On Friday, October 28, 2005 4:08 PM [PDT], Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not long after I posted some criticisms of John Hammond on my blog, > including his shabby treatment of Billie Holiday (the same thing > appeared > on Marxmail and PEN-L), a reader commented that I should look into > Frank Kofsky's "Black Music--White Business": > First: [...] The first and most important point to emphasize is that, as author Chris Albertson reveals in his biography of Bessie Smith, Hammond signed the singer to a series of contracts with Columbia Records that gave her a small fixed fee for each performance she recorded and no royalties. Such contracts were apparently standard practice with the executive, for Billie Holiday unequivocally stated in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues: "Later on John Hammond paired me up with Teddy Wilson and his band for another record session. This time I got thirty bucks for making half a dozen sides." What is more, when she protested about this arrangement, it was, according to her, a Columbia executive named Bernie Hanighen -- and not John Hammond -- "who really went to bat for me" and "almost lost his job at Columbia fighting for me." Subsequently, Holiday reiterated that although she "made over two hundred sides between 1933 and 1944" for John Hammond at Columbia, she didn't "get a cent of royalties on any of them." "The only royalties I get," she explained, "are on my records made after I signed with Decca." [...] So? It was industry standard... Sun Records, Chess, Motown, ALL Reggae, early 60s white R&B... Jimi Hendrix never received ONE PENNY for "Are You Experienced", thanks to Yameta Productions, an offshore(Bahamas) company, before his move to the Polydor label. Jimi was one of the last to sign his $ rights away contractually, although the A&R people still exert major control over the material that appears on albums, the production quality (distictive quality cf, the "Spector Sound"), ordering of songs ON the album, and the musician's touring arrangements, budget et al. As Adbusters says... "The Product Is YOU", and the music industry is the posterchild for that product/market. Let's get something straight... Music (and all "art" is) about more than $$$, much more, although a musician does need to eat, have a place to live (when they aren't on the road), buy strings, reeds, skins, pay the bills... beyond that, it's all "gravy" if you want to stay "groovy". For the Big Bucks... an MBA from certain institutions of higher education is much more a sure thing than seeking fame and fortune with your artistic talent and personality. Billie Holiday wasn't looking to get rich, everyone else around her was. [...] Given Hammond's expectations of deference as his due, a falling-out between the two was near-inevitable. The inevitable in fact occurred in 1938. Without providing all the pertinent details, Hammond recounts in his autobiography how he turned on Billie Holiday when she committed the sin of displeasing him. Holiday, it seems, had hired as her manager a woman from a distinguished family I knew well. I was concerned that she and her family might be hurt by unsavory gossip, or even blackmailed by the gangsters and dope pushers Billie knew. "It was one of the few times in my life when I felt compelled to interfere in a personal relationship which was none of my business. I told the manager's family what I knew and what I feared. Soon afterward the manager and Billie broke up, and Billie never worked at Cafe Society again. I think she never forgave me for what she suspected was my part in the breakup. . . ." [...] Ya gotta tell me... What did ANY of these people who make money writing books about black jazz culture (a pittance, no doubt) and slamming John Hammond do for her when the FBI and other provocateurs were attending her shows and hollering... "You sure you don't need that fix, Billie?" (from a BBC Special). ...while she was performing, because she recorded and featured in performance Abel Meeropol's anti-lynching poem-song, Strange Fruit. Hammond may have been right about her manager/friend... There's absolutely nothing here to indicate otherwise. Junkies attract junkies, you know? It sounds like he was worried about her reputation, career, and future... that was his job. Show me his self interest @ Billie Holiday's expense, or I just write it off as a slanderous hack job. [I'm waiting... thumbs twiddling....] The music industry is an ugly business with many people working in it that never passed the mental age of 5 (musicians & "suits") as far as ego/self esteem issues are concerned. No matter how successful, you don't need to be a saint, or a brain surgeon... or even talented! It's the industry that opportunism built, and a black female junkie had NO chance (still won't), although the psychology of a drug user bears a remarkable resemblance to the typical A&R "suit" (extreme single-minded focus, opportunist). In case you are wondering, I'm credentialed with 25 years of professional sound reinforcement experience. Lot's of Jamaican Reggae, Folk, Alternative, Jazz... 15 years of remote broadcasts & recording at the Monterey Jazz Festival for a local community radio station in the Bay Area. I've seen the worst & the best, and the latter are few and far between. FWIW, they're usually independents who don't care about the $$$. Leigh www.leighm.net Have you seen my newsfeeds?: http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com/ Got RSS?: http://www.furl.net/members/leighm/rss.xml
