Various Artists - The very best Vocal Jazz Collection

The Very Best Vocal Jazz Collection gathers the voices that actually defined the genre, fifteen legends spanning four decades of American song, from the smoky and knowing to the purely joyful.

This isn't a collection built around one era or one style, and that's the point. Louis Armstrong's warmth sits alongside Chet Baker's hushed melancholy, Cab Calloway's showmanship next to Blossom Dearie's understated cool, Carmen McRae recorded with the Dave Brubeck Quartet standing beside solo turns from Sarah Vaughan and Johnny Hartman. What ties fifteen such different voices together is a shared commitment to the song itself, letting a lyric and a melody do the work rather than reaching for spectacle.

Etta James brings the kind of raw, aching delivery that made At Last a wedding standard for good reason. Dinah Washington's What a Diff'rence a Day Makes carries the same effortless phrasing that made her one of the genre's most imitated singers. Julie London's Cry Me a River still sounds like the blueprint for sultry, understated vocal jazz, and Armstrong's own instantly recognisable rasp closes the loop on a set that spans from big band showmen to the coolest of the cool school.

Fifteen legendary artists, one shared instinct for making a standard sound like it was written just for them.