Dakota

Dakota Staton was a jazz and R&B singer very much in the mould of Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, whose style was sultry and sophisticated but who was extrovert and funky enough to share an R&B stage with the likes of Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner. She paid her dues on the jazz club circuit before signing to Capitol and released a number of singles and claimed Down Beat magazine's Most Promising Newcomer award before recording her No. 4 hit album The Late, Late Show in 1957. This great-value 55-track 2-CD set comprises all her recordings released as singles from her debut in 1955, along with all the tracks from her first four albums The Late, Late Show, In The Night, Dynamic and Crazy He Calls Me. It features performances with some noted musicians and arrangers, including Nelson Riddle, George Shearing, Harry Sweets Edison, Jonah Jones, Hank Jones, Van Alexander, Toots Thielemans and Al McKibbon. It's a comprehensive presentation of her studio work during the first and probably most significant era in her career, and a great showcase for the talent of a noted vocal stylist.

Dakota is a US based melodic rock group active during the late 1970s and early 1980s, not to be confused with the British pop-rock band of the same name active from 2007–2010. Dakota first achieved moderate success with their 1979 self-titled album Dakota, but the band's popularity increased rapidly while performing as the opening act for Queen on their 1980–1981 The Game Tour. The band released their second and best-selling AOR album, titled Runaway, in 1984. The band experienced several line-up changes during the 1980s and eventually stopped performing in 1987. During the 1990s and 2000s original member Jerry Hludzik continued to record a number of records under the Dakota name, featuring guest musicians, friends and also his son Eli Hludzik. In 2014, original members Jerry Hludzik and Bill Kelly reunited and teamed up with Jon Lorance and Eli Hludzik to record a new Dakota album titled Long Road Home.

British EMI continues its "two on one" series of combining two vintage LPs on a single CD with a couple of Peggy Lee albums from two different eras. I'm a Woman, which Capitol Records released in February 1963, was a rush job. Lee was enjoying a hit single with the Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller-composed title song, which had been issued as a one-off single, in early 1963, so Capitol had her quickly cut an album's worth of tracks in order to have an LP of the same name out to take advantage commercially…

With What Matters Most, Chris Hooson has likely delivered the most personal and, in his own words, complicated Dakota Suite album of his career. After previous collaborations with artists such as Quentin Sirjacq and Vampillia, this ten-track LP combines the Brit's songwriting qualities with contributions by Dag Rosenqvist - formerly known as Jasper TX and currently working with Aaron Martin under the From The Mouth Of The Sun guise - and Elem member Emanuele Errante, with whom Hooson had released The North Green Down on Karaoke Kalk in 2011.