[Dixielandjazz] Billie Holiday tribute reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

A Tribute to Billie Holiday (StormVox)
by Jon M. Gilbertson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 7, 2011
The opening track of this album shows off its main strength and its consistent weakness:
actress Angela Bassett reads from Billie Holiday's 1956 autobiography, "Lady Sings
the Blues," as if living out the jazz and blues singer's tremendously hard-earned
experiences, but behind her the music glides with modern, distanced gloss.
Bassett returns periodically throughout the album, dropping handfuls of grit among
frictionless versions of songs Lady Day made famous. Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds slips
through "Strange Fruit" as if covering Billy Ocean, while the usually estimable Shelby
Lynne barely begins to plumb the depths of sadness in "You've Changed."
Even the best performances, such as Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding's luxuriant
"I'll Look Around," suffer from arrangements that are as sunny and easy as Holiday
was dark and troubled. Even if Bassett had been given half the album, she wouldn't
overcome the forgettable slickness of these renditions.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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