Lady in Satin
1958 studio album by Billie Holiday
Lady in Satin is the eleventh studio album by jazz singer Billie Holiday, released in 1958 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1157 in mono and CS 8048 in stereo. It is the penultimate album completed by the singer. Her final album, "Billie Holiday" was released just before her death; the album was retitled Last Recording, and re-released just after her death. Lady in Satin was produced by Irving Townsend and engineered by Fred Plaut.
Background
For the majority of the 1950s, Billie Holiday was signed to jazz producer Norman Granz's Clef Records, which was later absorbed into the newly founded Verve Records by 1956. All of her work for Norman Granz consisted of small jazz combos, reuniting her with musicians she recorded with back in the 1930s when she made her first recordings with Teddy Wilson. There were talks in the early 1950s of Holiday making albums, or songbooks, dedicated to composers such as George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, but they fell through and ended up going to Ella Fitzgerald when she signed to Verve. By 1957, Holiday had recorded twelve albums for Granz and was unhappy. Therefore, she decided not to renew her contract.
By October 1957, Holiday contacted Columbia producer Irving Townsend and expressed interest in recording with bandleader Ray Ellis.
The public source identifies “Lady in Satin” as 1958 studio album by Billie Holiday. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lady, Satin and studio.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q285175. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1157, 1956 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lady in Satin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.