The problem is that a lot of people tend to see Billie Holiday's artistry as a tragedy in progress rather than the work of a great singer and musician who did have a few off microphone problems. Billie Holiday died six or 7 years after the last one of these sides. The magic of these recordings has to do with good production, and good art coming out of that and not the question of the decomposition of her personal life.

Grantz's predecessors and successor were to attempt to take Billie in a more pop direction which just didn't work. That may have had to do with her "health" problems, but it also probably had to do with the crisis of swing-Jazz at the time. I mean in the mid 1950s you had Duke Ellington playing in third-rate amusement parks until Paul Gonzalves turned everything around at Newport. The Grantz verve sides were Billie's music, all the other stuff, the attempts at being like Dinah Washington, the anticommunist songs, the attempts to take her into jumb blues (Billie always detested being called a blues singer because she was not) and so forth were terrible.

In fact, her last efforts like Lady in Satin, remind one of some of the Louis Armstrong band recordings of the 1930s and early 1940s where the magic is the contrast between the swinging soloist and the utterly stiff band and stiffer arrangements.

Curiously, before and after her Verve years, the live recordings we have from her Carnegie Concert and Jazz at the Philharmonic and her singing on the Sound of Jazz have the same glow of Jazz. They resemble these sides more than the recordings she was making.

Billie's real strength is as a Jazz musician, a contributor to the polyphony of Jazz. These are only part of a whole series of recordings that Verve did in these years. At one time they were all available on LP and Tape. I haven't looked around, but one hopes the whole thing is available.

All of these words about Billie needs to be supplemented by some great playing by Ben Webster, Sweets, and other musicians. Much is said about Billie and Prez's collaboration in the 1930s, but on these recordings Mr. Webster recorded as many sides with Billie and developed another darker synergy between the two of them that needs to be listened to. Don't get me wrong, I am a Lester Young fanatic: his framed picture is on my wall and he is the only musician I have ever bought a tee shirt of, LOL. But, the accompaniment and the solos the musicians take here are worth the price alone!

This is a forgotten gem that deserves to shine.