New Billie Holiday Collection

In celebration of Billie Holiday’s 90th birthday Hip-O/Verve/UMe will release Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection on April 5, 2005. The collection is a multimedia, comprehensive audio and video portrait of Holiday featuring a double-CD and DVD retrospective.

The collection offer 42 digitally remastered recordings from the Columbia, OKeh, Commodore, Decca, Verve, Brunswick, Clef, Capitol and Aladdin labels spanning Holiday’s entire career from 1935 to 1958 on two CDs and a DVD featuring movie and television performances, audio interviews with musical contemporaries and Holiday with 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace, photos and documents, a complete major label discography and extensive liner notes by jazz historian Ashley Kahn.

Songs on the collection include “God Bless The Child,” “Lover Man,” “Don’t Explain,” “Good Morning Heartache” and “Strange Fruit.”

The DVD includes three video performances seen for the first time since their original broadcast on ABC Television’s 1956 “Stars Of Jazz”: “My Man,” “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” and “Billie’s Blues.” The DVD also includes five rare audio tracks, among them selections from a 1937 Savoy Ballroom gig with the Count Basie Orchestra, an all-star jam marking Esquire’s inaugural jazz concert in 1944 and a 1955 rehearsal with pianist Jimmy Rowles.

Originally Published January 12, 2005