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While her closest connection in the popular music of the '30s and '40s was the great jazz singer Billie Holiday, prolific songwriter Irene Higginbotham was also related by blood and marriage to several famous musicians from this genre. The songwriter was the niece of classic jazz trombonist J.C. Higginbotham. She was also the ex-wife of Teddy Wilson by the time he provided piano accompaniment for some of Holiday's most deeply romantic performances. In a not particularly rare example of jazz combining with soap opera, some of these were Higginbotham's ballad masterworks, haunting tales of hearts that albeit broken can still be syncopated. Chances are these songs would be on the list of any Holiday fan's favorite records, including "Some Other Spring" from 1939 and "Good Morning Heartache" from three years later. Higginbotham, in a period of several decades, certainly wrote enough songs to fill the pages of her own biographical volume. Despite the association with songs of lost love, he...