She Sang as She Spoke: Billie Holiday and Aspects of Speech Intonation and Diction

Abstract

The authors investigate the processes underlying Billie Holiday's oft-remarked “speech-like” singing. They identify sliding, or “kinetic,” pitch as a definitive characteristic of speech intonation, and discuss the relationship between kinetic pitch and the communication of emotion in spoken English. They also adduce a connection between certain spoken consonants and the pitches of the vowels which follow them. They analyze five Holiday recordings in terms of kinetic pitch and consonant/vowel “pull-down”: three versions of “Yesterdays” (J. Kern), one version of “All of Me” (G. Marks and S. Simons) and one recitation of the lyrics of “Yesterdays.” The authors' pitch transcriptions of all five performances, including the recitation, demonstrate a high incidence of kinetic pitch and of consonant/vowel pull-down. Parallels between the one recited and three sung versions of “Yesterdays” are heightened when kinetic pitches are specified and included in the analysis.