The legendary Billie Holiday’s last best album, recorded with Ray Ellis and his orchestra in 1958, a year before her death, has long been a personal favorite of mine. It’s one of only a handful of Holiday’s recordings suited to audiophile playback, and it features one of her most compelling performances. I’ve owned a 60’s mono reissue for several decades and it’s a record I’ve continued to revisit time and again.
Holiday is known better for her distinctive voice and her unique phrasing than her range and vocal refinement. Lady In Satin finds her in weakened health, ravaged by heroin use and alcohol, with her voice likewise diminished. But the distinctive charm of Holiday’s singing remains clearly present in her performance, and her interpretations of these jazz standards is made all the more poignant by the vulnerability present in her voice, revealed with clarity and intimacy by Columbia producer Irving Townsend and engineer Fred Plaut.
If you’re not already a fan of Billie Holiday, listen to great copy of Lady In Satin and prepare to fall in love with both the album, and with the featured artist. The White Hot Stamper doesn’t just put Holiday in the room with us, it lays bare every word, every gesture, every strained breath she takes. Meanwhile, Ellis gives us moody, luxurious string arrangements and just the right dose of mournful horn solos and ghostly backing vocals, lovingly framing Holiday’s performance.
I always thought my 60’s mono pressing sounded very good. It sounded much better than an early stereo 6-eye I used to own that lacked the top end extension and transparency to bring this music to life. The mono did a much better job of capturing Holiday’s voice and revealing it’s nuances. It also does a wonderful job with the orchestra, albeit with that orchestra sitting right behind Billie. The delicacy of Billie’s voice requires enough air and space to fully reveal itself, and the mono doesn’t afford her that.
The W.H. Stamper, a later red label stereo reissue, places the bulk of the orchestra to the left of the Billie, giving her nearly all of the right center with more than enough space left over for the bass and horns at the far right of the soundstage. It’s brilliant spacing for this mix, and it lets us take in and fully appreciate the performance of the orchestra, as well as the solo performers, while giving Holiday plenty of room to breathe life into these timeless classics.
Every song on this record is great, but there are a few that stand out for me with “You Don’t Know What Love Is” in particular, at the very heart of the album. The string arrangement that opens the song rises up, then dives down again, hanging there for a few moments while we wait for for Billie to deliver the first lyric. And when she does, the pain in her voice is so clear and so penetrating, it’s a sweet and startling moment. Later, when Mel Davis plays his brief but oh so right trumpet solo, well, let’s just say it’s a moment in music you’ll want to experience for yourself.
And it sounds oh so right on this White Hot Stamper. After playing the first side I put my mono pressing on and it was much further off the right sound for this music than I’d realized, making it clear to me why I’ve continued pursuing better sound for his title. I always knew it could sound better than I’d heard it, but I just didn’t know quite how until I heard it for myself, an experience anyone who’s bought a Hot Stamper of a favorite title knows all too well.
Lady In Satin may not be a record you’d play to show off your stereo and impress your friends. It’s not a record with a ton of “WOW” factor. But it is a record that will show you how neutral and how “right” your stereo sounds, and how good it is at revealing the subtle nuances of a well recorded vocal performance.
It’s also one that you can come back to again and again and always come away from with the joy and satisfaction of hearing a record that doesn’t need a lot of bells and whistles to get your attention and keep it for 40 minutes. If you want to feel close to the artist, if you want to feel what she felt, even one who needs to cross more than half a century to come back to life in your listening room, you owe it to yourself to get a great copy of Lady In Satin. And I honestly can’t see how you could do that better than with this White Hot Stamper.