Produced by Norman Granz and featuring a first-class line-up, this all-ballads album – the singer's first recording for Granz's Clef Records, and released in 1952 – contains some remarkable things. Prefaced by a delightful introduction by guitarist Kessel, on ‘Solitude’ Holiday communicates the essence of a song as being the bearer of a deep emotion, not simply a melodic line to negotiate and decorate, an intensity of feeling which she herself so admired in the vocal expression of one of her touchstones, Bessie Smith. Holiday's genius for rhythmic displacement comes strongly to the fore in songs such as ‘These Foolish Things’ and ‘East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)’, illustrating that inimitable way in which she draws out a phrase to allow each word to detonate its own emotional charge. Released the following year on Clef Records and similarly produced by Granz, An Evening with Billie Holiday is included here in its entirety as a bonus album and is another front-rank recommendation, not least for a standout interpretation of one of Holiday's signature songs, ‘My Man’, plus Oscar Peterson's dazzlingly effervescent solo on ‘Lover Come Back To Me’.