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| | Lady in Satin | | | Music Artist : | | Billie Holiday | | Music Style : | | General | | Record Label : | | Sony | | Release Date : | | 1997-09-23 | | Store Price : | | $7.99 | | Artistopia's Price: $7.98 | | Usually ships in 24 hours | | |
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CD Tracks/Songs
Disc 11. I'm a Fool to Want You [Edited Master]
2. For Heaven's Sake
3. You Don't Know What Love Is
4. I Get Along Without You Very Well
5. For All We Know
6. Violets for Your Furs
7. You've Changed
8. It's Easy to Remember
9. But Beautiful
10. Glad to Be Unhappy
11. I'll Be Around
12. End of a Love Affair [Mono Version]
13. I'm a Fool to Want You [Take 3][#][*]
14. I'm a Fool to Want You [Take 2 - Alternate Take][#][*]
15. End of a Love Affair: The Audio Story [#][*]
16. End of a Love Affair [Stereo][#][*]
17. [Pause Track]
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Other Artist Albums
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Customer Reviews of This Album/CD |
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 A Tribute To Life
Submitted on: 2009-11-14 |
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| When listening to this record please keep in mind that these songs are some of Holiday's last recordings and were done so with the songstress in less than optimal health. With that said, this album is far superior to "The Last Recordings" where Holiday's voice is so damaged and reduced that listening to it is almost painful. Here, the tone and quality of her voice are diminished but not the power of emotion which she was and is still famous for. "Lady in Satin" is a study in contrast with Billie Holidays life-weary voice slicing through lush and nearly magical backing instrumentation. While some may shake their heads and feel sad for this beloved songstress nearing her final curtain call, I instead took away a new respect. Clearly she approached this project knowing that she was not at her best but still she decided to tackle some of the most demanding material of her career. With everything working against her, she still managed to produce a fine album that cuts straight to the heart. Whatever she may lack in honeyed tones and sweet melodies, she more than makes up for with raw emotion and sheer determination. What you hear here is an authentic moment. There is a smattering of love, a healthy heaping of pain, and pounds of memory and regret. Every emotion that one can feel is somehow embodied in these wrenching tributes to life. Standout tracks for me are "I'm A Fool To Want You", "But Beautiful", "I'll Be Around" and "The End of a Love Affair". But truly, there are no bad tracks on this album. There are singers now in the prime of their lives and mantles covered in awards that can't produce such a powerful and touching array of songs. Holidays vocals are like broken glass and the supporting music is like fine diamonds. At the end of the day both sparkle and shine. |
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 The Greatest
Submitted on: 2009-05-29 |
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| May be the greatest album ever recorded. Witness the myriad of releases over the years. It is a treasure for the ages. Each remastering brings us closer to the soul of the great Billie Holiday. Even Ray Ellis took a while to warm up to it. But like Shakespeare and fine scotch, give it time and you will be rewarded with greatness. |
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An UNQUESTIONED MASTERPIECE of Sorrow.......
Submitted on: 2008-11-18 |
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Does it help to be a MASOCHIST in order to fully ABSORB this AWESOME product?.....well, yes, perhaps, but so does HAMLET......
A PREPOSTEROUS analogy? Not really----- What SHAKESPEARE does with the written word, Ms. Holiday ACHIEVES through the DEEPEST, DARKEST of voyages up there with the very best in art....
Entire books could (and have?) be written about this EXCEPTIONAL, controversial work of HUMANITY, but we shall be relatively brief...... That the artist was perhaps DRUGGED, half- drunk when performing these gems is an ETERNAL dilemma of popular music that this writer will not go into, except to state the fact that whatever it took to bring this RAW INTENSITY out was more than acceptable, given the circumstances-----was POLLOCK DRUNK mad? Was MILES flying high on who knows what? were Lennon/Mccartney "enlightened" by Hallucinogens------and on and on it goes......A controversial subject....
More to the point is that If you come to this artist as this writer did----through "Lady in Satin" before the more "innocent", fresher voice that had abandoned her already, you may NEVER be able to let go------ the DEPTH, the CHARACTER, the MATURITY, the POETRY, the AUTHORITY (indeed!!) that this woman brings to these songs is that of the very old SAGE who has seen it all, stripped down to the very essence----- even when that "essence"-----elusive that it must remain----- seems almost connected exclusively to TRAGEDY.......
Well, again, we read SHAKESPEARE, yes, for the comedies, but the TRAGEDIES are the ESSENCE of Shakespeare.....
One recent analogy has been the poetry of EMILY DICKINSON------ if you can, do so, because what she does with words is sort of bring them to the FORE for you, and all those dormant images that we grow so "blase" about are re-awakened---- in a sort of "buddhist" fashion, so that you can "re-learn" to live again...... The greatest of poets.......THAT IS what Holiday will do to you......
At first PAINFUL to the ear and the heart (and PLEASE don't GO NEAR this when in a deep depression, or God save you, suicidal)----- like CALLAS at her best, it is the TRANSCENDENCE of technique to the point that the ravages of the instrument are the least thing to consider----- it is the EXPRESSIVENESS of that instrument all that matters......
All twelve of these songs are MASTERPIECES of INTERPRETATION-----and consider that they had already been done TO DEATH by a thousand others.....
No matter.....
Ms. Holiday approaches every one of these with her INTELLECT, her complete CONFIDENCE in that "RAVAGED" voice (an act of INMENSE COURAGE as well), with a CERTAINTY that shakes you to the CORE---- to the very ESSENCE......When she sings "I get along without you very well......", well, co-dependency is an insulting word that would cheapen the SOUL she conveys.....When she tells you that "You don't know what love is...." it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone (Sinatra? Simone?....) to MATCH her COMPLETE AUTHORITY......
After twenty years of hundreds of listenings, this is one album that remains at the very top of POP Vocalists for the EXCELLENCE with which she has performed..... The "SATIN" of Ellis only serves to HEIGHTEN the MORBID, DEFEATED, EXTRAORDINARILY powerful performance.......
Again, only CALLAS can be said to surpass this exceptional moment in the history of 20th. Century music........ |
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A portrait of the jazz fan as a young man
Submitted on: 2008-09-29 |
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One day in my early 20s, I was browsing in the small music section that used to exist on the mezzanine floor of the Doubleday bookstore in New York City on Fifth Avenue just south of 57th Street. [You may consider it noteworthy that I remember *exactly* where I was when this happened.]
My fledgling jazz knowledge at that time was such that I knew the importance of Billie Holiday's name - though I couldn't have identified her voice. So I looked over one of her records - but without any particular interest in purchasing one.
Then a strange man, in both senses of the word, who struck me as middle-aged - though anyone between 30 and 60 might have qualified to me then - shook his head at me discouragingly and sighed, "Young people can't really appreciate Billie Holiday." My vast dignity deeply affronted, I left to do my browsing elsewhere.
Now I know he was right. But had I been in his place [and in writing this review, perhaps in some way I can be] I would have phrased it more encouragingly for the younger man: "What is so remarkable is how her work deepens in meaning as one returns to it at advancing ages."
I don't remember which of her records that man saw me looking at. Given my limited expertise and budget, it was probably a "Greatest Hits" of the kind I would condescend towards today.
But the meaning in what that man couldn't have communicated to me is best found in "Lady in Satin".
Now you may not be in the market for a harrowing. But make no mistake: this record *is* the summit of Holiday's art - and, by extension, of female blues singing in general.
If you're skeptical of that claim, consider that no less an authority than Francis Albert Sinatra said - the year after this music was recorded - "Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years."
Please read that sentence a second time.
Then you'll know that if she declared this her masterpiece, she has earned your respect of her opinion. |
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On Lady's 93rd birthday, the CD is playing...
Submitted on: 2008-04-07 |
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When I was very young, I heard my mother play this record, and I envisioned the singer as follows: she bathed in milk, ate chocolate for breakfast, wore violets and fur all year round, and took frequent vacations on other planets; equal parts Venus de Milo, Mother Earth, and the Tooth Fairy. Years later, I read Lady's book and found out that I was both 100% wrong and 100% right. I also started buying Lady's early works, and I understood how she arrived here.
Lady in Satin is a work of sublime majesty and grandeur. If you've ever wondered whether there was life after Bird and before Trane, buy the record. If you've ever wondered whether jazz can be sung with strings and a chorus, buy the record. If you've ever wondered whether Marvin Gaye or Robert Palmer got it from, buy the record. (Both claimed it as formative.) Whatever time of day or night you listen, dawn caresses the heavens for the duration of this album. |
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