Billie Holiday recorded
what was almost her last hit song, “God Bless the Child,” on this date in 1941,
with the Eddie Heywood Orchestra featuring Roy Eldridge on trumpet. Shortly
before this session, she had co-written this tune with Arthur Herzog, Jr., a
songwriter with whom she sometimes collaborated. In her autobiography, Lady
Sings the Blues, Holiday claims
that the song stemmed from an incident in her childhood when she asked for
money from her mother and was refused.
Unfortunately, Holiday was
not the most reliable of narrators. A different account appears in Donald
Clark’s biography, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon. Herzog was trying to come up with a hit record at
the time, which was during the ill-fated ASCAP strike, in which the American
Society of Composers tried to boost their radio royalty rate and broadcasters
balked. A rival organization was formed, called Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and
their songs were the only thing on the air at the time. Herzog was not a member
of ASCAP and saw an opportunity.
He approached Holiday and
asked her for an “old-fashioned Southern expression” to turn into a song.
Billie could come up with nothing in response to this rather odd request. Their
conversation turned to Billie’s mother, who was apparently attempting to open a
club of some sort at the time and was pestering her daughter for funds. In
exasperation, Billie told Herzog, “God bless the child!” He asked her to
explain the remark. “That’s what we used to say,” Holiday explained, “your
mother’s got money, your father’s got money, your sister’s got money, your
cousin’s got money, but if you haven’t got it yourself, God bless the child
that’s got his own.” Herzog claimed that it took him only twenty minutes to
write the song.
Billie Holiday’s version
of “God Bless the Child” was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1976
- certainly an indication that all great popular songs are not necessarily
about love.
Interspersed between the
song sets are brief snippets of commentary from producer Norman Granz, Ella
Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, and, of course, Oscar himself. The
film looks at his “boy genius” rise to prominence in Montreal, Canada, where he
was discovered by Granz in what sounds like an apocryphal story but is
apparently true. Granz was in a taxi heading to the airport to fly back to the
States when he heard Peterson, then 24 years old, playing on the radio. When he
asked the driver who the recording was by, the driver told him it was a live
broadcast from a local club. Granz had him turn the taxi around and take him
immediately to the club. Shortly thereafter, Peterson was introduced as a
surprise performer at a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall.
