Billie Holiday: Body and Soul (Verve Acoustic Sounds series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve Acoustic Sounds edition is mastered from the original analog tapes in mono, pressed on 180g vinyl and housed in a tip-on gatefold jacket. Holiday sings Gershwin, Van Heusen and the title standard with a band of West Coast heavyweights.

This edition

• Verve Acoustic Sounds series
• Mastered from the original analog tapes
• 180g vinyl
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Mono
• Remastered

About the album

By the late 1950s Billie Holiday's voice had grown lower, grainier and more lived-in, and rather than fight it, she leaned in. Body and Soul is one of the records where that weathered voice does its most moving work, every line phrased as if she's telling you something in confidence and trusts you to keep it.

The band is a dream. Ben Webster's breathy tenor wraps around her on the slow numbers, Harry "Sweets" Edison adds muted trumpet asides, Barney Kessel plays guitar and Jimmy Rowles sits at the piano, with Red Mitchell on bass and Alvin Stoller and Larry Bunker sharing the drums. The title track stretches past six minutes, "Darn That Dream" and "Embraceable You" are slow and tender, "Moonlight in Vermont" closes in a hush, and the Gershwins' "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" gives everyone a chance to smile.

In 1957 the Saturday Review praised her unique sound and her honest, straightforward way with a song, and nearly seventy years on the verdict stands. Put it on late in the evening; it does wonders for a room, and considerably more than the new lampshade did.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Verve / UMe (cat# MGV-8197), a reissue of the 1957 album.