| Stay with Me | |
| Type: | Studio album |
| Artist: | Billie Holiday |
| Cover: | billieholidaystaywithme.jpg |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | 1958 (CD 1991) |
| Recorded: | February 14, 1955 (CD bonus tracks: April 14, 1954) Fine Sound Studios, New York[1] |
| Genre: | Jazz |
| Length: | 33:47 (CD 42:27) |
| Label: | Verve MGV 8302 (511 523-2) |
| Producer: | Norman Granz |
| Prev Title: | Songs for Distingué Lovers |
| Prev Year: | 1957 |
| Next Title: | All or Nothing at All |
| Next Year: | 1958 |
Stay with Me (MGV 8302) is an album by the jazz singer Billie Holiday, accompanied by Tony Scott and his Orchestra. It contains all the material from a session recorded February 14, 1955, in New York City,[2] and released in 1958 on producer Norman Granz's Verve label.[3]
For the CD reissue in 1991 another session was appended, that Granz had previously issued as part of the self-titled Billie Holiday LP on his Clef Record label (10" LP, Clef EPC 224/Verve MGC 690).[4] The recording from April 14, 1954, at the same studio with "Billie Holliday and Her Band", consisted of the Oscar Peterson Trio, Ed Shaughnessy on drums, and trumpeter Charlie Shavers as the only members of both sessions beside Holiday.[5] Beyond that, all tracks were part of many compilations and the complete recording issues of Billie Holiday.[6]
In a review for AllMusic, Ron Wynn stated that Holiday "was fading, but hadn't lost the dramatic quality in her delivery, nor her ability to project and tell a shattering story."
Jack Kenny, writing for Jazz Views, noted that the "readings that [Holiday] gives to popular tunes of her day can reveal depths that probably the writers of the lyrics never envisaged. There are numerous examples on this CD. The one that stands out is 'Love For Sale'... She sings it as though for the first time; you hear it as if for the first time. It was fortunate that Norman Granz managed to put her under contract in what proved to be her final years."[7]