Songs For Distingué Lovers Vinyle Rouge

Description

Recorded for the Verve label in January 1957 and released the following year, “Songs for Distingué Lovers” stands alongside “All or Nothing at All” as one of the final small group sessions Billie Holiday recorded under the guidance of producer Norman Granz before her premature death, exhausted by a life of excess, on July 17, 1959, at just 44 years old. Even though her voice is already damaged and her range seems eroded by alcohol and heroin abuse, Billie Holiday in these heartbreaking tracks of dolorous expressiveness and instinctive musicality revisits once again, with her inimitable genius, a selection of immortal standards (A Foggy Day, Just One of Those Things, Stars Fell in Alabama), compensating for her faltering pitch with an intact sense of rhythmic placement and a mastery of performance and interpretation worthy of the greatest tragic actresses. Beautifully and lovingly accompanied by a small ensemble full of elegance and swing, including musicians who had been close to her since the 30s and 40s like tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and trumpeter Harry Edison, Billie Holiday literally haunts these historic recordings with her bloodless voice, tearing through the veil of swing to reveal, like no one before her, the tragic dimension at the heart of jazz.