A Tale of Two Irenes

Details about the lives of Irene Higginbotham and Irene Kitchings are hard to come by. Although both women made large contributions to pop music in the 1930s, their status as black female songwriters made them almost invisible in a landscape that was dominated by white men. It’s no wonder, then, that somewhere along the line, several writers and historians began to confuse Kitchings and Higginbotham. Some even conflate them into one person.

Irene Higginbotham was the daughter of renowned and respected jazz trombonist J. C. Higginbotham. She studied music at Morehouse College, and at 26 she joined American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Because of her registry with ASCAP, we know that she published over 50 songs, but she is widely believed to have published many more under the pseudonym “Glynn Gibson.” The most famous contribution published under her real name is “Good Morning Heartache,” which was first recorded by Billie Holiday.

"Good Morning Heartache," sung by Billie Holiday in 1946:

Irene Kitchings was a women with several well-known names. Born Irene Armstrong, she performed as "Irene Armstrong Edie" in the Chicago jazz scene during the '20s, and married pianist Teddy Wilson in the early '30s. She abandoned her solo career in Chicago to move with Wilson to New York and is credited with helping rapidly develop Wilson’s piano playing. However, a few years later, amid the success of playing under Benny Goodman, Wilson left Irene for another woman. Irene was devastated, but she took the advice of her friend and influential musician Benny Carter to turn her pain into art. Billie Holiday, who befriended Irene during her marriage to Wilson, introduced her to lyricist Arthur Herzog Jr. Together, they wrote “Some Other Spring,” which would become a staple of Billie Holiday's repertoire. The next few years saw several notable song collaborations between Irene and Herzog, including “I’m Pulling Through,” which Holiday also recorded. After a few years, Wilson returned to Cleveland due to illness, and it was there that she married a man named Elden Kitchings. Her career slowed after leaving New York and she died in 1975.

"Some Other Spring" sung by Billie Holiday in 1939:

The most complex mistake around the two identities occurred in the liner notes of Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings, released in 1991. The author noted that “Good Morning Heartache” and “No Good Man” were “stunning marriages of poetry and melody written expressly for Billie by her dear friend Irene Higginbotham, the former wife of Teddy Wilson, whose song 'Some Other Spring' had been recorded by Billie in 1939.”  Higginbotham and Kitching’s identities have also been conflated in two biographies written about Holiday. The belief was that Irene Wilson had written “Good Morning Heartache” as a sequel to “Some Other Spring” and that Irene Wilson had become Irene Higgenbotham after her marriage with Teddy Wilson ended.

But in a 2006 audio documentary, David Johnson cracked the case wide open, piecing together the accounts of individuals who actually knew Higginbotham and historians who had documented bits and pieces of the life of Armstrong-Wilson-Kitchings. The conclusion was that it was Irene Higginbotham who wrote "Good Morning Heartache". Irene Armstrong Wilson Kitchings wrote "Some Other Spring," and while it is interesting that both songs debuted on recordings by Billie Holiday, they were not written by the same person. 

Historians are becoming more meticulous when mapping out the details of marginalized individuals careers. Although we could use more details about the lives of both Irenes, we can take pleasure in each of their contributions to the songbook.