Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 2, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 1933
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Sony / Columbia Legacy
• ASIN: B00005Q45Y
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,281 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #74 in Music > Broadway & Vocalists > Cabaret
  • #75 in Music > Blues > Vocal Blues

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best collection of the best of early Lady Day..., December 28, 2001

By 

J. Lund "jazzbrat" (SoCal, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday (Audio CD)

In 2001, Billie Holiday's landmark recordings from the first decade of her recording career have finally been remastered for best-ever sound quality on the 10-CD boxed set. The historical value of that collection is enormous, but not all admirers of Lady Day are going to have the half-day needed to absorb everything on there. Furthermore, there are a lot of similar-sounding alternate takes on the last few discs of the box. It's a paradise for collectors, but what about those who want a smaller dose of these jazz classics?

This 2-CD anthology is the answer, providing a generous helping of memorable cuts, with an preference for high-quality songs (frankly, quite a few of the tunes on the boxed set aren't worthy of Britney Spears, let alone a peerless vocalist like Billie, albeit Lady Day is renowned for turning trite songs into art). There are other one-disc collections culled from these sessions, but I highly recommend this collection above all others--the sound quality is as good as possible, and with two discs there's enough of a sampling to give the listener a good idea of what Billie and her accompiament were up to during this era...and what they were up to revolutionized popular music!

64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Artlessness, May 28, 2003

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday (Audio CD)

Unless you plan to invest in the "Complete Lady Day on Columbia," this is the Billie Holiday collection either to start with or to own (if you plan to stick to one). There is much of value on Billie's later, Verve recordings, but they can't match the timeless beauty to be found on her Columbia sessions. The singular "emotion" with which Billie is identified wears best and longest when we feel it as a property of the song as much as of the singer. On the Columbia outings, it's the combination of Billie's musical talents and the strength of her "persona" that results in very possibly the most believable and influential interpretations of the "American Songbook" ever recorded. It's from these recordings that Sinatra learned his most valuable singing lessons: first, trust the material; second, establish a persona that, in the listener's mind, would be capable of experiencing the story and emotions of the song; third, make it "natural"--American popular song and singing are all about the art of artlessness.

Since I own the box set of LP's already, I settled for this "Best Of" CD version. It's a judicious selection of material, the audio quality affords slightly more "presence" to Billie's voice than on the originals, the liner notes by Gary Giddins are informative and provocative, and the photos are revealing (contrasting the early buxom, spontaneous Billie with the later posed, slimmed-down star).

Columbia-Sony has obviously invested much thought and care in the production of this package. Unlike many of my CD acquisitions, this one is not going to be played once and set aside.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A serious and great artist's best work, you need these sides, March 10, 2005

By 

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

This review is from: Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday (Audio CD)

If there were some way to award music 200 stars, I am sure all of us would have done so for this set!

Like others here, I have it all, but I think her work from the 30s and early 1940s from Columbia and its ancestors is not just her greatest works, but among the great works of world musical culture. Everyone with a set of ears should be more or less required to have this music and enjoy it.

Strange Fruit was not recorded for Columbia but for the Indy label Commodore. Thus, you will not find it on this or any of the Columbia collections like this that capture her work in the period BEFORE Strange Fruit. It was recorded in the 1940s, whereas this collection contains work from Billie in the 1930s and perhaps 1940 and 1941. No doubt Sony wishes it had the rights to that side and everything else Commodore recorded, but they don't.

The truth is, Strange Fruit is not one of Billie's Greatest works. There are about 15 tunes on this CD that have better singing, better musicians backing her, and were more important pieces of Billie's work. Strange Fruit is well known to the people who know about Billie as a person, but don't know much about Billie as a Jazz musician. Her recording, while powerful, was not very nuanced, not very jazzy, and not as good as much of the work here. Indeed, the weakness of her mid-1940s Commodore work as opposed to these recordings is that Billie was persuaded to move away from Jazz and swing to attempt to become a cabarat chanteuse of "serious" songs, a move that some also relate to the inception of heroin and the decline of her voice, a move that brought about a decline in her art.

If you want to hear a better version of "Strange Fruit," listen to Josh White's recording which is so much more powerful, if not as well known. I am not downing the song or its politics, far from it, but Billie's Strange Fruit is more important as a political statement than as a work of Jazz art.

One of the greatest things about these records are the many master musicians of swing and jazz that join her on these recordings. Very shortly after she started recording, the greatest names in Jazz would flock to her sessions and play on her recordings for litte because of the innovation and creativity Billie showed as a jazz creator in her own right. These recordings were a chance for them to jam together in loose arrangements and be more innovative and creative than they were with the orchestras they played with.


These masters of Jazz viewed Billie as a serious artist of Jazz. They delighted in her knowledge of the musical aspects of swing jazz which was unique for such a young singer (she was in her twenties when these records were made) and delighted in her ability to sense what they were doing in their accompaniments and solos and to respond to them in her vocals.

Despite the exaggerated picture of her life as a prostitute that was part of the marketing of the 1950's work of ghost-written fiction called "Lady Sings the Blues," that a drug addled Billie claimed was her autobiography, Billie Holiday grew up around Jazz with her father being a big band guitar player who complained Billie hired every NY guitarist but him for these sessions. Billie's mother specialized in boarding Jazz musicians and catering parties for musicians and singers, parties where the young Billie would often help serve the food. So when she met Lester young in 1937 for these sessions, she had already known the man she named 'Prez in 1934 when he boarded with her mother while he was in the Fletcher Henderson band.

These sides contain most of the great collaboration between Lester Young and Billie. They were great musical friends and personal friends until Billie became a heroin addict, at which point Lester didn't much want to be around her.

However, as much as I am a Lester Young man to the death (his framed picture hangs in my home), too little is said of the other musicians who grace these recordings. Billie's collaboration with pianist Teddy Wilson who plays on and directed most of these recordings (many were recorded as Teddy Wilson Orchestra sides)needs to be explored. Likewise, her work with the great bassists and rhythm players on these records needs to be appreciated. My favorite sides are the ones in which she has the benefit of Basieites like her dear friend Freddy Green on guitar and the great Walter Page on bass. Likewise, Billie's musical closeness with the great Buck Clayton and his role on these sides is also underestimated.

Yet, it doesn't matter if Billie had recorded these sides with some high school band members from Winslow, Arizona. This is good music to listen to, good music to smile to, music to fall in love to, and music to dance too. Contrary to the tendency to get maudlin and milk her image as a tragedy that Holiday developed in the 1950s as her life and her musical skill declined , even the songs on these recordings with the sadest lyrics possess a great joy, swing, and spirit of the wonders of Jazz.