Billie Holiday Live at Carnegie Hall

Like a modern day rock star, Holiday's troubles with drugs, the law, and abusive men were almost considered part of what made her art work so well. It's an insulting idea, of course - and one that puts the audience in the position of voyeurs, or worse. The inclusion of Holiday's own tunes like "Don't Explain" and signature pieces like "Ain't Nobody's Business," combined with readings from her recent autobiography during the course of this concert, play to the more maudlin aspects of the singer's life. Holiday is painted as a woman who put up with hard times and abuse for sake of the shreds of love her men would hand her. Yet her exuberance on the uptempo, swinging material is full of attitude and charm. The life and vitality she brings to those tunes is just as real as her much remarked-upon gloomy side. Ultimately, it's up to the listener to decide what to hear as journalism and what to take as artistic interpretation.

While it can't hope to compete with the impressive box sets of her work or even more specialized single-disc collections, 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Billie Holiday still manages to present a fair amount of her most definitive work from the '40s, even though it's only 12 tracks long. "Strange Fruit," "Lover Man," "Lady Sings the Blues," and "My Man" are all here, along with "Fine and Mellow," "'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do," and "I Loves You Porgy." Not surprisingly since its track listing is so small, this collection is somewhat unfocused and definitely incomplete, but it offers a tantalizing taste of Billie Holiday's most musically fruitful period.

Companion Soundtrack to the James Erskine-directed documentary on the breathtaking talent of Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday featured with her band, The Sonhouse All Stars, performing her classic works including I Only Have Eyes For You, God Bless The Child, Strange Fruit and more. Billie features newly unearthed interviews from those who knew Holiday best — Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie among them.

Billie Holiday - The Complete Billie Holiday On Verve 1945-1959 (1992) {10CD Set Verve–PolyGram 517 658-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.63 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.66 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 288 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1945-59, 1992 Verve / PolyGram | 517 658-2
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Swing / Classic Female Blues / Traditional Pop

This is a rather incredible collection: ten CDs enclosed in a tight black box that includes every one of the recordings Verve owns of Billie Holiday, not only the many studio recordings of 1952-57 (which feature Lady Day joined by such jazz all-stars as trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Harry "Sweets" Edison, altoist Benny Carter, and the tenors of Flip Phillips, Paul Quinichette and Ben Webster). Also included are prime performances at Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in 1945-1947, an enjoyable European gig from 1954, her "comeback" Carnegie Hall concert of 1956, Holiday's rather sad final studio album from 1959, and even lengthy tapes from two informal rehearsals. It's a perfect purchase for the true Billie Holiday fanatic.

Benny Goodman was the first celebrated bandleader of the Swing Era, dubbed "The King of Swing," his popular emergence marking the beginning of the era. He was an accomplished clarinetist whose distinctive playing gave an identity both to his big band and to the smaller units he led simultaneously. The most popular figure of the first few years of the Swing Era, he continued to perform until his death 50 years later.