BILLIE HOLIDAY’s COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS

In this chapter you will find the chronological sequence of her recording sessions. Such sessions could be described as an event where Billie and a band perform one or more songs that will recorded for further release in discs, where each song will be refered as “tracks”.

As a result, those tracks can be classified by:

a. the recordings sessions were they were originally taped. That’s the scope of this “Recording Session” chapter.

b.  the records where they were released. In this work, you find them in the “Discography” chapter.

c. the song titles, in alphabetical order. You will find them in the “Lyrics” chapter.

In this site, I will classify the sessions in two types:

a) STUDIO SESSIONS: These took place in the professional recording studio chosen by the label she was under contract at the time (like Columbia, Decca, Commodore, etc.). In the studio, normally 3 to 5 songs were recorded per session. Several takes could be made in the search for the best quality, and one of them will be chosen to be the “Master Take (MT)” – the one selected to be printed.

b) LIVE SESSIONS: These were recorded live, during shows, theaters, radio or TV broadcasts or recorded to be included in a film. Therefore, their quality varies a lot, the best being those taken during theater presentations, like Carnegie Hall. I will refer to each one as “Live Recording (LR)”.

Each session will be described as follows:

Session #(number) Recording Place and Date, Orchestra (original recording label)

Musicians (t or tp: trumpet; ss: soprano sax; as: alto sax; ts: tenor sax; bs: baritone sax; fl: flute; cl: clarinet; tb: trombone; p: piano; g: guitar; b: bass; d: drums; v or vcl: vocal)

( #track) Song ** (the stars being my personal evaluation) – comments

• Additional information, curiosities

First session Billie recorded was in November 27th 1933, a Columbia studio session in NYC with Benny Goodman Orchestra.  The last one was in April 15th1959, a recorded radio broadcast while she performed in the Storyville club in Boston. The sessions will be present here by year.

Sorry! UNDER CONSTRUCTION (november, 2013)