The Commodore Records were the first only-jazz label in the USA, created in 1938 by the legendary mid-Manhattan record store. In four sessions in the years 1939 and 1944, Billie Holiday sang on 45 complete takes for them. 16 of them have been reunited for the first time on one CD. They belong to her best recordings ever. Her fragile voice and her intonation was not yet affected by her drug and alcohol abuse - she died prematurely in 1959 at the age of 44. She started in 1930 in a small club in Brooklyn.
Lady Day or Lady of Pain, as she was called, recorded her greatest commercial successes with Commodore: Strange Fruit, the song about a victim of lynch-mob, and Fine and Mellow. Besides these two tracks one can find on the CD Yesterdays, I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues - in contrast to its title a very joyful tune -, I Cover the Waterfront and As Time Goes By, a song well-known since Casablanca - of course not sung by Billie Holiday in the film. The Commodore Master Takes is a CD that belongs in all jazz collections.
http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo5/billie.htm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment