Billie Holiday with Lester Young Lady Day & Prez 1937-1941 (1998) Lossless
24 tracks | Genre: Jazz | Release: 1998 | EAC Rip | FLAC(tracks + CUE) | 309 MB
If hot jazz was defined by Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, then the lyrical side of jazz found its perfect exponents in Billie Holiday and Lester Young during the 1930s and 1940s. Their collaborations revealed a different side of the jazz art form. Here we can savor emotion without cheap sentimentality, simplicity without simple-mindedness, a force of expression that is achieved through restraint and understatement. In the long lineage of cool jazz, we constantly find the creative bursts coming at us through the work of couples -- Bix & Tram, Miles & Gil, Getz & Gilberto -- almost as if music this sensitive required some sort of magnetic, mutual attraction, an exemplary pairing to make it possible. Call it a musical romance, if you will. But at the top of the hierarchy, our First Lady (Day) and Pres of the democracy of cool jazz are Billie and Lester. "All of Me" ranks among the finest of their classic sides, and it is hard to say which of the two gets the upper hand here. Let's call it a tossup. A must have recording for anyone interested in the history of jazz vocals or the evolution of the tenor sax.
Label: Blujazz Records Genre: Jazz, Vocal Jazz Quality: FLAC (Tracks,cue,log)|MP3 Bitrate: lossless & 320kbps Total Time: 51:06 min Total Size: 292 mb/118 mb (+%rec)
Label: Not Now Music Genre: Jazz, Vocal Jazz Quality: APE (Img,cue,log,scans)|MP3 Bitrate: lossless & 320kbps Total Time: 02:28:54 min Total Size: 771 mb/355 mb (+%rec)
Billie Holiday - Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944) (10 CD Boxset) (2001)
Audio CD (October 2, 2001) | Original Release Date: 1933 | Number of Discs: 10 | MP3 320 kbps | 1.76 GB Genre: Jazz, Vocal | Format: Box set, Original recording remastered | Label: Sony
Amazon.com
This box set earns the "deluxe" designation not only because of its handsome packaging, insightful essays by Holiday scholars, and testimonials from the likes of Tony Bennett, Sonny Rollins, and Etta James, but also because of the vastly improved remastered sound that makes Lady Day the definitive issue of Billie Holiday's pivotal 1930s and '40s Columbia/Vocalion/Brunswick/OKeh oeuvre. The sides here include epochal collaborations with Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, and others. Six-plus discs chronologically present 151 masters, with the rest of the 10 CDs' space given to alternate takes and radio air checks.
It was during the early years of this period, of course, that Holiday quickly developed into one of the 20th century's vocal monuments. Her incisive way with lyric and melody, often deploying playfulness, wit, and pain in a single song, became a model for both many a female singer, as well as Frank Sinatra and Marvin Gaye. These are records to be endlessly replayed for many kinds of appreciation. Played end to end, they introduce ideals of groove and emotional expression that remain fresh and even startling many years on. Lady Day is not only a perfect example of how to reissue key material, but is an album that will stand as a beacon for veteran Holiday fans and for the new ones it will no doubt attract. --Rickey Wright