Radio

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 15:34

All Of me: The Betrayal of Billie Holiday Tuesday, Radio 2, 10:30pm Friday Night Is Music Night Friday, Radio 2, 7:30pm John Mayall's Blues Adventure Tuesday, Radio 4, 1:30pm

FIFTY YEARS after the death of jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, singer Neneh Cherry looks back at a bizarre yet momentous year in the icon's life in All Of Me: The Betrayal of Billie Holiday.

"Lady Day" was sentenced to a year in prison on drugs charges which would ultimately destroy her career; yet within a few days of her release she was topping the bill at Carnegie Hall. Cherry gains access to police archive material and talks to people who knew the woman who, according to one jazz chronicler, "changed the art of American pop vocals forever". The anniversary of Holiday's death, 17 July, is further marked by Friday Night Is Music Night, which broadcasts a tribute concert recorded at last year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

If Holiday had good reason to sing the blues, one of the most notable white artists on this side of the Atlantic to have made the genre their own is John Mayall, who emerged during the British blues explosion of the 1960s. In John Mayall's Blues Adventure he recounts these heady days, with contributions from other British artists who immersed themselves in the music, including former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, Animals lead singer Eric Burdon and trad jazzer Chris Barber.

They recall how, in Wyman's words, singles by black American bluesmen such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were "like gold dust", often brought into the UK by sailors. Bizarrely, the blues would then be shipped back across the pond and enthusiastically received back in its home country, re-fashioned by such British bands as the Yardbirds and Stones, and Mayall himself, who settled in the States.