The Private Canon: "One Never Knows, Does One?"

This post is part of a series; for an explanation go here.

Decades ago I stumbled on an embarrassment of riches with a used-record-store find called Columbia Jazz Masterpieces Sampler Volume VI, including Ellington's "C Jam Blues," Davis/Coltrane's "Two Bass Hit," Armstrong's "Cornet Chop Suey," Stan Getz's "Ligia." It was this record that introduced me to the joys of the Boswell Sisters (with the unjustly obscure "Old Yazoo"), and, while it was by no means my first exposure to the interpretive genius of Billie Holiday, it was this record that led me to one of my favorite deep cuts of hers—not one you see on many "best of" lists, thus all the dearer to me.

I partly understand why it's overlooked: "One Never Knows, Does One?" is hardly the stuff standards are made of. A coy Mack Gordon/Harry Revel number from a 1936 Shirley Temple vehicle called The Stowaway, it was first sung by Alice Faye, and while it has some nice turns, it doesn't exactly cry out to be heard again:

The most ear-catching moment, lyrically and harmonically, is that odd addendum, "Does one?" Probably inspired by a Fats Waller catchphrase, but cleaned up from "do one" to "does one" for a kind of half-slang/half-archaic phrase that's neither fish nor fowl, its ungainly gait is matched by a frowny Eb-minor chord that in the Faye rendition goes like this:

Billie, on the other hand, doesn't bother to soften the dissonance, hanging on that D over the Eb-minor chord, for a minor/major seventh feel. As if maintain the balance sheet, she adds a note, a sixth interval, on "knows":

The bite of that chord, along with the rasp in her voice, somehow italicizes the thudding superfluity of the sentiment; you might almost call it sarcastic (the "Does one?" that closes the song even evokes a derisive "nyah nyah"). She does something similarly deflating later, sanding down the hopeful flourish that Faye sings coming out of the bridge...

...to the blunter:

Indeed the whole number has the kind of somnabulant, world-weary plod I associate with Billie's later recordings, less so her '30s period (though this is only a few years before "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child"). She takes a sweet trifle about the serendipity of romance and lets us know how bloody unlikely and equivocal it really is, and I'll always love her for that, I will.