I've actually never tried a pigfoot, pickled or otherwise. So maybe after a few bottles of beer I could give it a go. It's just that feet don't sound too appetizing right now. Beer pretty much always does, though.
What can I say about Billie? She was one of the alltime greats. Look it up. One of her main influences was Bessie Smith. Here's her version of one of Smith's standards:
And here is the original:
For today's songs, any bottle of beer will do.
One more One For My Baby:
You've already heard Frank's version (a few posts ago). Here's Billie's version. For those keeping score, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are my two favorite vocalists of the 20th Century. And they both sang my favorite drinking song. Life is good.
This torch that I've found must be drowned...
3 comments:
There are oddly few drinking songs in what's often called theGreat American Songbook, more of alcohol as metaphor, "You go to my head like a sip of sparkling Burgundy brew," and so on, often noting that the singer isn't drinking...I was thinking, if you like Billie that much, that would seem to be a selling point for my girl Carmen. After all, they used to spend their shared birthday drinking together (in addition to more intimate activities, it's said); Carmen pretty much started her professional career by selling Billie a song she wrote; Carmen recorded two Billie tribute albums, in addition to the various Billie songs scattered throughout her discography....but I just looked at an online song list, and couldn't find a single true drinking song. Oh, well...
...but maybe when you get to the end of the list you could play "Black Coffee" by Sarah Vaughan...
...and one more for the road:
Apologies if offense is given by the term I used for the repertoire singers like these worked with, the vocal portion of what jazz musicians call standards. It's called what it's called.
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