Billie Holiday's first hit song, "Riffin' the Scotch", is released - November 11th, 1933

On this day in 1933, at age 18, jazz legend Billie Holiday released her first hit song, “Riffin’ the Scotch”.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that shines a light on the high and
low notes of history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're

(00:21):
celebrating the unique style and soulful voice of the incomparable
Lady Day. The day was November eleven three. At age eighteen,
jazz legend Billie Holiday released her first hit song, Riffin

(00:45):
on the Scotch, How Pan Right into the Fire, May
Got a no count wipe the A one one nave
anu one breaking by Ryan saying right into the five,

(01:07):
Right into the five. After being discovered in a nightclub
by a talent scout. For Columbia Records, Holiday recorded two
tracks with jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. Their first collaboration,
titled Your Mother's Son in Law, sold about three hundred copies,
but Riffing on the Scotch sold five thousand, making it

(01:31):
the first commercial success of Holiday's storied career. The song's
title and melody were the work of guitarists Dick McDonough,
who provided the song's Scotch in the form of a
vaguely Scottish sounding melody at the start of the song.

(01:55):
The lyrics, which have nothing to do with the title,
were written by Johnny Mercer. They describe a romance going
from bad to worse with the line I jumped out
of the frying pan and into the fire. Later in life,
after three troubled marriages, Holiday could likely relate better to
the song than when she recorded it in her teens.

(02:17):
But that's not to say her life had been easy
until then. Unfortunately, it was difficult from the start. The
singer was born on April seventh, nineteen fifteen, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Her unmarried teenage mother, Sadie Fagin, had moved there from
Baltimore after being kicked out of her parents house for

(02:39):
getting pregnant. Holiday's father was a traveling musician who played
guitar and banjo and some of the earliest jazz bands.
He abandoned the family shortly after Holiday was born, and
she was soon sent to live with Sadie's older half
sister in Baltimore, Maryland. Holiday later reflected on the poverty

(02:59):
of her youth, saying quote, I never had a chance
to play with dolls like other kids. I started working
when I was six years old in the fifth grade,
Holiday dropped out of school and took a job as
an errand girl for the madam of a local brothel.
If there was any upside to the gig, it's that
Holiday got to listen to records while she scrubbed the floors.

(03:23):
She loved music and singing from an early age, and
it's while working in the brothel that she first heard
the songs of famous black artists like Bessie Smith and
her future collaborator Louis Armstrong. As a teenager, Holiday moved
in with her mother in Harlem and began looking for
work in the local nightclubs. As she later recalled, quote,

(03:45):
one day in ninety two, we were so hungry we
could barely breathe. It was cold as all hell, and
I walked from a hundred and forty five to a
hundred and thirty third, going in every joint trying to
find work. Work. I stopped in the Log Cabin club
run by Jerry Preston and told him I was a dancer.

(04:06):
He said, to dance. I tried it, he said I stunk.
I told him I could sing. He said sing. Over
in the corner was an old guy playing the piano.
He struck traveling and I sang. The customers stopped drinking.
They turned around and watched the pianist swung into body
and soul. You should have seen those people. All of

(04:30):
them started crying. Preston came over, shook his head and said, kid,
you win. It's as a young singer in Harlem that
she first adopted the stage name Billie Holiday. Her birth
name was Eleanora Fagan. Despite her father's absence, the singer
used his surname Halliday before eventually changing it to Holiday,

(04:54):
just as he had done for his performances. As for Billy,
that was a tribute it to silent movie actress Billie Dove,
of whom the singer was a big fan. In a
funny twist, Billie Dove was itself a stage name. The
star's real name was Lillian Bony. Although she couldn't read

(05:14):
music and had no formal training, Billie Holiday quickly became
a fixture in Harlem's vibrant jazz scene. When she was seventeen,
Holiday landed her best gig yet when she was asked
to replace the singer Monette Moore at a popular club
called Covin's in early nineteen thirty three, she met a
record producer named John Hammond, no relation to the founder

(05:38):
of Jurassic Park. He had come to the club that
night hoping to hear Monette Moore perform. Instead, he heard
Billie Holiday, and he liked her sound even better. After
Billy had turned eighteen, more arranged for her to record
a couple tracks with Benny Goodman, a k a. The
King of Swing in November of that year. Holiday was

(06:01):
nervous during her first recording sessions, but you wouldn't be
able to tell from the finished product. Her voice sounds
very different than on her later records, but it still
has the intensity and improvisational quality that would become defining
features of her vocal style. Riffin on the Scotch was
a big hit for Benny Goodman and his orchestra and

(06:23):
for Billie Holiday. She was only paid thirty five dollars
for her contributions, but that early success jump started her career.
By five, she was recording hit after hit with the
likes of pianist Teddy Wilson and tenor sacks player Lester Young.
Recording Riffin on the Scotch was almost as big a

(06:45):
deal for John Hammond too. The producer later said of
working with Holiday, quote, her singing almost changed my music
tastes and my musical life because she was the first
girl singer I'd come across who actually like an improvising
jazz genius. Hammond was picking up on the fact that

(07:06):
Billie Holiday put her whole heart into every song she sang,
and in doing so, she turned each one into her own,
whether she was the first to sing it or not.
As for her being like an improvising jazz musician, that's
actually how Holiday saw it too. She once said, quote,
I do not think I'm singing. I feel like I

(07:28):
am playing a horn, and I try to improvise. What
comes out is what I feel. I hate straight singing.
I have to change a tune to my own way
of doing it. That is all I know. Clearly that
was enough. Billie Holiday went on to become one of
the most celebrated jazz and swing singers of all time.

(07:50):
The traumas of her early life never lost their hold
on her, and she was plagued by addiction and substance
abuse until her death in n when she was just
forty four years old. Her life was a series of
high and low notes successes, and tragedies. Her singing express

(08:10):
that range of human experience in emotion for all to hear,
and the world is richer for it. I'm Gabe Lousier
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep
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(08:34):
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can write to us at this Day at i heart
media dot com. Thanks as always to Chandler Mays for
producing the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another Day in History class.

(08:58):
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