Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday – Velvet Mood (1956/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 37:38 minutes | 1,62 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve Reissues

Long out-of-print, Billie Holiday’s brilliant 1956 LP, Velvet Mood, released on Clef (soon-to-be Verve) Records, captures the 41-year-old Holiday backed by a sextet that featured Benny Carter on alto sax and Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpet. Although hard living had already begun to take its toll on Holiday (who died just three years later), she was still a huge international star at this time, giving sold out concerts at Carnegie Hall and touring Europe. 1956 also marked the year that her legendary biography, Lady Sings the Blues was released.
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Billie Holiday – The Essential Billie Holiday: Carnegie Hall Concert Recorded Live (1961/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 44:33 minutes | 1,69 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve

Recorded live at Carnegie Hall on November 10, 1956, The Essential Billie Holiday: Carnegie Hall Concert Recorded Live was produced by Norman Granz and is a stellar live recording of Holiday at her best.

On this release of the recording, the songs are interspersed with readings from Billie Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, read by Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times.
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Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit (1939/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:13 minutes | 472 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

“Strange Fruit” is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937. The song protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century, and the great majority of victims were black. The song has been called “a declaration” and “the beginning of the civil rights movement”.
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Billie Holiday – Stay With Me (1958/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 33:52 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve Reissues

“Stay with Me“ is an album by jazz singer Billie Holiday accompanied by Tony Scott and his Orchestra. It contains a whole recording session of February 14, 1955 in New York and released in 1958 on producer Norman Granz’ Verve label.
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Billie Holiday – Stay With Me (1958/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:19 minutes | 626 MB | Genre: Jazz vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Stay with Me (MGV 8302) is an album by the jazz singer Billie Holiday, accompanied by Tony Scott and his Orchestra. It contains all the material from a session recorded February 14, 1955, in New York City, and released in 1958 on producer Norman Granz’s Verve label.
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Billie Holiday – Songs For Distingué Lovers (1957/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 33:20 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve

It is undeniable that Billie Holiday’s singing changed in her later years. Her voice darkened an shifted to a lower range. Her economy of means distilled her sound to its expressive essence – a kind of heightened speech. The classic LP Songs For Distingué Lovers, has also deepened and become burnished with time. Maybe it’s that still-arresting word distingué; maybe it’s that iconic, tinted image of Lady Day on the cover. This legendary recording features the singer’s best studio work of the Fifties.
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Billie Holiday – Solitude (1956/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 38:39 minutes | 801 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve

Billie Holiday’s Solitude, originally Billie Holiday Sings, is comprised of tracks recorded with American jazz producer Norman Granz in 1952. The album features popular tunes “Blue Moon”, “Solitude”, “East Of The Sun (West Of The Moon)”, “I Only Have Eyes For You” and many more.
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Billie Holiday – Recital (1956/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 37:02 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve Reissues

Recital is a compilation of recordings Billie Holiday made in 1952 and 1954 in New York City with some impressive musicians, among them Oscar Peterson. The material largely consists of songs from 1921 to 1935, many taken from the Great American Songbook.
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Billie Holiday – Music For Torching (1955/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 33:47 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve Reissues

This 1955 collection of standards features a preponderance of ballads, putting the emphasis on Holiday’s voice, stylings and her sensitive, intuitive interpretations. Among the session musicians backing Holiday are Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpet and Benny Carter on alto sax. Holiday could still sing better than most, her sense of rhythm still mostly intact, her unusual timbre still there (perhaps even a bit more idiosyncratic with age) and still able to tell the story of any song. And what songs she was given for these sessions: there isn’t a dud in the bunch.
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Billie Holiday – Lady Sings The Standards (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:28 minutes | 620 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), known professionally as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
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Billie Holiday – Lady Sings The Blues (1956/2007)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 37:58 minutes | 638 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Clef Records

Historical Mono Recording
A delicate and deeply felt collection of recordings, originally released to coincide with the publication of Billie’s autobiography in 1956. In the years since the album title has been appropriated on a number of Billie Holiday collections, but the original album has never been on CD until now.
Recorded September 3, 1954, and June 6 & 7, 1956
Session supervised by Norman Granz
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Billie Holiday – Lady In Satin (1958/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 40:14 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Columbia Records

Billie Holiday was a true artist of her day and rose as a social phenomenon in the 1950s. Her soulful, unique singing voice and her ability to boldly turn any material that she confronted into her own music made her a superstar of her time. Today, Holiday is remembered for her masterpieces, creativity and vivacity, as many of Lady Day’s songs are as well known today as they were decades ago. Holiday’s poignant voice is still considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.

After years on Norman Granz’s Clef/Norgran/Verve group of labels, and impressed by arrangements she had heard by Ray Ellis, Holiday cut this album for Columbia in 1958. A highwater mark of her career, Lady In Satin served as Billie’s second to last studio effort and final album released during her lifetime. The results are a very smooth, velvety set of tunes that go down like a twelve year old single-malt scotch. Standouts include “I Get Along Without You Very Well” and “You’ve Changed.”
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Billie Holiday – Her Greatest Hits (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:17 minutes | 532 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), known professionally as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
(more…)

Billie Holiday – Body And Soul (1957/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:56 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Verve

The title track is one of the most recorded jazz songs in history and Billie Holiday’s interpretation on this 1957 release is arguably considered one of the best, if not the definitive version. Producer Norman Granz brings out the best of her voice on this album from late in her career, accompanied by a superb band that includes Ben Webster on tenor sax.
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