PERFORMER: BILLIE HOLIDAY
ALBUM: THE COMPLETE BILLIE HOLIDAY ON VERVE 1945-1959
LABEL: VERVE
THE BOTTOM LINE: A boxed set captures, if not the glory days of a supernal jazz singer, great ones nonetheless.
SHE SAID EVERYTHING LIKE SHE meant it, and she sang it as she lived it. "I'm telling you, me and my old voice, it just go up a little bit and come down a little bit," Billie Holiday says during a rehearsal interlude on this landmark set. "It's not legit. I do not got a legitimate voice." True enough. But Billie Holiday changed every notion of legit --...