Billie Holiday – Music For Torching With Billie Holiday (Mono)
Regular price
€169,00
Rarity vinyl cannot be exchanged as they are sole copies of sold-out editions.
If damaged they would be refunded after return but not exchanged.
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RARITY - Sealed
Vocals - Billie Holiday
Trumpet - Harry "Sweets" Edison
Alto, saxophone - Benny Carter
Piano - Jimmy Rowles
Guitar - Barney Kessel
Drums - Larry Bunker
Bass - John Simmons
Written by Isham Jones (A1), Gus Kahn (A1), Harold Arlen (A2), Johnny Mercer (A2), Victor Schertzinger (A3), Victor Young (A4), Ned Washington (A4), Bing Crosby (A4), Jerome Kern (B1), Dorothy Fields (B1), Allie Wrubel (B2), Herb Magidson (B2), Cole Porter (B3), Irving Berlin (B4)
1LP, standard sleeve
Original Master Tape : YES
Heavy Press : 180g
Record color : black
Speed : 33RPM
Size : 12”
Mono
Studio
Record Press : Pallas
Label : Speakers Corner
Original Label : Clef Records
Recorded on August 23 & August 25, 1955 at Studio Los Angeles, CA
Produced by Norman Granz
Originally released in October 1955
Reissued in 2008
Tracks :
Side A:
1. It Had to Be You
2. Come Rain or Come Shine
3. I Don't Want to Cry Anymore
4. I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You
Side B:
1. A Fine Romance
2. Gone with the Wind
3. I Get a Kick Out of You
4. Isn't This a Lovely Day?
Reviews :
Lady Sings the Blues is the title of Billie Holiday’s autobiography and that despite the fact that she didn’t sing more than three blues titles in her entire life. A more appropriate title would have been “Lady who Sings Songs”. Like no other singer, she revived the most famous songs of the American 30s and 40s show business era. The composers of these recordings in 1955 Los Angeles for the Norman Granz CLEF label are not from the first ranks of musical and songwriters apart from Duke Ellington. The musicians came from the West Coast or made it their home and they are excellent soloists. Benny Carter probably provided the arrangements and all of the eight titles became top interpretations, on which singers orient themselves to this day. Music For Torching is the title of the program, the tempos and the soloists are a perfect match for this title. Everything combines to make a pleasant atmosphere, by no means schmaltzy, but emphasizing that voice, which is characterized by alcohol and drugs. The whole never becomes a tearjerker, but a feature of “Lady Day’s” life excesses. Like the LP title indicates, both LP sides have a balanced balladic tempo. Today’s fast-paced stressful life of ultra-short video and audio clips may just prove to be a contributing factor to the sales success of this LP. Today, Billy Holiday’s popularity can alone be judged by how often her voice is heard on the Internet’s jazz outlets. There must thus be a great many people, who are interested in listening to an entire LP.
You’d be hard pressed to find a female vocal album from the 1950s with sound comparable to this one. We just finished up a big shootout for the sublimely titled Music For Torching, and this lovely copy was clearly one of the better pressings we played. If you love smoky jazz standards the way only Lady Day can sing them, we think you’ll be blown away to hear her sound this warm, rich and present.
The formula is simple: Take one of the best female vocalists in the game, back her with a stellar crew of jazzmen and set them loose to knock out incredible versions of classic torch songs — It Had To Be You, A Fine Romance, Come Rain Or Come Shine and so forth.
The good news is that the performances turned out to be some of the best ever recorded by this extraordinary singer, and fortunately for us audiophiles, the mono sound turned out to be dramatically better than we would have expected from Norman Granz’s Verve label in 1955.
Both sides are blessed with the kind of mid-’50’s Tubey Magical Analog Sound that’s been lost to the world of recorded music for decades — decades I tell you!
Nobody can manage to get a recording to sound like this anymore and it seems as if no one can even remaster a recording like this anymore, if our direct experience with scores of such albums counts as any sort of evidence.
Rating :
Ratings : AllMusic : 3 / 5 ; The Encyclopedia of Populair Music : 3 / 5 ; The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings : 3.5 / 4