A Rare Live Recording of Billie Holiday


A Rare Live Recording Of Billie Holiday is a live album by jazz singer Billie Holiday, compiling material recorded over two nights at Boston's Storyville Club in 1951, and released by the small Recording Industries Corporation label in 1964. The material was originally broadcast on the radio station WMEX. The album documents one of the few recordings of Holiday performing her live set at a nightclub.

Content

The recordings on the album were posthumously released by a small label in the 1960s, sourced from a series of radio broadcasts made on Boston's WMEX, live from city's Storyville Club in 1951. Late that year, Holiday had performed for a week in the club, accompanied by the pianist and arranger Buster Harding and a rhythm section. She was interviewed at the time by Nat Hentoff, a local jazz critic and historian working for WMEX as well as Down Beat, who described her as being at the time joyful, responsible, and cooperative, due to her recent marriage to Louis McKay. As well as arriving on time for every set, she volunteered to perform extra sets specifically for the radio broadcast. Sharing the bill was Stan Getz, who Holiday praised for his ability to swing, and the two collaborated for several tunes that were also broadcast and included in this album.
The material on this album has been rereleased many times since, sometimes with different artwork and title, and sometimes adding other songs sourced from the same series of WMEX radio broadcasts.

Track listing

Side One
  1. Billie's Blues 2:53
  2. Lover Man 2:55
  3. Them There Eyes 1:40
  4. My Man 3:14
  5. I Cover The Waterfront 3:35
  6. Crazy He Calls Me 2:11
  7. Lover Come Back To Me 2:33
Side Two
  1. Detour Ahead 2:24
  2. Strange Fruit 3:16
  3. Drivin' Me Crazy 1:31
  4. Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do 2:58
  5. All Of Me 1:41
  6. I Loves You Porgy 3:06
  7. Miss Brown To You 1:52

    Personnel

tracks a1-7, b1, b4-7: November 1, 1951
tracks b2-b3: October 28, 1951