Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

Eleanora led a difficult childhood in Balti- more. She attended St. Francis Academy—the oldest Catholic school for African American students in the country—but frequent ab- sences landed her in juvenile court and oblig- atory enrollment at a reform school, House of the Good Shepherd. Upon her release in 1927, the rebellious girl reunited with her mother in Baltimore. Sadie moved to Harlem the fol- lowing year, and Eleanora joined in 1929. Her career as a nightclub singer began almost im- mediately under the invented name “Billie Holiday,” derived from her favorite actress (Billie Dove) and estranged father (Clarence Holiday). Despite her waywardness, Holiday contin- ued to develop her reputation as a jazz sing- er in Harlem nightclubs. Her recording de- but came at age 18 with Benny Goodman & His Orchestra accompanying Holiday. John Hammond, who produced those two tracks, later signed Billie to her first recording con- tract with Brunswick. A friend and frequent collaborator, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, bestowed the regal title “Lady Day” on Holi- day at about this same time. She reciprocat- ed by anointing him “Pres” (or “Prez”), as in “President of the Saxophone.” The follow- ing decade brought a parade of high-profile nightclub performances, recordings, tours, radio broadcasts. Lamentably, as Holiday’s career ascended to unfathomable heights, the seeds of her own self-destruction—failed relationships, insecurity, legal troubles, and substance abuse—began to take root. The title “God Bless the Child” originated as an exasperated throw-away comment. In 1939, Holiday described a heated altercation with her mother to songwriter Arthur Her- zog Jr.: Sadie apparently had tried to wring money from her daughter to support a busi- ness scheme—an illicit after-hours joint. “Billie didn’t want to give it to her,” Herzog recalled, “didn’t have it, and in a moment of exasperation she said, ‘God bless the child.’ ” Unfamiliar with the saying, he asked Holi- day what she meant: “That’s what we used Billie Holiday to say—your mother’s got money, your fa- ther’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.’ ” The title stuck, and Herzog and Holiday knocked off the song in 20 minutes. Lady Day recorded “God Bless the Child” with Eddie Heywood & His Orchestra on May 9, 1941. The song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1976, and the Record- ing Industry Association of American regis- tered it at number 58 on its list of 365 “Songs of the Century.” “Don’t Explain,” another collaboration be- tween Holiday and Herzog, emerged from an even seedier circumstance. Billie held a three-month residency at Monroe’s Uptown House in central Harlem in 1937. The night- club owner, Clark Monroe, was an excep- tionally handsome man nicknamed “The Black Clark Gable.” His brother proved no less attractive. James (“Jimmy”) Monroe was a jazz trombonist, actor, and small-time hus- tler who was married to film star Nina Mae McKinney (“The Black Garbo”) from 1935 until 1938. Jimmy and Billie later became ro- mantically involved and eloped on August 25, 1941. Jimmy’s access to illicit drugs and alco- hol only accelerated Billie’s downward spiral into addiction. He also never lost his eye for beautiful women. Billie’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues , recounts one of Jimmy’s dalli- ances: “One night he came in with lipstick on his collar … I saw the lipstick. He saw I saw it and he started explaining and explaining. I could stand anything but that. … I cut him off, just like that. ‘Take a bath, man,’ I said, ‘don’t explain.’ ” Those final words haunted Holiday until she turned them into music. She recorded “Don’t Explain” in Decca’s New York studio with Toots Camarata & His Or- chestra on November 8, 1944. “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do” was an old blues standard written in 1922 by Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins and first re- corded on October 19, 1922, by Anna Mey- ers with the Original Memphis Five. Over the past century, there have been at least 235 known recordings of this song. Billie Holiday recorded “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do” on August 17, 1949, with a studio big band. Dec- ca released that track as the B-side to “Baby Get Lost.” DEBBIE FRIEDMAN (1951–2011) Laugh at All My Dreams Jewish singer-songwriter Deborah Lynn (“Debbie”) Friedman crafted a captivating musical style influenced by the upper-Mid- western choral tradition, Bob Dylan-led folk music revival, and campfire songs at Olin- Sang-Ruby Union Institute in Minnesota, where she had moved from Utica, NY, at the age of 6. A landmark event in her career—and for the development of Reform liturgy—took place on May 26, 1972, when 21-year-old Friedman unveiled a new contemporary ser- vice, Sing Unto God , at Mount Zion Temple in Saint Paul, MN. “ Sing Unto God is a new ex- perience in worship that emphasizes through song the importance of community involve- ment in worship. The music carries a solid message in simple, easily understood form.” The guitar-playing song-leader, accompanied by bass, drums, keyboard, and members of the Highland Park (MN) Senior High Camer- ata, launched a liturgical revolution on that date, and it spread like wildfire. Friedman and Company recorded the service within a few weeks: the first pressing sold out at the Union Institute that summer, as the entire camp re- hearsed and presented Sing Unto God . Soon after, Friedman became artist-in-resi- dence at Chicago Sinai Congregation, intro- ducing her innovative form of participato- ry prayer and adding elements of jazz and dance into the Reform liturgy. Taking an apartment in Evanston, Friedman enrolled at Spertus College (now Institute) for for- mal studies of Jewish history, culture, and literature. Five years later, she became youth group leader at Congregation Beth Israel in Houston (1978–84) and served as cantorial soloist at the New Reform Congregation in Los Angeles (1984–87). Friedman subse- quently moved to New York City, where she co-led monthly healing services with Rabbi Michael Strassfeld on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, first at Congregation Ansche Chesed and later at the Jewish Community Center. “Laugh at All My Dreams” (1994), a song of forgiveness and assurance (“I still believe in you”), comes from this period of healing and consolation through music. In 2007, she joined the School of Sacred Music faculty of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Friedman relocated to California in 2010 to be nearer her family and to teach at HUC- JIR’s Los Angeles campus. Her health de- clined rapidly, and the revered musician died on January 9, 2011, of complications from pneumonia, at the age of 59. Eleven months Debbie Friedman later, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Insti- tute of Religion officially renamed its sacred music program the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music. Friedman left behind 23 al- bums and a priceless legacy for Reform litur- gy, not only through the irresistible songs and prayers that drew believers to the faith but also through her advocacy of gender-sensi- tive language, empowerment of women, and modest but infectious personality. In the liner notes to her CD Love at Last , pi- anist Lara Downes reflected on Friedman’s significance to her youthful faith formation: “The music of the progressive, pacifist, femi- nist, folk singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman was ubiquitous in American synagogues in the 1980s, and I remember singing this song of hers in our youth group at Temple Eman- uel in San Francisco. My Reform Jewish up- bringing echoed the message of this song to believe in the power of love, even despite the overwhelming evidence of hate that was still within living memory. My generation was taught with urgent insistence never to for- get the horrors of the Holocaust; to imagine, from the vantage point of our sunny Cali- fornia childhood, the utterly unimaginable darkness that had stolen the lives of grand- parents and great-grandparents, that had sev- ered our ties to ‘the old country’ and shorn so many branches from our family trees. Some of my earliest musical mentors, including my teacher Adolph Baller, were Holocaust survivors; they taught me that music can be your lifeline, the only thing you take with you when you flee in the nights, when your world turns upside down, when everything else is lost—your inextinguishable glimmer of light and love.” MISSY MAZZOLI ( b.1980) A Map of Laughter Missy Mazzoli has traveled a long, adven- turous road from her rural hometown of Lansdale, PA, to the world’s concert, oper- atic, and virtual stages. She received an un- dergraduate degree from Boston University, completed graduate studies in composition at the Yale School of Music, and polished her craft at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. Her compositional mentors have included Louis Andriessen, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, and David Lang. Work- ing in her New York apartment studio ever since, Mazzoli has pushed nearly every imaginable boundary that has restrained and limited music. National Public Radio dubbed her “The 21st Century’s Gatecrasher of New Classical Music.” Her compositions touch on numerous media and have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by artists such as Roomful of Teeth, NOW Ensemble, violist Nadia Sirota, and violinists Jennifer Koh and Joshua Bell. Pianist Shai Wosner commissioned and re- corded A Map of Laughter (2015), a RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 35