Billie Holiday- Greatest Hits [1998] FLAC, tracks+cue

1. Miss Brown to You
2. What a Little Moonlight Can Do
3. I Cried for You
4. Billie's Blues (I Love My Man)
5. A Sailboat in the Moonlight
6. I Can't Get Started
7. When A Woman Loves A Man
8. Some Other Spring
9. Solitude
10. God Bless the Child
11. Gloomy Sunday
12. The Very Thought of You
13. Body and Soul

Sony Records. 1998.
Barcode: 07464-65757-27



Curiously, yet not surprisingly given the enormity of his sway, Billie Holiday's greatest vocal influence was "Pops"--Louis Armstrong, whose trumpet was his first signature (though he's often credited with being the first great jazz singer as well). One hears Armstrong in Holiday's sense of phrasing, timing, and the warmth she invests in a lyric. This package, containing such touchstone Holiday renderings as "I Cried for You," "Body and Soul," and "When a Woman Loves a Man" (poetic, given the fact that Billie was notoriously unlucky at love), also boasts her signature song, "God Bless the Child." Her accompanists are a hall-of-fame lot, including trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Buck Clayton; saxmen Lester Young (with whom she had a close relationship), Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, and Harry Carney; drummers Cozy Cole and Jo Jones; bassists John Kirby and Walter Page; and her frequent pianist, Teddy Wilson. --Willard Jenkins