Love is like a faucet

Late Billie - 1957 - but even in frail health, the music is impeccable.  Her timing is as sweet as ever, and the band is fine & mellow. Look at Billie's reactions to those solos. She wrote the song, & recorded it in 1939.  You can hear a '39 recording here, & compare the two. They're both great, but this later one is sublime, about as raw & loose a version as you can get.  Hard living and musical genius make magic.

The '57 recording is from a TV special, The Sound of Jazz.  Here's the line up of the band - jazz royalty. The first six are listed in order of their solos.

Ben Webster – tenor saxophone
Lester Young – tenor saxophone
Vic Dickenson – trombone
Gerry Mulligan – baritone saxophone
Coleman Hawkins – tenor saxophone
Roy Eldridge – trumpet
Doc Cheatham – trumpet
Danny Barker – guitar
Milt Hinton – double bass
Mal Waldron – piano
Osie Johnson – drums

Happy birthday Billie. 

And from "The Day Lady Died", of course:

... and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing