Diana Ross - Lady Sings the Blues

Diana Ross' soundtrack record for Lady Sings the Blues is probably her most sophisticated recording. The first two sides of the double LP contain snatches of trenchant dialogue, guaranteed to bring back the drear of the film, interspersed with minute-length segments of song and Michel Legrand's always tawdry, kitsch-laden "love themes." The other two sides consist of Diana Ross emulating Billie Holiday's recordings of the middle and late Forties, and strangely enough it works. She does 11 tunes in a style that's an honest compromise between an accurate representation of Holiday's horn-like whiskey voice and the way Diana Ross would naturally do these songs in front of a band on her own sessions. Her "Fine and Mellow" is good enough to make me prefer it over any of the numerous versions by Holiday; not so with "Lover Man," "Strange Fruit," "God Bless the Child" and others which I thought had almost died with the woman with whom they were so closely identified. But Ross succeeds brilliantly in their revival on record. Her bell-clear voice plus Motown's recording techniques give a welcome new spirit to the old tunes, dusting them off and bringing them back into the light. She does "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer" with a light modern flair that is worlds away from the hoary touch that Holiday gave the tune, but which is still fun all the same. Comparatively ancient standards like "My Man" and especially "Good Morning Heartache" come off as among Ross' finest recordings, an irony that shouldn't be lost among old copies of "Baby Love" and "Where Did Our Love Go." What Diana Ross accomplishes here is to swing, no mean feat for most pop singers today. The big band she's got behind her does its share towards helping her out, peppered as it is with several California musicians who knew and worked with Holiday -- trumpeters Sweets Edison and Cat Anderson, Buddy Collette in the reed section and bassist Red Calender, with arrangements by Benny Golson, Oliver Nelson and Gil Askey. On a couple of the smaller group members she's accompanied by a piano player named Chester Lane who propels her along with little jabs and clues much the same way Teddy Wilson or Eddie Heywood prompted Holiday.

These two sides -- perhaps 30 minutes of music -- is all the good that has emerged from the entire Holiday revival. It puts Diana Ross back into prominence, where she obviously belongs, and in do so it brings us back to the music of Billie Holiday, which should never have needed any resuscitation in the first place.

The brilliant reviews Diana Ross has been receiving for her film portrayal of Billie Holiday are equally well deserved for her capturing of the Holiday sound in this superb soundtrack package. Standout performances include "You've Changed," "God Bless the Child," "My Man," and "Don't Explain." Will certainly prove a giant at the dealer level and the charts.

Billie Holiday is uncoverable, possibly the greatest singer of the 20th century, yet the fact is that Ross's versions -- which occupy only two sides of this soundtrack album -- are intensely listenable. That's the world I want, because it doesn't fit Holiday, who either seizes your full attention or disturbs you in the background. While copying Holiday's phrasing and intonation, Ross smooths them out, making the content easier to take without destroying it altogether. This may be a desecration and a deception, but it speaks to the condition of a ghetto child who's always had a talent for not suffering, for willing herself up and through. Not every singer turns into a junkie, after all. B+

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Her biggest album as a solo act, Diana Ross forever ended any association with The Supremes after this film. She not only got an Oscar nomination and more roles, she really did capture the spirit and flavor, if not the sound and timbre, of Billie Holiday's music; her performance was the film's only saving grace. * * *

Billie Holiday never had a Number One album, but she was nonetheless one of the greatest jazz vocalists of all time. Her career might have been even more storied had she lived longer -- she died of heart and liver disease exacerbated by years of drug abuse on July 15, 1959, at the age of 44.

Thirteen years later, Diana Ross faced one of the biggest challenges of her career. She had found success fronting the Supremes and as a solo artist, but could Ross also make good as Billie Holiday? Lady Sings the Blues was a film biography of Holiday presented by Motown founder Berry Gordy. Ross made her major film debut in the picture starring as Holiday opposite Billy Dee Williams, with Richard Pryor co-starring.

For Ross, singing Holiday's songs on Motown's first motion picture soundtrack was as challenging as portraying the singer in the film. "I had to prepare myself ahead of time," she says. "I had to know when I'm doing this song is Billie Holiday on drugs, going off drugs, or is she straight. I couldn't sing the songs in the normal way, because there were a lot of other things that needed to be considered."

While preparing for the part and filming the picture, Ross listened to nothing but Billie Holiday's music, but she wasn't trying to copy her singing style. "I had decided absolutely and completely not to try to sing like Billie Holiday, because I thought that would be wrong and I would be criticized if I tried to do that. The most important thing that I could do as an actress was to know what kind of pain she was going through at the time when she was singing those songs. I hoped to have the feeling there, rather than trying to sound like her, which I never did."

Despite Ross's popularity, there were those who were skeptical about her ability to play Holiday. "There were a lot of people who felt that I couldn't do it, because I didn't have enough pain in my life to sing jazz and blues and portray someone as extraordinary as Billie Holiday," she says.

Ross prepared for the role by interpreting Holiday's songs. "When she was singing 'You've Changed,' it didn't have to be directed at another person. She could have been thinking of herself. To me, the message was that she was looking at herself."

Although Ross received mixed reviews, she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. The only single released from the album, "Good Morning Heartache," stalled at number 34 in March, but by April, Lady Sings the Blues, which also includes score music by Michael LeGrand, fought its way to the top in its 20th week on the chart.