Customer Reviews

Good Morning Blues: The Complete Columbia Recordings (1933-1950)

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As is true for all of Amazon's MP3s, the quality is not up to high fidelity standards. However, many of the original recordings were not either. If you are listening on your car's audio system (feed by an MP3 player), though, it is still an excellent way to access a HUGE collection of some of Lady Day's best work. If you are a Holiday fan, you will enjoy this collection immensely. If you are not a Lady Day fan, why aren't you? :) Swing, Jazz, Blues, Standards .. they are all here.

This collection includes a little over 200 tracks of Billie Holiday at the peak of her career, accompanied by some of the greatest jazz musicians of the era (including Lester Young, Count Basie, Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Roy Eldridge). The sound quality is what you would expect from the time of the recordings, and to my ear the tracks have not been remastered when compared to the sound of previous re-issues of the same material on vinyl LP. Although the rhythm section and ensemble playing sound muffled and distant, the lead vocals and jazz solo instrumentals shine through. There are several versions of some of the songs, but all are complete takes, and if you listen in a shuffle mode, the collection is so large that you rarely will hear the same song in close sequence with a different version. All in all, it is a great value for a jazz enthusiast, but a casual listener might be better off with a "best of" collection.