Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday

iTunes Review

There are certain figures — Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Miles Davis — without whose presence it's impossible to imagine what jazz would have ended up sounding like. The legendary vocalist Billie Holiday is another one of those creative giants. Holiday revolutionized the relationship of the singer to the song by closing the gap between the two. Though she was an extraordinary stylist, she managed to give the impression that you were catching an unmediated glimpse of her unique human essence. And her influence has spread beyond jazz: countless singers in a variety of genres have been inspired by her moving performances. This collection of 36 tracks, drawn from the 10-CD Columbia release, Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday, features key collaborators such as Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, and Buck Clayton, along with a number of other fine players. Holiday is riveting whether she’s enlivening an old warhorse like “What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” singing a classic she co-wrote, “God Bless the Child,” or sending shivers up your spine with her version of “Body and Soul.” Oddly, “Strange Fruit,” a song that she owns, is not included here. But what is deserves to be.