HAPPY HOUR!!!

(SPECIALLY DEDICATED TO SAILOR GIRL)

(A Foggy Day - George & Ira Gershwin)

Billie Holiday (1915-1959) left us one of the most transcendent bodies of work in all of Western culture. Like Sinatra, who revered her, and unlike Sarah Vaughan, who followed her in the regal line of American female singers, Holiday did not read music – she simply is music.

There are those who aver that her voice, never a magnificent instrument but always a strikingly honest one, had by the Fifties lost the new-penny shininess of the Thirties and the woody warmth of the Forties. By the Fifties, though her voice had coarsened and her intonation tended to wobble. Miss Holiday knew her business in much the way that a knockout-fighter-turned-crafty-counterpuncher knows his. Revisiting tunes that she’d done in two previous decades, her stick-and-move, bob-and-weave phrasing made her mostly a winner. And, as always, her time was of championship caliber.

The majority of the songs herein are reconsiderations of familiar fare and some – notably “Everything I Have Is Yours”, “Comes Love”, “Speak Low”, and “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” – stand with the best work of her twenty-five-year recording career. The instrumentalists, including old friends (Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, Benny Carter, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Jimmy Rowles, and Tony Scott) and rising young stars (Oscar Peterson’s trio, Wynton Kelly, and Kenny Burrell) are knights attending a Lady.

Though she knew these numbers inside and out, Billie Holiday continued to uncover new shadings, nuances, and meanings. What she may have lost vocally is more than offset by the feeling we gain.

James Isaacs
(Introduction to Billie’s Best, 1992 PolyGram Records)

(SPECIALLY DEDICATED TO SAILOR GIRL)

(A Foggy Day - George & Ira Gershwin)

Billie Holiday (1915-1959) left us one of the most transcendent bodies of work in all of Western culture. Like Sinatra, who revered her, and unlike Sarah Vaughan, who followed her in the regal line of American female singers, Holiday did not read music – she simply is music.

There are those who aver that her voice, never a magnificent instrument but always a strikingly honest one, had by the Fifties lost the new-penny shininess of the Thirties and the woody warmth of the Forties. By the Fifties, though her voice had coarsened and her intonation tended to wobble. Miss Holiday knew her business in much the way that a knockout-fighter-turned-crafty-counterpuncher knows his. Revisiting tunes that she’d done in two previous decades, her stick-and-move, bob-and-weave phrasing made her mostly a winner. And, as always, her time was of championship caliber.

The majority of the songs herein are reconsiderations of familiar fare and some – notably “Everything I Have Is Yours”, “Comes Love”, “Speak Low”, and “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” – stand with the best work of her twenty-five-year recording career. The instrumentalists, including old friends (Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, Benny Carter, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Jimmy Rowles, and Tony Scott) and rising young stars (Oscar Peterson’s trio, Wynton Kelly, and Kenny Burrell) are knights attending a Lady.

Though she knew these numbers inside and out, Billie Holiday continued to uncover new shadings, nuances, and meanings. What she may have lost vocally is more than offset by the feeling we gain.

James Isaacs
(Introduction to Billie’s Best, 1992 PolyGram Records)