Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944
Box set by Billie Holiday
Released	October 2, 2001
Recorded	November 1933 – January 1944
Genre	Jazz
Length	11:21:57
Label	Legacy
Compiler	Michael Brooks Michael Cuscuna
Billie Holiday chronology
Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday (2001) Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944 (2001) A Musical Romance (2002)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[2]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[3]

Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944 is a 10-CDbox set compiling the complete known studiomaster recordings, plusalternate takes, ofBillie Holiday during the time period indicated, released in 2001 onColumbia/Legacy, CXK 85470.^[4] Designed like an album of78s, the medium in which these recordings initially appeared, the 10.5" × 12" box includes 230tracks, a 116-page booklet with extensive photos, a song list, discography, essays byMichael Brooks,Gary Giddins, andFarah Jasmine Griffin, and an insert of appreciations for Holiday from a diversity of figures includingTony Bennett,Elvis Costello,Marianne Faithfull,B. B. King,Abbey Lincoln,Jill Scott, andLucinda Williams. At the44th Grammy Awards on February 27, 2002, the box set won theGrammy Award for Best Historical Album of the previous year.

These recordings were made in a time before theLP album, introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. Recorded music had arrived a few decades earlier in the form of a 10-inchgramophone record playing at 78 revolutions per minute, two songs of around three-and-a-half minute duration per side. During theGreat Depression, record sales for domestic use dramatically decreased, but a viable market remained for the playing of records injukeboxes. Initially, these records featuring Billie Holiday were made with that market in mind.

John Hammond, who had discovered Holiday singing in aHarlemjazz club in 1933, arranged for her firstrecording session that same year on November 27. In the company ofJack Teagarden,Gene Krupa, and Hammond's future brother-in-lawBenny Goodman, the twosides with Holiday would be released under Goodman's name. A little more than 19 months later, Holiday would be in another New York studio for her second session in association with Goodman again, as well asBen Webster andCozy Cole, under the leadership ofTeddy Wilson. From July 2, 1935, through August 7, 1941, Holiday would regularly record, for commercial issue, 78s credited to herself or to Wilson.

With a few exceptions, these records were originally released on labels other than Columbia which catered to an African American market, then referred to asrace records. The labelsBrunswick Records andVocalion Records became fellow companies to Columbia when it was purchased in 1934 by theAmerican Record Corporation, which had owned Brunswick and Vocalion since late 1931. Records credited to Wilson were released on Brunswick; those to Holiday on Vocalion. With the purchase of ARC in 1939 byCBS, the corporation re-organized its record labels under the aegis of Columbia as the parent company. Starting in 1940, the Holiday releases were issued on theOkeh Records imprint, reactivated by CBS to handle its product for the "race record" market.

Discs one through six, and disc seven tracks one through fourteen present the master takes in chronological recorded order. The remainder of disc seven, and discs eight through ten, present the alternate takes and other items, also in chronological recorded order. The other items consist of eight tracks not part of the general body of Wilson/Holiday recordings from 1935 to 1941. The first, track 15 of disc seven "Saddest Tale" with theDuke Ellington Orchestra, was taken from the soundtrack to the short filmSymphony in Black released byParamount in 1935. Disc eight, tracks three through five, containairchecks with theCount Basie Orchestra from 1937, the only documentation of Holiday's year-long tenure as Basie's band singer. Disc nine, tracks seven and eight, feature recordings broadcast on theCamel Caravan radio variety program of January 17, 1939; with backing by theBenny Goodman Orchestra, Billie sings alongsideJohnny Mercer,Martha Tilton, andLeo Watson on the second song, Mercer's "Jeepers Creepers".

The final two tracks of the set, numbers 22 and 23 of disc ten, are from theEsquire Award Winners Concert at theMetropolitan Opera, broadcast and recorded onV-Discs for distribution toservicemen overseas duringWorld War II. Holiday had won top female jazz vocalist for 1943, and became the first African American woman to sing at the Met. "Do Nothing 'Til You Hear From Me" and "Billie's Blues", under a different title, are performed accompanied by otherEsquire poll winners,Roy Eldridge,Barney Bigard,Art Tatum,Al Casey,Oscar Pettiford, andSidney Catlett. This recording took place more than two years after the final studio session in 1941, and during thePetrillo recording ban; theAmerican Federation of Musicians waived the strike terms for the recording of V-discs.

Original recording sessions took place at the following locations in New York City: at the 55 Fifth Avenue Studio on November 27, 1933; at the 1776 Broadway Studio from 1935 through January 1939; at the 711 Fifth Avenue Studio from March 1939 through June 1940; atLiederkranz Hall on East 58th Street in September and October 1940; and atColumbia Studios in their new headquarters at 799 Seventh Avenue in 1941. Theproducers for the original recordings included John Hammond andBernie Hanighen, others are not known.

In terms of a collected body of work combining both influence and quality of achievement, these recordings are some of the most important in jazz history. Ranking jazz records always presents an exercise in both controversy and consternation, but certainly the Wilson/Holiday sides belong in the company of theHot Five and Hot Sevens ofLouis Armstrong, the collated set byFletcher Henderson later calledA Study In Frustration, the early Basie band onDecca,Duke Ellington's records withBen Webster andJimmy Blanton forRCA Victor, theCharlie Parkerbebop sides forSavoy andDial, and theAtlantic LPs byOrnette Coleman, not to mention the expanse of albums byMiles Davis andJohn Coltrane, together and separately.

The sessions coincide with the rise of theswing era on its way to becoming the popular music of the United States during the late Depression andwar years. Chosen by Hammond, Hanighen, Holiday, or Wilson, many of the musicians present were members of the leadingswing bands of the day, such as those by Ellington, Basie, Goodman,Artie Shaw,Jimmie Lunceford, andCab Calloway, among others. Of special note are the records cut with members of the Basie band, Holiday herself hired by Basie in 1937, including his rhythm section ofFreddie Green,Walter Page, andJo Jones, along with key soloistsBuck Clayton and Holiday's musical soul-mate,Lester Young. The roster of Holiday and Wilsonsidemen reads like a who's who of jazz soloists from the 1930s.

As a singer, Holiday had influence on defining the style of a big band vocalist after that ofBing Crosby and her role model, Louis Armstrong. Her records appeared just as the swing era was getting underway; subsequently, singers such asElla Fitzgerald,Frank Sinatra,Anita O'Day, andPeggy Lee, for instance, starting out respectively with the bands ofChick Webb,Tommy Dorsey,Gene Krupa, andBenny Goodman, all found inspiration in the Holiday records on Brunswick and Vocalion. Her manipulation of rhythm and length of musical phrases, allied to her ability to find emotional resonance in songs, was acknowledged publicly as a template by singers from her own era, Sinatra, Lee, Bennett, and others, and by myriad singers in later eras. As stated byGary Giddins in theliner notes to the box set:

When I first got to know ["A Sailboat in the Moonlight"], I thought it a fine melody with pretty chord changes and words that might be corny but didn't seem to be so bad when Lady Day delivered them. Then I chanced to find the sheet music at a Midwestern bazaar; at home, I picked out the melody with one finger and was astonished at how different it was from what Holiday sang. Until that moment, I had not fully gauged how freely imaginative her embellishments could be. By ironing out a phrase here, retarding another there, raising this note, slurring that, she transformed a hopelessly banal and predictable melody into something personal, real, meaningful.^[5]

ThatSony would lavish such an expensive box for recordings originally designed for the inexpensive medium of jukebox play from six to seven decades previously stands as testament to the staying power of this body of work.

• Billie Holiday – vocal
• Teddy Wilson – piano
• Bobby Hackett —cornet
• Henry "Red" Allen,Bunny Berigan,Buck Clayton,Harry "Sweets" Edison,Roy Eldridge,Chris Griffin,Harry James,Jonah Jones,Hot Lips Page,Charlie Shavers,Cootie Williams — trumpet
• Benny Morton,Dicky Wells,Trummy Young —trombone
• Buster Bailey,Benny Goodman,Vido Musso,Artie Shaw —clarinet
• Edgar Sampson — clarinet,alto saxophone
• Tab Smith —soprano saxophone, alto saxophone
• Johnny Hodges,Don Redman — alto saxophone
• Benny Carter — alto saxophone,tenor saxophone
• Chu Berry,Don Byas,Herschel Evans,Babe Russin,Ben Webster — tenor saxophone
• Lester Young — tenor saxophone, clarinet
• Harry Carney —baritone saxophone, clarinet
• Margaret "Countess" Johnson,Billy Kyle,Joe Sullivan,Claude Thornhill,Sonny White — piano
• Dave Barbour,Al Casey,Freddie Green,Carmen Mastren,Dick McDonough,Allan Reuss — guitar
• Milt Hinton,John Kirby,Grachan Moncur,Walter Page –bass
• Kenny Clarke,Cozy Cole,J.C. Heard,Jo Jones,Gene Krupa — drums

• Michael Brooks – compiler
• Michael Cuscuna – compiler
• Steve Berkowitz – co-compiler
• Seth Rothstein – co-compiler
• Mark Wilder –digital remastering
• Seth Foster – digital remastering
• Phil Schaap – consultant
• Ron Jaramillo –art direction, design
• Adam Owett – art direction

In the writer(s) column the lyricists are named first.

* live recordings

• Billie Holiday albums
• Albums produced by Michael Cuscuna
• 2001 compilation albums
• Grammy Award for Best Historical Album
• Vocal jazz compilation albums

• Use mdy dates from January 2020
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hAudio microformats
• Album articles lacking alt text for covers