Personnel includes: Billie Holiday (vocals); Tab Smith (soprano & alto saxophones); Jack Washington (alto & baritone saxophones); Johnny Hodges, Earl Warren, Jimmy Powell, (alto saxophone); Lester Young (tenor saxophone, clarinet); Ben Webster, Babe Russin, Kermit Scott (tenor saxophone); Harry Carney (baritone saxophone, clarinet); Roy Eldridge, Jonah Jones, Buck Clayton, Bunny Berigan (trumpet); Benny Morton (trombone); Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet); Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Joe Bushkin, James Sherman, Sonny White, Eddie Heywood, Margaret "Countess" Johnson (piano); John Truehart, Freddie Green, Paul Chapman (guitar); John Kirby, Walter Page, John Willams (bass); Cozy Cole, Jo Jones, (drums).
Producer: John Hammond.
Compilation producer: Nedra Olds-Neal.
Recorded between 1935 and 1941. Includes liner notes by Timme Rosencrantz and Inez Cavanaugh.
All tracks have been digitally remastered using 20-bit technology.
The notion of gathering the "best" sides of history's greatest jazz singer on a single disc may seem like an exercise in sheer futility. Nevertheless, Legacy's GREATEST HITS is vintage, classic, and untouchably wonderful Holiday. While later recordings present a voice that has lost a good deal of its agility and lightness (due, no doubt, to the much-publicized difficulties of Holiday's life), these cuts are graced by a delivery that is as deft as it is well-measured and flawlessly stylized.
Even this many decades on, Lady Day's performances still come as a revelation. Her delicate, deeply soulful approach to phrasing and horn-like control of timbre and inflection have known many imitators but no competitors. Featuring excellent, arguably definitive versions of such favorites as "Miss Brown To You," "What A Little Moonlight Can Do," "God Bless The Child," and "Body and Soul," GREATEST HITS is a top-notch sampler of some of her finest work. Session musicians like Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and Ben Webster make this slice of jazz history an essential, if not quite comprehensive, set.
