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Baroque Beatles Book...

Ella recorded five LPs' worth of Gershwin tunes for her songbook series, which was frankly a little much, so this single disc skims the cream. These songs are the ur-texts of American pre-war pop, straightforward love songs made to flow off a singer's tongue, and here they're in the hands of a maste...

Hot on the heels of Nina Simone's like-minded project, this 14-track disk takes Billie Holiday's masterful and mourning vocals of 1935 to 1958 to the 21st-century digital dance floor, courtesy of some resourceful remixers and DJs from Swingsett & Takuya and Nickodemus & Zeb to Organica and Poppysee...

A Big Band Christmas...

Once cited by Bob Dylan as the first performer he'd want to sign to his own label, Leon Redbone instead made his 1976 recording debut with Warner Brothers. On the Track carries a "very special thanks" to Jelly Roll Morton and Jimmie Rodgers, and indeed sounds like the offspring of the pioneering jaz...

This is one of the three all-ballad albums that John Coltrane recorded in late 1962 and early 1963. Johnny Hartman was apparently Coltrane's suggestion, and his deep, dark voice meshes perfectly here with Coltrane's tenor. The material is well-chosen, including definitive readings of "My One and Onl...

Long considered a jewel in Verve Records' very impressive crown, Fitzgerald's songbook collections of various composers--a series that was started by the success of this set--are all wonderful, but her natural wit and intelligence was at its most perfect with Cole Porter's erudite, urbane songs. Whi...

As its title indicate, this CD sees popular vocalist Steve Tyrell pay tribute to the Sinatra songbook, and pretty much every track is a famous nugget closely identified with the Chairman of the Board. That Tyrell is no Sinatra is a given, but the combination of his slightly hammy delivery and old-s...

Those Were Our Songs: Music of World War II...

Double Time...