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Billie Holiday ft Benny Carter & His All-Star Orchestra - St. Louis Blues (OKeh Records 1940)

2,150 views · Published 6 September 2017 · 3:05 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: RoundMidnightTV · 2017 · Music

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"Saint Louis Blues" is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style and published in September 1914. It remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. It was also one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. It has been performed by numerous musicians in various styles, including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet." The 1925 version sung by Bessie Smith, with Louis Armstrong on cornet, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Red Allen) was inducted in 2008.

Handy said he had been inspired by a chance meeting with a woman on the streets of St. Louis distraught over her husband's absence, who lamented, "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea", a key line of the song. Details of the story vary. Handy's autobiography recounts his hearing the tune in St. Louis in 1892: "It had numerous one-line verses and they would sing it all night."

The song was a massive and enduring success. At the time of his death in 1958, Handy was earning royalties of upwards of US $25,000 annually for the song (equivalent to about $200,000 in 2016). The original published sheet music is available online from the United States Library of Congress in a searchable database of African-American music from Brown University.

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

Billie's accompanied by Bill Coleman (trumpet); Benny Morton (trombone); Benny Carter (alto sax, clarinet); Georgie Auld (tenor sax); Sonny White (piano); Ulysses Livingston (guitar); Wilson Myers (bass); and Yank Porter (drums).  Recorded in New York City, October 15, 1940.  (OKeh Records)

I hate to see that ev’nin’ sun go down
I hate to see that ev’nin’ sun go down
'Cause my baby, he's done, lef dis town
Feelin’ tomorrow lak ah feel today
If I'm feeling tomorrow lak ah feel today
I'll pack my trunk make ma getaway

St. Louis woman wid her diamon’ rings
Pulls dat man roun’ by her apron strings
 ‘Twasn't for powder an’ her store bought hair
Da man I love wouldn't have gone nowhere, nowhere

I got de St. Louis Blues
Blue as ah can be
Dat man's got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea
Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me

(bridge)

I love my man lak a schoolboy loves his pie
Lak a Kentucky col’nel loves his mint and rye
I'll love my baby till the day ah die

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