“Did I Remember?” (1936) – with Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw

Recorded by Billie Holiday for Vocalion (ARC) on July 10, 1936 in New York.

Billie Holiday, vocal. Bunny Berigan, trumpet; Artie Shaw, clarinet; Joe Bushkin, piano; Dick McDonough, guitar; Pete Peterson, bass; Cozy Cole, drums.

The story:

In the summer of 1936, Bunny Berigan was to the extent possible doing three things, all of which were directed to building his name with the public so that he could start his own big band. First, from a public relations standpoint, he continued to appear weekly on the successful CBS radio show Saturday Night Swing Club. That show broadcast the name and trumpet-playing of Bunny Berigan to a national audience. Second, he was working as a free-lance studio musician in Manhattan, making as many recordings as possible to save money so that he could contribute monetarily to the costs of gathering, rehearsing and presenting to the public a band in front of which he stood and played his trumpet. Third, he was working in some fashion as the leader of an ad hoc group of musicians rehearsing, perhaps playing a few scattered dance dates in and near New York City, and then, on July 20, 1936, making some recordings with that band. This exercise, it now seems, was something that was done to demonstrate to the people who ran the band business that Bunny had the requisite skills to be a bandleader. It was soon apparent that he did have those skills.

Although many of the recording dates Berigan worked on in 1936 were mundane, occasionally something came up that interested him musically. One such date was on July 10, and it would feature the exciting 21-year-old singer Billie Holiday. Born Eleanora Fagan Gough, on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as Billie Holiday, she was one of the most individual of jazz singers. Her early childhood was spent in poverty in Baltimore. As she grew into womanhood, she became strikingly beautiful, and was assaulted sexually probably on more than one occasion. She and her mother moved to Harlem in the late 1920s, and for a time she worked there as a prostitute to earn enough money for her mother and her to survive. After being jailed for this, she turned to singing for tips in various Harlem speakeasys. It was in one of these that she was discovered by John Hammond, who arranged for her to make her first recordings in 1933. Shortly after, in 1935, again with Hammond’s help, she began a lengthy and successful association on records with the pianist Teddy Wilson. These recordings reveal the fully formed Holiday style: a very relaxed, almost elastic rhythmic approach, gentle improvisation, and great intimacy. On these sessions as backup performers were some of the finest jazz musicians of the time. She worked in Count Basie’s band in 1937–1938, and then spent the balance of 1938 in Artie Shaw’s band. Since she had her own recording contract, she could not , regrettably, make records with either Basie or Shaw. After leaving Shaw, she embarked on a career as a soloist which would continue, with varying degrees of success, for the next two decades. Because of the harrowing experiences of her early life, Holiday sought refuge in drugs starting in the 1940s, and later, alcohol. This caused her much personal and professional pain. She died on July 17, 1959, in Manhattan from cirrhosis of the liver.

“In the spring of 1936, when Billie was out of town on a series of theater dates with Jimmie Lunceford’s band, Teddy Wilson replaced her at one of his recording sessions with a 17-year-old named Ella Fitzgerld (actually, Ella was then 19), who had recently broken into the big-time as a singer with Chick Webb’s band. That momentary interruption in the Wilson-Holiday partnership (on records) led Billie to go out on her own.”(1) Through John Hammond …she was introduced to Bernie Hanighen, who helped her to organize her first recording date as a leader.

Bernie Hanighen was a songwriter who in mid-1936 was just starting to become known in the profession Like Hammond, he was enthralled by the singing of Billie Holiday. She had been involved in a productive musical relationship as a featured artist on records with Teddy Wilson for about a year before this. She thought, with considerable justification, that she now deserved her own record dates. Hanighen, guided by Hammond, made the necessary arrangements with ARC (the American Record Company/Brunswick), and began to gather the musicians for the recording date. The band supporting Billie would include Bunny; Artie Shaw (then putting together his first band, the one built around a string quartet), clarinet; Joe Bushkin, piano; Dick McDonough, guitar; Pete Peterson, bass; and Cozy Cole, drums. Bushkin later recalled: “I got involved because Bernie called me and had me come down to his Village pad to rehearse with Billie, and work on the four tunes she was gonna do. Bernie put the band together—Bunny and Artie and the other guys he dug.”(2) The four tunes recorded that day are classics: “Did I Remember?” “No Regrets,” “Summertime,” and “Billie’s Blues.” These records began to sell briskly, and Billie Holiday was thus launched as a recording artist “with her name on the records.”

I do not think it was coincidental that Billie appeared the next evening on the Saturday Night Swing Club, along with Bunny Berigan.

It should also be noted that Cozy Cole then began to work with some frequency as a session man at ARC records. To my knowledge, even though there had on rare special occasions been recording sessions with black and white musicians, there had been little or no real integration (i.e., that a black musician was regularly on call) in the commercial recording studios of New York prior to that. New York’s radio studios remained lily white until the early 1940s.

The music:

A good amount of rehearsal between pianist Joe Bushkin and vocalist Billie Holiday had taken place before this recording session, as Billie wanted her debut as the featured artist on her own records to be successful. It is unlikely however that any rehearsal with the other musicians on the date occurred before they entered the recording studio. Both Berigan and Shaw had for years been working in radio and recording studios where they were expected to show up, look at whatever written music had been brought to the date, make whatever adjustments were needed to satisfy the featured artist, then play whatever was required perfectly. What is rather astonishing is how all of the musicians who participated on this date were able to make their performances sound so casual and relaxed.

This joyous performance starts with a bright four bar introduction led at first by Berigan’s commanding open trumpet, then by Shaw’s delicate clarinet. Ms. Holiday sings a chorus with easy swing against a background of solid rhythm and quiet improvisation by Berigan and Shaw.

The second chorus contains a sixteen bar tract of jazz by Shaw, a jazz bridge by Bushkin, and then eight bars of harmonized playing by Bunny and Artie. Berigan then plays a delightful modulation followed by eight bars of robust open-horn jazz. Shaw follows politely.

Billie then comes back for the eight bar bridge and the final tract of the main melody.

The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

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Notes and links:

(1) Giants of Jazz …Billie Holiday (1979), notes on the music by Melvin Maddocks, 35.

(2) The Complete Brunswick, Parlophone and Vocalion Bunny Berigan Sessions (2003), notes on the music by Richard M. Sudhalter, 17.

It should also be noted that soon after the birth of Bunny’s daughter Joyce in April of 1936 (she joined four-year-old Patricia), at the request of Donna, Bunny’s wife, they bought a German shepard dog, and named him “Cozy” after one of Bunny’s favorite drummers. Donna felt a bit more secure in their Rego Park/Queens home with the dog, as by then, Bunny was rarely home. He stayed in Manhattan many nights, as he was often working over 80 hours a week.

Here is another example of Bunny Berigan collaborating with Billie Holiday:

“A Fine Romance” (1936) Billie Holiday with Bunny Berigan