Billie Holiday - Lady In Satin (1987 Columbia Jazz Masterpieces LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: NM

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Billie Holiday & Ray Ellis Orchestra - Lady In Satin Vinyl LP - 1987 Columbia Jazz Masterpieces Remastered Stereo Reissue

• Billie Holiday's final studio masterpiece - heartbreaking 1958 swansong with lush orchestration
• Remastered from original analog tapes - 1987 Columbia Jazz Masterpieces audiophile edition
• All-star personnel - Hank Jones, Mal Waldron, Milt Hinton, J.J. Johnson support Holiday's weathered voice

Billie Holiday's final studio album, recorded in 1958 with Ray Ellis' lush orchestral arrangements, stands as one of popular music's most emotionally devastating documents. Holiday's voice, ravaged by years of hard living and substance abuse, transforms twelve torch songs and ballads into deeply personal statements, her technical deterioration paradoxically intensifying the emotional impact. Backed by Ellis' string-laden arrangements and featuring elite jazz musicians including pianists Hank Jones and Mal Waldron, bassist Milt Hinton, trombonist J.J. Johnson, and others across two recording sessions, Holiday interprets standards like "I'm A Fool To Want You", "You Don't Know What Love Is", and "Glad To Be Unhappy" with profound vulnerability. Released in 1987 as part of Columbia's Jazz Masterpieces series, this US pressing was digitally remastered at CBS Studios New York directly from the original analog tapes and pressed at Columbia's Carrollton, Georgia plant.

Ellis' orchestral arrangements, featuring strings, woodwinds, brass, harp, and xylophone, create lush settings that some critics found overly saccharine yet perfectly frame Holiday's fragile delivery. Her inability to sustain notes or navigate rapid melodic passages that would have been effortless in her 1930s prime becomes the music's emotional core, every phrase weighted with lived experience and approaching mortality. The choice of material—songs about loss, longing, and romantic devastation—reads as Holiday's conscious final artistic statement, her interpretations stripping away any remaining distance between singer and song.

The personnel across the two sessions represents jazz's finest: Hank Jones and Mal Waldron alternate on piano, Milt Hinton anchors with his bass, while J.J. Johnson's trombone, Gene Quill's alto saxophone, and other luminaries colour the orchestrations.