Blues, jazz and country…
old and new

Billie Holiday, Blue Billie, Bille Holiday and Lester Young—A Musical Romance, Lady Day Swings! Columbia/Legacy Records.

These three reissues are spin-offs from Columbia Legacy’s recent Grammy Award-winning 10-disc Billie Holiday box set. Each presents Holiday in a unique setting. Blue Billie makes the point that Holiday actually recorded very little straight blues, but instead imbued a sense of blues into just about everything she sang, which is correct. Bille Holiday and Lester Young—A Musical Romance, couples Holiday with her favorite accompanist, tenor saxophonist Lester Young. These two, although never linked romantically, nonetheless enjoyed a very fruitful musical partnership for 20 years. Lady Day Swings! focuses on Holiday’s earliest recordings, made cheaply as jukebox fodder. This fact doesn’t diminish the value of the music, which was recorded with all-star backing musicians and sounds buoyant and upbeat nearly 70 years later. Although Holiday is best remembered as a torch singer, these swinging sides are of great value to the Holiday fan. Summing it up, Billie Holiday, for all her vocal limitations and imperfections, not to mention her unhappy and tragic personal life, remains the premier jazz vocalist of our time. These three discs are indispensable.

Jorma Kaukonen, Blue Country Heart, Columbia Records.

Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen traveled to Nashvile last January to record with some of bluegrass music’s brightest stars. The music is all traditional country with a notable blues influence. Included are tunes by the Delmore Brothers, Jimmy Rodgers, the Skillet Lickers’ Clayton McMichen and others. The sound is distinctly old-time string band and bluegrass, back when the lines between country and blues weren’t so visible. Kaukonen is in fine form instrumentally and vocally, and with help from sidemen Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Byron House and Bela Fleck, how can you go wrong? This is memorable music, released at a time when interest in vintage American music is at height, due to the success of last year’s “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.

Eddie Burns, Snake Eyes, Delmark Records.

Eddie Burns is the last of the great postwar Detroit bluemen still performing. Born in Mississippi in 1928, Burns worked extensively with John Lee Hooker in the late 40’s and beyond and is accompanied here by his guitar playing brother, Jimmy Burns. Eddie’s vocals are a bit tentative and occasionally shaky, but his harp playing is sharp and his guitar work is straightforward. Most tunes are Burns originals. This is pure, unadulterated blues, without compromise or pretense and it doesn’t get much more authentic. Delmark Records, 4121 N. Rockwell, Chicago, IL 60618.

Johnny Cash, The Essential Sun Singles, Varese Sarabande Records.

What is left to say about Johnny Cash that hasn’t been said? He’s the Man In Black, the troubled loner, the fallen-down drug abuser, a man caught in a weird dichotomy, obsessed with the dark aspects of life and death, yet fully embracing Christian teachings and doctrine, with spiritual heart firmly on his sleeve. With Columbia Records in the midst of an extensive Cash reissue campaign, it’s wise to add these seminal Sun recordings to your collection. Included are immortal tracks like “I Walk The Line,” “Folsom Prison Blues, “Cry! Cry! Cry!,” “Get Rhythm,” “So Doggone Lonesome,” “Next In Line” and many others, all certified Cash classics. www.VareseSarabande.com.