Billie Holiday & Lester Young: Complete Studio Recordings

Obviously, I picked the “complete” recordings, because I love everything they did together. The music they MADE together was divine.

His was her voice, from the horn, and hers was his horn, from the voice. She that named him Prez, he that named her Lady Day. Tragic figures, elegant figures, melodic figures. Heroin and sadness took the one, alcohol and sadness the other. But in that America, when you could be so great and still so scorned, how could they not have been saddened?

“Most of the cats in the band were wonderful to me, but I got tired of scenes in crummy roadside restaurants over getting served. Some places wouldn’t even let me eat in the kitchen. I got tired of having to make a Federal case over breakfast, lunch and dinner. You had to smile to keep from throwing up. As they say, ‘There’s no business like show business.'”

This one’s for the sound engineers who pressed record whenever these two played. For first they were here, and then they were gone.

Love is like the faucet
It turns off and on
Sometimes when you think it’s on baby
It has turned off and gone