The Commodore Days

VINYL FORMAT. Import! A Lady Day collection featuring four songs recorded in 1939 and twelve from three separate sessions in 1944. "Billie Holiday has often been popularly labeled a blues singer, but she was never that, within the generally accepted definition. The overwhelming majority of her records are of popular songs, Tin Pan Alley trifles, which she elevates by her immense talent into significant jazz performances. It could be said that Bessie Smith brought the blues to the popular song, while Billie Holiday took the popular song to the blues. Her whole checkered life, sometimes intensely gay, often abysmally tragic, always defiant, imbued her with the true spirit of the blues. However banal the lyric or trite the tune, this spirit became the catalyst by which they were transmuted into blues . . . Little need be said of the performances themselves. Place the disc on your turntable; sit back and listen to old tunes that become new in Billie's hands; commonplace ballads that become unique." - Ian Jennings (from the original liner notes)