Often cited, next to The Equals and Blue Mink, as British melting-pot pop, Pye Records’ unpretentious beat’n’bubblegum brigade eschewed flower-power stereotypes by sticking to a clap-happy variant on southern soul. Singer Clem Curtis, and his replacement Colin Young, fronted a sound that swung through TV studios and wouldn’t sound out of place now as cruise ship entertainment. In fact, the title cut closes There’s Something About Mary, so the melody lingers on. This triple-CD set collates tune-heavy hits?”Baby Now That I’ve Found You”, “Back On My Feet Again” and “In The Bad, Bad Old Days”?with B-sides and the odd rarity. One for jukebox nostalgists everywhere.

Although always outgunned by Fleetwood Mac, who even stole Christine McVie (n

Ward enjoyed scant career luck, flitting between labels who weren’t sure whether they had Lindisfarne or David Essex on their hands. More than a one-hit wonder, however, he penned a handful of beautifully brittle ballads, with “Up In The World”, included here, being the finest. Covered later by Garfunkel and Cliff, it’s a delicate tale of class and sex, and thus, like most Ward, very English. Little here can match it: “Secretary” and “Gandalf” is as ghastly as you’d fear, and the title track patronises housewives. Five previously unreleased alternative takes, though, showcase his subtle, soft voice.

The most productive and successful group contracted to Apple, Badfinger occasionally even scaled the same dizzy heights as their benefactors. Signed in 1968 as The Iveys, they were renamed after “Badfinger Boogie”, the working title for “With A Little Help From My Friends”. Most prophetic, since the association with their mentors ran deep: Badfinger played on Ringo’s It Don’t Come Easy, the Imagine LP and George’s All Things Must Pass, plus back-up duties for Concert For Bangladesh. McCartney jump-started their career, though, handing them a surefire hit in “Come And Get It” for Magic Christian Music. It honed their sound and helped define a whole sub-genre, namely power-pop?ascending melodies, contagious hooks and signature Beatle-esque harmonies.

The first two albums (1969 and 1970) were piecemeal affairs but by No Dice (also 1970) they hit their stride, including further power-pop perfection “No Matter What” and the wondrous “Without You”, later bettered by Nilsson.

Straight Up (1971) benefited from two-handed guidance?first George Harrison and then, after he was sidelined by the Bangladesh affair, Todd Rundgren, who got to live out the full Beatles fantasy. Tom Evans, Joey Molland and Pete Ham crafted 12 equally pleasure-drooling songs and then seemingly set Abbey Road as the benchmark for execution and production. And hit the mark they did?notably Ham’s “Day After Day”, with George’s trademark slide guitar intro, and “Baby Blue”, resplendent with ringing chords and a middle-eight worthy of Rubber Soul. It was the best album The Beatles never made. The extras on this and No Dice include seven rejected recordings, among them the segued tracks “Money/Flying”, with discarded George Martin-arranged strings.

This London-based quintet, all crumpled Oxfam shop suits and NHS specs, appeared out of time among Britpop’s cocky glare. Unfortunately their yearning, hyper-literate twilight pop (Leonard Cohen romanticism multiplied by The Teardrop Explodes) only compounded their isolation. Yet in those pre-Parklife days, Animals That Swim’s intelligent barfly persona, particularly the bizarre imaginary tale of Roy Orbison on “Roy” and the doleful “King Beer”, made them a haven from gormless grunge. The 1996 single “Faded Glamour” got them some radio play, but 2001’s Happiness From A Distant Star effectively sank. This judiciously selected collection highlights their ennui-soaked glory perfectly.

Ten early live tracks and radio sessions present a fascinating insight into the freak of nature that was the man’s voice in the teenage body of Steve Winwood. Mirroring all the fuss over Joss Stone, Winwood was just as young when he recorded these dynamic versions of such R&B classics as “Dimples”, “I Can’t Stand It” and an unbelievable “Georgia On My Mind” that rivals Ray Charles for soulful passion. Incredibly, he was still only 18 when he quit the band in early 1967. By then, he’d written “Gimme Some Lovin'” and “I’m A Man” as well, heard here in similarly rudimentary pre-Radio One recordings. The 10 tracks post-dating Winwood’s departure can be skipped: fortunately they’re chronologically ordered to enable just that.

Flash axe lovers should have been in heaven when New York clashed with Detroit at the gates of punk. Thunders & Kramer’s live recordings from Toronto and Boston in 1979 don’t actively disappoint, although some of the performances are sketchy: as Kramer noted, “Johnny’s got one foot in the gutter and the other on a banana skin”, and that tension doesn’t always deliver. Still, hectic takes on “Ramblin’ Rose”, the Stones’ “I’d Much Rather Be With Boys” and Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” keep an effervescent mix at boiling point. A recklessly high-energy take on Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” illustrates, too, why this toxic combination could never last.

Billy Mackenzie was never going to fit into the round hole of ’80s pop. With his beret and his whippets and a dimpled smile that hid his sadness and madness, Dundee’s finest fruitcake was just too odd and too buccaneeringly brilliant to compete with New Romantic frauds like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran.

Transported back to 1980 by the thrilling drive of “The Affectionate Punch”, it’s hard not to feel a burning indignation at the way this talent was so pitilessly sidelined by the Smash Hits generation. Even when the kids put the delicious “Party Fears Two” in the charts and on Top Of The Pops, they clearly didn’t see that they had a genius in their midst.

With darkly handsome multi-instrumentalist Alan Rankine making echoey soundscapes behind him, Billy Mac took the exultant Euro-funk of Bowie’s Low! “Heroes” period kicking and swishing into the indie ’80s. No wonder that the first single here is the locally released cover of “Boys Keep Swinging”.

Singles reflects the three distinct phases of the group’s life. First come those extraordinary early singles: futuristic, almost haughtily uncommercial, distant cousins of Scott Walker’s more outr

Irma Thomas never achieved the fame she deserved, partly because she failed to escape the ramshackle nature of the New Orleans music business, and partly because so many white artists covered her material note for note (viz: The Rolling Stones’ 1964 hit “Time Is On My Side”). Troubled teenage years (a first child at 14, four children by 19) gave her voice a deep, soul-tugging emotional resonance?half Pearl Bailey, half Mahalia Jackson. This 24-track compilation is culled from her Minit and Imperial catalogues from 1962-64, and it includes several Allen Toussaint-penned and produced tracks, including “Take A Look” and “Wait Wait Wait”.

The name suggested some frightful prog entity, but Earth Opera were essentially Boston bluegrassers Peter Rowan and David Grisman, a pair intent on chucking tradition out of the window in favour of spacey, SF-flavoured psych-folk.

Rowan’s effectless vocals and guitar combine with future Jerry Garcia pal Grisman’s mandolin and mandocello (plus low-key vibes, drums and more) on slow, sometimes ponderous songs.

Neither 1968’s Earth Opera nor 1969’s slightly jollier The Great American Eagle Tragedy-its title track a 10-minute condemnation of the Vietnam war featuring John Cale-have dated awfully well.

Private Eyes (1981) was in many ways Daryl Hall & John Oates’ Tusk. Inspired by British new wave and post-punk, they concocted an uneven but compelling mix of thrashy pop and sublime proto-electro (the endlessly sampled global chart-topper “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”). H2O (1982), meanwhile, saw them undecided as to whether they wanted to be a Proper Band or the missing link between The Everly Brothers and the Pet Shop Boys. The fine singles “Maneater” and “One On One” point to the latter, but mention should also be made of two of Hall’s finest white soul vocal performances on the closing “At Tension” and “Go Solo”.

“I can’t believe how good we sound,” writes drummer Mike Dudley in the sleevenotes, and indeed for fans of this colossal, neglected group, here’s a find on a par with nectar on Mars. From various sessions and In Concert performances emerge four glorious bursts of adrenalin-dripping art-rock, too fast and furious but all the more exhilarating for that. On earlier songs like “Heartland” and “Winning”, the late, great Adrian Borland was a match for any singer or guitarist on the planet at that moment. By ’85, frustration’s creeping in, but on “Under You” and a scorching “Missiles” he makes it work for him. U2? Joy Division? Bunnymen? They pale in this band’s shadow.

Like The Association and The Fifth Dimension, The Free Design?the four Dedrick brothers and sisters from New York?specialised in a rococo harmony-pop whose vaulting complexities elevated it far above more prosaic easy listening. On their second album, You Could Be Born Again (1968), they’re at their best negotiating a path between extreme joy and willowy etherealism. Occasionally, their covers (“California Dreamin”, “Happy Together”) are merely inoffensive. But when Chris Dedrick’s songwriting and arranging skills are stretched (“Ivy On A Windy Day”, a great take on Duke Ellington’s “I Like The Sunrise”), the results are striking and unearthly. Stars/ Time/Bubbles/Love (1970) is more expansive still, with the likes of “Bubbles” and “That’s All, People” revealed as hygienic, ingenuous rethinks of psychedelia and funk. Whimsical, but lovely.

There’s a fair case for Kristofferson as Nashville’s forgotten hero. Less celebrated than fellow ’70s outlaws Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, he brought an outsider’s perspective to Music City’s staid conservatism that drew from the confessional folk of Fred Neil and the freewheelin’ narrative of Dylan. In this respect, he did as much as anyone to replot the sensibility of country songwriting. At a time when Nashville flashed like a tacky rhinestone beacon, he was as hard-luck raw as it got.

This two-disc set?front-loaded with key recordings from between 1969 and 1971?is hardly an even-handed retrospective, but it does underscore his greatest work. While more or less giving up on his post-Highwaymen output, both Kristofferson (1970) and The Silver Tongued Devil And I (’71) are liberally plundered on disc one. It’s here where you find the gold. Lacking confidence in his own voice, Kristofferson’s earliest offerings were peddled elsewhere. Grammy-winner “Help Me Make It Through The Night” went to Gladys Knight And The Pips and Glen Campbell, among others. Janis Joplin scored a colossal hit with “Me And Bobby McGee”?and the original here is as erudite a hobo-hippie anthem as you’ll hear. Kristofferson’s version of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, popularised by Johnny Cash, is a bleary breath of hungover hell, matched only by the Lee Hazlewood-like “Casey’s Last Ride” and “Darby’s Castle” for beat-up-n-blue despondency. Most startlingly, the voice he had no faith in now sounds weatherbeaten to perfection.

Due to its scattershot chronology (attempting to compress 1972 to 1985), the second disc is less impressive. That said, “Border Lord” is as perfect a country-picked rumble as anything he’s recorded, as is the bigot-biting “Jesus Was A Capricorn”. There are duets, too?with then-wife Rita Coolidge and Nelson?along with the famous Willie-Waylon-Johnny foursome on 1985’s “Highwayman”. But Kristofferson’s singular, belligerent vision is made plain on “If You Don’t Like Hank Williams”: “You can kiss my ass”. Well said, that man.

For the first time?eight years in the compiling red tape?the Motown magic of the buoyant boy band (including early, innocent solo Michael) and the slithery disco of the shiny?shirted grown men co-exist on one two-disc collection. And by God, it’s good. Everyone claims rock is ‘visceral’, but it’s hard to imagine music that bypasses your filters and targets the spine like “ABC”, “I Want You Back”, the tearjerking “I’ll Be There” and “Got To Be There”. The light funk of The Jacksons not only stands up well but struts erotically, as “Can You Feel It?” and “Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)” show you the way to go. The sound of summer nights: pretty much matchless genius.

In many ways, A Certain Ratio were the bridge between Manchester’s punk and house scenes. Originally signed to Factory, they had early support slots with Talking Heads (1979) and seminal New York funksters ESG (1980), helping shape the label’s electronic dance ethos alongside New Order (albeit without the same commercial success). Despite reaching only No 53 in the album charts, 1982’s Sextet received ecstatic reviews for its taut, abrasive swagger?an uncompromising blend of percussive NY dance-funk, avant jazz and African, Latin and Brazilian influences.

Meant to be Mis’tah Chet’s shining hour, Baker’s NATO-sponsored European debut of the poll-winning trumpeter’s brand new quartet grabbed the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Seven days after the final session (October 1955), Baker’s gifted pianist Dick Twardzik (aged 24) fatally overdosed in his Paris hotel room, the ensuing media scrum diverting attention from this album’s excellence.

Aside from Twardzik’s “The Girl From Greenland”, the remaining eight tracks were composed by the pianist’s shadowy Bostonian buddy Bob Zieff, proving quite the reverse to Baker’s familiar romanticism.

It should have upped the trumpet star’s game. It didn’t. Baker went on to become a latter-day Flying Dutchman, while the album remains one of his finest studio moments.