“Stormy Weather” by Billie Holiday

"Stormy Weather" was already two decades old by the time Billie Holiday put it on An Evening With Billie Holiday in 1953: a torch song Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler wrote in 1933, first heard at the Cotton Club in Harlem. It's a lament for a man who's gone, with the weather standing in for the heartache of the woman left behind, exactly the kind of hurt Holiday could make sound like the plain truth.

She's in fine company here: Oscar Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on double bass, Freddie Green on guitar and Gus Johnson on drums, with Joe Newman on trumpet and Paul Quinichette on tenor saxophone. Holiday doesn't push; she lets every word sit there and ache.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.