Billie Holiday - All Or Nothing At All (2025 Mono Remaster) (2026) [Hi-Res]

Recorded in five sessions over 1956/57 and released in 1958, this twelve-track affair is loaded with the classic standards from Irvin Berlin, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and more. Though some claimed Holiday was beyond her peak at this point, it was Miles Davis that countered that this was actually her most effective time with her “deepest understanding and control” of the repertoire she was performing.

"All Or Nothing At All“ is actually a compilation of three albums worth of material recorded in 1956 and 1957, near the end of Holiday's life. The satisfactions here are numerous. Producer Norman Granz presented one of jazz's definitive vocalists sitting in with a stellar combo of swing-style all stars. Granz assembled a wonderful band for Holiday. Hearing musicians like Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, Harry 'Sweets' Edison and Barney Kessel constructing sixteen and thirty-two bar statements on some of the finest standards to ever come out of Tin Pan Alley is reason enough to listen. Holiday is featured by virtue of being the singer, and she includes the introductory verses on several of the tunes. But the band passes around the introductions and obbligatos with the ease and generosity of old familiar colleagues, and everyone makes enthusiastic use of the room they're given, occasionally taking up to a chorus apiece before taking it back to the top. Holiday is one of those artists whose work tends to get divided into 'early' and 'late' periods. These recordings offer an expansive view of her late work in perhaps the most sympathetic, inspiring and swinging context possible.

Billie Holiday, vocals
Barney Kessel, guitar
Ben Webster, tenor saxophone
Harry 'Sweets' Edison, trumpet
Jimmy Rowles, piano
Larry Bunker, drums
Alvin Stoller, drums

Recorded at Radio Recorders and Capitol Studios, Hollywood, California on August 14 & 18, 1956 and from January 3-9, 1957
Produced by Norman Granz

Digitally remastered MONO recording