From the Heart

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Legacy Recordings released digitally remastered versions of fifteen Billie Holiday songs for Valentine’s Day, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate. From the Heart is a collection of some of Holiday’s loveliest work: classics such as Ray Noble’s “The Very Thought of You,” Marks’ and Simon’s “All Of Me,” Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” and my personal favorite, J. Fred Coots’ “You Go To My Head.” The album is a part of Legacy’s From the Heart series, which includes nine artists.

For those poor souls who have never experienced incomparable jazz and blues singer Billie Holiday, the emotion and humanity of her voice, and the pure élan of her delivery are her trademarks. Both of those are in full effect here. Sadly, many of her recordings are marred by a scratchy sound due to their age and poor quality, but Legacy has done a marvelous job restoring the songs on From the Heart. The voice of “Lady Day” shines through beautifully, with the lush backup of piano, horns, drums, and guitar.

From the Heart is no “Best Of"; for a broader swath of Billie’s work with edgier songs like “Strange Fruit” or “Long Gone Blues,” look elsewhere. However, if you are in need of some pleasurably romantic music for slow dancing and romantic evenings, From the Heart will work just fine. For Valentine’s Day, or any other day, sit down with your sweetheart, break out the bubbly, and enjoy.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, March 29th 2009

Remixed and Reimagined

admin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:36:00 +0000

By Billie Holiday

Legacy

Billie Holiday has been lauded along with Joni Mitchell, Judy Garland, and Aretha Franklin as one of the greatest female artists of the 20th Century. The appeal of Holiday was her pained and pinched vocals; she did not have a pretty voice, and the biggest part of her appeal laid in the rough edges of her whiskey-sour pipes.

Because one listens to Billie Holiday for emotional truth, it is a little disconcerting to think of Billie Holiday dance music. One needn’t worry, this album is not the kitschy mess of Ethel Merman’s disco record, nor is it a queerly camp album - like Liza Minnelli’s dance album with the Pet Shop Boys. Instead, the album is a collection of ultra-cool remixes of Holiday classics.

If listeners have a hard time imagining Holiday’s earthy vocals couched in plush dance music, they’d be right; logic would dictate that an artist as gritty and real as Holiday would not fare well in a soundscape of synthesizers. The remixes that work best are not the ones that try to reinvent Billie Holiday as a dance diva, but the ones that attempt to reinterpret her tunes. While Tony Humphries’ vision of “But Beautiful” is sonically awesome, Holiday’s singing suffers in the dub-treatment. Better songs are “Summertime” and “He Ain’t Got Rhythm” that pull off the difficult task of placing Billie Holiday on the dance floor without making it a mess. For the most part the album works because the music covered is the rawer kind that finds itself in the headphones of urbane hipsters.

Written by: Peter Piatkowski, August 29th 2007