Elton Dean's Ninesense Happy Daze + Oh! For The Edge

Elton John One of the greatest stars of the rock & roll era, Elton John exploded like a supernova in the early 1970s and sustained a career that kept him at the top of the charts for the next five decades. He had a Billboard Top 40 hit single every year between 1970 and 1996, a sign that he knew how to both change with the times and mold the times to fit him. John's earliest records were part of the moody, introspective post-'60s singer/songwriter movement, but once he had a hit with "Your Song," the pianist revealed he could also craft Beatles-like pop and pound out rockers with equal aplomb. As "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and "Bennie and the Jets" – songs John wrote with his lifelong collaborator Bernie Taupin – climbed into the Top Ten on either side of the Atlantic, John was inescapable during the first half of the '70s. His versatility, combined with his effortless melodic skills, and flamboyant stage shows, became his calling cards, sustaining him through shifts in fame and fortune.

This set collects two of the Chi-Lites' later-era LPs, 1976’s "Happy Being Lonely" and 1977’s "The Fantastic Chi-Lites", on a single disc. The group was pretty much past its sell-by date at this point and beset with frequent personnel changes, although both of these albums are surprisingly pleasant and poignant at points even if they didn’t yield any big hits.