Lineman

The debut album by the soon-to-be venerable Fatback Band is a mostly instrumental – minus some "What's Going On"-style exclamations and raps in the background – collection of pure funk grooves. More in the Curtis Mayfield vein of slick and nimble dancefloor fillers than loose Parliament/Funkadelic jams, these nine tracks are concise – only one track breaks the four-minute barrier – and tightly constructed, with little room for exploratory soloing or aimless vamping. The key tracks, however, are the three non-originals, cover choices that might surprise some folks who have never heard, say, Isaac Hayes' Black Moses: the Fatback Band strips down any cheesy sentimentality from Glen Campbell's Jimmy Webb hit "Wichita Lineman," Bread's wimp-rock classic "Baby I'm-A Want You,".

With 100 hit tracks spanning five discs, this budget set, which has a decided British lean, has no real discernible theme, but features plenty of rock and pop classics like Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street," Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman," Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle," Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat," and the Band's "The Weight," as well as British hits from the Buzzcocks, the Ruts, and the Waterboys.

When most jazz singers do standards, they come from the "classic" American songbook, the one that includes show tunes and pop songs from a bygone era, one that was powered by names such as Gershwin, Lerner & Loewe, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Sammy Kahn, Johnny Mercer, and so many others. That said, Cassandra Wilson is not just any jazz vocalist, and her Blue Note catalog – the label she's been with since 1993 – proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Wilson has explored her deep love of jazz and blues to be sure, covering everyone from Robert Johnson to Miles Davis, but along the way she's also covered tunes by modern composers, those who have stormed the pop charts in the last 30 years or so, and those who are still on them. Closer to You: The Pop Side is a retrospective collection that looks at this side of Wilson's complex musical persona, and offers a selection of 11 tunes from her Blue Note albums, all of them focusing on songs from the rock, pop, and soul genres, and all executed in her own idiosyncratic manner.