Comments From Our Customers
A serious and great artist's best work, you need these sides
If there were some way to award music 200 stars, I am sure all of us would have done so for this set!
Descent Compilation
Apart from the fact that some of my favorite Billie Holiday songs are missing...its still a very good intro to those first timers. I first heart HOliday when I was 18 years old..and 5 years later...I still can't get enough of her ...she's such a great singer...along with Ella Fitzgerald she is the only one who can bring me to tears.
A "Politically Correct" Compilation?
A 2-CD "best of" compilation for Billie Holiday without "Strange Fruit" doesn't make sense, but historically record labels have been reluctant to include this song. I wonder whether their reasoning is that the song's lyrics, about the lynching and hanging of a black from a tree, are unsuitable for mainstream audiences, which implies that they thought Holiday had crossed the line from blues or jazz (I think she's a blues singer through and through) to pop. After all, many blues recordings contain lyrics just as if not more gruesome than "Strange Fruit", but that doesn't result in their getting left off the compilation disks. If we can't hear the Holiday version of "Strange Fruit", then the soundtrack to "Lady Sings the Blues" by Diana Ross has a version of the song that is pretty convincing.
