Since I treated myself with a brand new gramophone, I go for vinyl hunting every once in a while and my goal is always totally focused: I want to built (if possible) the LP collection I once had, back in the day when I was growing up. Now, many of these albums are available for streaming online, so whatever is already on Spotify, I don't need those - I only want to collect rare albums that have somehow slipped trough the cracks or were simply so obscure that only nerds like me would remember them.
A few days ago, I found this jewel in one of Amsterdam's second hand vinyl shops. On a first glance, it's nothing unusual - just another Billie Holiday compilation, released originally in the early 1970s in the aftermath of successful, Oscar-nominated biopic "Lady Sings the Blues" that brought Lady Day back in the public view. Just like so many other compilations, this one was printed and re-printed so many times that a decade later it eventually came to be released in my homeland under the title "Everest Records Archive Of Folk & Jazz Music" and everything about it, from a cover to the random music selection, tells you this was a budget label. But what is important is - this was for me the very first time I have ever heard Billie Holiday. And say what you want, that it's not chronological, that it has a bad cover art, incredible bad sound (specially on a last track "The Same Old Story") and it could have been better assembled - still, it was the only Holiday LP I had and I listened it religiously.
Back than, I was a teenager and bought in her myth totally without reservation - everything about her life seemed fascinating to me and if you asked me than, my 14 year old self was totally in love with her. Combination of alluring music and old black & white pictures (where Holiday was always a sharp dresser) filled my dreams. In the subsequent years I managed to collect quite a nice collection of her recorded work chronologically and in much better sound (on CDs) - but it seems that once I got my hands on everything, I overdosed a bit on Lady Day and nowadays I don't listen her at all. So when I found this old LP (in a perfect condition) it made me extremely happy and here am I, some 42 years later (and 66 years after her death) listening the exactly same record I listened back than, with a glass of cold booze next to me and my heart purrs with every note.
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