Cheob Sok The Contact (1997)

The Atipico Trio's Gone with the Winds could also be called "Three Guys Passing Wind" or "Middle-Aged Farts at Play." No disrespect meant; in fact, quite the opposite. The clarinet, saxophone, and voice trio (each member does everything, sometimes at once) is comprised of Carlo Actis Dato, Sandro Cerino, and Stefano Corradi, sly dogs all. They would have you believe by their album cover – and the fact that they dedicate their works to aunts, pharmacists, dogs, etc…

The only real problem with One Way Records' anthology on Katrina & the Waves is that it gives too much room to their first Capitol album (which ought to be out as a free-standing CD) and not enough to their later material. Anyone seeking to go further should track down this imported disc. Thanks to EMI's acquisition of the SBK label, for which the band recorded in 1989, and its merger with Virgin Records, for which the Waves recorded in the early '90s in Germany, this collection has a little range and depth, although it's still just a greatest-hits collection – if it were a best-of, it would also have to include some of their Attic Records sides from before their signing to Capitol. In addition to the eight songs off of the first Capitol album, there are four more off of Waves, including "Lovely Lindsey" (the one glaring gap in the One Way release).

The music on this three-CD set (released in 1997) won a Pulitzer Prize, but it's not without its faults. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis tells the story of two Africans (singers Miles Griffith and Cassandra Wilson) who are captured, brought to the United States and sold as slaves. Because the male had formerly been a prince while the female had been a commoner, he considers himself to be her superior. He asks for but then ignores the advice of a wise man (Jon Hendricks), gets caught trying to escape, discovers what "soul" is, finally accepts the female as his equal and eventually escapes with her to freedom. Marsalis wrote a dramatic, episodic and generally thought-provoking three-hour work, utilizing the three singers plus 15 other musicians (all of whom have significant musical parts to play) in a massive 27-part suite.

At 73, with hundreds of albums and countless sessions to his credit, Chet Atkins still had another great recording in him – this splendid duo session with the young Australian guitarist/composer Tommy Emmanuel. Here, Atkins leaves all of the smooth jazz experiments from the previous decade and a half behind him, choosing superior material for their acoustic guitars, with the rhythm section laying down swinging country-pie tracks underneath. Emmanuel's fingerpicking style isn't quite as tied to the rhythm as Atkins'; it's a little sharper in attack, fleeter in technique and a bit flashier in temperament, yet remarkably well-matched to that of the east Tennessee master, almost an alter ego.

Beautiful solo piano music. Every tune is filled with an unforgettable clarity and melodic beauty.

Mobile Fidelity reissued two of the Searchers' early albums, 1963's Meet the Searchers and 1965's Sounds Like the Searchers, on one gold disc in 1997. While they are uneven, each record has moments that make them worthwhile to hardcore fans…

"The Essential" Don Johnson might be stretching it. Still, Johnson's two albums had their merits, particularly Heartbeat, his debut. Of the 16 cuts on this set, nine of the ten original tracks from Heartbeat are included here. Of the tracks that come from Let It Roll, only the best make the cut, such as Johnson's versions of "Tell It Like It Is," "Your Love Is Safe With Me," "Heartache Away," etc. Johnson was smart about his singing career. He enlisted help form major-league songwriters like Bob Seger ("Star Tonight") and Tom Petty ("Lost in Your Eyes"), and of course his biggest hit, "Heartbeat," was written by Eric Kaz and Wendy Waldman. Throughout this collection there are surprises, and Johnson's voice is steady, rock-solid even. The material isn't always great, but it is never less that reliably sound pop/rock played by a host of aces, with guest stars including Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Ron Wood. Pretty cool, kitsch or not.