Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1939


Fine and Mellow

Buy Fine and Mellow now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




"'Fine and Mellow'" is a jazz standard written by Billie Holiday,Jacobs, Dick & Harriet. 'Who Wrote That Song?,' Writers Digest Books (1994), page 70 - who first recorded it on April 20, 1939 on the Commodore label. It is a blues lamenting the bad treatment of a woman at the hands of "my man".

Notable performances and recordings



The song was famously performed by Billie Holiday in 1957 in a television special, 'The Sound of Jazz'.

The line-up included several jazz legends (the first six are listed in the order of their solos):

* Ben Webster tenor saxophone

* Lester Young tenor saxophone

* Vic Dickenson trombone

* Gerry Mulligan baritone saxophone

* Coleman Hawkins tenor saxophone

* Roy Eldridge trumpet

* Doc Cheatham trumpet

* Danny Barker guitar

* Milt Hinton double bass

* Mal Waldron piano

* Osie Johnson drums

It has been covered several times, sometimes with a change in lyrics or emphasis. For example, Lou Rawls switched the gender to a girlfriend and Eva Cassidy sang it in a defiant tone. Notable cover versions were sung by Nina Simone (on the 1959 'At Town Hall'), Dee Dee Bridgewater on her Billie Holiday tribute album, and Ella Fitzgerald on her eponymous album.

References




Buy Fine and Mellow now from Amazon

<-- Return to songs from 1939



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1000670000.