God Bless the Child (with Eddie Heywood & His Orchestra) - Take 2

This was written by Billie Holiday with her frequent collaborator Arthur Herzog in 1941. She wrote the lyrics after an argument with her mother, Sadie, over financial matters. Just a few years earlier, Holiday had loaned her mom thousands of dollars to open a restaurant and when she found herself in need of cash, Sadie declined to lend her any money. In her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues, Holiday recalled how, in the course of the row, she uttered the old proverb, "God bless the child that got his own." The singer's anger over the incident led her to turn that line into a starting point for this song.

The song was recorded on May 9, 1941, in New York. Holiday was joined by Eddie Heywood and his Orchestra, who had backed her on several other occasions.

Holiday opens the song with her own interpretation of a biblical observation: "Them whose got shall get, them whose not shall lose. So the Bible says, but it still is news." The verse that Lady Day was referring to is thought to be: "For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him." (Matthew 25:29).