Sinatra & Strings, Frank Sinatra's first album with arranger Don Costa, is an exquisite, romantic collection of ballads and one of his most sensual records. Costa has given the songs – which consist entirely of standards – exceedingly lush, heavily orchestrated arrangements that sound like updated, contemporary versions of Axel Stordahl's ornate charts. Sinatra responds with smooth, nuanced, yet powerful vocals that make these traditional songs sound fresh. The pair take some chances with their arrangements – "Stardust" never reaches the chorus, for instance – but Sinatra & Strings remains a definitive ballads album, complete with impassioned readings and endlessly rich, detailed arrangements.

Sinatra Sings Great Songs from Great Britain is one of the oddest albums in Sinatra's catalog. Recorded in the summer of 1962 and available only in the U.K. for a number of years, the album consists of songs by British composers, performed with British musicians, and recorded in Britain, while Sinatra was on tour. As it happened, Sinatra was tired and worn out during the sessions, and arranger/conductor Robert Farnon had written a set of charts that were ambitious, lush, ornate, and sweeping. Although the arrangements are provocative – occasionally they are more interesting than the actual songs – Sinatra was simply not in good shape for the sessions, which is clear from his thin, straining singing. As such, Great Songs from Great Britain isn't much more than a curiosity.

These rare treasures take you all across Billie's career-from '35, the year she debuted at the Apollo and first charted, to '59, the year she died. The stunning early performances include a 20-year-old Billie with Ellington in '35 and a 1937 radio broadcast from the Savoy Hotel in NY with the Basie Orchestra; you'll also hear rare rehearsal tapes, her Monterey '58 performance, songs on The Eddie Condon Show, The Tonight Show, The Steve Allen Show, an impromptu recording of Billie and friends singing My Yiddish Mamma, and more with Art Tatum, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and more! Includes 129 tracks: Swing Brother Swing; Fine and Mellow; I'll Get By; Billie's Blues; All of Me; Lover Man; Them There Eyes; You're My Thrill; I Cover the Waterfront; Porgy; Tenderly; God Bless the Child; My Man; Moanin' Low; Ghost of a Chance, and more.

Charley Patton lived only into his 40s, but he left a large body of recorded work, which reveals a broad repertoire, much self-written. He came to his first recording session - in June 1929, for Paramount - with an established reputation. It was said his voice could be heard 500 yards away. The songs he recorded that day include some he had been honing for 20 years around the Delta. Pony Blues is usually cited as a masterpiece. He cut two versions. Both are good, the first is finer: he growls the lyrics, his guitar lopes and bucks. Patton's rhythms are one of his trademarks - complex, intricate, powerful, his fingering always precise. Listen to his playing on Down The Dirt Road Blues - he puts brilliant guitar phrases at the end of each stanza. Songs like Banty Rooster, with its beautiful slide work, and the idiosyncratic Spoonful represent the essence of Mississippi blues and are typical of Patton fast-and-loose approach to blues structures (there's not a standard 12-bar in Patton's recorded output) and rhythmic conventions. Even those who have studied Patton's lyrics find areas to dispute. The voice is gruff, the phrasing eccentric and his Mississippi accent can be impenetrable. But it's worth paying attention - Patton's songs evoke a world that has vanished.

September of My Years is one of Frank Sinatra's triumphs of the '60s, an album that consolidated his strengths while moving him into new territory, primarily in terms of tone. More than the double-disc set A Man and His Music – which was released a year after this album – September of My Years captures how Sinatra was at the time of his 50th birthday. Gordon Jenkins' rich, stately, and melancholy arrangements give the album an appropriate reflective atmosphere. Most of the songs are new or relatively recent numbers; every cut fits into a loose theme of aging, reflection, and regret. Sinatra, however, doesn't seem stuck in his ways – though the songs are rooted in traditional pop, they touch on folk and contemporary pop. As such, the album offered a perfect summary, as well as suggesting future routes for the singer. [This version of the album was released with a live version of "This Is All I Ask," as well as the single version of "How Old Am I?"]

As the repository of the earliest phase of Frank Sinatra's solo career, 1943-1952, Columbia Records is usually thought to be at a disadvantage against the more accomplished work the singer recorded for Capitol Records and his own Reprise imprint. But in two albums released on the same day in 2003, Sinatra Sings Cole Porter and Sinatra Sings Gershwin, Columbia's Legacy division expands on its studio recordings of Sinatra by borrowing airchecks from the collection of Charles L. Granata, and thereby improves its holdings. Sinatra would not seem at first blush to be the ideal interpreter of Porter, if only because his rough-and-tumble background is always visible beneath his careful intonation, while Porter's lyrics are redolent of wealth and comic condescension. But Sinatra sang "Night and Day" in his first solo session in 1942 and went on to perform Porter throughout his career, often achieving near-definitive readings. The ground on which they met was intellectual rather than social: Porter was at heart a wit, and Sinatra understood the jokes, while emphasizing what emotional content there was, giving it a greater sincerity than the songwriter might have intended. This collection effectively mixes a bunch of studio recordings with previously unreleased radio performances that find Sinatra ranging over many different Porter moods.

Though already in business in 1961 with his own record label, Frank Sinatra was contractually obligated to give Capitol one more record before moving on to Reprise. Sinatra gave them the ironically titled Point of No Return, which is hardly the deal-fulfilling throwaway one might expect. Expertly arranged and conducted by longtime Sinatra ally Alex Stordahl, it's an elegant collection of farewell songs (including "I'll See You Again," "As Time Goes By," "There Will Never Be Another You," and "It's a Blue World"), delivered by Sinatra with a profound sense of sadness and loss. Fans of such downbeat Sinatra concept albums as In the Wee Small Hours and Sings for Only the Lonely would do well to pick up on this oft-overlooked gem.

Five long years after Eric Records unveiled the last numbered volume of our flagship series – detours through Music City and Soulsville notwithstanding – we proudly present Hard To Find 45s on CD Volume 9: 1957-1959. This jam-packed platter is a veritable potpourri of pop, reflecting the wide-open world of Top 40 radio before the days of niche marketing and narrow-casting. Within the span of these 23 tracks, you’ll hear rollicking New Orleans rhythm ’n’ blues (Huey “Piano” Smith), irrepressible rockabilly (Carl Mann), and spirited workouts on the Wurlitzer (Dave Cortez’s “Happy Organ”), steel guitar (Santo & Johnny’s “Tear Drop”), and a whole “String of Trumpets” (from, who else, the Trumpeteers).

Here's a real grab bag of Top 40 hits from 1960 to 1966, some of them indeed very hard to find on CD or even hear on the radio. Some of them are not really not that hard to find on CD, though this disc (like every one in this series) takes pains to present original 45 RPM single versions, often in stereo.

Twenty-one more really-hard-to-find high-charting Sixties Classics, most in stereo, all superbly mastered from the absolute best sources available! These have never sounded better!

Originally released in 2000, this collection offers 20 hard-to-find ’60s pop hits from the Atlantic, Atco and Warner Brothers vaults. This CD offers the original hit single versions of hard-to-find hits like “Al Di La” by Emilio Pericoli, “Angel on My Shoulder” by Shelby Flint and “Let’s Think About Living” by Bob Luman, as well as the iconic “I Got You Babe” by Sonny & Cher. Collectors will want rare tracks like Rose Garden’s “Next Plane To London” and the doo wop classic “Looking For An Echo” by Kenny Vance. Every song has been lovingly remastered from the original master tapes for stunning clarity and rich sound. All but five tracks are in stereo.

While pop music sells in copious quantities at the time of release, its cyclical and transitory nature means that many hits just don't come around again in the reissue sweepstakes. Enter Eric Records, an oldies label, to help rectify the situation with this set of compilations, bringing together 20 big non-rock & roll hits from the 1950s. A quick perusal of the stars of this collection (Kitty Kallen, Mitch Miller, Doris Day, Al Martino, Tony Martin, Frankie Laine) will give you a strong idea of the musical content, with only Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line" bearing the tiniest resemblance to rock & roll. But the set also includes delightful one-offs by the Tarriers, Cyril Stapleton, the Four Coins, and Somethin' Smith and the Redheads. Oldies but goodies for the over-50 crowd.

Dream Street captures Peggy Lee at her most intimate and melancholy – a song cycle exploring love and loss in uncompromisingly frank terms, it strips away the saccharine and schmaltz so common among the singer's Decca sessions to effectively create the first truly adult music of her career. Lee occupies the same harrowing emotional territory staked out by Frank Sinatra via the landmark In the Wee Small Hours, investing the material with the kind of heartbreak and longing that belies the whole "easy listening" tag – this is music shorn of pretense and artifice, as intense as a primal scream yet beautiful in the way only art of this magnitude can be.

A prolific singer, remembered as one of the greatest pop song stylists alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. Peggy Lee's alluring tone, distinctive delivery, breadth of material, and ability to write many of her own songs made her one of the most captivating artists of the vocal era, from her breakthrough on the Benny Goodman hit "Why Don't You Do Right" to her many solo successes, singles including "Mañana," "Lover" and "Fever" that showed her bewitching vocal power, a balance between sultry swing and impeccable musicianship.

Rockstar Records present a twenty-nine song CD album entitled Benny Joy, Little Red Book with recordings from the years 1957 to 1963. There are two recordings which are dually credited to Benny Joy and "Big" John Taylor, and one solo "Big"John Taylor release. Their initial recording from the year 1957 "Hey"… High School Baby! b/w Spin The Bottle were released using only Benny Joy’s name, and they were recorded for the Haines City, Florida based Tri-Dec label. The CD album includes the Dixie version of Spin The Bottle which was the undubbed master leased to Shelby Singleton who added his name to the writing credits.