TOMORROW ON THE MORNING JOLT: BUDDY HOLLY, BILLIE HOLIDAY

Tomorrow morning on The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick on SiriusXM OutQ, I'll be talking about two incredible artists, Buddy Holly and Billie Holiday. They both were hugely influential, and are the subjects of new tribute albums.  I just wrote about Buddy Holly's, called Rave On Buddy Holly.  I hope this turns on new fans to his music.  I think he is timeless.  To me, he's an outsider  -- he's not a stud, jock or obvious cool guy like an Elvis, but he's not angst ridden over it. Not over-artsy, not over-angry.  He just doesn't fit in, doesn't care, and wants to have a great time.

By the way, if you're looking to get some music by Buddy himself, you should check out the 2 CD set Gold that Universal Music put out a few years ago, it has lots of the great songs.  You can also find the new digital album, Raving On, which includes Buddy's versions of all the songs on the tribute album. More tribute albums should be accompanied by collections of original versions of songs included on the tribute.

I wrote about the new Billie Holiday tribute a few days ago. It has some cool artists covering her songs, as well as the lovely Angela Bassett reading excerpts from Lady Sings The Blues, Billie's autobiography.  I've really been enjoying Shelby Lynne and Esperanza Spalding's contributions to that album.  I wish there were some bigger names - Billie Holiday should be celebrated by the hugest singers in the world, in my opinion.

Will anyone ever do Buddy songs better than Buddy or Billie songs better than Billie?  It's not likely. But I think it is cool that big name artists give credit to their influences, and keep their songbooks alive. I may be a bit of an optimist, but I do believe that these kind of tribute albums can turn on younger ears, minds and hearts to great artists, and if that happens, then tribute albums are worth doing.

A TRIBUTE TO BILLIE HOLIDAY

This album hasn't gotten too much hype - I actually just noticed A Tribute To Billie Holiday on iTunes last week. I'm not an expert on her or her era of music.  But I do have lots of her music, and I think her singing was so beautiful, while also being sad.  I think she's one of the greatest singers of all time.  Sinatra was supposedly influenced by her, and I know he sang a lot of the same songs.  I like Billie better.

I downloaded three of the songs.  Shelby Lynne, who is seriously underrated, does "You Changed," and it's excellent. I also checked out Esperanza Spalding's "I'll Look Around" which I love.  I was intrigued by the idea of Babyface singing "Strange Fruit."  While Babyface participated in the "Vote For Change" tour some years ago, he generally hasn't been the most political artist, so I thought this was a very unusual choice for him.  It's cool that he tried it, but I don't think it really works.  No disrespect, it was an interesting choice and a tough song to take on.

Those are the songs that I checked out, and two out of three ain't bad, as the man says.  Boz Scaggs and Deborah Cox are other singers on the album.  I haven't heard their songs yet.  I know a lot of people "hate" on tribute albums. I like the idea of them, and I often enjoy the final results.  My favorite thing about them is the idea that they may lead people to check out the original artist and if some new music fans get turned on to Lady Day because of this collection, then mission accomplished.