"gasoline Alley"

British pop-jazz-blues crooner Elkie Brooks (born Elaine Bookbinder) dominated U.K. radio in the late '70s with a series of hit singles that established her as "the biggest-selling female album artist in the history of the British pop charts." The Manchester native, who grew up in an extremely musical family, left school at the age of 15 to join a dance band in London. She eventually mad the jump to radio, as well as numerous appearances with legendary jazz bandleader Humphrey Lyttelton, before embarking on a career in pop music. The early '60s saw the budding young singer releasing singles for Decca and EMI, as well as opening for everyone from Carl Perkins to the Beatles, but commercial success remained elusive.

As part of Universal's Colour Collection, Rod Stewart is featured on previously released tracks taken from the singer's stint with Mercury in the '70s. Among the 17 tracks are the original versions of "Maggie May," "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Twistin' the Night Away."

This double CD is the most comprehensive collection of Elkie's music yet released. The first CD is similar to previous compilations, focusing on hits and covers of other songs. Some covers (Nights in white satin (Moody Blues), Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)) show that Elkie can take famous songs and keep them interesting. Others (such as Lilac wine) she plucked from obscurity and made her own. This CD contains much great music, most if not all previously released on CD. The second CD showcases Elkie's blues roots. It also includes covers, but of bluesy songs such as Hello stranger (Barbara Lewis), The way you do the things you do (Temptations), Rescue me (Fontella Bass), He's a rebel (Crystals) and Do right woman do right man. The first 13 tracks on this CD pre-dates Elkie's commercial breakthrough and some may be making their CD debut.

The Hollies are an English pop group formed in Manchester in the early 1960s. Most of the band members are from throughout East Lancashire. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style, they became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s and early-1970s…

When the Hollies - one of the best and most commercially successful pop/rock acts of the British Invasion - began recording in 1963, they relied heavily upon the R&B/early rock & roll covers that provided the staple diet for countless British bands of the time. They quickly developed a more distinctive style featuring three-part harmonies (heavily influenced by the Everly Brothers), ringing guitars, and hook-happy material, penned by both outside writers (especially future 10cc member Graham Gouldman) and themselves, eventually composing most of their repertoire on their own. The best early Hollies records evoke an infectious, melodic cheer similar to that of the early Beatles, although the Hollies were neither in their class (not an insult: nobody else was) nor demonstrated a similar capacity for artistic growth. They tried, though, easing into somewhat more sophisticated folk-rock and mildly psychedelic sounds as the decade wore on, especially on their albums (which contain quite a few overlooked highlights).

The Faces were unanthologized on CD prior to 1999, but ever since Rhino's corking single-disc Good Boys…When They're Asleep…, the group has seen a number of different compilations of different sizes, of which Rhino U.K.'s 2012 set Stay with Me: Anthology is the fifth. At two discs, this has 2007's The Definitive Rock Collection as its closest cousin: they're both double discs that cover a tremendous amount of ground, but Stay with Me has a slight edge, weighing in at 36 tracks compared to Definitive's 30. Of those 30 tracks, 27 cuts are present and accounted for on Stay with Me – the missing numbers are "Open to Ideas," "Jodie," and "(I Know) I'm Losing You," the latter two cuts from solo Rod Stewart albums where he was backed by the Faces – and those other nine songs include some of the Faces' very best, including the roaring rocker "That's All You Need," Ronnie Lane's sweet, plaintive "Richmond," and the gloriously shambolic "On the Beach." Serious fans should pony up for 2004's Five Guys Walk into a Bar…, which is one of the great rock & roll box sets, but this double-disc set is like that box in miniature, containing the essence of the Faces in all their messy glory.