Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra "April In My Heart" (1938) LYRICS HERE

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There's snowflakes in the sky, and geese are
flying high, but there's April in my heart again!
The devil's got his due--love's holiday is through.
Love and I have made a happy start again!

Though leaves lie on the ground, the world just
turned around. It isn't fall at all--you see,
it's spring that I have found!

There's frost in Central Park. At five it's almost dark.
What's the difference when you've heard love's sweet
amen? There's snowflakes in the sky, and geese are
flying high, but there's April in my heart again!

Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra

"April In My Heart"

Billie Holiday, vocalist

Song by Hoagy Carmichael & Helen Meinardi

November 9, 1938

My rule of thumb for Billie Holiday records is the earlier, the better.

I adore the very earliest recordings ("Your Mother's Son-In-Law"
and "Riffin' The Scotch" from 1933), but I also see 1937-1938 as a high point.

The 1940s were uneven for Billie, and almost nothing by Billie from the 1950s holds my attention.

Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan (or Eleanor Holiday? Eleanora Fagan Gough? Elinore DeViese?) on April 7, 1915, in Baltimore (if we trust her autobiography--perhaps that is not wise) or Philadelphia (more likely--see her birth registration).

Eleanora Fagan--or Billie Holiday--was also known as "Lady Day" (a nickname given by Lester Young).

Some writers in books complain that Billie was forced to work with trite songs in her early days, but I no longer read such jazz commentators because of this and similar silly pronouncements.

The young Billie Holiday handles so-called "trite" songs in very interesting ways, and I prefer Billie's early "trite" material to her later recordings of songs by Cole Porter, Gershwin, and other composing giants.

From 1935 until a recording ban on August 1, 1942, Billie sang on around 150 sides (153? 158?) that were or became Columbia property. Original labels include Brunswick and Vocalion.

She made Commodore recordings, beginning on April 20, 1939.

She made Decca recordings, starting in October 1944--by this time Billie was more of a chanteuse or star of song or cabaret singer, less of a jazz singer. This was Billie as a "serious artist" (paradoxically, she was better as an artist when she wasn't trying so hard to be a serious artist--in the early days she merely sang pop songs, and she shined). That means on Decca discs she dominated records, the background musicians staying in the background.

From 1952 to 1957, she sang for Norman Granz's Verve label, but Billie's voice was a pale shadow of what it had been. Some of her late work is painful to hear.

Holiday died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959.




Billie Holiday "April In My Heart" Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra (1938) LYRICS HERE