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Title: Billie at her very best
Review: "Solitude" is a stunningly good album - warm, intimate singing from one of the premier jazz stylists, accompanied by steller jazzmen. It was Billie Holiday's first Verve album, and she is in fine voice - her slightly tangy timbre is well-captured by the Verve engineers, and she improvises with all her usual taste and subtlety. The songs, too, are great: many of them are poignant and a little melancholy, which creates a sustained mood of intimacy and worldliness. You simply will not hear a more convincing reading of Cole Porter's "Easy to Love" than here: it's a very hard song to get right, with its demanding intervals and sophisticated lyrics, but Holiday somehow manages to reshape the melody in her own style which mining a deep vein of understated passion. It's a wonderful example of her art.
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