Signed recording agreement.

HOLIDAY, Billie.

Published by Bridgeport, Connecticut: Columbia Recording Corporation, 26 December1940

About this Item

From the collection of Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts: a highly desirable jazz signature, here in a context of musical and personal poignancy. In 1940 Columbia had revived the famous OKeh label for which Holiday, in just a few months time, would record "God Bless The Child", without doubt one of her best-loved songs, an intimate saudade for a life glimpsed, but never grasped. The co-signatory, Joe Glaser, her manager from 1935 until her death, seems to have been yet another of the manipulative and abusive men to whom Holiday was fatally drawn. Her 1947 heroin bust has been revealed as a product of Glaser's collusion with the FBI. Some have seen this as a last desperate attempt to get Holiday clean, others suggest that it was a trade-off with the Feds to protect Glaser's more important client Louis Armstrong, a notorious "viper", from closer scrutiny. It also meant the loss of her New York Cabaret Card, placing the singer further in her manager's thrall. On her death in 1959 at the age of 44, Glaser made it known that he would pay for her funeral. Later, he claimed the cost back from her estate. The agreement approves the dissolution of a prior agreement between the singer and the recording label in order to execute a new contract which had been signed on 23 December 1940, three days before this letter was written. Single page, octavo. Carbon-copy typescript, signed by Billie Holiday in blue ink at bottom right of the page; also signed by her manager Joe Glaser at bottom left. Punch-holes to top-edge together with a few short splits, no loss, creases from old mailing folds, light toning, but overall very good, the signature clear and unfaded. Seller Inventory # 171103

Bibliographic Details

Title: Signed recording agreement.

Publisher: Bridgeport, Connecticut: Columbia Recording Corporation, 26 December1940

Signed: Signed by Author(s)