Billie Holiday Lady In Autumn: Best Of The Verve Years CD

LADY IN AUTUMN: BEST OF THE VERVE YEARS comes with a 32 page booklet including rare photos.
Personnel includes: Billie Holiday (vocals); Ray Ellis (conductor); Benny Carter, Gene Quill (alto saxophone); Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Flip Phillips, Paul Quinichette, Budd Johnson, Ben Webster, Al Cohn (tenor saxophone); Buck Clayton, Charlie Shavers, Joe Newman, "Sweets" Edison, Roy Eldridge (trumpet); Tommy Turk (trombone); Tony Scott (clarinet, piano); Jimmy Rowles (piano, celesta); Oscar Peterson (piano, organ); Milt Raskin, Bobby Tucker, Mal Waldron, Wynton Kelly (piano); Hank Jones (celesta); Freddie Green, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Kenny Burrell (guitar); Red Callender, Ray Brown, Milt Hinton, Red Mitchell (bass); Alvin Stoller, J.C. Heard, Ed Shaughnessy, Chico Hamilton, Cozy Cole, Larry Bunker (drums).
Producers include: Norman Granz.
Compilation producer: Joel E. Siegel.
Recorded between 1946 and 1959. Includes liner notes by Joel E. Siegel.
Digitally remastered by Dennis Drake, Andrew Nicholas, Thomas Ruff and Mark Wilder (PolyGram Studios) and Gert Van Hoeyen (PolyGram, The Netherlands).
There are many jazz lovers, even dedicated ones, who cannot afford to part with the 150 dollars or so that the ten-disc Complete Billie Holiday on Verve commands, so this two-disc distillation will do very nicely as a detailed summary of her troubled, soulful Verve period. Set out in chronological order with a mighty overreaching sweep, this mini-box covers virtually the entire period, with a generous helping of the JATP events of the 1940s, jumping a few years into the jazz all-star backings of the '50s and the 1956 Carnegie Hall concert, and closing with her heartbreakingly ravaged final sessions with Ray Ellis' string orchestra. Along the way, several Holiday landmark tunes like "Don't Explain," "God Bless the Child," "Lover Man," "Fine and Mellow," and "He's Funny That Way" are revisited and reinterpreted from a bitter, life-worn perspective. But not all is stark tragedy, for life-affirming tracks like the 1957 "Stars Fell on Alabama" and "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You" add some balance to the picture. For very sensitive listeners, 128 minutes of Lady Day in her twilight years may well be all they'll need. ~ Richard S. Ginell
Without question the greatest jazz singer there has ever been (or will ever be), Holiday's unmistakable sound, her inimitable phrasing, her faultless sense of what was right, helped mould an artist unique in the history of popular music. In the early years her joyous, youthful voice was backed by soloists of the calibre of Buck Clayton, her close friend Lester Young, and her ideal arranger, pianist Teddy Wilson. Towards the end of her life her voice was a flaking, fractured caricature of itself but her commanding artistry and musical integrity lent dignity and poignancy to her recordings.