Billie Holiday with Artie Shaw & Orchestra—”Any Old Time”
When Artie Shaw waxed Cole Porter’s “Begin The Beguine” for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label in New York City, on July 24, 1938, the coupling on the Shaw record was “Any Old Time” for which Shaw wrote both the music and the words. It was sung by Billie Holiday, the second black female singer to be featured in an all white orchestra.
Artie Shaw and his Orchestra: John Best, Chuck Peterson, Claude Bowen-trumpet; George Arus, Ted Vesely, Harry Rogers-trombone; Artie Shaw-clarinet; Tony Pastor and Hank Freeman-tenor saxophone/clarinet; Les Robinson and Ronny Perry-alto saxophone/clarinet; Les Burness-piano; Al Avola-guitar; Sid Weiss-standing bass; Cliff Leeman-drums; Billie Holiday-vocals. The tenor solo is played by Tony Pastor.
“Any Old Time” is the only record Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw made together. As soon as the record appeared, RCA Victor immediately got into conflict with the American Record Company, with whom Billie was under contract, and the Bluebirds had to be taken out of circulation. The following year Artie Shaw recorded his composition again with Helen Forrest as the vocalist.
Ironically, 22-year old Billie was sometimes considered to light skinned while working with the Basie band and had to be blackened up. After leaving Basie on Thursday, March 3, 1938, and joining Shaw the following week, her skin color provided trouble again. Now she was too black to share the restrooms, enter the hotels through the same door or sit on the same stage. But Artie and the band would have not of that and stood by Billie, who later agreed that “Most of the cats in the band were wonderful to me.”
After a Wednesday try-out with Shaw’s all-white aggregation at the Moon Harvest Ball in Madison Square Garden on March 9, Shaw and Holiday began a three-month engagement at the Roseland-State Ballroom in Boston, playing there on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and doing several broadcasts on WABC.
During 1938 they also played in other spots in Massachusetts as well as in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, West Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Washington and Missouri. With Shaw, Billie would be earning $65 a week, five dollars less than with Count Basie.
In October Billie told Shaw she would leave the band, which she did on the last Saturday of their final joint residency, at the Lincoln Hotel in New York (October 26-December 10). All through November and December Shaw’s orchestra had remote broadcasts from the Lincoln, but Billie did not appear on any of them. According to singer Helen Forrest, who joined the Shaw outfit about two months before Billie left it, pressure was put on Artie not to use Billie by “a lot of people including his manager, booking agents and producers. He used her less and less as time went on. He had it in his mind to do right by her, but his skull was caving in from the pressure.”
Billie Holiday describes her eight months with Artie Shaw in Chapter Eight of her biography “Lady Sings the Blues” which I recommend for your reading.
