Free Jazz Standard Sheet Music Downloads

"Good Morning Heartache" is a jazz and blues ballad written by Irene Higginbotham (music), Ervin Drake (lyrics), and Dan Fisher, first recorded by Billie Holiday on January 22, 1946, for Decca Records. Drake wrote the lyrics from personal experience—when he heard Higginbotham's haunting melody while nursing a broken heart, the words came to him in about twenty minutes.

The song personifies heartache as an unwelcome yet grimly familiar companion that greets the narrator each morning. Its bluesy melody moves between minor and major tonalities, capturing the complex emotional landscape of lingering grief. Holiday's intimate, conversational vocal delivery—her signature phrasing and subtle vibrato—transformed this torch song into one of her most deeply personal performances. Higginbotham, the niece of jazz trombonist J.C. Higginbotham, was among the few African American women to succeed in the male-dominated songwriting industry of the era, and this composition stands as her most celebrated work.

Holiday's original 1946 recording remains definitive, and her 1955 re-recording with the Tony Scott group offers a more intimate small-combo setting. Diana Ross revived the song in 1972 for the biographical film Lady Sings the Blues, reaching the top 20 on the R&B chart and introducing the composition to a new generation.