Complete Verve Studio Master Takes [Box set, Original recording remastered]

Billie Holiday | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 13, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 6
• Format: Box set, Original recording remastered
• 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: Verve
• ASIN: B000BLI4NI
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,482 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The final decade of Billie Holiday's life was one in which the singer, in the clutches of drugs and poor taste in men, slowly withered away. Amid this tragedy, Lady Day carried on with a bittersweet dignity that seemed only to grow as the years passed. Her matchless phrasing added a profundity to a worn-out lyric and her dark, ragged timbre exuded a venerable wisdom, but at the same time she acquired a faded vulnerability not heard in her earlier years. Collecting her studio work between 1952 and 1959 (when she died), this six-CD/100-song set offers a long and loving look at the Holiday of this era. She's joined here by the crème of jazz with an orchestra session at the end. And whereas The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, 1945-1959 also offers uneven rehearsal tapes as well as live and radio performances, this collection zeroes in on prime studio cuts. This is for lovers of Lady Day, but not the obsessive. --Tad Hendrickson

Product Description

For many people, Billie Holiday (a.k.a. "Lady Day") wasn't just a jazz singer. She was the jazz singer, and remains so today. Thanks to her lifelong struggles with men, alcohol, and drug addiction, Holiday is often viewed as an archetypal example of the suffering artist--a singer who sang her life. And there's no denying the often heartrending quality of the classic recordings she made with musicians like Ben Webster, Oscar Peterson, and Harry "Sweets" Edison.

But Holiday's sophisticated sense of rhythm, subtle melodic improvisations, and nuanced way with a lyric enabled her to invest everything she sang with new meaning, from swinging dance tunes to mournful ballads. And her cool, effortless manner only heightened the emotional impact of her delivery. She influenced several generations of singers and instrumentalists alike, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder alongside such iconic jazz figures as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker.

Original recordings produced by Norman Granz and others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Music, Flawed Packaging, January 3, 2006

By 

James Morris (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Complete Verve Studio Master Takes (Audio CD)

My five star rating is for the music.

The track layout is an improvement over the 10-disc complete Verve boxed set. I wish I could say the same for the packaging.

When you open this set (which is in a hinged tin box) the first thing you see is the singly most unflattering photo of Billie Holiday I have ever seen in my life. She looks like a space alien, I'm not kidding. It's not Billie's fault - it's the way the photo is cropped - they have cut off her hair completely (she looks bald) and surrounded her head with a halo. The effect is totally surreal, and completely unflattering.

And there's worse news when you pull out the CD's - they fold out of the box in an "accordion" style, and the discs are attached to a cheap piece of silver cardboard. Assuming I play these discs as often as I expect to, my guess is that the box will last about six months before it completely falls apart.

And I don't know how they managed it, but my copy of the booklet that comes with the boxed set is bent and wrinkled - the way it's packaged, I would think it would be impossible to damage the booklet, but it looks like it went through a washing machine.

At least they can't screw up the music, although I do have one minor complaint about the tracks presented. This is supposed to be the complete Verve studio recordings, so I am puzzled to find that this box includes the March 1959 sessions that were done with Ray Ellis. I realize that Verve owns the rights to these tracks, but they were originally issued by MGM, and have no place in a set of Billie's Verve sessions. Don't get me wrong; I like the final sessions for what they're worth, but stylistically, they are totally different from the Norman Granz produced sessions that make up the bulk of the box. For this reason, they are a rather jarring contrast to the rest of the material, especially since they share disc 6 with the final four tracks from the January 1957 sessions.

I'm glad to finally have all of Billie's Verve Studio Masters in one box without the rehearsals, take announcements, false starts and alternate takes, but once again it seems that Verve has failed to present the package with much care or forethought.

Nevertheless, and despite all my misgivings about the packaging, I would not hesitate to recommend this set to anyone. Many people consider these small intimate sessions to be the best recordings that Billie Holiday ever did, and with good reason. Norman Granz had the good sense to back her with musicians who were stylistically of the same voice, background and temperament of Billie. Without exception, these musicians had all worked with her for years, and were very much in tune with her style. Her phrasing and diction were perfect, and the excellent musicians enhanced that perfection to the point that these tracks were about as great as jazz got in the 1950's.

Although I just got the set today, I have listened to the first three discs already. The sound has been completely remastered, and the result is that these tracks have never sounded better. Billie has been brought more to the front on some of the tracks that she was originally poorly positioned on. Even the 1952 tracks, which always sounded a little muffled, now have more clarity and presence than ever before. I am almost ready to totally forgive the layout.

Her January 1957 recording of Body and Soul may just be my all-time favorite Billie Holiday performance. The feeling and phrasing packed into that one track alone is worth every dime this boxed set costs. Other highlights from this set include Stars Fell on Alabama, Say It Isn't So, Darn That Dream, Sophisticated Lady, We'll Be Together Again (I dare you to not be moved), Everything I Have Is Yours, It Had To Be You, When Your Lover Has Gone, I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You, I Don't Want To Cry Anymore, Everything Happens To Me, I Thought About You, P.S. I Love You, He's Funny That Way, Autumn in New York, Solitude and You Go To My Head. Each of these are stunning performances, and fine examples of why Billie was famous for her phrasing and her feeling. Buy the set and pick your own favorites.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential, in a silly box, March 17, 2006

By 

John Ellis "jonthes" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Complete Verve Studio Master Takes (Audio CD)

The last phase of Billie Holiday's career is captured here in great sound (the very slight hiss means they didn't take off a layer of sound just to get pristine silent background, a good sign, a mistake Japanese issues often make). With a return to great jazz backup, as in her 30s recordings (arguably the greatest jazz/popular recordings ever made), Holiday isn't in great voice and she sometimes isn't up to the material, which is much better than the material she was handed in the 30s. But that's a rare sometimes, and her take on anything is always interesting. And often great. She completely remakes "Love for Sale" (which was a rather silly risque Porter number til she took it on) or "Solitude", unearthing colors the composers likely didn't realize they'd buried there; much as her daughters Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone would do so often after her. The damage she had done to her instrument and herself, as well as the damage the world inflicted on her, shows and sometimes she is using it and sometimes it is using her. On a few cuts you're listening to a woman in great pain, and it's not art; it becomes voyeurism. In the end, it's an essential collection, and preferable to the fuller complete collection - her false takes in this period aren't useful, as the 30s outtakes were, where nothing she did was the same twice. The packaging is silly, and has nothing to do with her style; the photo on the inside front cover is just ugly, though there is an Aztec quality to it that would be interesting if there was anything Aztec about Holiday. She was also very beautiful and a chameleon (at different times, she looked Chinese, African, patrician, no two photos from different shoots look the same), which highlights her essential nature as an actress. The greatest singing actress, in fact. But the perfumed soap tin box doesn't disguise the unique music inside.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Second the Horrible Packaging, January 28, 2006

By 

D. Glassner "dah-boot" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Complete Verve Studio Master Takes (Audio CD)

Okay, the music is flawless. Nothing needs to be said.

And yes, the packaging is horrible. However, it's not the functionaliy of the packaging the irks me (even though this is also poor). My wife and I are both designers, and nothing about the packaging is aesthetically cohesive. The disc art looks like it can also be used on an XTC or Theivery Corporation album (or maybe it was stolen from one). The photos are very unflattering. All of this would not be such a crime if it wasn't coming from a period and label that wasn't known for classic, trend-setting and influential album covers. It honestly looks as if different people designed parts of the package without seeing what the other was doing.

Oh well, it's going right on my iPod anyway where I'll swap out the art for something nicer. Here is a great hint/trick for fellow iPod jazzers....

Change your encode settings to MONO on anything recorded before 1958. Stereo wasn't used until 1958, and changing the setting to MONO will make the file half the size with 0% loss of quality. (The "automatic" setting in iTunes cannot differentiate mono from stereo, so you need to do this manually.) If your entire iPod is pre-1958, you will get twice as much music on it.