Susannah Mccorkle Let's Face The Music

There's something incredibly tragic and ironic in the strange reality that finds a beloved jazz singer taking her own life just after compiling a collection of her best loved interpretations. So loved by so many, but perhaps – as she wrote in her liner notes for her wistful reading of "If I Only Had a Heart" – she was one of those people who "have trouble experiencing their own emotions and yearn to feel something, anything." Also in this spirited mix of classics is "Look For the Silver Lining," and her version is, of course, cheery.

The first few seconds of crowd noise on the debut release from legendary jazzfunk keyboardist George Duke's label might lead the listener to believe it's a live recording. But it's just a clever interpolation. Duke fashioned "The Black Messiah" as a cool, soulful, brass-tinged meditation on the musical splendor of his mentor Cannonball Adderley, and so bookends the tune with original sounds from a date the keyboardist did with the sax icon in the early '70s – complete with an authentic Adderley prattle to the audience about his young cohort.

Electric Light Orchestra's more modest follow-up to Eldorado is a very solid album, if not as bold or unified. It was also their first recorded at Musicland in Munich, which became Jeff Lynne's preferred venue for cutting records. At the time, he was also generating songs at a breakneck pace and had perfected the majestic, quasi-Beatles-type style (sort of high-wattage Magical Mystery Tour) introduced two albums earlier. The sound is stripped down a bit on Face the Music, Louis Clark's orchestral contributions generally more subdued than on Eldorado, even when they compete with the band, as on "Strange Magic." The soulful "Evil Woman" was one of the most respectable chart hits of its era, and one of the best songs that Lynne ever wrote (reportedly in 30 minutes), while "Strange Magic" showed off his writing in a more ethereal vein.