Napier, Nancy J

With the decline in Heart's popularity in the 1990s, its guitarist/singer/songwriter Nancy Wilson made a first, tentative stab at a solo career by scoring the 1996 film Jerry Maguire and appearing on the soundtrack album. While working on the score, she began turning up at the hootenannies at the folk club McCabes Guitar Shop in Los Angeles, and the result is this album, which represents a second toe in the water for her…

Wilson is a vexing artist to summarize with a best-of compilation, due both to her versatility and her prolific discography. This two-set CD concentrates on her pop- and R&B-influenced recordings for Capitol in the 1960s and '70s. While that means that her jazziest and most standard-inclined sides are relatively lightly represented (although not ignored), it does mean that this is the material most likely to be familiar to the general audience. In truth the soul influence is quite light; this is really pop material, not R&B, soul, or rock, even as it might show some traces of those genres (as well as jazz and cabaret). As a whole, this easy-listening soul music was light fare, but Wilson was probably better at it (and certainly more successful at it) than anyone else…