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Lady in Satin 1958
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Lady in Satin

Recorded over three days in February 1958 at the Columbia 30th Street studios in New York, Lady in Satin arrived when Billie Holiday returned to a label she hadn’t worked with in sixteen years. The album was born from a clear idea: she wanted a sound that would envelop her, something "delicate," as she repeatedly told the producer Irving Townsend. To achieve this, she chose Ray Ellis, an arranger who had listened to her recordings from the 1930s and 1940s, and who proposed a string orchestra backdrop—something Holiday had already experimented with during her time at Decca, but this time aiming to emulate the contemporary style of Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald in their classic song albums. The budget was not an issue: Columbia gave her free rein, and the session musicians were paid $60 for each of the three takes.

Year
1958
Songs
11
Duration
81 min 53 seg
Listen to the album ★

24 song|s

Song list

# Title Available ⏱
01

I’m a Fool to Want You

3:27
01

All of You

2:33
02

For Heaven’s Sake

3:29
02

Sometimes I’m Happy

2:50
03

You Took Advantage of Me

3:12
03

You Don’t Know What Love Is

3:51
04

When It’s Sleepy Time Down South

4:08
04

I Get Along Without You Very Well

3:02
05

For All We Know

2:56
05

There’ll Be Some Changes Made

2:56
06

Violets for Your Furs

3:27
06

’Deed I Do

2:18
07

You’ve Changed

3:20
07

Don’t Worry ’bout Me

3:12
08

It’s Easy to Remember

4:04
08

All the Way

3:26
09

But Beautiful

4:32
09

Just One More Chance

3:47
10

Glad to Be Unhappy

4:10
10

It’s Not for Me to Say

2:29
11

I’ll Be Around

3:25
11

I’ll Never Smile Again

coming soon

3:27
12

The End of a Love Affair

4:49
12

Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home

3:03

About the album

Lady in Satin, according to DoReSol

The result includes covers of standards like I’m a Fool to Want You, You Don’t Know What Love Is, and You’ve Changed, where Holiday’s voice—already weakened by years of abuse and addiction—unfolds over arrangements that, according to some, border on the saccharine. She herself considered it her favorite album, and on Last.fm, some highlight its emotional intensity, while others point out that the brittle tone of her throat in 1958 can be hard to listen to. What’s certain is that, among the 24 tracks on the album, these songs became reference points: For All We Know, for example, was the track that convinced her to work with Ellis after hearing his version for Sinatra, and Glad to Be Unhappy reflects that mix of irony and melancholy that always defined her.

Released in May 1958, the album hit the market just as Holiday had already recorded twelve albums for Clef Records—the label of Norman Granz—and her contract with them had expired. Lady in Satin was her penultimate work in her lifetime (the last, Last Recording, was posthumously released in 1959), and although today it is part of the Grammy Hall of Fame, its reception was—and remains—controversial. Ellis’s arrangements, with their dense strings and a Muzak*-like air, divide opinions: for some, they enhance the fragility of her voice; for others, they drown it out. But here lies the paradox: in a year when jazz was already exploring other paths, Holiday chose this sound as her sonic farewell.

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