The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve, 1945-1959 [Box set]

Wynton Kelly, Tony Scott, Jo Jones, Billie Holiday, Lester Young | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 10
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B0000046P3
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,269 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

That's right: Ten CDs with everything Billie Holiday recorded on Verve Records between 1945 and her death in 1959--not only the songs, but concert introductions, some of the rehearsals, and between-take studio chatter, too. All of which makes for a definitive portrait of Lady Day in her final years. For a long time these recordings were disparaged because it was said her voice was no longer fine and mellow, "ravaged" by hard living, jail time, booze, and drugs. And there's no question that her later tone is darker, more brittle and unstable than it had been in the '30s--but somehow I find myself listening to this music more often than those Brunswick/Columbia or Decca sides, anyway. Like Frank Sinatra, who so often paid tribute to her influence, Holiday's artistry was never based on virtuosity; it was about interpretation, bringing out the emotions in a song and giving a personal reading. She never stopped doing that, and for all the "strange fruit" you'll find in this collection, it's a gold mine. --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Music, Bad Layout, November 24, 2005

By 

James Morris (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve, 1945-1959 (Audio CD)

My Five Star rating is for the music.

I am a long time Billie Holiday fan and love all of her music; it's taken many years, but I am confident that I have acquired virtually everything she ever recorded. Although I enjoy every period of her musical development, I am particularly fond of the tracks she recorded for Norman Granz on the Verve label in the 1950's. Naturally, I was thrilled when this box set was announced.

While I am grateful to have so complete a box set as Verve has issued here, I have severe problems with the way the material is presented. It's nice that they have released virtually everything in the Verve vaults, but in so doing they have included live performances, alternate takes, false starts, and even some rehearsals. That would have been fine with me, if they hadn't decided to place everything in strictly chronological order. We therefore get Lady Day's great studio sessions interspaced with live concert performances, chatter, rehearsals and incomplete takes, and the total effect makes for very poor continuity. It also makes the boxed set, on the whole, very difficult to enjoy.

A few of the live concert performances have never been released before, and I was thrilled to hear some "new" Billie Holiday. But the audio quality and Billie's performance varies greatly on the live material, and the result is very uneven. And the inclusion of the rehearsal material is questionable, even if you're a die-hard fan like me.

The 1955 rehearsal with Jimmie Rowles is particularly problematic. This session was released on an LP called Songs and Conversations shortly after Billie's death, and I was frankly surprised to find it included here. It consists of mostly drunken rambling conversation while Billie rehearses with her favorite and most sympathetic pianist. Some of the language is quite raunchy, although most of the discussion is hard to follow anyway, as the audio quality is particularly poor. The alternate studio takes are frequently annoying, especially when they include two or three false starts in a row, and the spoken intros by Norman Granz often included in the master takes are completely unnecessary. It would have worked so much better if they had simply separated the live concert material from the studio sessions and then saved the alternate takes, false starts and rehearsal material for the last couple of discs. It's a pity - I would love to be able to listen to all of Billie's wonderful 1950's studio sessions all the way through, without the distractions of the extra material. Happily, I see that Verve will release a new boxed set of just the studio masters in December 2005. Hopefully they will skip all the chatter (I don't need to hear Mr. Granz announce "All Or Nothing At All, take 5"). A great deal of expense and angst could have been avoided if the track layout for this set had simply been better thought out.

As for Billie's performances, there is not a bad moment in any of the studio recordings presented here, including the notorious three April 54 tracks that she later dismissed, complaining that the band was drunk. The musicians are all first rate throughout these sessions, and present her with the sympathetic backing she deserved and worked best with.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Gardenia, May 17, 2000

By 

Joshua (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve, 1945-1959 (Audio CD)

...Holiday's brilliance, in spite of and in synch with the circumstance of her life does something religious, transcends, translates and transforms everyday existence.

This box set is a great gift to those of us wishing to understand better our love for Lady. The insight into her musical journeys in the final years of her life is fascinating. Although many critics have contended that Holiday's genius lay, for the most part, in her earlier Columbia recordings I feel this box set nullifies that argument. Not because Holiday's Columbia recordings weren't brilliant, but because the Lady we here in her Verve Days is almost a different artist.

Here we have a Billie of resillience as we witness in the recordings of her 1954 Jazz Club USA performance on Dics 2 & 3. We have an artist choosing new (for her) material and revitalized while nearing the end of her life in the 1957 Norman Granz run sessions. We are given a look into the recording world of Holiday will rehearsal tapes from Artie Shapiro's home in 1955. These are particularly interesting as we are given a chance to hear her in both the process of crafting each song. A step from this to the 1955 August 25th recording session tapes allows into the reminiscient dialogue of Billie and her band while reshaping Holiday classics like "Strange Fruit".

My personal highlights hit in the Jazz Club USA jam session of "Billie's Blues", discussion in the '55 studio session over "Nice Work If You Can Get" where Holiday explains why she feels she can never sing a song the same twice. (This is erroneous in actuality - in some ways this being because of the limitations of her substance abuse, but we'll let her have it because we love her.) And finally the final Verve Recordings of Holiday for MGM in 1959 in the "Lady In Satin" tradition with Ellis. Although not as tightly emotionally moving as "Lady In Satin", a beautiful extension of the sentiment nonetheless.

The liner notes are extensive, informative and fascinating - could be a book themself, but by length so could this review. Special graces to Phil Schaap for his precise discography and session notes.

This is a whole lot of expensive, this box set. But it's worth it. It allows a brief insight into the studio of a genius, an extensive retrospective of one of the most important American artists EVER and a whole lot of joy, pain, beauty and magic all rolled into a tiny square box.

78 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid at all costs, January 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve, 1945-1959 (Audio CD)

This is one of the worst box sets ever released.

There is talking between virtually every track (on 7 or 8 of the 10 cds)(scores and scores of title and take numbers spoken, and respoken. The producer introducing tracks by title and making endlessly pointless studio remarks. (Of course the same uninteresting remark
each and every time you play the cd..)
Sometimes songs even stop after a single line is sung (or before). Then reslate, retitle and restart for
another 20 seconds.

Of course the (properly recorded) music itself is wonderful but it's impossible to fall into any kind of musical reverie
with the incessant interruptions (absolutely none of it worth hearing).
So if you like Billie Holiday for her *music* this isn't for you

In fact the box set is so utterly unplayable I rebought the music on individual cds so that I can actually listen to it.
I'm a big Billie fan, I already had all the music on vinyl before I bought the box set.
(Yes, even the very poor bootleg stuff that Verve bought to pad out the box set.)

Finally it's wildly overpriced, around 5/6 of the cd's are only for listening to once (and you might not even manage
that. Billie Holiday as a slurring rambling drunk is a big downer and
the record company might have shown her a little respect and kept the tapes in the vault.
Haven't they made enough off her yet? In the first place they only paid her a fee of $30-$100 per track for a buyout with
with no royalties ever.

In reality at least half the box set is actually unreleasable outtakes/rehearsal tapes - boxed up as full price cds.
The whole thing smacks of record company greed.

So there are only around 4 cds of real, properly recorded releasable master take music.
And these can be bought on 2 double cd sets (unfortunately only from Verve) without the talking between tracks.
Do yourself a favor and get these instead.

Oh yeah, and as if all this isn't enough bad news, they've jammed different sessions on to the same cd - so you get a handful of
prime Billie tracks followed by 40 minutes of amateur home recorded rehearsal talking on the same cd.
So what emerges is that there is only (I think) one single cd which is prime quality all the way through.
(Except for the stopping, retakes and talking between the takes which it also has..)

So get any other Billie Holiday box set than this - but get one!

Verve should be ashamed of themselves for ruining an incredible archive like this.
And making me feel so ripped off that I had to go to the trouble of writing this.
Thanks Amazon for the cheap therapy.