Holiday Webster

Songs for Distingué Lovers forms part of the last series of extensive small-group recordings that Lady Day would make in the studio. Although her voice was largely shot at this point, she puts so much feeling into the lyrics that it's easy to overlook her dark sound. The band is a major asset, and made up of all-stars: trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, pianist Jimmie Rowles, guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Red Mitchell, and Alvin Stoller or Larry Bunker on drums. There are plenty of short solos for Edison, Webster, and Kessel. Holiday does her best on such numbers as "A Foggy Day," "One for My Baby," "Just One of Those Things," and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," and there are plenty of haunting moments, even if one could tell (even at the time) that the end was probably drawing near for the singer.

It is undeniable that Billie Holiday's singing changed in her later years. Her voice darkened an shifted to a lower range. Her economy of means distilled her sound to its expressive essence – a kind of heightened speech. The classic LP Songs For Distingué Lovers, has also deepened and become burnished with time. Maybe it's that still-arresting word distingué; maybe it's that iconic, tinted image of Lady Day on the cover. This legendary recording features the singer's best studio work of the Fifties.

Billie Holiday. 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…

This DVD presents most of Billie Holiday’s filmed performances, taken from TV shows filmed between 1950 and 1959. Performance footage of Billie Holiday may admittedly be scant, but this issue compiles into a single release song cuts from some of Holiday's live filmed performances that are still extant. Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit video Concerts from which the compilation draws include: an August 19, 1950 gig with Count Basie and his orchestra, an August 13, 1956 set with pianist Corky Hale and his trio; a July 10, 1958 set, filmed in Newark, in which Holiday is backed up by tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld, bassist Vinnie Burke, pianist Mal Waldron and others; and a November 1958 Parisian set where Holiday is accompanied by Waldron and bassist Michel Gaudry…

Billie Holiday is predominant among jazz singers. Frank Sinatra said of her, "She was and remains my biggest influence." Sinatra points to the way Holiday could make a song her own. Her dusky, smoky voice conveys more about love and heartache in one syllable than most other singers in any genre will convey in a lifetime. This album is a collection of recordings from the '50s for the Verve and Clef labels. It's a late-night dream for the nights you can't sleep, thinkin' about the love that got away. Holiday is accompanied by some of the music's best players: Ben Webster (king of the big, breathy tenor sax tone), Benny Carter (alto sax), and Jimmy Rowles (one of the most graceful pianists ever). Her take on "Body and Soul" could melt the hardest heart, and imagine yourself at the end of your figurative rope with "Ill Wind"…

This session comes from close to the end of the line (1959) in the erstwhile swinging company of Barney Kessel on guitar, Ben Webster on tenor, and naysayers will be quick to point out that Lady Day wasn't in peak form here…

An instrumental Polka holiday collection. Craig Duncan is no stranger to the Nashville music community. His talents on violin, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, mandolin, guitar, bass, and viola can be heard on numerous Nashville recordings. A graduate of Appalachian State University and Tennessee State University, Craig is a member of the North American Fiddler's Hall of Fame and Who's Who in Music and Musicians. In addition to his recording credits, Craig Duncan has written over 30 music instruction publications for Mel Bay Public.

Part of Verve's Diva Series of compilations, this Billie Holiday collection is by no means the definitive account of her career – Columbia's Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday takes that honor. That said, it is still a great introduction to the vocalist's singular and influential style. There is a timely flow to the track listing on most of the Diva Series albums, and this collection is no exception.

After the publication of her autobiography, Lady Sings The Blues, Billie Holiday was doing good business in clubs in what turned out to be a last burst of stardom. We cannot know why she stopped recording for Norman Granz after January 1957 - but the present collection is a magnificent culmination of her years with the producer.

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.