Amazon.co.uk Review
This greatest hits collection accompanies Ken Burns's documentary
Jazz and shows that though she never practised the vocal gymnastics of an Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday was unquestionably among the greatest jazz singers, with a subtle inventiveness in phrasing and note choice and a tremendous capacity to swing. This collection covers virtually the entire career of a fascinating and troubled artist, beginning with her sparkling mid-1930s recordings with pianist Teddy Wilson and the cream of swing-era horn players. While those fresh-voiced early records already indicate Holiday's capacity for conveying the nuances of a lyric, her work soon took on greater drama. "Strange Fruit", a 1939 account of a lynching, marked a breakthrough in the popular song, as well as in Holiday's career, and her controlled intensity only becomes more marked on signature songs like the wistful "God Bless The Child" and the moving "Don't Explain". Holiday's voice deteriorated in the later 1950s, but performances like "Fine And Mellow" show that her emotional power and musicality remained intact.
--Stuart Broomer
CD Description
Whatever gripes one may have with the short shrift given post-bebop jazz in Ken Burns's ten-part TV documentary JAZZ, he took great care in presenting the work of jazz's early pioneers, even to the extent of releasing a series of compilations by jazz figureheads that achieved a cross-licensing couppreviously unimagined. For Holiday and the other jazz greats covered in these discs, the entirety of their career is sampled, regardless of the record label.
Thus, this collection affords us the opportunity of hearing everything from "Lover Man" to "Autumn in New York", and moving from Decca to Verve recordings with impunity. As is the case with many of the other compilations in this series, if you're looking fora single disc that represents all the phases of the artist's career, this is probably it.