Essential Bellydance

This release presents some of the best recordings made by the outstanding Chet Baker. All of the tracks included here are studio recordings with excellent sound quality, and showcase Chet both singing and playing the trumpet. Among the highlights are his three earliest vocal albums, as well as a session which pairs him with pianist Bill Evans.

The Statler Brothers started their recording career at Columbia Records and cut eight albums for the label in five years, scoring eight country singles chart entries, including the Top Ten hits "Ruthless," "You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith, Too," and the pop Top Ten crossover "Flowers on the Wall." This 18-track compilation includes all those hits, along with standards like "The Wreck of the Old '97," "Green Grass," and the gospel pop song "Oh Happy Day," and one previously unreleased track, "Half a Man," which, despite having been recorded two years later, sounds like the logical follow-up to "Flowers on the Wall." The influence of the Statlers' employer, Johnny Cash, is apparent, especially on "Hammer and Nails," on which he appears. At this early stage, without losing the sound of the classic country quartet, the Statlers also sang pop, folk, and gospel well. The only complaint to be made about this set is that, in the CD age, a running time of 42:15 is short for a compilation (if typical of country music). But nothing essential is missing.

Belgian-born pop singer/songwriter Lara Fabian began singing, dancing, and taking piano lessons at a very young age and formal music lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels at age eight. During her ten years of study there, Fabian started writing and performing her own songs, which were inspired as much by her classical vocal and music theory training as they were by Barbra Streisand and Queen. After finishing her studies, Fabian moved to Montreal and began her own label and publishing company, Productions Clandestines. Collaborator/producer Rick Allison, an old friend from Brussels, joined her in Montreal and the pair worked steadily on writing and recording songs.

Singer Jackie Cain (born May 22, 1928, Milwaukee, WI) and singer/pianist Roy Kral (born October 10, 1921, Chicago, IL) first joined forces in 1946, and in 1996 they celebrated their 50th anniversary as a vocal duo. Jackie & Roy were with Charlie Ventura's band during 1948-1949 (which gave them a great deal of recognition); Lou Stein's "East of Suez" was an unusual feature for their voices. Shortly after leaving Ventura in June 1949, they were married and worked together on a regular basis ever since. Jackie & Roy had their own television show in Chicago in the early '50s, worked in Las Vegas during 1957-1960, settled in New York in 1963, and appeared on some television commercials. They recorded many spirited jazz performances for a variety of labels through the decades, and performed into the 2000s until Kral's death in August 2002. Roy was the brother of singer Irene Kral.

Italian pop star Alice (also known as Alice Visconti) was born Carla Bissi in Forli, Italy in 1954. She began her career as a piano-playing singer/songwriter in 1971, gaining more recognition in 1981 when she won the Sanremo Music Festival. A series of albums, singles, and tours unfolded over the next several decades and saw Alice branch out in unexpected stylistic directions, moving through phases of classical, jazz, ambient, and electronic experimentation. Perpetually embracing new forms of sound, Alice released albums as diverse as 1999's God Is My DJ (which found her interpreting spiritual works by Popol Vuh and Gavin Bryars, among others) and 2012's Samsara, which found her in a cinematic folk-pop mood with some new agey synth touches.

Best-known for penning the outlaw country anthem "Ladies Love Outlaws," singer/songwriter Lee Clayton never achieved the same level of notoriety as some of the artists who recorded his songs. Yet in spite of a limited singing voice, he crafted some expressive, highly personal music in his own right. Clayton grew up in Oak Ridge, TN, and took up the steel guitar at age nine; after just a year and a half, he was good enough to perform on local radio. After a stint in the Air Force, Clayton moved to Nashville in 1969 to make it in the music business, and scored his first big success when Waylon Jennings turned "Ladies Love Outlaws" into a hit anthem in 1972.

The Mississippi Delta has some of the most fertile soil in the world and became one of the richest cotton growing areas in the world which, before the American Civil War, was worked exclusively by black slaves brought over from Africa. The blues was forged on the anvil of poverty and hardship the black sharecroppers and tenant farmers had to endure. Born of the harsh, brutal conditions of life in the South, and full of pain, frustration and anger, the passionate, soulful sounds of the Delta revolutionised the sound of 20th-century music. This compilation celebrates some of its greatest exponents.