Open Mike: Lady Day

Of the two greatest female singers of the jazz era, the langorous and mournful Billie Holiday, seen here performing in 1947, was the "moon" to the ebullient and energetic Ella Fitzgerald's "sun." Photo by William P. Gottlieb.

A very brief guide to buying Billie Holiday on record:

1933–1942 were the so-called "Columbia years," named after her main label during the period. These were the years in which she became famous as a pop chanteuse and was in full voice and flower. On disc, the period is extremely well-served by the currently going- but not gone-out-of-print budget Spanish import of the out-of-print Sony Legacy box set, which contains remastered versions of the recordings in ideal presentations, for a cheaper-than-cheap price (~$5.50 per disc). This traces the arc of her ascent. The Columbia material was traditionally known as the "good stuff" that made her reputation, and was once preferred by the public and by record collectors.

In 1939, mainly because Columbia refused to record the harrowing "Strange Fruit," Billie freelanced for Milt Gabler at Commodore Records, mainly in two sessions, one in 1939 and one in 1944. Although not the best single-disk introduction to Holiday—it's a transitional period musically—the Commodore sessions are essential for any collector, as this was the formative period of her mature style—and it contains some of her signature tunes, "I Cover the Waterfront," "I'll Be Seeing You," "Embraceable You," a lovely rendition of "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and of course the 1939 "Strange Fruit." However, no one but the most fanatic completist needs all the alternate takes that are available, none of which are really very different from the master takes (although I confess to marginally preferring a couple of the alternates). The single disk with just the 16 "master takes" is the one to have. You can also get "The Commodore Master Takes" by searching that phrase on iTunes.

In 1942-44 she began using heroin and recording for Gabler at Decca. This was probably the happiest period of her professional life because Decca treated her like the 1940s version of a superstar, getting the best songs for her to sing and pulling out the stops when it came to orchestral accompaniment. Holiday reveled in the treatment she received at Decca and the respect she was accorded. However, although well served on The Complete Decca Recordings, this period didn't cover much ground and is probably the least essential major Holiday for the modern listener to own. It still belongs in a more complete collection of her best, though.

Although her Decca period didn't wind down until 1950, her career was permanently (and some think fatally) interrupted in 1947 when she was arrested and jailed for the better part of a year on drug charges. Worse, upon her release from prison she was permanently denied a cabaret card, meaning she could no longer perform in establishments that served alcohol—which of course meant most of them. Her drug use, legal problems, money woes, and personal problems escalated and intensified in the late '40s and throughout the '50s until her death, and she became a sort of postwar Michael Jackson, notorious with the public (and getting much more attention from the white press for her troubles than she ever got for her singing) as an aging former star providing a lurid spectacle as she went down in flames.

Light and shade
From a creative standpoint, however, the best was still to come. In 1952, Norman Granz signed her to Mercury, the parent company of Verve. In the seven years before she died in 1959, she recorded nearly 100 songs for Verve, now known as her late or Verve period. The standard line is that this period is a triumph of experience, judgment, and musical intelligence over declining vocal ability, but the fact is that her work during this time is very uneven. A good number are excruciatingly awful ("unlistenable recordings made when she could barely find the energy to enunciate or keep in tune," writes Gary Giddins). But the best of Billie Holiday's Verve recordings are one of the glories of recorded music. In recent years the reputation of her Columbia period and her Verve period have flip-flopped; most Billie Holiday lovers now admire and prefer the later period over the earlier.

And most, although not all, of the best songs from this period are present on the Verve compilation All or Nothing at All. It comprises all of Songs for Distingué Lovers and Body and Soul, plus six or seven more high points plucked from other records of the period. In toto it's a great work of art and both a pleasurable and a moving listening experience, whether dipped into, selected and excerpted, or listened to straight through.

Notorious
Also, importantly, for me at least, it contains none of the songs from Lady in Satin. The controversial Lady in Satin is really a case study in misguided pop cultural assumptions, and encapsulates down into the present day the misunderstanding that always existed between Billie Holiday and the broader American public. Very regrettably, Lady in Satin has gotten the reputation as her "best" record, for two reasons. First, Billie herself said at the end of her life that it was her favorite. But to interpret this, you need to consider the context—Billie always considered recording with a full string band to be a mark of respect to her, and the treatment she got while making this record at the very end of her short life must have felt like a return to the treatment she got during her salad days at Decca—it was her last star turn, a reprise of her former glory. And the album was released in June, 1958, and she died in July of 1959—so she never had a chance to get any perspective on it. And second, it's beloved of myopic "audiophiles" as the best-sounding Billie Holiday record, due only to the recording of the strings, ignoring her voice, which makes no sense at all. For this reason, Lady in Satin is often purchased by neophytes as "the best," and their one and only representative Billie Holiday record.

That is just so...wrong. Her voice on this record is ragged and hoarse, her range—always limited—even more truncated, making the contrast with the Nelson-Riddlesque Ray Ellis string arrangements almost bizarre in its cognitive dissonance. Personally, I have no objection to the completist owning this record, and no quarrel with the Lady Day aficionado who finds great pathos and meaning in her performances here, as some do. But the ruin of her once sweetly expressive voice is shocking, and as a listening experience the record is a travesty because of the hokey, sappy, horrible strings-all-over-the-place soundscape. However jazz fans might feel about it, it should not be anybody's only Billie Holiday record. I don't even own it.

If you love Billie Holiday, or jazz—or music—suggest that your friends get All or Nothing at All as their one-and-only Billie Holiday record, and make sure they don't think that having Lady in Satin as their sole sample disk means that they've got any idea what Billie Holiday was all about. It's the biggest anomaly in her entire extensive catalog.

Look for the "Originals" strip on the left to be sure you're getting the proper songs in the proper order

To round out a great Billie Holiday collection on record, the other essential from the Verve years is the great Lady Sings the Blues, a perfect record and one of the high points of music on record for me.

Happily, the record was reissued on CD by Verve in 2007 with its proper songs in proper sequence. With Wynton Kelly on piano, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Aaron Bell on bass, Leonard Browne on drums, Charlie Shavers on trumpet, Paul Quinchette on tenor sax, and Anthony Sciacca on clarinet on the first eight songs, and Bobby Tucker on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar, Red Callender on bass, Chico Hamilton on drums, Willie Smith on alto saxaphone, and Sweets Edison on trumpet on the last four. By sure not to be fooled by the PolyGram pastiche with the same cover, or by other pretenders! The album has been "issued" in many forms over the years, some of them horribly mangled.

Having All or Nothing at All and the proper version of Lady Sings the Blues is a way to neatly possess almost all of the very best, and none of the worst, of late-period Billie Holiday, who was only 44 years old when she left this Earth but had lived a very full life as an artist.

Mike

(Originally published in 2007 on CD Reviews by C60 Crew.)

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Featured Comment by Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai: "Mike, did you know that in addition to my day job as a photographer, I'm also a singer? One of my favorite gigs is at a cabaret, where I get to do my favorite songs from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Etta James and Jones, even reaching back to Bessie Smith et al. The audience at the cabaret is very diverse, which means I get to expose college students to music most of them have never heard. It feels a bit like preaching the gospel."

Comments

[Player]

I have nothing to add, Mike, just that I've always wanted to explore Billie Holiday's music and now I have a great roadmap to guide me on my journey. I'm grateful. Thankyou.

[Mike Johnston]

fivetonsflax,
That one fills some of the gaps from the two I recommended--there is very little overlap with "All or Nothing at All" but four songs are taken from "Lady Sings the Blues." A good compilation, though, it looks like to me.

As you get more fanatical about having all of BH, there is a lot out there to sift through. I was approaching this piece more in the spirit of, what would you buy if you're going to buy just a few things.

Anyway if you like Jazz Masters 12, you might want to add All or Nothing at All." But maybe not "Lady Sings the Blues" unless you don't mind buying a few songs twice.

Mike

[Javier]

"Mom and pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three" Can't read anything about Lady Day without remembering the first sentences ofher biography, probably one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

Thanks for your posts, extremely helpful, considering Billie Holiday is one of those artists that "produced" more records after her death than she did in her whole life. In fact, Amazon sells 548 different Billie Holiday cds.

I stopped buying her discs because I always found I already had some or most the songs once I started listening to each "new" acquisition. Then I tried the opposite strategy and bought the 10 disc Verve box, extremely expensive, only to find that most of the extra material, additional takes, etc. was nearly worthless.

Now I know what to buy!

[Rob Grinberg]

Now y'see Mike, this kind of thing is why I hang out here more than at any other photo bar in the street - where else is the latest and greatest in equipment mingled (mangled??) with the authoritive opinion of 'one who knows' about vinyl, Bille, Etta et al. As someone who is just beginning to find a serious interest in jazz (and blues) it's a treat to see these pearls and use them to fill in my blanks. (c:

Sweet column mate, loved it, keep up the good work. Thanks.

[Dierk]

Mike, I am not sure about the Columbia box set from Spain you recommend. While the art work looks like the original complete Columbia recordings - which coincidentally I am just in the midst or listening through again - the title it uses is the same as another collection [http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Day-Complete-Columbia-Golden/dp/B00009RAYR/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1262593570&sr=1-3], which was a single disc. I can't quite see how US Amazon can offer teh 10-disc box for only $ 56, particularly if they import it from the EU.

Even less convincing is Amazon Germany: http://www.amazon.de/Lady-Day-Complete-Holiday-Columbia/dp/B0029XIWCY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1262593854&sr=8-1 though, if this is true - and it look too good to be true - it's the bargain of all time.

PS: Since Bessie Smith, one of Ms Holiday's idols, has already been mentioned [and has been served well on CD], may I throw in the name of Annette Hanshaw. Unfortunately all but forgotten and not easily obtained on CD - and not all of her recordings are in the public domain so I cannot recommend to look for them as downloads from the Internet.

[Shawn Barnett]

Strings accompaniment has ruined too many fine jazz and even pop vocal works for me. Julie London, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, and Billie Holiday are just a few. Thank goodness most of them have better recordings. I could be wrong, but I'd prefer that a bow should never enter a jazz recording session. I have Billie Holiday The Silver Collection, by the way. Thanks for the tips on the others.

[Ari Kermaier]

What do you think of "Billie's Best" from Verve (PolyGram 1992)?

[Mark S+]

Why don't you give credit to whoever made the photo at the top of this thread?

[Mike Johnston]

Mark S+,
It's by William P. Gottleib. I've added it to the caption now. The JPEG source is the Library of Congress.

Mike

[fernando]

Thanks for this wonderful walk through her work. I have a few of the recordings from the Verve period, which I enjoy quite immensely, and just ordered the Columbia set from your link.

While I fully understand how Lady in Satin is severely flawed, relative to her other work, and perhaps even from a normal Jazz-singer perspective, it remains my favorite album from hers. I do recommend it to people, and provide the usual caveats.

For me, it joins that small pack of records made mostly of passion (even if drugged, depression or drunken) in the twilight of someone's career. True, Nick Drake's Pink Moon retained his musical mastery, arguably at his peak, but I find Lady in Satin to have an air of relevance to a life, in as much as Ian Curtis' involvement with Joy Division's Closer. Yes, I am a "post-punk" kid (or older than that), and may be the outside-jazz perspective where a record like Lady in Satin holds great value and sentiment.

[Mike Johnston]

fernando,
I understand. What I'm concerned about are people who say, in effect, "I keep hearing about this Billie Holiday. Maybe I'll try one of her records. What's her best?" And then they buy "Lady in Satin" and they don't like the strings OR the singing and that's the end of that. That seems a shame. Those people would be better off starting out with a Columbia-period best-of. I don't have any quarrel with people like you who understand LIS in its proper context.

Mike

[Sanders McNew]

Were Brunswick and Vocalion under Columbia's parentage? I burnt Billie Holiday's early recordings on those labels into my brain at an early age -- for me, her swelling voice in the last chorus of "He's Funny That Way" (1937 or thereabouts) defines the heart of the singer. Her late work has the texture of an experienced woman but I prefer the girl you can still hear in the Vocalion recordings.