Forget the Packaging, Let's talk about the music.
This review is not about the packaging (besides, it's not the worst even though whoever decided to glue the acordion like disc holder to the metal box wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and whoever designed the art work wasn't the brightest bulb in the lamp).

This is strictly on the music alone. If this was on the Verve & Cleff material only, this would be getting a 5 star rating. On the first 5 discs, she hadn't totally messed up her vocal chords on cigarettes and heroin yet. Unfortunately, Verve (originally owned by Polygram, now owned by UMG) also owned MGM, and to live up to the complete angle, they had to release the MGM (Ray Ellis conducted / arranged / produced) album simply titled Billie Holiday. This section got worst for 2 reasons. Instead of having really great jazz artists, you have strings (which just doesn't work). Also (Like Lady In Satin), her voice has had it.

All the other discs (and actually the first 4 songs on disc 6) are all very good, but once you start to hear All The Way, it becomes dificult to listen to (another similarity to Lady in Satin). Is it worth the price for the poor packaging and the imfamous MGM album? From me, you'll get a resounding YES. On the other discs, Billie is in good voice, and the musicians are hot. This is perfect for the person who doesn't want all the alternate tracks that you get in the Complete Verve, and feel that the 2 disc set is too skimpy.

Worst packaging ever
Yes, the music is wonderful. If you love Billie Holiday's music, then you'll love listening to this set. I'm enjoying it immensely.

HOWEVER, as has been noted already, the packaging is the worst I've ever seen. This set is all about being completely uninformative and unusable. There is the fold-out accordion-style holder for the discs, which is very cumbersome. Want to know what the songs are on which disc? Good luck! First of all, the discs are not labeled, save for the tiny writing around the spindle hole in the center of the disc. Once you figure out which disc is which you'll then need to extricate the booklet from the first leaf of the fold-out accordion holder. I was not able to get my booklet out, it seems that it was glued in place and is now worse for wear after a tug of war getting it out.

And, if the annoyances of trying to actually use this set is not enough, what is with the completely inappropriate design? There is the worst photo of Billie Holiday ever taken that you will see when you open the tin box and then there is the colorful motifs of daisies and sunshine on each of the discs which begs the question, what was the designer thinking? UMG, owner of Verve, has invested a lot of effort, and is presumably charging you, the buyer, a lot of money for gratuitous and inappropriate design indulgence and impulsive whims of clueless designers. I give this two stars - the music deserved five stars but the packaging is so insulting and unusable that I have to knock it down to two stars. Now that I've ripped it into iTunes, I will not be struggling with trying to play these CDs.

the packaging is a crime
The music is absolutely great and I love these disc.

BUT, the tin box and the packaging is beyond my worst imagination. The picture they choose for Lady Day and the way they put it---I am so angry with it that the first thing I did was to repachaging these discs myself....

It is a crime against the great music.....

Essential, in a silly box
The last phase of Billie Holiday's career is captured here in great sound (the very slight hiss means they didn't take off a layer of sound just to get pristine silent background, a good sign, a mistake Japanese issues often make). With a return to great jazz backup, as in her 30s recordings (arguably the greatest jazz/popular recordings ever made), Holiday isn't in great voice and she sometimes isn't up to the material, which is much better than the material she was handed in the 30s. But that's a rare sometimes, and her take on anything is always interesting. And often great. She completely remakes "Love for Sale" (which was a rather silly risque Porter number til she took it on) or "Solitude", unearthing colors the composers likely didn't realize they'd buried there; much as her daughters Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone would do so often after her. The damage she had done to her instrument and herself, as well as the damage the world inflicted on her, shows and sometimes she is using it and sometimes it is using her. On a few cuts you're listening to a woman in great pain, and it's not art; it becomes voyeurism. In the end, it's an essential collection, and preferable to the fuller complete collection - her false takes in this period aren't useful, as the 30s outtakes were, where nothing she did was the same twice. The packaging is silly, and has nothing to do with her style; the photo on the inside front cover is just ugly, though there is an Aztec quality to it that would be interesting if there was anything Aztec about Holiday. She was also very beautiful and a chameleon (at different times, she looked Chinese, African, patrician, no two photos from different shoots look the same), which highlights her essential nature as an actress. The greatest singing actress, in fact. But the perfumed soap tin box doesn't disguise the unique music inside.

I Second the Horrible Packaging
Okay, the music is flawless. Nothing needs to be said.

And yes, the packaging is horrible. However, it's not the functionaliy of the packaging the irks me (even though this is also poor). My wife and I are both designers, and nothing about the packaging is aesthetically cohesive. The disc art looks like it can also be used on an XTC or Theivery Corporation album (or maybe it was stolen from one). The photos are very unflattering. All of this would not be such a crime if it wasn't coming from a period and label that wasn't known for classic, trend-setting and influential album covers. It honestly looks as if different people designed parts of the package without seeing what the other was doing.

Oh well, it's going right on my iPod anyway where I'll swap out the art for something nicer. Here is a great hint/trick for fellow iPod jazzers....

Change your encode settings to MONO on anything recorded before 1958. Stereo wasn't used until 1958, and changing the setting to MONO will make the file half the size with 0% loss of quality. (The "automatic" setting in iTunes cannot differentiate mono from stereo, so you need to do this manually.) If your entire iPod is pre-1958, you will get twice as much music on it.