The United States Vs. Billie Holiday: Music From The Motion Picture (Warner Records)
Andra Day
Released March 2021
Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m8pbfhyPj9CC2xtFLC7Ua4hviuiLLMM0M
Spotify:
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About:
Capturing the right musical ambiance for Billie Holiday in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” was the product of a year-and-a-half of research and planning, even before shooting began in late 2019. “These songs don’t sound like a record from that time,” executive music producer Salaam Remi tells Variety. “They sound like you’re in the room at that time. I wanted them to sound like you were in the room, with these musicians in their 20s and 30s really jammin’. I wanted you to feel the musicians sweat as they’re playing.”
Remi, who has produced records for Amy Winehouse, Nas, Fugees and Fergie, was brought on board to produce the Billie Holiday songs that Andra Day sings throughout the film. His movie credits include “Rush Hour 3” and “Sex and the City 2.” The Holiday classics showcased in Lee Daniels’ film include “All of Me,” “Strange Fruit,” “Solitude,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Lover Man” and “God Bless the Child.” “Lee was all over the music,” Remi adds. “He had different songs for different scenes; it was about how he was using the songs to tell the story.”
It fell to Remi not only to record Day’svocals but also to surround her with the right sound. “For me, it was an understanding of what the original arrangements were, and how they would have done them at that time, but also how they were playing out in the movie,” Remi says. “If she was at Cafe Society, it might have been a smaller group [of musicians], or at Carnegie Hall, a larger group.”
“We try to be as accurate as possible to the period,” says music supervisor Lynn Fainchtein, who’s no stranger to collaborating with Daniels; they worked together on “Precious” and “The Butler.” “But the layers of the music, how it was orchestrated, are more like the pop of the ’70s than the jazz of the ’40s or ’50s. It’s more of a soulful pop feeling.”
“Sometimes I was able to push the envelope,” Remi adds. “On a lot of Billie Holiday recordings, you can’t always hear [the detail]. There might have been one mic going straight to vinyl. I had to augment because I was recording digital at the highest possible bit rate.” Remi’s mandate was to re-create the Holiday sound but with modern-day tools and in the right dramatic context. But although he recorded all the Holiday numbers in his Miami studio in September 2019, prior to shooting, some songs were also done live on the set, notably the very political “Strange Fruit” that got the singer in so much trouble with the FBI.
Day was already singing very much in the Holiday style when she arrived at Remi’s studio. “She knew,” says Remi. “She had the vocal chops. She was nailing it from the beginning.” Adds Day of her process: “I found her voice through the music and through song, but I also found it through her laugh. I looked at her breath. Where does she breathe? Why does she breathe the way she does? Where is her voice sitting?” The actor punished her voice just as Holiday did. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette before in my life, but I adopted the habit of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol,” she says. “I wasn’t mimicking or impersonating it, but interpreting it.”
Track Listing:
1. All of Me (Gerald Marks / Seymour Simons) 03:35
2. Strange Fruit (Lewis Allan) 03:26
3. Tigress & Tweed (Andra Day / Raphael Saadiq) 03:11
4. The Devil & I Got Up to Dance a Slow Dance (Warren Felder / Jamie Hartman / Coleridge Tillman / Charlie Wilson) feat: Charlie Wilson 03:21
5. Solitude (Eddie DeLange / Duke Ellington / Irving Mills) 03:01
6. Break Your Fall (Warren Felder / Coleridge Tillman) 02:20
7. I Cried for You (Gus Arnheim / Arthur Freed / Abe Lyman) 02:40
8. Ain’t Nobody’s Business (Porter Grainger / Everett Robbins) 03:03
9. Them There Eyes (Maceo Pinkard / Doris Tauber / William Tracey) 02:49
10. Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday / Herbie Nichols) 03:15
11. Lover Man (Jimmy Davis / Roger “Ram” Ramirez / James Sherman) 03:00
12. Gimme a Pigfoot and Bottle of Beer (Wesley Wilson) 02:50
13. God Bless the Child (Billie Holiday / Arthur Herzog, Jr.) 02:27
Personnel:
Andra Day: vocals (1-3, 5-13)
Salaam Remi: bass (1, 5, 7, 8, 10-13), drums (1, 5, 7-13)
Vincent Henry: bass (9), clarinet (12, 13), guitar (1, 2, 5, 7-13), saxophone (1, 5, 7-9, 11-13)
Emilio Lopez: trumpet (1, 2, 5, 8-13), flugelhorn (5, 8, 10-12)
Alex Bugnon: piano (1, 2, 5, 10, 13)
Charlie Hunter: guitar (3)
Raphael Saadiq: bass (3), piano (3)
Khari Allen Lee: saxophone (3)
TFOX: drums (3)
Warren “Oak” Felder: keyboards (4, 6)
Charlie Wilson: vocals (4)
Sebastian Kole: vocals (4) James Poyser: piano (7-9, 11, 12)
Czech Film Orchestra (1, 2, 8, 10)
Recorded at Instrument Zoo, Miami, FL
Produced by Salaam Remi (1, 2, 5, 7 to 13), Raphael Saadiq & Andra Day (3) and Warren “E” Felder (4, 6)
Recorded by Hotae Alexander Jang (3), Ryan Evans (1, 2, 5, 7 to 13), Downtown Trevor Brown (4, 6), Warren “E” Felder (4, 6)
Mastered by Chris Gehringer (1, 2, 4 to 13) and Dave Kutch (3)
Mixed by Eric J. Dubowsky (4, 6), Hotae Alexander Jang (3), Jimmy Douglass (1, 2, 5, 7 to 13), Salaam Remi (1, 2, 5, 7 to 13)
Photography by Philippe Bosse Design: Stephen Walker
Review:
The wait for a true follow-up to Andra Day’s Grammy-nominated 2015 debut Cheers to the Fall continued well into 2021, mitigated — the more expectant might say aggravated — by an abundance of featured appearances, soundtrack recordings, and stray singles. It was extended by The United States vs. Billie Holiday, certainly not a typical side pursuit. Day at first rejected the offer to portray the titular pioneer, who revolutionized the art of singing during an extraordinarily troubled and tragically short life, as she felt she would be out of her depth, having never properly acted before. Day had chosen her stage name in honor of Holiday (nicknamed “Lady Day” by Lester Young), was open about her inspirations from the start, and had shown obvious big-screen potential, so an undertaking of this scale and specificity was only a matter of time. Day made the leap, and a shower of accolades had started by the time the film and soundtrack were given commercial release in February 2021. To the credit of Day and her partners, this 13-song set doesn’t chart a course of plain sailing. It isn’t merely a batch of attempted replications. Most imaginative is that a halting version of “Strange Fruit,” the horrific anti-lynching song Holiday turned into the most significant recording in American history, is followed by an original (“Tigress & Tweed”), a dusty hip-hop soul track of perseverance that references what precedes it. Day made that new song with Cheers to the Fall collaborator Raphael Saadiq, while one with a foundation in Holiday’s slinking mode (“Break Your Fall”) was produced by Warren Felder. (Felder also handles the third original, fronted by Charlie Wilson and Sebastian Kole.) “Strange Fruit” and the other inclusions that Holiday either originated or popularized — a balanced mix of ballads and swing — are produced with expected flair by Salaam Remi. Day evokes Holiday while putting enough of her own creativity and life experience into it to never sound like she’s shooting for flawless reenactment. It’s a feat of creativity and reverence.
Andy Kellman (AllMusic)