Thursday, March 8, 2012

International Women's Day


I love Billie. I love her voice, I loved reading her words, I love all of her. So it really confuses me when I see this album, with a picture of a woman from the 50s giving the impression that this is Billie. She looks like I've never seen Billie before! Not strange, because this isn't Billie. This is a woman named Lorraine Glover. It looks like she played the trumpet, but she's holding her husband's trumpet here. He was a musician.

Why is this picture the cover of a Billie Holiday album? Why wasn't Billie herself good enough?
Picture this: An album with the best of Frank Sinatras Original recordings, but on the cover, we have a picture of Doris Day's smiling husband with no further explanation. Perhaps he's holding her bra or something else belonging to her, not himself.

Why was Billie not good enough?