Billie Holiday - Songs for Distingué Lovers [Red]

Late-period Billie Holiday is a different, deeper experience, and Songs for Distingué Lovers shows why, presented here on limited 180-gram red vinyl with two bonus tracks.

Recorded in Los Angeles in 1957 with producer Norman Granz, the album reunited her with two old allies. Ben Webster and Harry "Sweets" Edison had both played behind her years earlier, and here they sound as if they are finishing her sentences, with Jimmy Rowles on piano and Barney Kessel on guitar filling out the small-band space. The setting is intimate and unhurried, with room for the soloists between her lines.

Her voice by then was lower and grainier, and she used every crack in it. "A Foggy Day" swings with a wry shrug, while "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)" sounds like it is being sung to the last customer left at the bar. Webster's breathy tenor curls around each phrase, and Edison answers with short, knowing trumpet lines. The two bonus tracks, including "April in Paris", extend the same late-night mood.

This is a great singer working with what remained and making every bar count. Listeners who know only her early recordings will find a more fragile, more knowing Billie here, and the red pressing gives a quietly devastating record a striking new look.