Montreal plays supporting role in The United States vs. Billie Holiday

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It’s no secret that, long before the rise of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Montreal was once a thriving jazz mecca. A safe haven during prohibition in the U.S., Montreal’s jazz clubs such as the legendary Rockhead’s Paradise kept things bopping from the 1920s through the ’50s.

Our city was known as the Harlem of the North. So it’s only fitting that Montreal sits in for New York and provides the backdrop for most of Lee Daniels’ buzzed about new film, The United States Vs. Billie Holiday.

Montrealers dot the cast and crew credits of the jazz legend’s latest bio-pic, shot here in the fall of 2019.

The film details Holiday’s struggles with drug abuse and her harassment at the hands of the U.S. government, which led a relentless campaign to prevent her from singing Strange Fruit, her chilling ballad about lynching in the American South.

Lead actress Andra Day delivers a mesmerizing performance as the iconic singer. Day just won the Golden Globe for her efforts, and is in good standing for an Oscar. At her side throughout the film, as part of Holiday’s backing band, is Montrealer Warren “Slim” Williams.

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Leader of ’80s funk-R&B act Tchukon, the North Carolina-born and raised musician plays Holiday’s pianist Bobby Tucker, and also served as the on-set band leader.

When he heard they were auditioning for the movie, Williams — whose film credits include a Gemini win with Oscar Peterson for the 1992 documentary In the Key of Oscar — put together a portfolio package and, after a successful first audition, found himself sitting down with Daniels for a followup.

“We just chopped it up, and starting talking,” Williams said. “He asked, ‘How old are you?’ At that time, I was 63. I had a hat on and he said, ‘You have hair under there?’ I said, ‘I’m sure I can grow something up here.’ We started laughing. He said he needed an on-set musical director, ‘Have you done that before?’ I said yeah, and told him I had taught Rosario Dawson to play bass guitar for Josie and the Pussycats. He laughed.”

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Williams is flanked by fellow Montreal musicians Jono Townsend on guitar, and Morgan Moore on bass. While you don’t actually hear them playing, in the movie, Daniels wanted to ensure that everyone looked like they knew what they were doing.

“I called about 15 rehearsals, away from the set,” Williams said. “We rehearsed four or five hours per day to learn all the songs. I hired a sax player to teach Tyler (James Williams, the American actor) so he looked like he was playing sax, and got a drummer from Concordia to help (actor Ray Shell).”

Williams has a few lines in the movie, including during a scene after Holiday is released from prison, where she works on a song at home with Tucker as her sax player, while working out. As these things go, a bigger scene in which Tucker helps break up a fight between Holiday and an arrogant white man ended up on the cutting room floor.

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Among the many Montreal actors who pop up in the film are Dusan Dukic as Holiday’s manager Joe Glaser, Kwasi Songui as a fan who stops by her dressing room with his wife, Joe Cobden as a TV host, and Sylvia Stewart as “Stink-Eye Inmate.”

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday is out now on VOD.

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