(Photo from Orlando Shakes)
Billie Holiday is a jazz legend. Few singers, past or present, come close to singing with a voice — built through passion and pain — like that which Holiday was known for. Her style, tone and vocal skills helped to create the sound of the blues we hear even today.
Holiday, who was nicknamed Lady Day by friend and music partner Lester Young, also had a tragic life. Born in 1915 when her mother was only 13, Holiday spent her short life surrounded by drugs, alcohol and abusive relationships. She died at the age of 44 with 70 cents in her bank account.
One of the music legend’s final performances before her death in 1959 is the setting for the musical “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” playing now at Orlando Shakes through March 5. The musical stars Tymisha Harris as the titular singer, who is performing at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, a rundown bar in Philadelphia, singing her hits and telling the stories of her life, as she becomes more and more intoxicated.
In the show, Holiday is accompanied on stage by Jimmy Powers (played by Garrick Vaughan) on piano. Reggie Pryor and Larry McRae round out the band, playing drums and bass, respectively.
“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” premiered in Atlanta in April 1986, making its way to Off Broadway later that year. After years of playing in theaters throughout the country, “Lady Day” made it to Broadway in 2014 with stage legend Audra McDonald playing the lead role and winning her record-breaking sixth Tony Award.
We chatted with Harris as she prepared to take the stage at Orlando Shakes as the legendary Holiday about what we can expect from her performance.
WATERMARK: Talk to me about the Billie Holiday we see in this show.
TYMISHA HARRIS: She’s still got the heroin in her system. She’s still on this drug and drinking alcohol, which has always been a constant throughout her life. And so, what we see here is kind of a culmination of all of that. She’s still got this zest for life, but, you know, but the man won’t let her sing; you know she’s a felon. She’s just trying to be in these little clubs, and she loves the small spaces, she loves that it’s kind of poetic, it’s darkly poetic that we are seeing her in this.
It’s like a pit of a plum, it’s sweet but it’s dark. The show is not up, it’s not bright. She’s letting people in on the joke after the jokes have already been said and done and felt and gone through. But I love the show. I love that we get to pick it apart, and you see the pain. She just wanted to be in love and give love, and at every turn, it was just like, “you’re not enough.”
And at the same time, the racial parts of this are hard. It’s hard. I think that might make some people uncomfortable. So that’s really heavy, but there are people who are still alive when she was going through this, when they took her license away for singing. When she was targeted for being a jazz singer, she’s targeted for that and they came after her hardcore. How do you live? How can you be who you are except when you’re on stage. I think that’s why we hear so much pain in her voice, and she sings things that mean so much to her. That stage is her only freedom.
Billie Holiday has a very distinct voice. Talk to me about how you found that voice in yourself.
When I was younger, there were certain artists that I would listen to, like Billie, and I would sing into my grandmother’s wall radiator. In the house where I grew up, we had a converter garage, but the wall radiator was right there, and I could sing into it and hear that echo, the voice, and find my pitch.
Billie Holiday is one of those who influenced me. As I was doing the research, she said she was influenced by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, not just in this play, but documented in her own words, she says Louis Armstrong was a huge influence on her. His big trumpet sound, and she wanted that feeling, she wanted that, and she mixed them up with some Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith brought the blues into the forefront, especially for women, and she blended the two of them to find that sound.
So, I feel like I’m still trying to find those isms of using my voice as an instrument and making it as big as I can. It’s a challenge, I’m not going to lie. It’s been a challenge but it’s been fun finding that because I don’t want to Imitate. I’m trying to imagine and immolate. I’m trying to bring in my take on it.
How does it feel for me? Without doing the heroin. As we’re doing the show, we’re figuring out how much control and instincts she used as she sang. The techniques that she’s able to pull off throughout her entire career — whether she was fresh at 14 or slowly ending at 44 — the voice quality changed, but the techniques were still there. The isms were still there. That was something that she wasn’t taught. It just came from her soul.
If she were alive today, I bet she’d be able to teach that now, and it would be The Holiday Technique. It would help people realize it, and I tend to find it if I dance more. The voice that she uses naturally as a non-dancer, I can find a little bit easier as a dancer. I’m still honing it but using the instrument that she used, I use it as a dancer, and now it’s just like stop dancing but use it.
You’re coming off of national headlines from playing Josephine Baker. What has it been like for you, going from playing one musical legend to another musical legend.
Besides being life-changing, it’s really epic. Josephine was a showman. She’s flashy. She had big costumes. She started as a dancer and all these things, and she was boom, bam, boom, bam, in it. Billie was very much not a dancer. She didn’t want to. She had a voice, she was going to use it and she was going to take it easy and do that.
It’s interesting that one of the hardest things is to see the racial aspect that kind of goes across the board for both of them. In order to get away from it, one moved across the sea, one stayed here and dug into it, got beat up, dug back out, you know, and I have to totally make sure I’m not Josephine. Josephine reached outward to give her love back, and Billie was just like, ‘I would love it. I would like to have it, but I’m going to sing from here because this is the only love that I have.’ They just kind of approach life and performances slightly differently for me. This is two extremes of up, up, up and then down, down, down, and I love to get to try that range and bring two women to the forefront.
It’s interesting because of the political climate now, with stripping away history in the schools. Shows like this are becoming history lessons for kids. Because Black history, LGBTQ history, the history of many marginalized groups are being stripped out of the school books. That’s got to be weighty going into shows like this.
We did a preview for some folks, and a lady at the ballet wanted me to join her outreach program just from singing one song. It was just a little moment here, and she was like, ‘I want you to come and help these kids because they don’t know, they don’t see themselves so they don’t know they can do it.’ No matter if it’s here or there, whatever level, we just got to make sure that people can see themselves so they can continue to change and grow within the world that we are given.
Sticking with the similarities between Billie and Josephine, both have a documented history of same-sex relationships. How did their sexuality, and being open and free with their sexuality, impact the type of entertainers they were.
I feel like both were just unapologetic about it. They were both living in the moment and understood it doesn’t matter who you love or who you are involved with. I don’t know how they did it. I’m not sure how they could just do that and be them.
Do you have a song, or a couple of songs, in “Lady Day” that are your favorites to sing?
I think it switches every night. I find something really cool in each song every night. I don’t think I have married any of them. I love singing the song that goes (Harris sings a portion of “Crazy He Calls Me”):
“I say I’ll move the mountains
And I’ll move the mountains
If he wants them out of the way
Crazy he calls me
Sure, I’m crazy
Crazy in love, I say”
We don’t sing the whole song, but Billie was trying to tell his dude, “I’ll do whatever I can for you, I’ll do everything. I will hold up the sky, I will move these mountains for you,” and he gives her heroin. When we sing “Strange Fruit,” she’s in a mad place. It’s a weird place for me to hold that song. I don’t want to hold any anger, but she is angry. The song carries anger in it. So that was a hard one for me.
As a Black woman, knowing how the Black community, and more specifically women of color, were treated in those times, where do you go in your head to play these women?
What goes through my head is “this wasn’t that far off.” If they’re coming to see this, know that this is within lifespan reach. I was born in 1975, the same year Josephine died. I feel this important connection and understanding like, I’m almost part of an old guard. It’s not our future because each one of you is going to be the old guard as we progress in this life. The importance of just doing the role and giving it my very all is everything. It’s important that I showcase inner strength, resilience and the potential for everyone to become a star. I want people to be able to see themselves in the roles no matter who they are so that, hopefully, it changes how they interact with the world.
You played Josephine Baker. You’re playing Billie Holiday. Who’s the third icon you want to play that completes your trilogy?
People talk about Whitney, and I’m like, “I’m not trying to sing Whitney all day.” Tina’s already got a thing going on. If I could play piano, I’d be Nina Simone. I don’t know, that’s yet to be determined. I love singing jazz, so I’m still looking. Maybe the third is one is my own story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tickets for “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” playing now at Orlando Shakes through March 5, are available now at OrlandoShakes.org.
