Billie Holiday - Lady Sings The Blues (1982 Japanese Verve Mono Vinyl LP)

Billie Holiday - Lady Sings The Blues | Vinyl LP - 1982 Japanese Verve Mono Reissue (23MJ 3190, Polydor K.K.)

By 1956 Billie Holiday's voice had been worn down by years of hard living, and Lady Sings the Blues makes a virtue of it. Norman Granz produced the record and released it to sit alongside her autobiography of the same name, ghost-written with William Dufty and out that same year. Four of the songs were new, including the title track she wrote with the pianist Herbie Nichols, built on the "Lady Day" nickname Lester Young had given her. The rest are re-recordings of songs from earlier in her career, among them her last studio version of "Strange Fruit", the anti-lynching song she had made her own, and "God Bless the Child". The music comes from two sessions, Los Angeles in 1954 and New York in 1956, and the bands are full of heavyweights: Charlie Shavers and Harry Edison on trumpet, Wynton Kelly and Bobby Tucker on piano, Kenny Burrell and Barney Kessel on guitar. Her tone is frayed, but the reading of a lyric is deeper than ever.

It was her last album for Granz's Clef label before it folded into Verve, and DownBeat handed it five stars on release. Holiday died three years later, in 1959, at forty-four, which leaves this record sitting close to the end of her story. It remains one of the essential late-Billie albums.

This is the 1982 Japanese pressing on Verve, manufactured by Polydor K.K. in mono, its cover carrying Herman Leonard's photograph of Holiday.