When Columbia wouldn't allow Billie Holiday to record the controversial "Strange Fruit," for fear of reprisals by Southern distributors, the songstress turned to her friend Milt Gabler, owner/producer of Commodore Records. A deal was struck with Columbia for a four song one-off session for Commodore, and a decade-plus long producer/performer relationship was launched. Milt viewed Billie Holiday as not only a great jazz singer, but also as a great pop songstress; and after she returned to Commodore in 1944 ...   [ read more ]

3xCD $46.99

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Forget for a moment that The Best of Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday was tied into the release of the superb box set, {Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia}, thereby offering a bit of advertisement to the full-fledged set. That doesn't matter -- even if there was never a box set, this would have been a welcome addition to Billie Holiday's catalog, since it's the first concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to her groundbreaking, perhaps greatest, recordings. Over the course of tw...   [ read more ]

CD $15.19

Billie Holiday's story is so huge, her artistry so vast, and her impact so incalculable, that even attempting to corral a representative sampling of it within a single collection of recordings is an overwhelming, perhaps foolhardy task. Many have tried, of course, and literally hundreds of options of varying quality and legitimacy, scattered across dozens of labels, are available to the consumer. Neophytes, or those not willing to commit to a gargantuan listening session, can settle for any number of singl...   [ read more ]

4xCD $52.99

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