Thursday, March 20, 2014

Ken Burns Jazz: Billie Holiday (2000)


Let's switch gears from 45's to 78's. Ignore the date of 2000 you see on the post title. We're taking it back to the 1930's and moving through Billie Holiday's career to the 1950's. Jazz from the 1920's and 1930's can be especially challenge to categorize in terms of an artist. Since Holiday didn't release a full-length album until the 1950's, it can be a bit of a mad scramble to identify all of the singles from various labels without the help of compilations such as Lady Day and, to a lesser extent, this one. To further complicate matters, often the artist is not "Billie Holiday". In fact, many of the recordings will be credited to the bandleader (e.g. Teddy Wilson) even though Holiday's voice is the main attraction. Other examples include Charlie Christian, who never recorded under his own name, Coleman Hawkins, and Louis Armstrong, who often released singles with another far-lesser known person's name placed on top.

I picked up this particular disc for free well before I really got into jazz. It served its purpose for the time, but, as with most of the Ken Burns series, it is too lightweight of a compilation to warrant spending a lot of money on. Stick with Lady Day, which as almost all of these tracks and a lot more. If you find yourself really getting into her music, the 1950's albums will take care of the rest.

***Addendum: I must have been feeling some hostility toward Mr. Burns when I wrote this. Upon closer inspection, this collection includes a number of songs not featured on Lady Day, most critically "Strange Fruit", one of the most important songs of the entire first half of the 20th century. While I still believe other compilations can do the job better than this one, I would suggest something in addition to Lady Day.

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