Last Recording
Last Recording | ||||
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Studio album by Billie Holiday | ||||
Released | July 1959 | |||
Recorded | March 3, 4, & 11, 1959 | |||
Genre | Vocal jazz | |||
Length | 34:58 | |||
Label | MGM | |||
Producer | Ray Ellis | |||
Billie Holiday chronology | ||||
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Alternative cover | ||||
![]() Original cover before album retitled Last Recording after Holiday's death in July 1959 | ||||
Last Recording (MGM Records, 1959) is the final album Billie Holiday recorded. It was originally released during Holiday's lifetime with the title Billie Holiday, and was retitled after her death. It is not to be confused with the 1954 Clef Records album titled Billie Holiday.[1][2]
Content
After the success of her album, Lady in Satin (1958), Billie Holiday wanted to record another album with arranger Ray Ellis. Ellis had switched from Columbia to MGM, so Billie switched labels also to avoid breaching her contract with Columbia. When she returned to the studio in March 1959, jazz critic and friend of Holiday's Leonard Feather, said Holiday "walked into the studio statuesque and sharp as ever."[This quote needs a citation]
When Holiday recorded her previous album Lady in Satin with Ellis, she conveyed to him her desire to “sound like Sinatra”, but at the time was in such poor health from years of difficulty and substance abuse that a nurse sometimes had to help keep her propped up on a high stool as she sang.[3] Billie Holiday was a departure from the stylings of her more string laden previous album, making use of a lighter string orchestra, minus the choir, and more horns, including a saxophone and a more jazz like feeling. It also demanded less fanfare. Songs like "All of You", "'Deed I Do", and "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" have a lighter and happier tempo and do not include strings.
During the time of recording Billie Holiday, Holiday's health was taking its toll. Some say that she did not look like herself at all, and looked like a ghost of what she once was.
In the song "There'll Be Some Changes Made", Holiday replaces the name Jack Benny in the lyric "Even Jack Benny has been changin' his jokes" to Frank Sinatra, her jazz friend.
The album was completed on March 11, 1959. Four days later, Billie Holiday's lifelong friend and music partner Lester Young died on March 15, 1959. She would die four months later on July 17, 1959, at the age of 44.
Allmusic music critic Ron Wynn gave the album one and half stars out of five stating, "In many ways, a sad event... It's poignant in a tragic way." The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings awards the album three stars, but places the entire rating in brackets, indicating that the authors had reservations about the album as a whole.[4]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | (![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Voice
By 1959, use of hard drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on Holiday's voice. It is evident that her voice had deteriorated since her previous album Lady in Satin. Producer and arranger Ray Ellis said that the producers "accidentally" adjusted the speed at 1/4 pitch faster in the studio making Holiday's voice high pitched in some songs like "You Took Advantage of Me".[citation needed]
Track listing
- "All of You" from Silk Stockings - (Cole Porter) -2:30
- "Sometimes I'm Happy" from Hit the Deck - (Irving Caesar, Clifford Gray, Vincent Youmans) -2:46
- "You Took Advantage of Me" from Present Arms - (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) - 2:46
- "When It's Sleepy Time Down South" from Safe in Hell - (Leon René, Otis René, Clarence Muse) - 4:04
- "There'll Be Some Changes Made" - (W. Benton Overstreet, Billy Higgins) - 2:52
- "'Deed I Do" - (Walter Hirsch, Fred Rose) - 2:14
- "Don't Worry 'bout Me" - (Ted Koehler, Rube Bloom) - 3:08
- "All the Way" from The Joker Is Wild - (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen) - 3:22
- "Just One More Chance" - (Sam Coslow, Arthur Johnston) - 3:43
- "It's Not for Me to Say" - (Al Stillman, Robert Allen) - 2:25
- "I'll Never Smile Again" - (Ruth Lowe) - 3:23
- "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" - (Charles Warfield, Clarence Williams) - 3:03
Personnel
- Billie Holiday - vocals
- Ray Ellis - arranger & conductor
- Harry Edison - trumpet
- Joe Wilder - trumpet
- Billy Byers - trombone
- Tommy Mitchell - bass trombone
- Gene Quill - alto saxophone
- Al Cohn - tenor saxophone
- Danny Bank - baritone saxophone
- Hank Jones - piano
- Barry Galbraith - guitar
- Milt Hinton - bass
- Osie Johnson - drums
References
- ^ Billie Holiday, discogs.com, accessed Dec 18, 2015
- ^ Last Recording, discogs.com, accessed Dec 18, 2015
- ^ "The Last: Final Recordings of Jazz Greats".
- ^ a b Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 717. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
- v
- t
- e
- Billie Holiday Sings/Solitude
- An Evening with Billie Holiday
- Billie Holiday
- Billie Holiday at Jazz at the Philharmonic
- Stay with Me
- Music for Torching
- Velvet Mood
- Lady Sings the Blues
- Body and Soul
- Songs for Distingué Lovers
- Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport
- All or Nothing at All
- Lady in Satin
- Last Recording
- The Essential Billie Holiday: Carnegie Hall Concert Recorded Live
- Lady in Autumn: The Best of the Verve Years
- Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944
- Lady Day Swings
- Remixed and Reimagined
- "Ain't Nobody's Business"
- "As Time Goes By"
- "Billie's Blues"
- "Blue Moon"
- "Body and Soul"
- "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?"
- "Don't Explain"
- "Easy Living"
- "Embraceable You"
- "Everything Happens for the Best"
- "Everything Happens to Me"
- "Fine and Mellow"
- "Gloomy Sunday"
- "God Bless the Child"
- "Good Morning Heartache"
- "I Cover the Waterfront"
- "I Loves You, Porgy"
- "If You Were Mine"
- "I Thought About You"
- "I'll Be Seeing You"
- "I'll Get By"
- "I'll Never Be the Same"
- "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm"
- "Just One of Those Things"
- "Lady Sings the Blues"
- "Left Alone"
- "Love for Sale"
- "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)"
- "Me, Myself, and I"
- "Miss Brown to You"
- "My Man"
- "Moonlight in Vermont"
- "Night and Day"
- "No More"
- "Now or Never"
- "Our Love Is Different"
- "P.S. I Love You"
- "Pennies from Heaven"
- "Please Don't Do It Here"
- "Preacher Boy"
- "Sophisticated Lady"
- "Stormy Blues"
- "Stormy Weather"
- "Strange Fruit"
- "Sugar"
- "Summertime"
- "That Ole Devil Called Love"
- "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)"
- "Too Marvelous for Words"
- "Trav'lin' Light"
- "What a Little Moonlight Can Do"
- "What Is This Thing Called Love?"
- "Why Was I Born?"
- "Willow Weep for Me"
- "You Go to My Head"
- "Your Mother's Son-In-Law"
- "Angel of Harlem"
- Lady Sings the Blues
- book
- film
- soundtrack
- Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
- Statue
- The United States vs. Billie Holiday
- soundtrack
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