jazz_singer raze i think billie_holiday might be my favourite. if i had to choose. she didn't have ella's dexterity or sarah's range. what she did have was the ability to make whatever she sang sound like it was hers alone. she bent each scrap of song her bottomless muted trumpet of a voice skated across into blues-drenched autobiography. even when she was disintegrating, she didn't know how to give a dishonest performance, or how to be anyone other than who she was. she said once: "you can't even be like you once were yourself, let alone like somebody else. you can't copy anybody and end up with anything. if you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing. no two people on earth are alike. it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music." 240908 what's it to you? who go blather from