"God Bless the Child" (Billie Holiday)

So yesterday I was discussing Frank Sinatra and his sense of vocal phrasing.  One of Sinatra's biggest influences was none other than Billie Holiday (who was influenced by Louis Armstrong.  I had a music appreciation professor in college who showed us a flowchart once that basically had every bit of modern music--jazz, rock, R&B, etc--all leading directly back to Armstrong.)
Anyway, Holiday tends to be a polarizing performer for people.  She has the type of voice that you either can't live without or absolutely can't stand.  Granted, her voice isn't as velvety smooth as, say, Ella Fitzgerald's; it's rough around the edges and has this perpetual raspiness, which got even more pronounced toward the end of her life as heroin and booze took their toll.  Although I'm in the former camp of "fan," I'll admit that it's difficult to listen to Holiday for more than a few minutes at a time.  But that's not because of her voice; it's the brutal truth and intoxicating blues that pour out of her voice.
Especially on a track like "God Bless the Child," one of the few songs that Holiday helped pen.
She wrote the song in 1939 after an argument with her mother about borrowing money.  Her mother likely knew that Holiday needed cash for her drug habit and flatly turned her down.  According to Holiday's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, she told her mother, "God bless the child that's got his own."  The incident gnawed at Holiday, prompting her to write the lyrics, which intersperse Biblical references with secular ones as a commentary on how people treat one another, regardless of their supposed religiosity.  It's a pretty brutal lyric that implicitly concludes: you're on your own in this life.
The curious thing is, she could have delivered the song with real bitterness.  Instead, there's a very wounded, blue feeling there.  (It's there whether you listen to the original OKeh recording from 1941 or the oddly schmaltzy, choir-backed version from 1950 for Decca.)  And that's what makes Holiday difficult, yet so compelling, to listen to on all of her songs: she channeled every bit of disappointment, hurt, and glimmer of joy in her life into every word she sang.  It even gives her frothiest material a certain gravity.  
It's even more poignant here because she's singing her own words and not just interpreting someone else's lyrics.