Billie Holiday [extended]

• Classic Live Recordings [Telstar, 1990] A
• Ken Burns Jazz [Verve, 2000] A+
• A Musical Romance [Columbia/Legacy, 2002] A+
• The Ultimate Collection [Hip-O/Verve, 2005]
• Remixed & Reimagined [Columbia/Legacy, 2007]

See Also:

• Billie Holiday + Lester Young

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Classic Live Recordings [Telstar, 1990]
Columbia's complete Billie I file, reverently. This pieced-together live half hour I take away on romantic weekends. The "12 Hits" are prime--all right, kind of obvious, so what? And in the absence of annotation (though the sidemen who get announced are also prime), I'm assuming it documents the late phase when life started ravaging her voice, which I've always thought jibed with her specialty--flashing pain a sarcastic smile, twisting its arm till it sings her tune. A

Ken Burns Jazz [Verve, 2000]
You won't be sorry if you spring for a matched set of two-CD sets: Lady in Autumn: The Best of the Verve Years and Columbia's belated Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday. But beyond a label-bridging perfection spoiled only by the unavoidable "Strange Fruit," the advantage of this disc is how vividly it establishes the organic unity of a career customarily bifurcated into girl-singer and fallen-woman phases. Early on she digs fibbing about the moonlight, while in the end she's too ravaged to fake how far fine-and-mellow has and hasn't gotten her. But in hindsight we can hear that her commitment to good times was provisional either way. That distance was what made her singing meaningful. What made it great was a musicality that instead of transcending pain affirmed its primacy. A+

Billie Holiday + Lester Young: A Musical Romance [Columbia/Legacy, 2002]
Last year's belated twofer (four repeats) sums her up, and I should mention the 10-CD box--better completist Holiday than Sinatra or Fitzgerald or George Jones. The year's other reshuffles, Lady Day Swings and Blue Billie, are useful product. But there's never been a Holiday record I've replayed as spontaneously as this one. Nor, and this is connected, have I ever found her so credible uptempo (meaning midtempo, and fast enough). Her disdain for the trifles her '30s producers fed her can be bracing but also wearing, and while none remain trifles, some remain unnecessary. Here, that's not a problem. In love or in pain, she's smiling, she's swinging, she's dealing with it, dropping so little hint of the tragedies to come you wonder whether they were inevitable after all. She just needs the support of a man as hip and confident as Prez sounds--relaxed, savvy, off-center but that just makes him more fun. On no record, including the excellent Ken Burns, will you ever hear him so unmistakably. In real life, unfortunately, guys who play that often have a mean streak and/or a dependent side. You wonder why couldn't she make do with the worldly wisdom of Teddy Wilson, the friendly sarcasm of Buck Clayton. Because here, they too keep her smiling and swinging. A+

The Ultimate Collection [Hip-O/Verve, 2005]
Billie Holiday stands at or near the top of any knowledgeable short list of American singers. Not even Aretha, Elvis, or Al Green is in her class--her only competition is Louis Armstrong, whose improvisational smarts she emulated, and Frank Sinatra, who adored her. Yet Holiday had a much smaller voice than any of these titans, and by 1958, when she died of alcohol abuse at 43, it was a wreck. Her magic is all in her languid timing, subtle melodic variations, unmatched conversational intimacy, and above all physical timbre--young and buttery or brandy on the rocks, it goes down so easy. For licensing reasons, this overview offers just a taste of the buoyant '30s Billie, already worldly yet set on fun, while doing better by the careworn '50s Billie. What makes it invaluable is the way it bridges the two periods. Though interrupted by wartime recording bans and a federal prison stint for heroin, the 1940s found Holiday no longer feigning innocence but still clear-voiced, captured by producer Milt Gabler first on his Commodore indie and then in hit-seeking mode on Decca. The strings Holiday invited and the big-band conventions Gabler applied can be hard to take in large doses. These tracks are so astutely selected, however, that their star-time phase seems natural--a strength, even. Because Holiday destroyed her body and couldn't resist mean mistreaters, she's come to symbolize female victimization. But even in suffering she was vibrant, and this collection gets the proportions right. Not all these songs are sad, and she owns every one--a fathomless artist guaranteed to reward as many hours as you can invest in her. [Blender: 5]

Remixed & Reimagined [Columbia/Legacy, 2007]

See Also

• Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection [0000]
• Diana Ross and THE Supreme [1973-02-25]
• The First Lady of Song: Billie Holiday [2005-06-27]