Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Jazz legends get their due in Holiday, Young tribute
Almost from the time she could sing, Kelle Jolly has been compared to Billie Holiday. She was OK with the vocal comparisons, but she was bothered by Holiday’s troubled lifestyle.
“Growing up, I was always compared to Billie, and I didn’t like it because her story is so tragic,” she says. “Jail, drugs and bad relationships.”
That all b e ga n to change for Jolly in high school when her music teacher created the Billie Holiday Award for her as a graduating senior.
“They didn’t have a jazz vocalist in the music department before me,” she says.
That was almost 15 years ago, and Jolly has embraced comparisons to the trailblazing singer ever since. Now a resident of Knoxville, Jolly lived in Chattanooga a decade ago, teaching music here among other jobs. A few years ago, she and husband Will Boyd, a sax player, created a musical tribute to Holiday and her sometime collaborator, Lester Young.
They will perform their show tonight, Nov. 3, at Barking Legs Theater in the Legends of Jazz series at t he Dodds Avenue venue.
“At this age, (38) I can appreciate her struggles and her successes,” Jolly says.
She also appreciates that Holiday was a complete artist who wrote many of her songs. The show will feature some of Holiday’s best- known s ongs, s uch as “He’s Funny That Way,” “You’ve Changed,” “Don’t Explain” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.”
“Many of the songs we chose are popular, but [they are] also songs that are personal favorites,” Boyd says. “I learned long ago when I did a Stan Getz tribute that you have to play ‘Girl From Ipanema.’ People would get mad if we didn’t play their favorites.”
Jolly says that she and Boyd have rearranged the songs, so people won’t be hearing an imitation but a loving tribute.
“We’ve added some extra i nterpretation,” she says. “Maybe a Latin interpretation or different meters.”
Jolly makes her own clothes for t he stage, which she laughingly says might be interpreted as costumes.
“I like to wear gloves and hats and flowers, and I do sew my own dresses, and I do look at old record albums to see what kind of dresses [Billie] had on, but they are copies. But I do love them.”