Customer Reviews

Lady in Satin

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When I buy a CD, most often it's on impulse, just eager to hear what it's like. A very select few are ones I buy because of the acclaim I've heard about them. With LADY IN SATIN, it was the mixed reviews that got my interest peaked. Good, bad, in the middle, I don't care. I had to hear for myself. Needless to say, I'm glad I went with my gut, for I've heard truly one of the most authentically heartbreaking pieces of music ever in my life.

When LADY IN SATIN was recorded, Billie Holiday was definitely at the end of her life. Years of rough living & heroin addiction had all but put her formerly-honey sweet voice to shame. She was still a trooper though, for even as she was approaching yet another trial for drug possession, Billie approached this recording with the best of professionalism & even with her by-now-fading voice, she succeeded triumphantly.

It's safe to say you shouldn't approach this album without a box of tissues close by, for the performances on LADY IN SATIN are so true to life & heartbreaking, you're sure to be moved by hearing a once-great artist sounding like she's clinging to that last shred of life. The titles of songs like "Glad To Be Unhappy", "I Get Along Without You Very Well", "You Don't Know What Love Is" & most notably, "You've Changed" speak volumes. To say this album might be her the story of her life would only be stating the obvious.

But the song that really says the most about this whole album is "The End Of A Love Affair". The version that made it onto LADY IN SATIN is a wonder enough, but the bonus track that has Billie singing a cappella & later saying she doesn't even know how the song goes is the tell-tale sign that as good as this whole album did turn out, it wasn't exactly a labor of love. In fact, in only 17 more months, she'd be dead.

Some say that Ray Ellis's string arrangements are a hinderance to the album more than a help, but they provide the best back-up for Billie's war-weary-yet-still-resonant voice. Both are very beautiful in their own ways, whether they're light or dark. The result is not all that different from Frank Sinatra's influential albums that he was recording at around the same time.

When LADY IN SATIN was released, controversy abounded from many corners. Some said that the album should not have even been released & was an insult to Billie Holiday's once-marvelous talent. But the more open-minded hailed it as a masterpiece, albeit a dark one. Even Billie herself claimed it as her favorite. The fact that she managed to hang on while she recorded this album is truly a work of nature when you consider her state of mind & life at the time. She would record one more album before her death at the age of 44.

However, it's rare that an artist can end their career having known they've recorded their masterwork. But with LADY IN SATIN, maybe Billie was right in singing its praises. Sure, she may not have been in the best of shape & her better days were behind her. Yet some of the best music comes from a lifetime's worth of experience & actually living the life of the music. With LADY IN SATIN, Billie Holiday did that & then some. Of course, listening to an artist at the end of her tether will not be an easy feat. Once you take the plunge, though, you'll feel greatly rewared that you did.

This is not an easy record to warm up to. Have patience...once you've reconciled the tone and manner of Lady Day's fragile, fading, sorrowfull voice with the sweeping elegance of Ray Ellis' orchestrations, you might find yourself in love with this CD...Billie's voice is at once brilliant and shattered, like a broken mirror, especially in the studio cuts added as narrative to the original set. My favorite song, "The End of A Love Affair", is a haunting testimonial to romance gone bad; the music and the lyrics are unforgettable. Lady In Satin is not for the squirmish; not even, perhaps, for alot of Holiday fans. But if you don't mind a front row seat to the closing act of the tragic opera that was Holiday's life; if you can find beauty in sorrow and hope in pain, this CD will unveil a new meaning for the term "soul music"...

This is an unavoidable album, though admittedly not one I'm fond of playing. The line between "art" and "life" has never been so blurred--in fact, the entire album, by combining these classic songs and lush orchestrations with Holiday's frail, fading voice, raises the question about the relationship between art and life, the beautiful and the tragic. Perhaps the most haunting and heartbreaking moment in the history of recorded music occurs when Billie comes in for the second chorus of "But Beautiful." Listen to her voice crack when she gets to the word "heartache," the emotional climax of a song about the paradoxes of life and love. I don't play the record much because I don't need to--Billie inscribes these songs deep in your heart forever, but it requires a painful surgical incision. I'm glad I had it done, but for me it's now simply enough to know the album is in my collection.

In his new liner notes, arranger-conductor Ray Ellis writes that after listening to this album again, this time emotionally not musically, only did he realize how great it was. Any Billie Holiday fan would heed Ellis' advice. By doing so, one will get a true understanding of the final days of Billie Holiday and her lasting legacy to the world of jazz.

Billie's voice breaks and she is no longer in fine form. But make no mistake, the soul is still there. She never lost it. In "I'm A Fool To Want You," you feel as if you're the one she is pleading to in the line, "Take me back, I love you." I don't know of any other singer, save Tony Bennett, who can evoke such empathy from a listener as Billie does. Listen to "You've Changed" and if you're not moved by her singing, you are artistically dead.

Track no. 15 (elapsed time at 07:49) captures Billie in a rare rehearsal out-take, singing "The End of A Love Affair" a cappella. This is one of the best moments in the album. Unfortunately, she didn't get to finish the song, but the rare moment is captured here for us to relish forever.

"Lady in Satin" is a perfect model for today's so-called pop "divas" (pooh!) who think that by screeching and screaming, they could draw emotion from a song. Take a lesson from Billie Holiday, ladies. Lady Day exuded class and sang with soul. And she didn't have to pierce my ears with her voice. On the contrary, it warms my heart each time I listen to her. Show me a female singer today who can do that.

I admittedly was never particularly drawn to Billie Holiday for various skewered reasons (too legendary, too long ago, too sad). But after seeing her story on an A&E Biography, curiosity got the best of me, especially with respect to Lady In Satin. I remember having run across this album in the stores; it was the only Holiday offering that looked like an actual album, as opposed to the endless profusion of latter-day compilations.

I haven't wanted to listen to anything else since I bought it last week. It's just that good! There's something to be said for an artist's so-called "declining period". Though even for someone like myself who's largely unfamiliar with Lady Day's early work, this album can make for difficult listening. But her worn out, often fractured voice only adds to the material's emotional honesty. Be prepared to have your heart ripped out by "Glad To Be Unhappy"; her voice has a whimsical trace that somehow manages at times to pierce through the sadness.

Placing singers with less-than-perfect voices into lush pop arrangments tends to make for very appealing contradictions.
It's very easy to see why this was Holiday's personal favorite album. The well-documented liner notes only serve to make the album and the Lady all the more compelling. This one will haunt you...and you'll be glad.

The first time I heard the distinctive timbre of Billie Holiday's immortal voice which somehow speaks to us from the deepest haunts of the soul, I believe I was somewhere in the vicinity of my mother's apron strings, and remember her remarking to the effect, "Now, that's a tragedy - she was so great . . . a mere shadow of what she was - terribly, terribly self-destructive", echoing the common sentiment. Lady Day was still alive at that time. And I remember the furl between the eyebrows of her original producer with Columbia, John Hammond Sr., when, some twenty years later, he recalled what is referred to on the copious liner notes of this awesome 1997 Sony reissue of the 1958 original as "the more lurid elements of the Billie Holiday saga". And since her death 17 months after this recording, the discussion has raged around that curious question: "Who was greater (or, in our abstracted experience of the media, unfortunately, "which"), the early Lady, or the later?" The early Billie - with her spectacular range, her unmatched phrasing, cadence, her youthful charm - adored by her sidemen and audiences alike - or the later - in her finest hour - on this recording - the heart-broken, broke, haggard, dispossessed junkie - in the words of her primary collaborator (by request) on this effort, Ray Ellis - " When we began recording and I heard the first playback, I was quite shook up. The quality of Billie's voice had really deteriorated. It was very noticeable to me after listening to all her early records".

"Lady in Satin", one of the towering masterpieces of the genre (maybe THE masterpiece), should put that dispute to rest forever, but, undoubtedly, it won't. Gone is the full body of Billie's voice, gone - any of the usual repertoire of her well-known classic titles which have since become cultural standards - too numerous to list ... well, you know them. What is conveyed is something else, which today is curtly and rather tritely as referred to as " the ineffable". The resiliency of the human spirit which will not be denied, even in the face of ultimate denial, perhaps . . . staring squarely into the crack of doom? A frank and strangely satisfying discussion of the downside of love and desire? Billie, who chose the repetoire, in the brief time which remained to her, once called this palpably torturous session her "favorite" recording. One wonders exactly what she meant. Ray Ellis, a musician of stoic discipline, who could only have existed before the advent of the Beatles and after the gentrification of Kansas City, a maestro of what we today call `1950's musak', said: "After we finished the album, I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn't until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was".

Of course, one cannot fail take note of the destiny of what is perhaps the supreme moment in this effort, "The End of a Love Affair", amazingly absent from the first stereo issues. On this set, we have along with a remastering of the original, a number of `rejected' studio outtakes. You will listen to them all. Also, mention must be made of the great performance of trombonist Urbie Green, a legendary ensemble player, who really does "swoop down like an angel" on "For Heaven's Sake" and throughout these tracks.

Alright, listen to "I'm a Fool to Want You", her version of "You Don't Know What Love Is", the final four cuts on the album, including the aforementioned masterpiece, "The End of a Love Affair", and tell me if your Billie Holiday collection is complete without this one. And the refrain which seems to especially come to mind: "Time and time again . . ."

I always wondered what *fragile* sounded like. Now I know. It sounds like Billie Holiday singing on one of her final albums, her voice as tired and damaged as can be, with a lush orchestra backing her just to make the juxtaposition all the more stunning. As a singer myself, just listening to her voice gives me chills. I no longer have to imagine what years of substance abuse does to the lungs and vocal cords. It is painfully obvious. This is not to say that the listening experience is painful; in fact, many feel this is essential Billie. The factory-placed sticker states that this was Billie's personal favorite recording. Whether or not that is true, LADY IN SATIN is a gorgeous record, but probably not one you will spin a lot. Holiday had deteriorated so visibly and audibly by this point that I'm amazed she got thru the recording sessions. The strain in her voice only serves to drive home the lyrics which are mostly about lost love, forlorn love, sadness etc. The performances are all the more effective for this-thank God her doctor didn't make her stay home! We music lovers are so much the better for her work on this tortured, melancholy recording.

Highly recommended.

Writing an review for Billie Holidays "Lady in Satin"... Not an easy task.. Because you just can't explain this one... I could say that the lyrics are good (wich they are), or that the arrangments by Ray Ellis are beautifull (wich they are)... But it just won't do. This CD is pure magic, I absolutely love it.. To hear Billies voice so scarred, so.. for lack of a better word.. weak, a far cry from the once cornett-like instrument, is in itself a powerfull experience. But the raw emotion, passion, sorrow and heartache that she puts into theese performances.. It just makes you want to cry. Wich is exactly what I do each time I listen to this album. I just can't help it. If you know anything about Billies life, listen to the lyrics.. Lady Day really knows what she is singing about. It is one of those moments in life where life imitates art, or art imitates life, as the case may be. Listen to it.. Really listen, because it is one of the most powerfull albums you will ever hear..

Admittedly, this is not an "easy" album in anyway. Billies shaky voice does not make for easy listening. The first time I heard it, I did not se what all the fuss was about.. But then I tried listening to it again.. and again.. And the third time, I got it. I finally got it..

Heartfelt throughout..Sad,georgeous arrangements and tunes for Billie's last. The feeling of despair and the bad weather before the storm is felt on this her last offering.
This CD now gets the treatment it deserves with it's lavish packaging and even though her voice is near shot it stands
out as an emotional vehicle for her intonations and phrasing and use of time..her gift and claim to fame.
A fitting purchase and a very eerie one.

LADY IN SATIN is indeed one of the most heartwrenching recordings one can listen to. Billie Holiday is at her finest moment, and unfortunately it was her last. As one reads the album's liner notes, Billie declaringly states, "I've got to sing with Ellis," Lady said, "I want this album more than anything else, and I want it to be good." This was Billie's favorite record, and undoubtedly so, she gave her heart and soul in producing a record that will leave a lasting impression on any listener. The initial 12 tracks on the album will will definitely hit the gut. The remaining four bonus tracks and alternate takes offer a little revealing glimpse of what Billie was like during the recording session.

Overall, Billie finely stands alone backed by Ray Ellis' lush orchestration. This is not muzak, but a great collection of tracks done by one of jazz music's quintessential female vocalists. One will hear the sound of Billie's singing with its strength and agility despite the somewhat somber lyrics in songs, such as "I'm A Fool To Want You," "You Don't Know What Love Is," and "I'll Be Around." Indeed, this record is a true depiction of the torchsong singer.

Every genre of music experiences a period of progression. LADY IN SATIN was recorded in 1958, and amidst the changing face of popular music, Rock and Roll took over the airwaves, popular jazz music moved into a different direction than when "Lady Day" originally burst onto the jazz music scene over 20 years earlier, the record has stood the test of time, but with an inkling of historical irony and atomsphere. Indeed, this recording is Billie's best effort, and many may criticize her vocals, but by listening to the songs, it has aged like a fine wine for someone who literally tasted the fringes of life.