Billie Holiday Recommendations

Its true that much of her best work is on Columbia (the Quintessential series), which has pretty lousy recording quality. Tis is partly due to the age of the material, but mostly to do with the crap job columbia did to its jazz library. The best sounding album is probably the Deca material (you can get a three disc collection), but it is mostly orchestral backing, and thus more "pop" than jazz.

Try Songs for Distingue Lovers. It is a little earlier than Lady in Satin, so her voice is not quite as shot, and she is backed by a true jazz band (Sweets Edison, Ben Webster,etc.)

Lady in Satin does take a while to sink in, but it is quite beautiful and hartbreaking, especially when you learn about Billie Holiday's difficult and often tragic life.

Have fun,
Steve

...whatever you have has a version of "Strange Fruit" on it.

Nuff said.

Jonathan

Try these. All Verve 50's material. Highly recommended.

Songs for Distingue Lovers
Body and Soul
Lady Sings the Blues
Stay With Me
Jazz at the Philharmonic

Paul

I cannot think of a major music figure who is more shoddily treated in the re-issue/re-master dpeatrment. Much of her work is now out of copyright so any old cretin can release a shoddy 'Bets of..'. Unfortunately many do! She is far and away my favourite female singer yet most of her best material is badly mastered as to render it unlistenable. By the way the best best of is 'The Legend of Billie Holiday'.

..article on Billie - especially about strange fruit - but a good read if you are a fan.

Jonathan

Best singer ever. I second the recommendation of The Legend of... as a superb collection. Also Billie's Best on Verve - later stuff recorded nicely. For a good quality wide ranging collection try Columbia's Lady Day the Very Best of.... And stick with Lady in Satin (try adjunctive therapy with malt whisky) - you'll grow to love it.
The cheapo collections are largely shite - especially those ones in black boxes that HMV knock out for next to nowt.

While on the subject, can anyone explain to me why on some of Billie's recordings you hear a very distant 'pre-echo' of certain lines before she actually sings them - this is very marked on I Love you Porgy on The Legend of.... There's probably a very simple explanation and it bugs me not knowing!
cheers Paul

The 'pre echo' is most likely print through on the master tape. When magnetic tape is stored, adjacent layers of recording tape on top of one another (on the reel) can interact and cause this effect, especially if the tape was stored poorly.

Martin