Live Review: Jose James: The Music Of Billie Holiday

"Billie Holiday got right to the hurt and the pain, there was no halfway with her," Jose James explains the reason behind his tribute for his 'musical mother', the great lady of jazz. "Whenever you hear phrasing done in a creative way, that's all because of her." He demonstrates this by opening with an extended cover of Good Morning, Heartache, with a simmering instrumental bridge and rapid, scat-like phrasing on the chorus. 

James is dressed elegantly in a crimson red suit, a shock of grey atop his hair — a nod to Lady Day's fondness of wearing large, bright flowers in her hair. His smooth, smoky baritone is like sipping fine malt whiskey on this freezing winter's day. Whether crooning numbers like the wanton Body And Soul, or marrying both Holiday and the spirit of Frank Sinatra, another of his heroes, in Fine And Mellow, James paints a vocal canvas of stirring depth and finely stroked nuances.  Although he has unfortunately dropped the tenor saxophone from his ensemble on this outing, pianist Takeshi Obayashi, bassist Solomon Dorsey and drummer Nate Smith still perform a top-notch accompaniment. 

"There is no one else like Billie Holiday. She was not formally trained yet she took everything before her — gospel, blues, Louis Armstrong — and put them all in the microphone.  She was the richest black female performer of her time, she was the Beyonce of her time! But she didn't rest and think she was fine being up there with people like Ella [Fitzgerald] and Nat [King Cole]. She looked around and said, 'I've got to sing about the sexism and racism and injustice to bring more attention to them.' She made me think of how I see myself as a black American, as a young man growing up, and the environment around me."

Recounting how his album Yesterday I Had The Blues originated, James adds, "I'm from the hip hop generation. I can't make these songs sound like it's still the 1950s." For added potency, he displays more of his instinctive deconstruction on God Bless The Child and What A Little Moonlight Can Do. Parsing and vocally riffing through the chorus as though scratching vinyls on a tabletop, he lends beauty to Holiday's famous practice of phrasing to conceal her limited vocal range.

Ending the night as only Holiday could, James delivers one of the truly spine-chilling highlights of the festival in his encore. Performing solo with a loop pedalboard, he sings Strange Fruit to his own ominous vocal harmonies and cold claps. It's akin to taking a long, resigned walk to the swinging noose in the haunting poplar trees. In this interpretation, James singularly encapsulates the horror and shame of America's history, and immediately brings to mind the treatment of Indigenous Australians on our own doorstep.