May's Jazz, Soul & Blues Record of the Month - Billie Holiday - Lady In Satin (Ltd. Ed. Import, 180G, Blue Vinyl Remastered)

• Limited Edition Import in Solid Blue Colored Vinyl.
• 180 gram.
• Colored Classic LPs.
• Remastered - Direct Metal Mastering.
• Each LP Has It's Own Unique Sticker!
• Street Date: 4/6/2018

Almost forty years after Lady in Satin was recorded, Ray Ellis remembered the following:

"On January 3, 1958, I received a call from record executive Irving Townsend asking if I was free February 18th, 19th and 20th. On my reply of yes he said, 'Great! Billie Holiday is in my office and she wants you to write the arrangements for the album she's about to record'. I was flabbergasted. Apparently, she'd heard an album I'd recently called Ellis in Wonderland. We set up a meeting for the following week to pick material and plan the concept. It didn't dawn on me at the time, but just about every title that she picked was the story of her life, unrequited love."

The results from those three sessions would mark Billie's last great hit, and her next to last studio album. (While her very last LP was made with Ray Ellis again at the beginning of the following year, it never reached the heights of her previous album.)

Most jazz fans now consider Lady in Satin to be Holiday's last great effort, and she also loved the album herself. It is true that her voice, after a life of self-abuse, wasn't the same as on her earliest 1930s recordings. Her expressiveness, however, would remain with her to the end, and this album seems to showcase her baring her soul like never before.