Billie Holiday Body And Soul

The title track is one of the most recorded jazz songs in history and Billie Holiday's interpretation on this 1957 release is arguably considered one of the best, if not the definitive version. Producer Norman Granz brings out the best of her voice on this album from late in her career, accompanied by a superb band that includes Ben Webster on tenor sax.

The title track is one of the most recorded jazz songs in history and Billie Holiday's interpretation on this 1957 release is arguably considered one of the best, if not the definitive version. Producer Norman Granz brings out the best of her voice on this album from late in her career, accompanied by a superb band that includes Ben Webster on tenor sax.

The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band.

"Throughout the night, Billie was in superior form to what had sometimes been the case in the last years of her life … there was an outgoing warmth, a palpable eagerness to reach and touch the audience.

Acclaimed vocalist José James' "Yesterday I Had The Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday" is a tribute to the legendary singer in honor of Holiday’s 100th birthday. The stunning set of 9 songs written or popularized by Holiday was produced by Blue Note president Don Was and features a stellar band including pianist Jason Moran, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Eric Harland.

"Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939.

"Gloomy Sunday" (Hungarian: Szomorú vasárnap), also known as the "Hungarian Suicide Song", is a popular song composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and published in 1933.

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), known professionally as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.

A live album from the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, this album combines individual performances recorded at separate shows two days apart from two of the most popular female singers of the era. Billie Holiday is backed by Mal Waldron on piano, Joe Benjamin on double bass and drummer Jo Jones; Ella Fitzgerald's band includes Don Abney on piano, Wendell Marshall on double bass and Jones again on drums.

Billie Holiday, born as Elionora Harris and originally named Eleanora Fagan, (* April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia; † July 17, 1959 in New York City) is one of the most important American jazz singers with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.