Those who remember the early ’80s may still more vaguely remember poet Ted Milton, he of the shrieking vocals, absurdist song titles and extreme aversion to sideburns. His wailing saxophone wasn’t unique back then?Lora Logic, James Chance, Clock DVA and Biting Tongues among others melded post-punk with free jazz to wildly expressive effect. Expectations that this collection might be an anomalous musical quirk are comprehensively dispelled here?Milton matches eloquent playing with angular guitar fury. Well worth rediscovering.

This is an amazing find on a par with the recent Beale Street Green ‘legit’ bootleg of Big Star rarities and outtakes. Rock City were the band featuring singer-guitarist Christopher Bell and drummer Jody Stephens?one half of the legendary Memphis power-pop unit. And Rock City contains 11 of the songs they recorded during 1969-70 while Alex Chilton was recovering from his brush with teen idolatry courtesy of The Box Tops, plus one when they morphed into Icewater just before Chilton and bassist Andy Hummel joined. John Fry, who worked on #1 Record, Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers, engineered while Ardent boss Terry Manning played Moog and assorted period gizmos. Aside from a gorgeous piece of Zombies-style baroque art-balladry called “The Preacher”, there are early versions of “My Life Is Right”, written by Bell and Rock City frontman Terry Eubanks, and “Try Again”, on which Alex sings backing vocals. “Lovely Lady” is “When My Baby’s Beside Me” in all but name. And Icewater’s prototype “Feel” (side one, track one of # 1 Record) sounds uncannily ahead of its time. All that and archive photos of Chris Bell. O my soul!

Their career ending prematurely with singer Andrew Wood’s overdose prior to the album’s release in 1990, Seattle rockers Mother Love Bone are nowadays better known as the band who gave us Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. Evolving from the ashes of local legends Green River (whose ranks also included Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and Steve Turner), Mother Love Bone’s debut revealed roots in anthemic ’70s rock

Among the early champions of Essex-born Softley’s career was Donovan, who covered “Gold Watch Blues” and “The War Drags On” (the original’s on here) and showcased more at Newport in 1965. One of Blighty’s first Dylanologists, Softley’s debut is a folk-strummer’s delight, his lightness and warmth of touch?both acoustically and vocally?semi-disguising a causticity best heard on Pete Seeger’s “The Bells Of Rhymney”. A boho spirit of singular style, Softley now lives in Enniskillen, forsaking music for life as a poet. A genuine buried treasure.

Departing notoriously eccentric label ESP Disk, Pearls Before Swine signed to Reprise in 1969, having sold 250,000 copies of second album Balaklava. None of the five subsequent records made lynchpin/ideologue Tom Rapp a star (the fifth was a collection of demos put out without Rapp’s consent) but these and the two ‘solo’ albums he made for Blue Thumb before retiring from music are wondrous things. Rapp’s wistful, sibilant tone is hugely affecting, and though there are a handful of Leonard Cohen covers here, Rapp’s own songs?delicately arranged, conjuring a perfectly judged pastoral lushness?better them effortlessly. It’s impossible not to be moved by “Rocketman” or “The Jeweller” (as covered by This Mortal Coil), Rapp filtering the radicalism of the times in exquisitely drawn character studies of the individual at odds with circumstance.

Aspiring songsmiths Mark Olson and Victoria Williams first met in 1984. When they hooked up again, a little over 10 years later, things were different. Olson had formed Minneapolis’trailblazing alt. countryites The Jayhawks, releasing at least two genre gems in Hollywood Town Hall (1992) and Tomorrow The Green Grass (’95). But the marathon tours and studio sessions had blunted his edge, driven him spare. In ’95, he upped and quit. Meanwhile, Williams had enjoyed a low-key career as an idiosyncratic LA singer-songwriter. Reunited with Olson (first recording as a duo on “When We Sing Together”, from her 1994 album Loose), she was now living with multiple sclerosis. They married, headed out to the Joshua Tree desert in California and set up camp on an earthquake faultline.

These recordings are the back-to-nature cleansing of city palates. Self-sufficient, self-effacing music shaped by desert winds and moonlit nights, recorded in their home cabin with Mike “Razz”Russell. There’s a rustic, awkward grace about these songs, oozing joy like a happy rupture in a riverbed. The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers from 1997 (six tracks from which appear here) was Olson revelling in new-found freedom (“Flowering Trees”, “Run With The Ponies”), nibbling at acoustic guitar and harmonica, with Williams counterpointing his melancholic delivery with high tremble and prickly banjo. Russell adds mandolin and some truly wonderful, understated violin.

By ’98’s Pacific Coast Rambler, their DIY folk was augmented by visiting Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford, while follow-up Zola And The Tulip Tree?their best?featured John (Calexico) Convertino and Eric (Son Volt) Heywood. Olson’s squelchy guitar on the title track is an irresistible highlight. Of the others, Pacific Coast Rambler outtake “Louisiana Black Dog Moses” (re-recorded for last year’s December’s Child?Olson reuniting for the first time with founder Jayhawk Gary Louris) is swampy cactus-funk par excellence. Odd, homegrown elegance.

The first instalment of Definitive Impressions remains the best-selling album in the Kent label’s 21-year history. Although it covered everything that was great about Curtis Mayfield’s R&B trio?the way they accommodated black church didacticism within a secular context (“People Get Ready”, “Keep On Pushing”) alongside devotionals to the fairer sex (“I’m So Proud”) and a sociopolitical world view that would find its apogee in Mayfield’s solo ’70s work?there was more in the vaults. Hence Part 2, which comprises single B-sides, album tracks and rarities. More than its predecessor, it concentrates on love songs lushly orchestrated by Johnny Pate, the Thom Bell of the piece, with neo-gospel vocals shared by Mayfield’s near-falsetto, Fred Cash’s expressive baritone and Sam Gooden’s bass anchor, the three swooping and soaring around each other in a series of endless harmonies.

Of all the melancholy slowcore bands of the mid-’90s, Spain were one of the more imaginative:a debonair, blues-tinged group from LA led by Josh Haden (son of jazz bassist Charlie Haden) that frequently sounded like Spiritualized crossed with a cool jazz quartet. Spirituals plucks four songs off their superb 1995 debut, The Blue Moods Of Spain, places them alongside selections from Spain’s decent second album and weaker third and adds some useful rarities (a live version of Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away”). It makes for a neat retrospective, and Haden’s calm dissection of his own doubt and guilt is still unnerving, like eavesdropping on an intimate conversation. The Blue Moods… itself, though, remains the best memorial to this woefully underappreciated band.

Two of Ellington’s most accomplished albums (Afro-Bossa and The Symphonic Ellington) just happen to be among his most overlooked works. Maybe it was the time of the season? The Duke signed to Sinatra’s newly inaugurated Reprise label just as Britain’s beat groups were poised to invade the US. It proved a testing time for many. Once successful careers evaporated overnight, leaving those who didn’t lose their nerve to face the challenge.

The exotic Afro-Bossa and the truly majestic Symphonic Ellington were in the can before the bombardment began, with the latter proving to be one of the few successful fusions of jazz and symphony orchestras ever.

Jazz frequently borrowed its repertoire from Broadway, with mixed results. But The Duke makes a silk purse from a sow’s ear when approaching the Mary Poppins score?a Disney-bankrolled project. Elsewhere, some unlikely jukebox hits are transformed into acceptable jazz performances. Likewise swing era hits. But it’s Duke’s own music that is of core value.