You never know who you're going to meet on the internet and I came to know Peter Tibbles (bio here) via email over the past couple of years. His extensive knowledge of most genres of music and his excellent taste became apparent only gradually (Peter's not one to toot his horn) but once I understood, I knew he needed his own column at Time Goes By - or, better, that TGB needed his column - which appears here each Sunday. You can find previous Elder Music columns here.

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I have a nice easy time this week. Norma, the Assistant Musicologist, is doing it all for me. In the past, the A.M. has chosen tracks and then left it to me to provide the words. Today she’s doing everything. So, over to you, A.M.

The simple term “jazz singer” can provoke long discussions on whether or not particular artists qualify. Personally, I’d rather listen to the music than argue about it, so I’ll just say today’s singers are all “jazz-infused” whatever music they are singing.

Billie Holiday was the obvious starting point for this set.

Her distinctive style has influenced many other singers from Frank Sinatra through to Madeleine Peyroux, whom we’ll hear later. Billie’s early recordings were made in New York in the 1930s, many of them with pianist Teddy Wilson.

At this time, the popular white singers had first pick of the new songs, however Teddy was able to select and arrange the available songs to bring out the best in them.

Musicians for the recording sessions were drawn from whichever of the big bands were in town at the time. Our first track, Easy Living, has probably the best combo Billie worked with including Teddy, Lester Young (Prez), Buck Clayton (“that handsome cat,” as Billie described him), Buster Bailey, Freddy Green, Jo Jones – all old friends from her time with the Count Basie band.

♫ Billie Holiday - Easy Living

Five years later, we find her in a television studio recording for the Sound of Jazz program, this time with the Mal Waldron All-Stars, certainly an all-star tenor sax line-up: Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster.

Unfortunately, a YouTube video has been removed due to copyright claims which is too bad. It is one of the rare pieces of film footage I have seen of Billie Holiday. It shows her totally immersed in and responding to the music, especially Lester Young’s solo. Here is the audio from that recording session of Fine and Mellow.

[EDITOR'S UPDATE: Thanks to TGB reader, Chuck Nyren who left a note and link in the comments below, here is video of this Billie Holiday recording which can also be found here at zappinternet.]

If that doesn't work, here is the audio only:

♫ Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow

And I can't resist quoting a couple of lines from a poem I recently found, written just after Billie's death by Frank O’Hara. He recalls listening to her perform...

...in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Next up, “The Divine” Sarah Vaughan.

The young Sarah got her professional break in 1943, winning the talent contest at the Apollo Theatre as Ella Fitzgerald had done some years before. Billy Eckstine saw her performance that night and immediately persuaded Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines to hire her as second pianist.

The Hines’ big band and later the Billy Eckstine band were nurseries for bebop so Sarah worked with key musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Art Blakey. When Eckstine and these musicians left Hines, Sarah went with them.

Sarah made her first recordings as a vocalist with Dizzy Gillespie ensembles – also one of Dizzy’s first recordings leading his own band. From those sessions, here is Mean To Me. Hard to believe she was only twenty when this was made.

♫ Sarah Vaughan - Mean to Me

Billy Eckstine referred to Sarah as “my little sister” and they remained close friends and worked together over many years. Indeed, I think I first discovered Sarah through her duets with Billy. So our next track is their 1957 duet, Passing Strangers.

♫ Sarah and Billy - Passing Strangers

Coming forward a few decades to Kate Ceberano, a popular Australian singer whom we think of as “a young person” but last year she celebrated 25 years in the music industry. Doesn’t time fly?

She started out with a pop group, I'm Talking, in the 1980s but has also performed the jazz standards from early in her career. I had a Talk with My Man was recorded in New York in 2004.

♫ Kate Ceberano - I Had A Talk With My Man Last Night

Another younger singer who has listened to a lot of Billie Holiday and the early blues singers is Madeleine Peyroux.

Born in the U.S., she also spent time growing up in Paris. She cut her musical teeth busking around Europe with the delightfully-named The Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band, named after Ma Rainey’s Lost Wandering Blues. However, I’m not going to play one of her jazz or blues songs here. Instead I have picked Bob Dylan’s You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.

♫ Madeleine Peyroux - You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

It’s me, Peter, again. Sorry, it is I once more. We got to this spot and I said to the A.M., “Someone’s missing.”

“Nope”, she said, “That’s all I wanted to include.”

I suggested that doing a column on Lady Jazz Singers and not including Ella is a bit like doing one on Fifties’ rock & roll and not including Elvis. She agreed that Ella had slipped her mind.

You don’t need either of us to tell you anything about Ella, it’s all been said before by better writers (and maybe a few worse ones). We’ll just play the track of her doing the Gershwins’ They All Laughed.

♫ Ella Fitzgerald - They All Laughed