Billie Holiday - Lady In Satin

Released - June 1958

Genre - Jazz

Producer - Irving Townsend

Selected Personnel - Billie Holiday (Vocals); Ray Ellis (Conductor); Claus Ogermann (Arrangements); George Ockner (Violin/Concertmaster); David Soyer (Cello); Danny Bank (Flute); Mel Davis (Trumpet); J.J. Johnson (Trombone); Urbie Green (Trombone); Mal Waldron (Piano); Barry Galbraith (Guitar); Milt Hinton (Bass); Osie Johnson (Drums)

Standout Track - I'm A Fool To Want You

The next one is another that owes a great debt to Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours, albeit this time a less directly tangible one than the more obvious link it has with Sinatra's own follow-up Songs For Swingin' Lovers! Billie Holiday is a singer I've been aware of my whole life, thanks to her presence on any number of classic jazz compilations we used to have on in the background over dinner, usually her definitive recording of "That Ole Devil Called Love." She was one of the most popular jazz singers of the 30s and 40s, and I was aware of some of her most famous recordings, but I'd never felt any compulsion to listen to a full album of hers - as I've said elsewhere on this blog, the idea of an album being anything more than a collection of recordings from various different sessions, with little cohesion or sense of self-contained identity, didn't really catch on until the mid-50s, so there's a lot of music from before 1955 that's passed me by. But then I heard about Lady In Satin, the last album Holiday released in her lifetime, and its fascinating status as a study of a broken woman at the end of her life. It's a fascinatingly tragic thing to listen to, and one of the earliest albums I'm aware of that manages to really crystallise the emotional state of the singer behind the songs.

Holiday had achieved huge success during the 40s, her slightly strangled voice becoming one of the most iconic sounds of jazz music at the time, but her star had begun to wane by the 50s. During this time she released records for Verve Records, who kept instigating ideas for grand, ambitious recording projects for her that would be comprehensive compilations of songs by particular composers like George Gershwin or Jerome Kern, but these projects ended up being given to Ella Fitzgerald, Verve's younger and more popular recent acquisition, and Holiday was just given cheaper, simpler projects to work on. At the same time, Holiday was battling with drug and alcohol addiction, and in 1957 married a Mafia enforcer named Louis McKay, who was abusive. Increasingly disheartened with her creative output and greatly damaged by the downward spiral of the last few years of her life, she became disheartened with Verve and contacted Irving Townsend, a producer at Columbia Records, to help her make a record she could feel more strongly about, and imbue with her own emotional state at the time. It seems that In The Wee Small Hours had become something of a touchstone for her in this time - several of the tracks she eventually chose for the album were ones Sinatra had recorded for that album, such as Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well," Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers' "Glad To Be Unhappy" and Alec Wilder's "I'll Be Around." She also initially wanted that album's virtuoso arranger, Nelson Riddle, to work with her on this new one, before hearing Ray Ellis's version of "For All We Know" and deciding to work with him.

Lady In Satin essentially takes the same template as In The Wee Small Hours, as borne out by its decision to reuse some of the same songs - it's an album in which every song explores loneliness, sadness and isolation, but whereas Sinatra's take on the theme was one that feels temporary, this feels tragically all too real. Sinatra's mood which led him to make In The Wee Small Hours had admittedly come out of genuine trauma and even an attempted suicide, but it was also a period he was able to work through in order to arrive at the highs of Songs For Swingin' Lovers! the following year. You don't get a sense listening to his album that you're listening to a man genuinely on the edge and at the end of his life, but Billie would be dead just over a year after the release of Lady In Satin as a result of direct complications relating to her drinking problem.

Comparing Holiday's vocals on Lady In Satin to her more well-known tones on older recordings like "That Ole Devil Called Love" is rather shocking - that strangled, fruity tone is still intact and it's still a unique, warm, earthy sound, but in 1958 there's a real strain to it, and it cracks and croaks and trembles in places it never used to. This is never more apparent than on the masterful opener "I'm A Fool To Want You," in which Holiday gives one of the most convincing portrayals of desperation ever recorded. Ray Ellis has remarked that when the two of them first listened back to her recording, she had tears in her eyes and he was simply frustrated she missed so many notes, but was only able to appreciate after a second listen quite how painfully emotional her performance was, and how perfect in its imperfections.

Ellis assembled the orchestra and conducted it, using arrangements by Claus Ogermann. Their arrangement of the songs seems to be a divisive point among fans - the record used a massive 40-piece orchestra, and it's objectively obvious that the gargantuan warmth and lushness and fullness of the sound, its flourishing strings and warm, muted horns is starkly in contrast to the reedy, cracking vocal performance Holiday gives. Some say this creates an unpleasantly voyeuristic quality to the music, as if everyone involved is trying to ignore quite how damaged the woman is and it becomes an unflinchingly unpleasant exercise in listening to someone in need of help. Others have said that that very disconnect between voice and accompaniment is what makes the album so masterful - a more stripped-back arrangement that less obviously demonstrated the limits to her voice might have robbed this album of its beauty. What makes it quite so strikingly powerful is how ambitiously it strains for something beautiful, and how narrowly it misses it in places. I should clarify that I by no means think Billie's voice here is unpleasant - it's still an absolutely wonderful sound, but it's those occasional cracks and moans that suddenly jar the listener out of an otherwise gorgeous listening experience and remind you of the tragedy of what you're really hearing.

"I Get Along Without You Very Well" is perhaps my other favourite on the record, as the light breeziness of the double bass part and the soft, tinkling piano, is perhaps the strongest contrast between sound and meaning - it's got a real upbeat friendliness to it which tugs more at the heartstrings when you remember what state Billie was in when she recorded it. The muted trombone solo on "It's Easy To Remember" also gets a shout-out as it's really lovely. There would be one more Billie Holiday album released after Lady In Satin, but posthumously, being recorded just a couple of months before she was taken fatally ill. Lady In Satin remains a tragically beautiful reminder of the tragic direction her life took after the more celebrated and iconic work she did as a younger woman, as well as being a reminder of how capable she was of still making truly beautiful music even in the midst of emotional turmoil. A difficult listen, but an important one.

Track Listing:

1. I'm A Fool To Want You (Frank Sinatra; Joel Herron & Jack Wolf)

2. For Heaven's Sake (Elise Bretton; Sherman Edwards & Donald Meyer)

3. You Don't Know What Love Is (Gene DePaul & Don Raye)

4. I Get Along Without You Very Well (Hoagy Carmichael)

5. For All We Know (J. Fred Coots & Sam M. Lewis)

6. Violets For Your Furs (Tom Adair & Matt Dennis)

7. You've Changed (Bill Carey & Carl T. Fischer)

8. It's Easy To Remember (Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers)

9. But Beautiful (Johnny Burke & Jimmy Van Heusen)

10. Glad To Be Unhappy (Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers)

11. I'll Be Around (Alec Wilder)

12. The End Of A Love Affair (Edward Redding)