The will ...

Of all the tormented destiny of jazz (Monk, Mingus, Powell ...), Lady Day is certainly the one that has had the most pathetic destiny (in the best sense of the word), the most tragic to the point that these many biographers fascinated by so much misfortune and determination to self-destruct, have often added into pathos lingering at length about his childhood of misery and his life of excess, forgetting that it was above all a great singer .... (read about the excellent chapter devote Jean Jamin and Patrick Williams in their remarkable "anthropology of jazz" An anthropology of jazz).

"Lady in Satin" was recorded in 1958, a year before his death. Billie Holiday to realize an old dream to record with a large string orchestra (here that of Ray Ellis). Yet the Lady with gardenia is already a shadow of herself, her voice is broken, hoarse in the extreme, but, curiously, the magic always operates. How not to be touched by her rendition of "I'm fool to want you", "For heaven's sake" or "you do not know what love is?" The singer puts all his remaining strength and conviction in these sessions which registration is he seems hell. This is certainly his most personal work, one in which she puts it even more and that will remain as his favorite disc.

To hear it again today, one can not help thinking that it was actually his will ...

PS: for the centenary of his birth, "lady in satin" was reissued this year in its complete version 3 CD Lady in Satin: the Centennial Edition. A nice little biography of 2.00 was published in 2000 in the Librio collection. It is a pity that it has not been reissued this year ...