Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday shaped jazz and popular singing with a voice that phrased like a horn, bending tempo and melody around the lyric. Her own songs, among them Don't Explain and God Bless the Child, sit beside the standards she made indelible.
Nicknamed Lady Day by Lester Young, she treated a song as something to reshape in the moment rather than deliver straight. Early small-group sessions with Teddy Wilson turned ordinary pop material into swinging jazz; later Decca sides such as Lover Man set her against strings she had asked for. Strange Fruit, cut for Commodore when larger labels would not touch it, stayed in her repertoire for years. What carries across the records is an intimate, improvising delivery closer to a jazz instrumentalist than to conventional vocal polish, with phrasing and time stretched to serve the feeling of the line.
Compositions by Billie Holiday appear on
McGann LIVE 81 / 83
Live recordings of Australian alto saxophonist Bernie McGann from two celebrated concerts: three originals with Chuck Yates in Sydney in 1981, and standards with the Ted Vining Trio in Melbourne in 1983.
Love Rhapsody
Emma Sidney’s debut jazz album Love Rhapsody traces love in every mood, from triumph to loss. Standards sit beside three of her own songs, sung with swing, Latin colour and intimate ballad feeling.