Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve reissue is pressed in the EU. DownBeat gave Lady Sings the Blues five stars, and it gathers Holiday's own versions of the songs most tied to her name.

This edition

• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Billie Holiday's autobiography and this album shared a title and arrived together at the end of 1956, and the pairing made sense: here was the life story in print and the soundtrack on the turntable. It was her last album for Clef before the label folded into Verve, drawn from sessions in 1954 and 1956.

The band is first-rate. Paul Quinichette plays tenor, Charlie Shavers trumpet, Wynton Kelly piano and Kenny Burrell guitar, and they give her plenty of room. The title song, which she wrote with Herbie Nichols, sets the tone, "Strange Fruit" is as stark and powerful as ever, and "God Bless the Child," her own song with Arthur Herzog Jr., sits beside "Good Morning Heartache," "Willow Weep for Me" and a lighter "Trav'lin' Light" and "Too Marvelous for Words." By the mid-50s her voice had deepened and grown wiser, and every line lands like it was lived.

That November she played a sold-out Carnegie Hall, with passages from the book read between songs. Seventy years later this is still the place most of us would send someone to meet her, and we've yet to have anyone come back to complain about the introduction.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Verve (cat# MGV-8099), a reissue of the 1956 album.