Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Billie Holiday

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Billie Holiday

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Billie Holiday's tumultuous personal life may have led to her death at age 44, yet 'Lady Day' was a consistently productive recording artist over the course of an approximately quarter-century-long career that ended just before she passed in 1959.

Most historians would agree that Billie's career neatly divides into three phases. Her first decade in the limelight was divided between sessions for labels presently available through Sony and Commodore. Though the quality of the tunes she recorded varied widely, these small-group sessions featured Billie with some of the greatest jazz musicians of the era (Lester Young, etc). She spent the last half of the 1940s recording more commercial sessions for Decca (often marked by dated, syrupy pop orchestration). The quality of the accompiament may have left a lot to be desired, but Billie's vocals usually transcended her surroundings.

Her last decade found Lady Day mostly back in all-star combo settings for Verve, or with orchestral accompiament for her last two albums (e.g., LADY IN SATIN). Fans continue to argue about whether Billie's voice in her final years became a shadow of its former self, or if she compensated for any loss in technique with more emotively-satisfying performances. My opinion is: sometimes the former, often the latter.

What is admirable about this collection is that it provides enough examples of each era to give the listener a starting point to explore your preferred periods in more depth later, or to have this CD be a decent representation of her career for those on a tighter budget. Given just one CD's worth of time to fill, the compilers of this CD seem to have done as good a job as possible of hitting the high notes of Billie's remarkable career.

There is nothing definitive about this CD. Neither the song selection, liner notes, photos nor packaging distinguish this product from any other run of the mill "best of" Billie Holliday CD out there. I was sorely disappointed.

The relatively short number of songs span so much time on this "best of" - the arrangements, Billie's voice, recording style, and song quality all vary so drastically - as another reviewer eluded to, you don't get any sense at all why Billie Holliday was important - what made her music so great.

Moreover, as numerous other reviewers have eluded to, the sound quality of the first four tracks is TERRIBLE. Heed their words, because I didn't. I'm no audiophile, but the amount of hiss - which actually sounds like it was ENHANCED on these tracks - makes them utterly unlistenable.

I've heard some of these tracks on other compilations and they sounded fine - there is no reason in the world they need to sound like that. With the sound technology today, you could have made them sound better - and at the very least, not WORSE. What gives? Is it a joke?

Save your money and buy one of the many good anthology/box set CDs - that cover the different "eras" of her recordings - as an introduction to Lady Day. The only real way to be "introduced" to Billie Holliday. The Complete Decca Recordings is Fantastic! I'd give that a 5 star.