Folk Songs (1996)

Five CD box set containing a quintet of original albums from the Folk/Pop vocalist: Fifth Album, In My Life, Judith, Who Knows Where The Time Goes and Wildflowers.

After looking at the cover of Gillian Welch's debut album, Revival, and listening to the first two cuts, "Orphan Girl" and "Annabelle," you'd be tempted to imagine that Welch somehow stumbled into a time machine after cutting some tunes at the 1927 Bristol, TN, sessions and was transported to a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1996, where T-Bone Burnett was on hand and had the presence of mind to roll tape.

Barrel wasn't quite Michaels in his most minimalist two-man band format. Drummer Frosty was still the prime accompanist, and Michaels played most of the other instruments, but Drake Levin did help out on guitar. The strengths of the album are the strengths of most of Michaels's early-1970s material: rich funk-rock-gospel vocals and keyboards. The weaknesses are also common to much of Michaels's albums from the period: a lack of truly outstanding songs and a reliance upon slow to mid-tempo bluesy songs that sound too much alike. Some moderate circa-1970 counterculture sentiments surfaced in songs like "What Now America," but the undoubted highlight was his rousing cover of Moby Grape's "Murder in My Heart (For the Judge)."

Five more CDs of Connie Francis, picking up right where Bear Family's earlier White Sox, Pink Lipstick set left off, in 1960 – although its 300-plus minutes of music only cover the period of 1960 to 1962. By this time, Connie Francis was established as one of the top female vocal talents of her generation, and she was ready to experiment – you hear her successful move into country music, wonderful outtakes, and never-issued songs from her early-'60s sessions…

Greatest Hits is a reasonably comprehensive collection of Joan Baez's best-known songs, concentrating mainly on her crossover hits. Although it misses several fine items, the compilation remains an effective introduction for the curious listener.