Billie's Best

Billie Holiday | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 22, 1992)
• Original Release Date: September 22, 1992
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B0000046M1
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,895 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This selection is drawn from Billie Holiday's Verve recordings of the mid-1950s. It was a time when her voice was already showing some wear and tear, but the same experiences that tattered the voice brought it an unmatched expressiveness. Her voice possessed a unique presence, a sound that seems lit up by a resilient vitality. Producer Norman Granz set Holiday among the small jazz combos that suited her talents best, groups that included some of the finest soloists of her generation, such as trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison and saxophonists Benny Carter and Ben Webster. Granz also supplied ideal rhythm sections, with pianist Jimmy Rowles and guitarists Kenny Burrell and Barney Kessel making appearances here. There's more room to stretch out than was available on the early Columbia and Commodore recordings, and the results are relaxed and profound treatments of some great songs. --Stuart Broomer

Product Description

No description available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Rating:
Release Date: 0000-00-00
Media Type: Compact Disk

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is really her best! or maybe her second best, February 9, 2004

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billie's Best (Audio CD)

This is really the best of the great Verve recordings of the 1950s. I will jump out on a limb and say those Verve recordings were surpassed only by the 1930s Columbia/Brunswick sides produced by John Hammond. They work best because like the Hammond sides, Billie here is produced solely as a JAZZ SINGER TOGETHER WITH JAZZ ARTISTS OF HER CALIBER AND OF HER GENERATION, not as a chanteuse, not as a pop singer, and not as an R & B singer, all detours that people who recorded her before and after these sides put her on.

The problem is that a lot of people tend to see Billie Holiday's artistry as a tragedy in progress rather than the work of a great singer and musician who did have a few off microphone problems. Billie Holiday died six or 7 years after the last one of these sides. The magic of these recordings has to do with good production, and good art coming out of that and not the question of the decomposition of her personal life.

Grantz's predecessors and successor were to attempt to take Billie in a more pop direction which just didn't work. That may have had to do with her "health" problems, but it also probably had to do with the crisis of swing-Jazz at the time. I mean in the mid 1950s you had Duke Ellington playing in third-rate amusement parks until Paul Gonzalves turned everything around at Newport. The Grantz verve sides were Billie's music, all the other stuff, the attempts at being like Dinah Washington, the anticommunist songs, the attempts to take her into jumb blues (Billie always detested being called a blues singer because she was not) and so forth were terrible.

In fact, her last efforts like Lady in Satin, remind one of some of the Louis Armstrong band recordings of the 1930s and early 1940s where the magic is the contrast between the swinging soloist and the utterly stiff band and stiffer arrangements.

Curiously, before and after her Verve years, the live recordings we have from her Carnegie Concert and Jazz at the Philharmonic and her singing on the Sound of Jazz have the same glow of Jazz. They resemble these sides more than the recordings she was making.

Billie's real strength is as a Jazz musician, a contributor to the polyphony of Jazz. These are only part of a whole series of recordings that Verve did in these years. At one time they were all available on LP and Tape. I haven't looked around, but one hopes the whole thing is available.

All of these words about Billie needs to be supplemented by some great playing by Ben Webster, Sweets, and other musicians. Much is said about Billie and Prez's collaboration in the 1930s, but on these recordings Mr. Webster recorded as many sides with Billie and developed another darker synergy between the two of them that needs to be listened to. Don't get me wrong, I am a Lester Young fanatic: his framed picture is on my wall and he is the only musician I have ever bought a tee shirt of, LOL. But, the accompaniment and the solos the musicians take here are worth the price alone!

This is a forgotten gem that deserves to shine.

My rating for this is anyone with ears needs to own it!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a Beautiful Voice!, February 15, 2004

By 

bluehummingbird (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billie's Best (Audio CD)

This lady could sing the blues like no one else. What a beautiful voice! And I love her jazz style and the bands on this compilation of great hits of the 50's. The sound quality is excellent on this single remastered CD which "contains selections from the complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959," a box set of 10 CDs. This one is definitely a good buy. Some of my favorite songs on the album are "Comes Love", "Stars Fell On Alabama", "East Of The Sun", and "Speak Low". But this is only a small sample of some of Billie's Best, a box of gems from a treasure trove of talent.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Last Grasp at Greatness, December 6, 2000

By 

Peter (East of Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Billie's Best (Audio CD)

It's hard to choose 16 songs and call it "Billie's Best", but this set gives an idea of Billie Holiday's great artistry during the last years of her life. Billie is heard throughout backed by a jazz combo or trio, with occasional (not often enough) saxophones by the likes of "Sweets" Edison and Benny Carter. Her sidemen are first rate and they provide maybe the last ounce of inspiration Billie needs during this difficult time in her life. Sadly, her voice is not what it once was, but some numbers come off better than others, and Verve chooses mostly those that she is comfortable with, some dating bak to her early days at Columbia in the 1930s that she remakes here. On a few numbers her voice is barely audible beyond a croak, but determination pulls her thru and she still manages to wring out many emotional performances here. Sound quality is very good.