This release contains a rarely heard performance given by Billie Holiday at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada, in 1957. As a bonus, we have added Holiday’s complete Monterey Jazz Festival concert from the following year, featuring hornmen Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter and Buddy DeFranco.
To round out our CD, we have selected four additional Billie Holiday live sets in their entirety, including her two songs at the Plaza Hotel in 1958, and three hard to find broadcasts: her only known recordings with the Percy Faith orchestra (1956), an obscure 1957 broadcast from Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago with Paul Quinichette, and her three songs on the London TV show “Chelsea at Nine“, in 1959, which marks one of he final recordings of her career.
Tracklist:
1. Nice Work If You Can Get It
2. Willow Weep For Me
3. I only have eyes for you
4. Billie's Blues
5. Lover Come Back To Me
6. Lady sings the blues
7. Ain't Nobody's Business (If I Do)
8. Willow Weep For Me
9. When Your Lover Has Gone
10. God Bless The Child
11. I only have eyes for you
12. Good Morning Heartache
13. Them There Eyes
14. Billie's Blues
15. Oh, what a little moonlight can do
16. Trav'lin' Light
17. Lover Come Back To Me
18. You better go now
19. Them There Eyes
20. When Your Lover Has Gone
21. Don't explain
22. Good Morning Heartache
23. You better go now
24. I Loves You, Porgy
25. Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone
26. Strange Fruit
Bonus Tracks (7-28)
Recording info:
1-6 Stratford Shakespearean Festival August 10, 1957
7-17 Monterey Jazz Festival, October 5, 1958
18-19 New York, December 9, 1956
20-21 Persian Room, Plaza Hotel, New York, September 9, 1958
22-23 FM broadcast, Mister' Kelly's, Chicago, March, 1957
24-26 TV Broadcast "Chealsea At Nine", February 24, 1959.
Released 2012.