You’ve Changed

“You’ve Changed” appeared on Billie’s contentious “Lady in Satin” is an album in 1958 on Columbia Records. It is the penultimate album completed by the singer and released in her lifetime (her final album, “Billie Holiday”, being recorded in March 1959 and released just after her death). The original album was produced by Irving Townsend, and engineered by Fred Plaut, and it is a beautiful sound, though much criticized by Lady’s fans who had grown to preferred her with deft, less maudlin jazz combos.

The song material for Lady in Satin derived from the usual sources for Holiday in her three decade career, that of the Great American Songbook of classic pop. Unlike the bulk of Holiday’s recordings, rather than in the setting of a jazz combo, Holiday returns to the backdrop of full orchestral arrangements as done during her Decca years, this time in the contemporary vein of Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald on her Songbooks series.

The album consists of songs Holiday had never recorded before. The arrangements were by bandleader Ray Ellis, Holiday familiar with his Ellis in Wonderland album. Soloists on the album included Mel Davis, Urbie Green, and bebop trombone pioneer J.J. Johnson.

Reaction to the album, from which “You’ve Changed” is a stand out track, remains mixed. Holiday’s voice had lost much of its upper range in her 40s, although she still retained her rhythmic phrasing. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave the album a three-star rating of a possible four stars, but expressed a basic reservation about the album, describing it as “a voyeuristic look at a beaten woman.”

However, trumpeter Buck Clayton preferred the work of the later Holiday to that of the younger woman that he had often worked with in the 1930s.

“Lady in Satin” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.

Personnel: Billie Holiday vocal, Ray Ellis arranger and conductor, George Ockner violin and concertmaster, David Soyer cello, Janet Putnam harp, Danny Bank flute, Phil Bodner flute, Romeo Penque flute, Mel Davis trumpet, J.J. Johnson trombone, Urbie Green trombone, Tom Mitchell trombone, Mal Waldron piano, Barry Galbraith guitar, Milt Hinton bass, Osie Johnson drums, Elise Bretton & Miriam Workman, backing vocals.

– Wikipedia