Artist: Billie Holiday
Genre: Swing
Year: 1959
Grade: B
As far as posthumous swan-songs go, Billie Holiday’s Last Recording ranks closer to An American Prayer rather than Life After Death. What does that mean, you ask? Well, only die-hard Holiday fans will find something worth listening to with this album, and even they might be hard-pressed to listen to it more than once.
Some songs are pitched up so that Holiday’s deteriorated voice still sounds youthful. The LP is hard to listen to, not just for the banality of the music, but mainly for the lack of artistic integrity. When I listen to Holiday, I don’t want to be reminded of how she was so close to death that a nurse literally had to prop her up on a stool as she sang.
Last Recording – Billie Holiday