Billie Holiday

[George Thompson]

WKCR, a local radio station, has begun a broadcast that will play every
recording Billie Holiday ever made, some of them many times.  The
broadcast has lasted 5 days so far -- it won't end until April 15 --
and I have heard "Billie's Blues" 8 or 10 times, in different versions
made across her career.  This song, which she wrote, contains the
line "I have been your slave ever since I have been your babe" -- the
line is repeated twice in the stanza and the stnaza is usually sung
twice in the performance, at the beginning and at the end.

In nearly all repetitions of this verse I clearly hear her singing "I
have been your slave |every| since I have been your babe"  Is this
found from other speakers?

WKCR broadcasts on the internet at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/
The jazz hounds among us who are out of range of the broadcast stations
should check it out.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
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