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Lady in Satin | 
 enlarge | Artist: Billie Holiday
Label: Sony
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy Used: $2.59
You Save: $9.39 (78%)
New (40) Used (39) Collectible (1) from $2.59
Avg. Customer Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 33173
Format: Enhanced, Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 65144
UPC: 074646514429
EAN: 0074646514429
ASIN: B000002AH9
Release Date: September 23, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: All of our used items are 100% Guaranteed to play. Ships 1st class!!
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| Tracks:
| • | I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holiday, Wolf, Jack | | • | For Heaven's Sake - Billie Holiday, Bretton, Elise | | • | You Don't Know What Love Is - Billie Holiday, Raye, Don | | • | I Get Along Without You Very Well - Billie Holiday, Carmichael, Hoagy | | • | For All We Know - Billie Holiday, Coots, J. Fred | | • | Violets for Your Furs - Billie Holiday, Adair, Tom | | • | You've Changed - Billie Holiday, Carey, Bill | | • | It's Easy to Remember - Billie Holiday, Rodgers, Richard | | • | But Beautiful - Billie Holiday, Burke, Johnny | | • | Glad to Be Unhappy - Billie Holiday, Rodgers, Richard | | • | I'll Be Around - Billie Holiday, Wilder, Alec | | • | The End of a Love Affair - Billie Holiday, Redding, Edward | | • | I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holiday, Wolf, Jack | | • | I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holiday, Wolf, Jack | | • | The End of a Love Affair: The Audio Story - Billie Holiday, Redding, Edward | | • | The End of a Love Affair - Billie Holiday, Redding, Edward |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential recording
A harrowing classic, Billie Holiday's personal favorite among her '50s albums captures the singer 17 months before her death, her once honeyed voice, scarred and weakened from punishing life, its ravages highlighted by the 1958 session's crisp sonics and the contrasting "satin" of Ray Ellis' sleek string arrangements. Yet it is that very contrast that explains the power of these performances: In revisiting its torchy standards, Holiday reduces them to their core of pain and longing, transforming "I'm a Fool to Want You," "You Don't Know What Love Is," and "You've Changed" into naked declarations as mesmerizing and unsettling as a horrific accident. Any postrocker that presumes pop standards and string sections automatically translate to "easy listening" hasn't listened to this. This 1997 version adds unreleased takes and a beautiful 20-bit digital transfer to extract every shivering pang of Holiday's music. --Sam Sutherland
Album Description
Limited 'Millennium Edition' reissue of classic 1958 album in a deluxe heavyweight miniaturized LP sleeve complete with inner sleeve and a Japanese-style obi strip on the spine. 12 tracks. Individually numbered. 1999 release.
Album Details
Limited Millennium Edition. Packed in a Heavy Weight Card Wallet that Faithfully Recreates the Original Vinyl Sleeve, Right Down to the Inner Bag. The Wallet Will Come in a Plastic Cover.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...
 An UNQUESTIONED MASTERPIECE of Sorrow....... November 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Does it help to be a MASOCHIST in order to fully ABSORB this AWESOME product?.....well, yes, perhaps, but so does HAMLET......
A PREPOSTEROUS analogy? Not really----- What SHAKESPEARE does with the written word, Ms. Holiday ACHIEVES through the DEEPEST, DARKEST of voyages up there with the very best in art....
Entire books could (and have?) be written about this EXCEPTIONAL, controversial work of HUMANITY, but we shall be relatively brief...... That the artist was perhaps DRUGGED, half- drunk when performing these gems is an ETERNAL dilemma of popular music that this writer will not go into, except to state the fact that whatever it took to bring this RAW INTENSITY out was more than acceptable, given the circumstances-----was POLLOCK DRUNK mad? Was MILES flying high on who knows what? were Lennon/Mccartney "enlightened" by Hallucinogens------and on and on it goes......A controversial subject....
More to the point is that If you come to this artist as this writer did----through "Lady in Satin" before the more "innocent", fresher voice that had abandoned her already, you may NEVER be able to let go------ the DEPTH, the CHARACTER, the MATURITY, the POETRY, the AUTHORITY (indeed!!) that this woman brings to these songs is that of the very old SAGE who has seen it all, stripped down to the very essence----- even when that "essence"-----elusive that it must remain----- seems almost connected exclusively to TRAGEDY.......
Well, again, we read SHAKESPEARE, yes, for the comedies, but the TRAGEDIES are the ESSENCE of Shakespeare.....
One recent analogy has been the poetry of EMILY DICKINSON------ if you can, do so, because what she does with words is sort of bring them to the FORE for you, and all those dormant images that we grow so "blase" about are re-awakened---- in a sort of "buddhist" fashion, so that you can "re-learn" to live again...... The greatest of poets.......THAT IS what Holiday will do to you......
At first PAINFUL to the ear and the heart (and PLEASE don't GO NEAR this when in a deep depression, or God save you, suicidal)----- like CALLAS at her best, it is the TRANSCENDENCE of technique to the point that the ravages of the instrument are the least thing to consider----- it is the EXPRESSIVENESS of that instrument all that matters......
All twelve of these songs are MASTERPIECES of INTERPRETATION-----and consider that they had already been done TO DEATH by a thousand others.....
No matter.....
Ms. Holiday approaches every one of these with her INTELLECT, her complete CONFIDENCE in that "RAVAGED" voice (an act of INMENSE COURAGE as well), with a CERTAINTY that shakes you to the CORE---- to the very ESSENCE......When she sings "I get along without you very well......", well, co-dependency is an insulting word that would cheapen the SOUL she conveys.....When she tells you that "You don't know what love is...." it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone (Sinatra? Simone?....) to MATCH her COMPLETE AUTHORITY......
After twenty years of hundreds of listenings, this is one album that remains at the very top of POP Vocalists for the EXCELLENCE with which she has performed..... The "SATIN" of Ellis only serves to HEIGHTEN the MORBID, DEFEATED, EXTRAORDINARILY powerful performance.......
Again, only CALLAS can be said to surpass this exceptional moment in the history of 20th. Century music........
A portrait of the jazz fan as a young man September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One day in my early 20s, I was browsing in the small music section that used to exist on the mezzanine floor of the Doubleday bookstore in New York City on Fifth Avenue just south of 57th Street. [You may consider it noteworthy that I remember *exactly* where I was when this happened.]
My fledgling jazz knowledge at that time was such that I knew the importance of Billie Holiday's name - though I couldn't have identified her voice. So I looked over one of her records - but without any particular interest in purchasing one.
Then a strange man, in both senses of the word, who struck me as middle-aged - though anyone between 30 and 60 might have qualified to me then - shook his head at me discouragingly and sighed, "Young people can't really appreciate Billie Holiday." My vast dignity deeply affronted, I left to do my browsing elsewhere.
Now I know he was right. But had I been in his place [and in writing this review, perhaps in some way I can be] I would have phrased it more encouragingly for the younger man: "What is so remarkable is how her work deepens in meaning as one returns to it at advancing ages."
I don't remember which of her records that man saw me looking at. Given my limited expertise and budget, it was probably a "Greatest Hits" of the kind I would condescend towards today.
But the meaning in what that man couldn't have communicated to me is best found in "Lady in Satin".
Now you may not be in the market for a harrowing. But make no mistake: this record *is* the summit of Holiday's art - and, by extension, of female blues singing in general.
If you're skeptical of that claim, consider that no less an authority than Francis Albert Sinatra said - the year after this music was recorded - "Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years."
Please read that sentence a second time.
Then you'll know that if she declared this her masterpiece, she has earned your respect of her opinion.
On Lady's 93rd birthday, the CD is playing... April 7, 2008
When I was very young, I heard my mother play this record, and I envisioned the singer as follows: she bathed in milk, ate chocolate for breakfast, wore violets and fur all year round, and took frequent vacations on other planets; equal parts Venus de Milo, Mother Earth, and the Tooth Fairy. Years later, I read Lady's book and found out that I was both 100% wrong and 100% right. I also started buying Lady's early works, and I understood how she arrived here.
Lady in Satin is a work of sublime majesty and grandeur. If you've ever wondered whether there was life after Bird and before Trane, buy the record. If you've ever wondered whether jazz can be sung with strings and a chorus, buy the record. If you've ever wondered whether Marvin Gaye or Robert Palmer got it from, buy the record. (Both claimed it as formative.) Whatever time of day or night you listen, dawn caresses the heavens for the duration of this album.
Lady In Satin Billie Holiday April 1, 2008
Even after more then 50 years, Billie Holiday (a singer before my time) songs can still capture the heart of many who listen to her singing and her emotion behind her song. Ella has always been my facourite.
However, it was by chance that I listened to Bilie Holiday's voice and was quickly captured my attention. I have many of her recordings CD from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. In the early years, her voice was sweet. However, it was her recording in her 50s that I can truley feel what she is singing.
The songs from the Lady in Satin CD truley revealed Billie's inner emotions especially in the songs: I am a Fool to want you; and The End of a Love affair...songs that can really bring tears into your eyes.
Enjoy your Billie Holiday Lady in Satin CD...even though her voice has become rough, her strong emtion behind the songs truley made them a real timeless Classic!
I cannot seem to think of any other songs that can be so sad and so emotional!
Thanks for giving us the songs!
 Like the title says: "Lady in Satin" March 19, 2008
The name really does say it all. This is Holiday at her smoothe, silky best. When it comes to female jazz singers, a lot of fans like to break off into various camps: Camp Holiday, Camp Fitzgerald, Camp Simone, Camp Vaughn, etc. I'm not one of those people. I listen to jazz singers to work on and improve my jazz music phrasing. So to start, I get different experiences and learn different things from different singers, making me a Holiday fan, but certainly no basher of any other singer. Listening to any of the above singers is beneficial and enjoyable, but make no mistake: They are different. For me, I have always liked Billie Holiday because, if you know the notes, when you listen to her sing, you aren't always sure she's going to get where she needs to go in the number of beats/measures she has left to get there. But somehow, she always does. Some of the tracks on this CD are shining examples of her ability to take a phrase, soak it down, wring it out, and put it back into an unexpected but pleasing shape. Probably the best example of that is track 3, "You don't know what love is". The selection of songs on this CD leaves a little to be desired, but at the same time, the alternate takes really are "alternative", so the listener gets to experience different aspects of the same song, which makes the listening all the more challenging, but rewarding. In short, I always enjoy this CD and I come back to it quite often. Casual jazz fans looking for a compilation to add to their collection could probably do better with Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings, but it is more expensive than this CD. Serious jazz fans familiar with Ms. Holiday and wanting a broader introspective, on the other hand, will not be disappointed with this work.
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