Billie Holiday Body and Soul

Vital Vinyl Series 180g Vinyl LP Reissue!

Verve and Impulse! Records launch the new Vital Vinyl series with UMe, celebrating essential jazz LPs from the enduring catalogues of the two iconic labels. Throughout 2019, Verve and Impulse! will be making no fewer than 40 key albums from the 1950s, '60s and '70s available again on 180-gram vinyl. Each will feature their original cover artwork, track listings and liner notes. Some of these albums will become available for the first time in years, while others that are already in print will now be perennially available.

Small jazz groups brought out the best in Billie Holiday, especially groups as good as the one heard on the classic 1957 recording, Body and Soul. Ben Webster, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Co. were not just gifted soloists but sensitive accompanists as well. Lady Day was rarely more ably supported than she was on this program of popular evergreens from the era of swing. More importantly, she rarely sounded more luminous. Her husky voice fits each of these tunes like a glove...and a velvet one at that.

From well-known tunes like Johnny Green's "Body and Soul" or "Embraceable You" from the pens of the talented Brothers Gershwin to perhaps the more basic emotions of Don Redman and Andy Razaf's "Gee, Baby Ain't I Good To You," Lady Day sings as though the tune had been written just for her. Her wonderful phrasing plus that indefinable quality that is hers alone, elevate these tunes into the ranks of the memorable.