The Ultimate Collection

《Billie Holiday-The Ultimate Collection》收录爵士歌后比莉.荷莉黛珍贵的现场实况，黑白影像，终极典藏。据说很少有人在亲临比莉.荷莉黛的现场后，不会感动落泪的。这位被无数后辈歌手视做最崇拜偶像的Billie Holiday，确实是用她的悲剧生命写下并吟唱出每一个音符。 By Mark Richardson Since she died strung out and broke in 1959, the perception of Billie Holiday's art has hardened around the grim facts of her biography. She's a primary figure in the Cult of Pain pantheon, alleged proof that the black coal of bad circumstances and poor choices can sometimes be compressed into an artistic diamond. Her signature song was "Lady Sings the Blues", and while she preferred to think of her work in the tradition of smooth, sophisticated pop, her life was filled with sadness from the beginning. Still a teenager when she first dabbled in ****** and prostitution, Holiday was a successful singer in her early 20s and died before reaching 50. We're told about the suffering inside her weary phrasing and when she delivered a line like "I'd rather my man would hit me then for him to jump up and quit me" and "I swear I won't call no copper if I'm beat up by my poppa" in "'Taint Nobody's Business if I Do", we remember her destructive taste in lovers and the never-ending string of abusive relationships. The words she croaked on the Lady in Satin album, recorded a few months before her death, are received as an epitaph. It wasn't always so. As heard in the early tracks on this 2xCD/DVD collection, when she was just a kid fronting pianist Teddy Wilson's band she sang with infectious energy and a child's enthusiasm. "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" from 1935 is a joyous up-tempo floor-filler and Holiday sounds silly but self-aware, one step away from leaving the bandstand and joining the party herself. At this point she hadn't yet developed her extreme behind-the-beat lag (a quality Miles Davis claimed as an influence) but the timbre of her unmistakable voice was intact. "I Cried for You" from the following year is a bit slower but no less buoyant, and the mid-tempo ballad "Mean to Me" from 1937, though about a deadbeat boyfriend, is delivered with sass and humor. The Ultimate Collection deserves credit for assembling tracks from a number of different labels, allowing us to hear the changes in style and approach from year to year. Holiday's music got heavier by the late 30s, the time of the darkly brilliant allegory "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child". This period through the mid-40s is when Holiday recorded her most famous sides, including "Billie's Blues", "Don't Explain", and "Good Morning Heartache." The second disc begins with Holiday getting the string section she always wanted, the sweetness of the orchestrations serving as a steadily contrasting frame to her deteriorating voice. Songs like "You're My Thrill" and "Crazy He Calls Me" have a disturbing gothic quality as Holiday sounds aged beyond her years, and on spare ballads in front of a small combo like "Detour Ahead" and "It Had to Be You" she seems aware of her tragic stature as she drifts off pitch and never sounds convincing expressing warmer sentiments. By the time of the sole Lady in Satin selection "I'm a Fool to Want You" she sounds exhausted, like someone who wants to lay down for a long, long time. The heavy reverb on her voice and the lush strings are weird and disorienting, almost an attempt to throw her shortcomings to sharp relief. A few months later she was gone.