Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Mary Coughlan, Hail Mary Records 2005.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Irish blues singer, Mary Coughlan, at her Canberra concert recently and was once again enthralled by the stories she told of her life and the magnificence of her vocal delivery.
One of the songs she sang was Billie Holiday’s, All Of Me, and when I spoke to Mary after the concert and told her how much I enjoyed her rendition of that classic she immediately produced this album.
The two women, Mary Coughlan and Billie Holiday, share more than a love of the blues and magnificent voices. They both have endured hardship in their lives that has shaped who they are and given authenticity to their vocal presentation.
Billie Holiday would often tell the story that it was a single patron at a New York café who changed the history of American music back in 1939 when she first sang Strange Fruit.
As she described it “There wasn’t even a patter of applause when it finished. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping.”
Strange fruit became one of Holiday’s signature songs and a few years ago Q Magazine named it as one of the 10 songs that actually changed the world.
It is also the first song of Billie’s that galvanised Mary, demanding that she perform it.
Mary Coughlan understands where Billie Holiday was coming from when she poured her heart and soul into her songs.
Like Billie she has also suffered from rejection, abuse, and addiction as she worked her way through the baggage of her childhood, from reform schools to mental institutions and on to international fame. All the while supported by drugs and alcohol.
It all comes out in her voice which is why she is the perfect person to produce a homage to possibly the greatest blues singer of all time.
If anybody was going to take on the role of Billie Holiday, and do her justice, it was going to be Mary Coughlan.
This double CD covers all of Billie Holiday’s greatest hits and they are performed with such passion and skill that it could be Billie you’re listening to, such is Mary Coughlan’s command of the material.
