Billie Holiday: All Or Nothing At All (180g, 6 bonus tracks) [JAZZ WAX]

Why you'll love it

This Jazz Wax pressing is remastered on 180g vinyl and adds bonus material from the same sessions, including "Moonlight in Vermont." It gathers Holiday's 1956 and 1957 small-group sides with Ben Webster, Harry Edison, Jimmy Rowles and Barney Kessel.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Bonus tracks from the same sessions
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Billie Holiday's Verve years are where you hear her at her most intimate. Her voice had grown deeper and darker by the mid-50s, and she leaned right into it, phrasing every line like a confidence shared across a small table, with the timing that made her the singer every other singer studied. Norman Granz recorded her with sympathetic players and let the sessions breathe.

All or Nothing at All draws its songs from five sessions in 1956 and 1957, with a relaxed, understanding combo: Ben Webster's breathy tenor, Harry "Sweets" Edison's muted trumpet, Jimmy Rowles on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar, Red Mitchell or Joe Mondragon on bass and Alvin Stoller on drums. Ellington's "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me" and "Sophisticated Lady," Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" and the Gershwins' "But Not for Me" sit beside a slow, aching "Ill Wind."

David Stone Martin drew the cover, and Verve put it out in 1958 as one of her last studio albums. Put it on after dinner and the washing up tends to wait, which in our experience is the highest praise a record can earn.

Also at Kops: more Billie Holiday on vinyl · browse Vocal Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Jazz Wax (cat# JWR4621), a reissue of the 1958 album.