My Five Star rating is for the music.

I am a long time Billie Holiday fan and love all of her music; it's taken many years, but I am confident that I have acquired virtually everything she ever recorded. Although I enjoy every period of her musical development, I am particularly fond of the tracks she recorded for Norman Granz on the Verve label in the 1950's. Naturally, I was thrilled when this box set was announced.

While I am grateful to have so complete a box set as Verve has issued here, I have severe problems with the way the material is presented. It's nice that they have released virtually everything in the Verve vaults, but in so doing they have included live performances, alternate takes, false starts, and even some rehearsals. That would have been fine with me, if they hadn't decided to place everything in strictly chronological order. We therefore get Lady Day's great studio sessions interspaced with live concert performances, chatter, rehearsals and incomplete takes, and the total effect makes for very poor continuity. It also makes the boxed set, on the whole, very difficult to enjoy.

A few of the live concert performances have never been released before, and I was thrilled to hear some "new" Billie Holiday. But the audio quality and Billie's performance varies greatly on the live material, and the result is very uneven. And the inclusion of the rehearsal material is questionable, even if you're a die-hard fan like me.

The 1955 rehearsal with Jimmie Rowles is particularly problematic. This session was released on an LP called Songs and Conversations shortly after Billie's death, and I was frankly surprised to find it included here. It consists of mostly drunken rambling conversation while Billie rehearses with her favorite and most sympathetic pianist. Some of the language is quite raunchy, although most of the discussion is hard to follow anyway, as the audio quality is particularly poor. The alternate studio takes are frequently annoying, especially when they include two or three false starts in a row, and the spoken intros by Norman Granz often included in the master takes are completely unnecessary. It would have worked so much better if they had simply separated the live concert material from the studio sessions and then saved the alternate takes, false starts and rehearsal material for the last couple of discs. It's a pity - I would love to be able to listen to all of Billie's wonderful 1950's studio sessions all the way through, without the distractions of the extra material. Happily, I see that Verve will release a new boxed set of just the studio masters in December 2005. Hopefully they will skip all the chatter (I don't need to hear Mr. Granz announce "All Or Nothing At All, take 5"). A great deal of expense and angst could have been avoided if the track layout for this set had simply been better thought out.

As for Billie's performances, there is not a bad moment in any of the studio recordings presented here, including the notorious three April 54 tracks that she later dismissed, complaining that the band was drunk. The musicians are all first rate throughout these sessions, and present her with the sympathetic backing she deserved and worked best with.