"...Blending British Christmas favorites like The Box of Delights and A Matter of Life and Death (our Xmas viewing habits can be … eccentric), having the Doctor hide in plain sight as the caretaker to a widow and orphans during World War II is both charming and thrilling. Especially since, if a man with a time machine cannot deliver a holiday miracle or two, who can?..."

"...The less than steady steps down the stairs that shift to a wobbly shuffle on crossing to the microphone, the head that bobs, the eyelids that shutter in slow motion and seldom rise above half-mast, all betray her as a woman who is barely holding it together in a haze of booze and drugs. And once she gets hold of a glass filled with more of the liquid that dulls her pain, there's such desperation in her grip on it that we know this Billie Holiday hasn't much further she can go...."

"...Directed by: Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden. A celebratory documentary that skips briskly along to cover a 60-plus-year career, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer begins in 1941 when O'Day was discovered by the bandleader Gene Krupa and follows the artistic development of this white jazz singer whom many put in the same league as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan..."

"...And it's about being an outlaw. You know, he didn't think of it as drug abuse, he thought it was his medicine and when your hero is Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday—when those are his—..."

"...The thesis put forth in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis (Pantheon, $27.50 hard) is that the singing and songs of 1920s women blues artists and jazz singer Billie Holiday not only reflected the relatively independent status of African-American working women but helped raise feminist consciousness. Her 427-page book contains only 197 pages devoted to stating and supporting her positions..."

"...You know, he didn't think of it as drug abuse, he thought of it as his medicine. And when your hero is Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday –..."

"...Billie HolidayLady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944 (Columbia Legacy) You couldn't have made her up. Elegant yet earthy, successful yet tragic, Billie Holiday had the makings of a character straight out of fiction, one that embodied everything good and bad in jazz..."

"...Billie Holiday..."

"...Strange Fruit Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights..."

"...I've been wanting to do a swing-jazzy-bluesy thing for a long time, but would people accept it from me? How about the song "Loverman"? My god, we're talking about Ella Fitzgerald. We're talking about Billie Holiday, who introduced it..."

"...Art BlakeyLive in '65 (Naxos) Coleman HawkinsLive in '62 & '64 (Naxos) Woody HermanLive in '64 (Naxos) Anita O'DayLive in '63 & '70 (Naxos) Jimmy SmithLive in '69 (Naxos) John ColtraneThe World According to John Coltrane (EuroArts/Lower 5th) Billie HolidayLady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (EuroArts/Lower 5th) Thelonious MonkAmerican Composer (EuroArts/Lower 5th) Count BasieSwingin' the Blues (EuroArts/Lower 5th) Charlie ParkerCelebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker (EuroArts/Lower 5th) Andrew HillSolos: The Jazz Sessions (MVD Visual)..."

"...Left Alone Revisited ... A Tribute to Billie Holiday (Synergy Music)..."

"...Peace is invoked again and again in the songs here, something hoped for, desired, yearned for. As these are largely works of introspection and meditation, where poetic texts ride on haunting melodies and extended lines, delivered with stately tempos in often hushed tones, they form together a prayer, a shimmering, iridescent prayer in which the beauty of the subject, be it hibiscus flowers or Billie Holiday or sleep, seems somehow magnified, intensified by the sensitivity and sensuousness of these voices...."

"...Since music and substance abuse are inseparably linked in many people's minds, we learn that Buddy Bolden, Bix Beiderbecke, and Lester Young were alcoholics, that Louis Armstrong smoked marijuana, and that Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and others hit the harder stuff. Burns does not disappoint those who expect the mirror music holds up to society to have a little suspicious residue on it...."

"...On Holiday (Columbia)..."

"...Billie Holiday. For Holiday to be grasped, she must be listened to across the length of her life, from the girlish voice of the early records to the voice of the witch-crone about to die of old age before her 45th birthday..."

"...Early in his career, the Harlem of the Thirties, Billie Holiday nicknamed Young “Pres” or “Prez.” The two toured with Basie and bonded over the blues. “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” embodies the beautiful music they made together...."

"...A brief interview with the jovial Sandoval screams for a "play all" option… Billy Crystal Presents the Milt Gabler Story (Verve) also combos CD and DVD, but the comedian's 30-minute doc doesn't do his favorite uncle justice. Fortunately, 26 career-defining tracks by cornerstone acts (Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch' Boogie," Bill Haley & the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock") ground Gabler's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legacy, even through the latter years' squareness, though Der Bingle Crosby's "MacNamara's Band" makes its case as the subliminal blueprint for the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"… Gabler's greatest collaborator, Billie Holiday, is smartly anthologized on the 2-CD portion of The Ultimate Collection (Verve) – amply, chronologically – but its DVD is the ultimate collection..."

"...Dee Dee and Ella. Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, was the third and final member of jazz's eternal triumvirate: Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan..."

"...Her first gigs were indicative of the road she would follow. "When I started singing, doing some stuff for U.T., they had this Cotton Club review and I did a Billie Holiday thing," remembers Hart..."