God Bless the Child

#54 / April 1 Podcast

Billie Holiday’s 1941 classic “God Bless the Child” comes with a legend.

The story goes that the great jazz singer’s mother, Sarah Julia Fagan, always wanted to run a restaurant, and she borrowed most of the money for it from Billie. Later on when Holiday needed some cash herself, she was surprised that her mother turned her down. Harsh words were exchanged, ending with Billie storming out after saying, “God bless the child that’s got his own!” She stayed angry for three weeks before the whole song fell into place in her mind.

Holiday rushed down to Greenwich Village and met up with Arthur Herzog, who picked it out on a piano as she sang it to him. The song went on to rank Number 3 on Billboard’s year-end list of top songs of 1941. Arthur, who died in 1983 at age 83, is best known for his work with Billie Holiday. Besides “God Bless the Child,” he wrote “Don’t Explain” in 1946 and “Somebody’s On My Mind” (1950) with her. Holiday died in 1959 at just 44, but Herzog lived to see their “God Bless the Child” inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1976.

Our Take on the Tune

This tune’s still relatively new for us, but last night we found the groove.

Just listen to Randy’s heartbeat of a bass line under Charlie’s vocals as we pass it on for sensuous soliloquies by Veezy, Danny and Sam, a flowing sweet and earnest conversation among friends. Click here to hear last night’s take on the tune.

More of the Latest

By the way, if you’d like to hear more of what we’ve been working on lately, tune in the 2022 Channel on Radio Floodango.

So far, there are a dozen tunes that have been featured on the weekly podcast since January, with another added each week. Keep tuning in and there should be 40 or 50 tunes on the channel by year’s end.