Rare Live Recordings, 1934-1959

In 1972, thirteen years after her death, Congress extended copyright protections to include recorded musical performances. Billie Holiday would have benefited greatly from such protection: during the more than twenty-five years of her career, Holiday gave an unknown number of live performances on TV & Radio and in clubs & concert halls, many of which were recorded both officially and unofficially by sound engineers, fellow musicians and fans. Today, ESP-Disck, which for many years has been assembling unofficial recordings of several artists from before 1972, has released one of the most comprehensive collections of live Billie Holiday recordings to date, some previously available but most not. These recordings, laid out in chronological order, not only demonstrate the arc of Holiday’s development as a vocalist but give a rare behind-the-scenes look into how the singer approached her musicians and her audience. The first disc of this compilation opens with a twenty-year-old Billie Holiday performing with Duke Ellington in 1935, followed by a radio broadcast from the Savoy Hotel in New York two years later in which Holiday fronts the Count Basie Orchestra. The next four discs cover Holiday’s career from 1949 to her death in 1959.