A voice that still resonates

As I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway on a rainy night recently, my only companion was Billie Holiday, intimately whispering in my ear, reminding me -- as she has done so many times -- about the perils of love gained and love lost. Billie Holiday on a CD, of course, with her world-weary voice and embracing sense of rhythm, telling stories I’d heard again and again, making each into a telling new experience.

She would have turned 90 on Thursday. As it turned out, she didn’t reach half that span, passing away in 1959 at age 44 -- departed now for as long as she was with us. But Holiday continues to be one of the lasting figures of American pop and jazz music.

Her influence has been, for the most part, subtle and indirect. Holiday was not a scat singer in the style of Ella Fitzgerald; she was not a vocal athlete like Sarah Vaughan. Her metier was musical storytelling enhanced by a shadowy framework of the blues.

Aspects of Holiday can be found in many singers -- the phrasing of Frank Sinatra, the simmering, laid-back sound of Cassandra Wilson, the singularity of Abbey Lincoln, Norah Jones, Patricia Barber and Andy Bey, the fearlessness of Sheila Jordan, the conversational manner of Karrin Allyson, the balladry of Shirley Horn, the layered musicality of San Francisco singers such as Madeline Eastman and Jackie Allen.

Only rarely have singers taken the artistically risky route of following specifically in Holiday’s stylistic footsteps -- usually without much success. The exception is Madeleine Peyroux, who has mysteriously managed to garner both critical praise and considerable record sales with a style that verges dangerously close to an impressionist’s version of Holiday’s singing.

The 90th birthday is being insightfully acknowledged in a new boxed set, “Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection” (Hip-O/Verve/Decca).

It consists of two CDs encompassing Holiday’s career on several labels and a DVD that includes rare footage of performances reaching from her buoyant youth to her final years.

The audio discs are filled with classics, starting with the startlingly self-confident vocals on “Miss Brown to You” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” continuing with classics such as the seminal “Strange Fruit,” “God Bless the Child,” “Don’t Explain” (a newly discovered version) and “Good Morning, Heartache,” winding up with the dark poignancy of “Body and Soul” and “But Not for Me.”

Virtually all this material has been available in earlier collections. But the combination of two discs full of classic tracks with the performances, interviews and rehearsal material on the DVD makes “The Ultimate Collection” a vital item for Holiday fans.

There are several extraordinary inclusions on the DVD.

The first is Holiday’s initial appearance on film, singing “Saddest Tale” in the 1935 Duke Ellington short “Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life.” There are the performances -- not seen since their original 1956 telecasts on ABC’s “Stars of Jazz” -- in which she sings “My Man,” “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” and “Billie’s Blues.” Via audio, there is an intriguing 1956 Mike Wallace conversation with Holiday.

And perhaps best of all, there is her remarkable 1957 CBS television appearance on Studio 58’s “The Sound of Jazz” with, among others, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan and Roy Eldridge.

Not all was darkness

The common wisdom about Holiday is that her singing was her life. She said it herself, and it certainly is true that the artistic density of her interpretations traces to her difficult personal journey.

But there are moments in “The Sound of Jazz” (especially when she is listening to Young play his brief but extraordinary solo) in which the close-ups reveal another quality -- an inner sweetness, even an innocence, that was essential to the fullness of her music, a momentary light-filled counterbalance to the darkness.

The contradictions involved in maintaining that balance are revealed in the Wallace interview when Holiday is asked, “Why do so many jazz greats seem to die so early?”

She responds, “Because we try to live 100 days in one day ... bend this note, bend that note ... get all the feeling and eat all the good food, and travel everywhere ... all in one day. And you can’t do it.”