United States

Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959 ) was born 100 years ago today, and so we honor one full century spent with the remarkable voice and unbelievable musical influence of the incomparable woman Lester Young dubbed “Lady Day.”

Billie’s voice was completely untrained, but her unique way of catching the rhythmic drive and intensity of articulation from the instrumentalists she worked with combined with her own distinctive soul-filled vocal quality made her an almost instant favorite among the most prominent jazz musicians in Harlem. Her uncanny ability to imitate the instruments, to make her voice be and do and sound exactly like the most accomplished instrumentalists of her day seemed to mesmerize crowds. Her musicality and superb ability to express the blues and make everyone in the room feel and know the truth in the texts she was singing also captured the audience’s attention.

Today we mark the 25th anniversary of the death of “the Divine One,” influential jazz singer Sarah Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990.) Her voice was truly magnificent, and her four octave range, impeccably controlled vibrato and uncanny sense of pitch led to Vaughan's New York Times obituary describing her as a "singer who brought an operatic splendor to her performances of popular standards and jazz."

For over thirty years, she has promoted the interests of the users of music libraries through publications, advocacy, and tireless work in many roles within the Music Library Association, among them Member-at-Large, Development Officer, Program Chair, President, recipient of the Special Achievement Award for Plan 2001, ALA Representative, Local Arrangements Co-Chair, and Editor of Notes. Within the International Association of Music Libraries she has been active in its professional branches and—as President of IAML’s US Branch—she was an early advocate for the merging of IAML and MLA. As the Vice President for Library and Information Resources at The Juilliard School, she has fostered the development of the Lila Acheson Wallace Library as a major performing arts research collection and has worked with her administration to secure the best possible facilities for the collection’s housing and use. Through her labor and leadership, she has enhanced the prestige of the profession of music librarianship and has come to embody the purposes of this Association.

The Music Library Association is pleased to announce that, for the first time, we will be video-recording and streaming a significant part of our Annual Meeting. We will be recording the largest room of the 84th Annual Meeting on February 26, 27, and 28 (Thursday through Saturday). The content will be streamed live and recorded for later availability.

The following is by Jordan, a.k.a. Pamina, and originally appeared on the blog Pamina's Opera House. Pamina took an article that was published in Fontes and used it to reflect on music libraries. It is reprinted here with kind permission.