Gold (CD)
Marvin Gaye
Amoeba Review
Anders Eljas 01/07/2010
Although the title could only have been coined by a marketing department, The Ultimate Collection deserves the highest of praise. It is not only the first American compilation to survey Billie Holiday's entire 25-year career -- and astutely, at that -- but it also includes a DVD that presents the lion's share of her film and TV appearances, a full discography, and an interactive timeline. The audio discs spotlight all of Holiday's most innovative material, from the musically pioneering "Billie's Blues" and "Lover Man," in which she refined the perpetually coarse female blues form and virtually invented the slow-burn torch song, to the socially progressive "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child," wherein she yoked reform concerns to beguiling pop songs and became a master of the protest song. (As it should be, the 1939 of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" seems much more recent than the 1939 when a majority of Southerners felt lynching was justified in case of sexual assault.) The bulk of the material rightly comes from her Verve and Columbia libraries, but there are many inclusions from her breathtaking Decca and Commodore catalogs, as well as a superb version of "Trav'lin Light" from a 1942 Capitol session with accompaniment from (surprise) the outmoded but effective Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Fittingly, the program begins with one of Holiday's first sessions -- in 1933, when she provided a short vocal chorus over a reading of "Miss Brown to You" by Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra -- and it ends, on the DVD portion, with her reprising another 1933 title for the television program Art Ford's Jazz Party one year before her death.
Track Listing
Disc 1 Titles |
Artist |
Length |
---|---|---|
1.
Stubborn Kind of Fellow
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:45 |
2.
Hitch Hike
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:33 |
3.
Pride and Joy
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:08 |
4.
Can I Get a Witness
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:50 |
5.
You're a Wonderful One
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:43 |
6.
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:58 |
7.
I'll Be Doggone
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:48 |
8.
Ain't That Peculiar
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:00 |
9.
It Takes Two
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:59 |
10.
Ain't No Mountain High Enough
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:28 |
11.
Your Precious Love
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:05 |
12.
If I Could Build My Whole World Around You
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:21 |
13.
Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:15 |
14.
You're All I Need to Get By
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:51 |
15.
You
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:27 |
16.
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:15 |
17.
Too Busy Thinking About My Baby
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:57 |
18.
That's the Way Love Is
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:44 |
19.
His Eye Is on the Sparrow (Stereo Mix)
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:48 |
Disc 2 Titles |
Artist |
Length |
---|---|---|
1.
What's Going On
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:52 |
2.
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:13 |
3.
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
|
Marvin Gaye | 05:28 |
4.
You're the Man, Pts. 1-2
|
Marvin Gaye | 05:48 |
5.
Where Are We Going? (previously unreleased)
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:57 |
6.
Trouble Man
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:51 |
7.
Let's Get It On
|
Marvin Gaye | 04:53 |
8.
Come Get to This
|
Marvin Gaye | 02:42 |
9.
Distant Lover [live]
|
Marvin Gaye | 06:19 |
10.
I Want You
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:57 |
11.
Got to Give It Up
|
Marvin Gaye | 11:53 |
12.
Anger
|
Marvin Gaye | 04:03 |
13.
Ego Tripping Out
|
Marvin Gaye | 07:14 |
14.
Praise
|
Marvin Gaye | 04:53 |
15.
Sexual Healing
|
Marvin Gaye | 03:59 |