Several momentous music careers were blooming in New York's Greenwich Village in 1962.  A young Minnesotan on the folk circuit changed his surname to Dylan and signed on Albert Grossman to manage him. In a tiny W. 8th Street basement speakeasy called the Bon Soir, a new singer of showtunes and standards was generating an equally impressive buzz moving critic Dorothy Kilgallen to burble, "She's never had a singing lesson in her life, doesn't know how to walk, dress or take a bow, but she projects well enough to close her act with a straight rendition of 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf' and bring down the house …" Barbra Streisand had recently signed to Columbia Records (which also had Bob Dylan on its roster), and returned to the club for three nights of recording in November, 1962, to capture what was to be her debut album. Shelved for unknown reasons, its 24 tracks, captured in very respectable sound given the state of live recording at that time, have now been issued with new mixes supervised by Streisand and Grammy Award-winning engineer Jochem van der Saag. Accompanied only by a small band led by British pianist Peter Daniels, this is a Streisand few have seen or can remember. What's most forgotten today is how adept a performer she could be in such an intimate environment: cracking jokes, acting the coquette, even letting out rapid fire giggles in "Value." She's audibly nervous yet also clearly at home as the tough Brooklyn girl with the soft center who could raise the roof if she so chose. The singing, some of which was part of the career-spanning 1991 collection Just For The Record, is a rare delicacy. Stripped of the studio gloss that would mark most of her career after these sessions, Streisand never recorded anything this real again. In a startlingly raw version of Leonard Bernstein's children's song, "I Hate Music," she practically shrieks out the title, getting a few laughs in the process. But she follows that burst of immaturity with a gentle, utterly masterful version of Harold Arlen's "Right As The Rain" and a gutsy, breathless, showstopping version of "Cry Me A River" that hint at the career to come. Forget the gauzy outfits, the lacquered nails, those grand modulations, and perfect enunciation, this is a very young Streisand unchained. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Of course, the first thing that strikes you listening to the first Barbra Streisand album, recorded and released before the singer's 21st birthday, is that great voice. And it isn't just the sheer quality of the voice, its purity and its strength throughout its register, it's also the mastery of vocal effects that produce dramatic readings of the lyrics -- each song is like a one-act musical. Streisand opens with Julie London's signature torch song, "Cry Me a River," and she doesn't only surpass London, she sets off a thermonuclear explosion. From there, versatility and novelty are emphasized -- a breakneck version of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?," a slow, emotion-drenched performance of "Happy Days Are Here Again." But Streisand's debut, inventively arranged and conducted by Peter Matz, is notable as much for the surprising omissions as the surprising selections. Arriving in 1963, ten years into the revival of sophisticated interwar theater songs led by Frank Sinatra and followed by all other adult pop singers, Streisand virtually ignores the modern masters like Gershwin and Berlin. When she does do Rodgers & Hart or Cole Porter, she picks obscure songs; her idea of a good 1930s number is Fats Waller and Andy Razaf's "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now." She is much more comfortable with recent theater material, choosing two songs from The Fantasticks (1960) and the title song from the stage play A Taste of Honey (1962). The Barbra Streisand Album is an essential recording in the field of pop vocals because it redefines that genre in contemporary terms. (The Barbra Streisand Album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Female Vocal Performance, and Best Album Cover.)© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

A hard rock supergroup, Chickenfoot came out of a spontaneous on-strage collaboration between Sammy Hagar (formerly of Van Halen and Montrose, and a veteran solo artist), Michael Anthony (Hagar's onetime bandmate in Van Halen), Chad Smith (drummer with the Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Joe Satriani (one of the leading guitar heroes of the '80s and '90s). While their brand of flashy, arena-friendly hard rock was believed to have fallen out of favor in the 21st century, Chickenfoot's self-titled debut album was a surprise commercial success in 2008, and confirmed that plenty of fans were still in the market for their brand of party-hearty guitar-fueled bombast. Best + Live is a two-disc collection that brings together tracks from the group's first two studio albums (2008's Chickenfoot and 2011's Chickenfoot III) and live tracks that originally appeared on the DVD Get Your Buzz On. For fans, the set also includes one new track, the previously unreleased "Divine Termination." © Mark Deming /TiVo

The Heavy's third studio album, 2012's The Glorious Dead is a bombastic acid rock, funk, and blues-soaked album that sounds like the illegitimate offspring of the Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley. In that sense, it builds nicely upon the Heavy's previous work and should please fans of the band's quirky take on rootsy soul-influenced music. Showcasing singer Kelvin Swaby's trademark rough, nasally yawp, the Heavy seem to love building songs around riffs of low-end electric guitar twang, booming basslines, and wickedly boneheaded, backwoods drumbeats. They also punctuate these sweaty, red-eyed arrangements with bursts of trombones, trumpets, strings, and backing vocals. The band kicks things off with the horror movie-inspired zombie-gospel number "Can't Play Dead," featuring Swaby doing his best swamp blues-style shout over a fuzzed-out electric guitar riff and plodding blues-rock beat backed by what sounds like a choir of female divas. It's a grand moment of over the top rock that perfectly sets the tone for such similarly exuberant and soulfully campy moments as the marching band funk of "Big Bad Wolf" and the driving, James Bond theme-sounding "Don't Say Nothing." Elsewhere, the Heavy delve into various punk, dance, and blues-influenced sounds including the manic garage rock meets mariachi band anthem "Just My Luck" and "What Makes a Good Man?," which splits the difference between the retro hip-hop soul of Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and "Discothèque"-era U2. © Matt Collar /TiVo