![]() ![]() ![]() It's available as an import from Legacy and Sony Music Entertainment France, and is, as of this writing, very reasonably priced at Amazon U.S. and Daniel Baumgarten in France, features a 12-page booklet with new liner notes by Sebastian Danchin. The CD edition, spearheaded by Michael Cuscuna in the U.S. Maria Triana has remastered at Sony's Battery Studios. Discs Two and Three are drawn from the February 18-20 session reels, totaling 25 tracks and almost two hours of never-before-commercially-released complete outtakes. Legacy Recordings' new 3-CD edition includes, on Disc One, the eleven-track stereo album plus the newly-created stereo master of "The End of a Love Affair," the mono versions of that song and "I'm a Fool to Want You," and Holiday's Columbia recording of "Fine and Mellow" from December 1957, a few weeks prior to the Satin recording sessions. The album was released in June 1958 in mono with a twelve-track line-up the stereo issue dropped "The End of a Love Affair" and used a different version of "I'm a Fool to Want You" incorporating Takes 2 and 3 whereas the mono LP included the complete Take 3. Lady in Satin became her final LP released in her lifetime. Their final collaboration, Billie Holiday, was recorded for MGM Records and wouldn't be released until after her untimely death on July 17, 1959. Holiday was pleased enough to ask Ellis back for a second outing despite his trouble recording Lady in Satin, he agreed. The recordings were deeply rooted in emotional honesty the satiny arrangements only added another poignant dimension to the frayed but powerful recitations provided by the singer. Though Ray Ellis was initially disappointed in the results of the sessions, he changed his mind when listening to the assembled album. ![]() After three fraught evenings (which included some moments of true inspiration from Holiday, such as her last-minute addition of the song "You've Changed" after a quick run to Colony Records), the album was completed. ![]() But when interpreting a lyric, the old magic most definitely hadn't gone away. Imbibing gin throughout the session, Holiday wasn't in her best frame of mind, and her voice by this point best allowed for breathy, speak-singing. The 30+ musicians of the orchestra were augmented by Holiday's regular trio: pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Milt Hinton and drummer Osie Johnson. 2:30 a.m.) of recording with Ellis, producer Townsend and engineer Fred Plaut. Though rehearsals were reportedly called off or unattended by the singer, she arrived at 30th Street Studio on February 18 for the first of three consecutive evenings (11:30 p.m. There were songs by Rodgers and Hart ("Glad to Be Unhappy" and "It's Easy to Remember"), Hoagy Carmichael ("I Get Along Without You Very Well"), Alec Wilder ("I'll Be Around") and Holiday fan Frank Sinatra ("I'm a Fool to Want You"). Holiday picked eleven songs for the LP which she hadn't previously recorded all were from the Great American Songbook, with lyrics that spoke to her. Ellis later recalled being greeted by a "shabby, dirty" Holiday to select the album's material. She was happy to be paired with conductor-arranger Ray Ellis, whose instrumental album Ellis in Wonderland had been a favorite. Despite having predicted to journalists that an early death would await her, Holiday pressed forward to dress in satin for the album that would become her most famous long-player. Although the book (ghostwritten by William Dufty based on interviews with its subject) has since been picked apart by her biographers for its glaring inaccuracies, it nonetheless captured Holiday's singular voice, lacking in self-pity and filled with a certain, stinging kind of wisdom and elegance. Holiday had acknowledged many of her personal demons in the 1956 autobiography Lady Sings the Blues. It's just been reissued as Lady in Satin: The Centennial Edition, a deluxe 3-CD set featuring two discs' worth of previously unissued material. The LP's original liner notes by producer Irving Townsend noted that "The use of strings and voices, punctuated with jazz-inspired solos here and there, is a new setting for this great jazz singer." Though audiences and critics were immediately divided by Lady in Satin, with its orchestral arrangements by Ray Ellis, it's since been acknowledged as a classic and a defining statement for Lady Day. The album controversially promised a new, glamorous setting for the artist, who had recently been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver following a lifetime of troubles including alcohol and drug dependency, abusive relationships, stints in reform school and prison, and even a period as a teenaged prostitute. Billie Holiday was just a couple months away from her 43rd birthday when she entered Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio on Februto record Lady in Satin. ![]()
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