Billie Holiday: Solitude (clear vinyl) [ERMITAGE]

Why you'll love it

This Ermitage edition comes on clear vinyl. It's Holiday's 1956 Clef LP Solitude, 12 standards in her later, intimate style, produced by Norman Granz.

This edition

• Clear vinyl

About the album

Billie Holiday had made her name on 78s for Columbia, Commodore and Decca, but she'd never made an album of new material. So in 1952 Granz fixed that, booking Radio Recorders in Los Angeles and surrounding her with the best small band he could find.

Oscar Peterson plays piano, Barney Kessel guitar, Ray Brown bass and Alvin Stoller drums, with Charlie Shavers on trumpet and Flip Phillips on tenor adding warm fills. "Solitude," "These Foolish Things," "You Go to My Head" and "Blue Moon" are unhurried and close, the voice older and wiser than on the early records, with Peterson's piano light and supportive and Kessel's guitar filling the spaces between lines, and "Love for Sale" and "Moonglow" sit beside "Tenderly." The songs first came out on a 10-inch, then Clef expanded them into Solitude in 1956.

David Stone Martin drew the original 10-inch cover, and Granz recorded it all at Radio Recorders in a couple of 1952 sessions, the band and singer in one room. Put it on late, with the lights low; the band has already agreed to keep the volume down.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Ermitage (cat# VNL 12502), a reissue of the 1956 album.