This rare sheet music find stands out for featuring a photograph of Billie Holiday on the cover. It’s for the song “West End Blues” that is performed by Holiday and Louis Armstrong in the 1947 musical romance film New Orleans, starring Arturo de Córdova and Dorothy Patrick. In her only feature film appearance, Holiday plays a singing maid romantically involved with bandleader Louis Armstrong. The film features extensive playing of New Orleans-style Dixieland jazz: over twenty songs (or versions of songs) are featured in whole or part, including “West End Blues,” which Armstrong first made famous with his seminal recording in 1928.

This sheet music was published by Clarence Williams Music Publishing Co., one of a few Black-owned publishing companies in the United States at the time. Williams had written the lyrics for “West End Blues,” which was composed and first recorded on June 11, 1928 by Joe “King” Oliver.

Named for New Orleans’ West End, the song exploded in popularity when it was recorded on June 28, 1928 by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. Considered one of the most famous recordings in the history of jazz, Armstrong’s rendition laid the groundwork for jazz soloists to be considered true artists, the same as musicians in other styles of music.

Billie Holiday cited listening to “West End Blues” as her first experience with scat-singing. In her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, she wrote, “Sometimes the record would make me so sad, I’d cry up a storm. Other times, the same damn record would make me so happy.”