, Deon Jackson, the Monitors, Tammi Terrell, The Artistics, The Poets and more.

On Wednesday, July 21, 1993, the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network dedicated a mural featuring Georgie Woods. It’s located at 5531 Germantown Avenue (at the corner of Germantown and School House Lane). Just a few months before, on Friday, May 14 th, the City of Philadelphia proclaimed “Georgie Woods Day” to honor the broadcast legend.

Georgie Woods was also very supportive to the Philadelphia community. For decades, every year WDAS and their air personalities would collect donations of thousands of turkeys for the city’s poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. George was part of the WDAS Charities organization, which put on charity shows to aid the area.

Many people in the city have credited Georgie Woods and WDAS with directly being responsible for preventing rioting in the streets of our city after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Woods and WDAS constantly reminded our residents of Dr. King's non-violent philosophy and aired his speeches. In 1969, George and WDAS urged the population of the area to turn in their guns. Many hundreds did so and Woods was credited with making Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Gerry Wilkinson said, “I vividly remember George’s morning drive program. He had his signature cowbells (long before Dr. Don Rose) and just acted crazy.” Jerry Wells, Production Manager for WDAS, thinks back to his early days at the station a quarter century ago. He says: “George once told me, you gotta do whatever you have to so that at the end of the day, people remember you, even if it means acting like a nut.”

“George loved to sing the old spiritual, Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep every morning. It was always done differently, sometimes in harmony, depending on who was around the studio at the time. It was the best part of the show for George was the star, not the records” Wilkinson remembers.

In the 1960s, he would sometimes stop the music for hours on WDAS to talk about the civil-rights movement and the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recalled Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, the station's former general manager.
"He had the ear of the African-American community. Whenever there was an injustice, we would talk about the issues rather than play music," Tamburro said.

Gerry also recalls: “I remember the era and ‘solid’ was in common usage. One morning, George said ‘salad’ instead of solid. He immediately came back with ‘potato salad.’ Somehow, it stuck and became part of the show. I was in the air studio one morning when Broadway Eddie (of Broadway Eddie’s in Camden) was there. He said to George that Woods should make a recording called ‘Potato Salad.’ He did and it became a top ten record at the station. Eddie produced it and writing credits were given to both Eddie and George and arranged by Vince Montana (of Philadelphia International fame). I clearly remember one of the rap lines, ‘don’t eat chicken on Sunday! It'll put a hole in your soul!’”

Almost two decades later, in 1988, Georgie Woods marketed his own line of Potato Chips through a South Philly company, C & S, Inc., which claimed to sell over 3 million bags a year. Whether there is any connection to the “Potato Salad” craze of two decades before is subject to debate.

Georgie Woods, The Guy With the Goods, died in the early morning of Saturday, June 18th, in Boynton Beach, Fla., where he had lived since 1996.

Guitarist For All Seasons....Carlos Santana!

From: AMG
By: William Ruhlmann

Born: Devadip Carlos Santana on July 20, 1947 in Autlan De Navarro, Mexico

Mexican-born American guitarist Carlos Santana is best known as the leader of the band that bears his last name, which has toured and recorded successfully since the late '60s. He has also recorded a series of exploratory solo albums and collaborations with other musicians that expand upon his basic musical style.

Carlos Santana grew up in Mexico, the son of a father who was a mariachi violinist. He took up the violin at five, but at eight switched to the guitar. The family moved to Tijuana, where he began playing in clubs and bars. In the early '60s, the family moved to San Francisco. Santana at first remained in Tijuana, but he later joined them and attended Mission High School, graduating in June 1965. In 1966, he was one of the founders of the Santana Blues Band. Despite the name, the group was at first a collective; it was required to name a nominal leader due to a provision of the musicians union. The name was eventually shortened to Santana and the band debuted at the Fillmore West theater in San Francisco on June 16, 1968. That September, Carlos played guitar at a concert held at the Fillmore West by Al Kooper to record a follow-up to the Super Session album that had featured him with Mike Bloomfield and Steve Stills. The result was The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, which marked Santana's recording debut.

Meanwhile, Santana was signed to Columbia Records and recorded a self-titled debut album. At this point, the group was a sextet consisting of Carlos (guitar), Gregg Rolie (keyboards and vocals), David Brown (bass), Michael Shrieve (drums), Jose "Chepito" Areas (percussion), and Michael Carabello (percussion). Santana toured the U.S. prior to the release of the album, including a notable appearance at the celebrated Woodstock festival in August 1969 that was filmed and recorded. Santana was released the same month, and it became a massive hit, as did its follow-ups Abraxas (1970) and Santana III (1971). After completing recording and touring activities in connection with Santana III, the original Santana band broke up.

Carlos retained rights to the group's name and he proceeded to lead a band called Santana from then on, though it consisted of himself and a constantly changing collection of hired musicians. His first recording after the breakup of the original group was a live show performed in Hawaii with singer and drummer Buddy Miles, released in June 1972 as Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live! Consistent with the success of the Santana band, the album reached the Top Ten and eventually went platinum. Following the release of the Santana band album Caravanserai (1972), Carlos formed a duo with John McLaughlin, guitarist for the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The two shared a spiritual leader in guru Sri Chinmoy, who bestowed upon Carlos the name Devadip, meaning "the eye, the lamp, and the light of God." Devadip Carlos Santana and Mahavishnu John McLaughlin's duo album Love Devotion Surrender was released in June 1973. It reached the Top 20 and eventually went gold. After releasing another Santana band project, Welcome, Carlos next teamed up with another religious disciple, Turiya Alice Coltrane, widow of John Coltrane, for a third duo album. Their collaboration, Illuminations, was released in September 1974; it spent two months in the charts, peaking in the bottom quarter of the Top 100.

Carlos focused on the Santana band for most of the rest of the 1970s, releasing a series of gold or platinum albums: Borboletta (1974), Amigos (1975), Festival (1976), Moonflower (1977), and Inner Secrets (1978). In February 1979, he finally released his first real solo album, the half-live, half-studio Oneness/Silver Dreams -- Golden Reality, actually credited to Devadip. Like Illuminations, it spent a couple of months in the charts and peaked in the bottom quarter of the Top 100. After another gold Santana band album, Marathon (1979), he returned to solo work with the double-LP jazz collection The Swing of Delight in August 1980. Featuring such guests as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter, it sold a little better than his previous solo album. Two more Santana band albums, Zebop! (1981) and Shango (1982), followed before Carlos released a more pop-oriented solo effort, Havana Moon, in April 1983. Featuring Willie Nelson, Booker T. Jones, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the album reached the Top 40, actually a better showing than the next Santana band album, Beyond Appearances (1985). In 1986, Carlos undertook his first musical score, writing music for the Ritchie Valens film biography La Bamba. He then made another Santana band album, Freedom (1987), and followed it in October 1987 with a solo album, Blues for Salvador. The album did not sell well, but the title track won Carlos his first Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. After a final Santana band album for Columbia Records, Spirits Dancing in the Flesh (1990), Carlos left the label and signed to Polydor, which gave him his own custom label, Guts and Grace. The first Santana band album for the new company, Milagro, was followed by what was projected to be a series of releases of tapes from Carlos' own collection of his favorite musicians, Live Forever: Sacred Sources 1, featuring Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Coltrane. Then came a Santana band live album (Sacred Fire - Live in South America, 1993) and in September 1994, Carlos released Santana Brothers, a trio album also featuring his brother Jorge Santana and their nephew, Carlos Hernandez. It charted briefly and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

Carlos spent almost five years away from recording, not returning until June 1999 when he issued Supernatural on Arista Records. The Santana band album featured many tracks co-written by guest stars such as Rob Thomas of matchbox 20, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, and others. Paced by the number one singles "Smooth" and "Maria Maria," the album became the biggest hit of Santana's career, selling upwards of ten million copies. It also won Santana eight Grammy Awards.

BluePower Presents....An Evening With Teresa Russell!

A raging Southern California guitar phenomenon .....

Described as "the most awesome Female rock guitarist...ever!" this is simply an understatement - Teresa Russell is one of the best guitarists out there: male or female.

Teresa, is the only female to ever qualify" in the top eight" for the national finals in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's lead guitar competition, Guitarmageddon. Competing with over 2000 guitarists across the country, she accomplished this by winning the West regional in Los Angeles where she received "out-of-seat-thumbs-up" kudos from such Grammy award, celebrity judges/guitarists as Steve Lukather (Toto) and Steve Stevens (Billy Idol).

Teresa started guitar lessons at age 7. She was playing teen halls, high schools and navy bases by age 9. At age 12, she was playing on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. With guitar influences such as Hendrix and Clapton, she rocked regularly at Gazzari's and the Whiskey A-Go-Go. Numerous TV appearances followed as well as writing songs for a movie called The Young Graduates. At age 14, Teresa and her band were contracted to do a six-month engagement in Mexico City, performing at the El Camino Real and El Senior Real Hotels and night clubs.
After attending Northridge University on a guitar scholarship, she hit the road to continue seasoning her rock chops in countless roadhouse bars throughout the western U.S. She later formed an all-female rock band and performed for several years on the Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe circuits.

After touring all over the world with Helen Reddy throughout the late 80's, playing live TV and major concert venues, Teresa decided to pursue projects of her own. She focused on her Blues-rock roots with an aggressive style establishing a wide-spread fan base throughout southern California.

On the recent release of her 3rd CD with Cocobilli, "Show You What Love Can Do", Teresa delivers an electrifying performance that features raging guitar solos. Her vocal style has been compared to such divas as Janis Joplin, Melissa Etheridge, and Bonnie Raitt, combining a rock-hard edge with a supple warmth that quickly distinguishes her voice as uniquely that of Teresa Russell. Joined in her virtuosity by bassist Billi Breland and drummer Coco Roussel, this popular trio can be seen performing regularly throughout Southern California.

For more information, go to Teresa Russell

Listen now to Teresa Russell!

Holiday For The Blues....Billie Of Course!

From: AMG
By: John Bush

Born: Eleanora Fagan Gough on Apr 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, PA
Died: Jul 17, 1959 in New York, NY

The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic Blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. Almost fifty years after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie's big sound and Pops' feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.

With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday's technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life -- a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression -- undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday's best performances ("Lover Man," "Don't Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century -- easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra -- was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances.

Billie Holiday's chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday's mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.

In New York, Holiday helped her mother with domestic work, but soon began moonlighting as a prostitute for the additional income. According to the weighty Billie Holiday legend (which gained additional credence after her notoriously apocryphal autobiography Lady Sings the Blues), her big singing break came in 1933 when a laughable dancing audition at a speakeasy prompted her accompanist to ask her if she could sing. In fact, Holiday was most likely singing at clubs all over New York City as early as 1930-31. Whatever the true story, she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond -- only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career -- wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. After recording a demo at Columbia Studios, Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother's Son-In-Law."

Though she didn't return to the studio for over a year, Billie Holiday spent 1934 moving up the rungs of the competitive New York bar scene. By early 1935, she made her debut at the Apollo Theater and appeared in a one-reeler film with Duke Ellington. During the last half of 1935, Holiday finally entered the studio again and recorded a total of four sessions. With a pick-up band supervised by pianist Teddy Wilson, she recorded a series of obscure, forgettable songs straight from the gutters of Tin Pan Alley -- in other words, the only songs available to an obscure black band during the mid-'30s. (During the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs strictly in the hands of society orchestras and popular white singers.) Despite the poor song quality, Holiday and various groups (including trumpeter Roy Eldridge, alto Johnny Hodges, and tenors Ben Webster and Chu Berry) energized flat songs like "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" and "If You Were Mine" (to say nothing of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town"). The great combo playing and Holiday's increasingly assured vocals made them quite popular on Columbia, Brunswick and Vocalion.

During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then returned to New York for several more sessions. In late January 1937, she recorded several numbers with a small group culled from one of Hammond's new discoveries, Count Basie's Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who'd briefly known Billie several years earlier, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were to become especially attached to Holiday. The three did much of their best recorded work together during the late '30s, and Holiday herself bestowed the nickname Pres on Young, while he dubbed her Lady Day for her elegance. By the spring of 1937, she began touring with Basie as the female complement to his male singer, Jimmy Rushing. The association lasted less than a year, however. Though officially she was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable, shadowy influences higher up in the publishing world reportedly commanded the action after she refused to begin singing '20s female Blues standards.

At least temporarily, the move actually benefited Holiday -- less than a month after leaving Basie, she was hired by Artie Shaw's popular band. She began singing with the group in 1938, one of the first instances of a black female appearing with a white group. Despite the continuing support of the entire band, however, show promoters and radio sponsors soon began objecting to Holiday -- based on her unorthodox singing style almost as much as her race. After a series of escalating indignities, Holiday quit the band in disgust. Yet again, her judgment proved valuable; the added freedom allowed her to take a gig at a hip new club named Café Society, the first popular nightspot with an inter-racial audience. There, Billie Holiday learned the song that would catapult her career to a new level: "Strange Fruit."

The standard, written by Café Society regular Lewis Allen and forever tied to Holiday, is an anguished reprisal of the intense racism still persistent in the South. Though Holiday initially expressed doubts about adding such a bald, uncompromising song to her repertoire, she pulled it off thanks largely to her powers of nuance and subtlety. "Strange Fruit" soon became the highlight of her performances. Though John Hammond refused to record it (not for its politics but for its overly pungent imagery), he allowed Holiday a bit of leverage to record for Commodore, the label owned by jazz record-store owner Milt Gabler. Once released, "Strange Fruit" was banned by many radio outlets, though the growing jukebox industry (and the inclusion of the excellent "Fine and Mellow" on the flip) made it a rather large, though controversial, hit. She continued recording for Columbia labels until 1942, and hit big again with her most famous composition, 1941's "God Bless the Child." Gabler, who also worked A&R for Decca, signed her to the label in 1944 to record "Lover Man," a song written especially for her and her third big hit. Neatly side-stepping the musician's union ban that afflicted her former label, Holiday soon became a priority at Decca, earning the right to top-quality material and lavish string sections for her sessions. She continued recording scattered sessions for Decca during the rest of the '40s, and recorded several of her best-loved songs including Bessie Smith's "'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes," and "Crazy He Calls Me."

Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday's emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-'40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn't last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York's Town Hall and a small film role -- as a maid (!) -- with Louis Armstrong in 1947's New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother's death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.

Unfortunately, Holiday's troubles only continued after her release. The drug charge made it impossible for her to get a cabaret card, so nightclub performances were out of the question. Plagued by various celebrity hawks from all portions of the underworld (jazz, drugs, song publishing, etc.), she soldiered on for Decca until 1950. Two years later, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz, owner of the excellent labels Clef, Norgran, and by 1956, Verve. The recordings returned her to the small-group intimacy of her Columbia work, and reunited her with Ben Webster as well as other top-flight musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Charlie Shavers. Though the ravages of a hard life were beginning to take their toll on her voice, many of Holiday's mid-'50s recordings are just as intense and beautiful as her classic work.

During 1954, Holiday toured Europe to great acclaim, and her 1956 autobiography brought her even more fame (or notoriety). She made her last great appearance in 1957, on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz with Webster, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins providing a close backing. One year later, the Lady in Satin LP clothed her naked, increasingly hoarse voice with the overwrought strings of Ray Ellis. During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time. Her cult of influence spread quickly after her death and gave her more fame than she'd enjoyed in life. The 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues featured Diana Ross struggling to overcome the conflicting myths of Holiday's life, but the film also illuminated her tragic life and introduced many future fans. By the digital age, virtually all of Holiday's recorded material had been reissued: by Columbia (nine volumes of The Quintessential Billie Holiday), Decca (The Complete Decca Recordings), and Verve (The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959).