I listened to my first Billie Holiday album when I was at school - one of her late recordings, Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall, dating from around 1956.

By this time her voice was past its peak. But that hardly mattered - her interpretative powers were undimmed. Throughout her career she remained the greatest of all the jazz vocalists. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Anita O'Day might have had the more perfect voices and technique, but none could explore the meaning of a song the way Billie could, or seem to express so much of her own life in just a drawn-out syllable or downward twist of a note.

Her first studio gig came in 1933 when she was aged just 15 - she put down a couple of lightweight songs which gave little indication of what was to come. But just a couple of years later she started making the small-combo recordings which became her trademark - light and loose and free recordings, made with jazz musicians who, like her, were so comfortable with the idiom that they would discuss what they were recording, choose the order of solos, then just do it. One take, mostly. Bang. Instant classics.

Lady Day - The Many Faces of Billie Holiday is one of the better profiles of Billie. There is a meatier documentary, The Long Night of Lady Day made by a British production house a score of years ago, but that's not available on DVD.

This one has the benefit of brevity. It's well-paced and intimate in feel, as it focuses on her performances, and tells her life through intimate conversations with her peers, such as her great admirers Carmen McRae, Annie Ross, Buck Clayton and Harry 'Sweets' Edison.

The facts of her life are told without unecessary drama - how much drama do you need? This was a life marked by child prostitution (she was a 'pretty baby' at 12), drug abuse, and by her constant choice of the worst men as her companions - usually violent drug pushers or pimps. All these things coloured her singing, as they did her life.

To the credit of the documentary, all these parts of her life are mentioned, but not dwelt on. Emphasis is firmly on her music, and for the most part, the clips of Billie in performance are given straight - in full, and without the constant voiceovers which so marred the Ken Burns series 'Jazz'.

This documentary is a fine tribute, but to really get to know Billie, just listen to her songs - it's all there, as she sings Fine and Mellow, God Bless the Child or My Man. She was one of the outstanding giants of jazz, and no jazz singer before or since has come close to matching her interpretative artistry.

Considering that most of this is archival material, the overall quality is high. Some of the later television material is very poor in image quality, but the historical importance is over-riding.

The sound is adequate. It reflects the different ages and sources of the assembled material.

There is a discography, which is very incomplete. It has not been updated to mention the most important single compilation of Billie Holiday recordings yet made - the ten-disc set issued by Columbia (CXK85470) of all her recordings between 1933 and 1944.

If you add to that set the complete Decca and Commodore sets (Decca MCA GRD2-601, two discs, and Commodore CMB 2401 another two discs) and the complete end-career Verve recordings (ten discs, Verve 513859-2), you will have a great grounding in the legacy of Billie Holiday.

This Umbrella DVD carries four trailers for other documentaries, on Sarah Vaughan, Thelonius Monk, Count Basie and Charlie Parker.