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Singing standards, trying to bring something different to or imprint your style on a tune made famous by Sinatra, Garland or Holiday, is a brave venture in the 21st century. The eclectic and unpredictable Rickie Lee Jones, has also always been a sneakily talented, genre-spanning songwriter who approaches covers with the same determination she brings to her own songs. Jones has carefully built a proud though underappreciated career that now gives her the gravitas to have a little fun on the aptly named Pieces of Treasure. As she did for a selection of rock and pop covers on 2019's Kicks, Jones leans into well-known (and well-worn) pop music standards like Jimmy McHugh's' bouncy "Sunny Side of the Street" or Kurt Weill's enchanting ode to age, "September Song." Rather than drowning these chestnuts in sentimentality, she works her nimble vocal way at leisurely tempos that encourage finely detailed renditions, the kind she's always been fabulous at finding. The opener "Just in Time" is an on- target success as is her easy, swinging run through of George and Ira Gershwin's "They Can' Take That Away From Me" where just a bit of scatting is added. While the late Jimmy Scott will always own the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cohen knockout "All The Way," Jones gives her all here. Set against just an acoustic guitar, she earnestly wends her way through a warm version of "On the Sunny Side of the Street" in which the last note is held for more than a beat. Working again with Russ Titelman who, along with Lenny Waronker, produced her 1979 debut album, Jones says this album made her feel young again and was like a reunion with herself.  Titelman has said of Pieces of Treasure's sessions, "I adore the young Rickie Lee, but I love even more the old dame I watched pour her heart out every time she got in front of a microphone." Recorded with the very spare accompaniment of mostly just pianist Rob Mounsey, with appearances by guitarist Russell Malone and vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, Pieces of Treasure was tracked in New York City at Bass Hit Studio, whose owner Dave Darlington was one of four engineers, and also mixed the album.) As befits the project, Jones is close-mic'd and the instrumentalists are tastefully kept in the background. Rickie Lee Jones sounds reinvigorated by this trip down Tin Pan Alley. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Little Girl Blue, released in 1957, was Nina Simone's first recording, originally issued on the Bethlehem label. Backed by bassist Jimmy Bond and Albert "Tootie" Heath, it showcases her ballad voice as one of mystery and sensuality and showcases her uptempo jazz style with authority and an enigmatic down-home feel that is nonetheless elegant. The album also introduced a fine jazz pianist. Simone was a solid improviser who never strayed far from the blues. Check the opener, her reading of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo," which finger-pops and swings while keeping the phrasing deep-blue. It is contrasted immediately with one of the -- if not the -- definitive reads of Willard Robison's steamy leave-your-lover ballad "Don't Smoke in Bed." The title track, written by Rodgers & Hart, features "Good King Wenceslas" as a classical prelude to one of the most beautiful pop ballads ever written. It is followed immediately by the funky swing in "Love Me or Leave Me" with a smoking little piano solo in the bridge where Bach meets Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons. It's also interesting to note that while this was her first recording, the record's grooves evidence an artist who arrives fully formed; many of the traits Simone displayed throughout her career as not only a vocalist and pianist but as an arranger are put on first notice here. "My Baby Just Cares for Me" has a stride shuffle that is extrapolated on in the piano break. Her instrumental and improvising skills are put to good use on Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait," which is transformed into something classical from its original bebop intent. "You'll Never Walk Alone" feels more like some regal gospel song than the Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune it was. Of course, one of Simone's signature tunes was her version of "I Loves You, Porgy," which appears here for the first time and was released as a single. Her own "Central Park Blues" is one of the finest jazz tunes here, and it is followed with yet another side of Simone's diversity in her beautiful take on the folk-gospel tune "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," with quiet and determined dignity and drama. Another of her instrumentals compositions, "African Mailman," struts proud with deep Afro-Caribbean roots and rhythms.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Both jazz and classical music are often better on stage than in the studio, and Nina Simone bridged the gap between both of these art forms. One of Nina Simone's best albums, It Is Finished, is a live recording. And Montreux, here, a compilation of her previously-unpublished performances at the famous jazz festival, ranks alongside that earlier work in terms of quality. In it we hear segments from five concerts given on the shores of Lake Geneva, in 1968, 1976, 1981, 1987 and 1990, all of which enjoy excellent sound quality. 1968 saw the second outing of the festival and the beginning of a long relationship between Nina Simone and Montreux. This concert was previously only available on rare and expensive pressings, and this release allows us to hear Simone's great works from those days (from I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free to Backlash Blues or See-Line Woman plus her cover of Ne me quitte pas) performed in a workmanlike but relaxed style. It was later, and most notably in 1976, that her music reached extremes, moving between a fresh breeze and a cathartic rampage. High priestess of soul, Nina Simone became a shaman, an enchantress who did what she wanted with music and audiences. From intimate ballads to trancelike Afro-Jazz, Simone reigns supreme, totally in command of her material. The tracks from 1990 show an artist tested by life's trials, with quite a different voice. She had lost confidence and power, but this fragility made her even more affecting. © Stéphane Deschamps / Qobuz

During the late '50s, Ella Fitzgerald continued her Song Book records with Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, releasing a series of albums featuring 59 songs written by George and Ira Gershwin. Those songs, plus alternate takes, were combined on a four-disc box set, Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, in 1998. These performances are easily among Fitzgerald's very best, and for any serious fan, this is the ideal place to acquire the recordings, since the sound and presentation are equally classy and impressive.© Leo Stanley /TiVo

If there's one word that comes to mind while listening to 2018's The Capitol Studio Sessions -- the debut album from part-time jazz pianist and full-time Jeff Goldblum impersonator Jeff Goldblum -- it's charm. Joking aside, just as with his acting, Goldblum's musical stage presence percolates with his unmistakable charisma, and further cements his long-standing persona as a witty, quirky, gregarious presence. While the album often feels like Goldblum giving one big wink and a smile to his adoring fans after another, part of the fun is that he has the chops to back it up. Having studied piano growing up in Pittsburgh and played lounge gigs throughout much of his career, Goldblum is certainly a gifted performer. While he hands much of the improvisational work over to his bandmates, as a bandleader he acquits himself ably throughout the album, with a warm harmonic sensibility and wonderfully swinging style on full display. Here, he is captured live at the storied Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, backed by his longtime ensemble of studio-pros the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra (lovingly named after a family friend in Pittsburgh). Joining him are a select cadre of special guests including singers Haley Reinhart and Imelda May, trumpeter Till Bronner, and on the giddy, self-referential duet "Me and My Shadow," singer/comedian Sarah Silverman. While Goldblum is the main attraction, he smartly spreads the spotlight, allowing Reinhart and May to sashay their ways through saucy renditions of "My Baby Just Cares For Me," "Straighten Up and Fly Right," and "Come-On-A-My-House." Similarly, he gives Bronner a plethora of solo time, with tracks like the ballad "It Never Entered My Mind," and the organ-accented groover "Don't Mess with Mister T.” One of the many impressive aspects of the Capitol Studio Sessions is just how balanced Goldblum's skills are as he deftly moves his audience from perky vocal standards to swinging instrumental numbers -- each transition aided, of course, with some very charming stage banter.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Unlike many covers albums, Songs from the Last Century is a cohesive, enjoyable diversion. With the help of co-producer Phil Ramone, George Michael has crafted a warm, intimate album built around a small combo of piano, guitar, bass, and drums. Orchestras, big bands, harps, and on one occasion, a rock band augment the basic combo, yet the flourishes never change the essential, close-knit nature of the group. For the first time ever, Michael sounds relaxed. He's lying back, singing songs he loves, not worrying about chart success, and the end result is quite fetching, even if it isn't perfect. The main flaw with Songs from the Last Century is that it's so smooth, it's occasionally a little sleepy, a trait that's emphasized by Michael's fairly predictable taste in covers -- "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," among others. Nevertheless, he does bring style and sophistication to these standards, even such often-covered yet still difficult tunes as "Wild as the Wind." When his selections are idiosyncratic -- whether it's a jazzy reading of "Roxanne," the brassy "Secret Love," the little-remembered "I Remember You," or a revelatory reading of "Miss Sarajevo," a song commonly dismissed as a U2 side project -- the album is delightful. Certainly, Songs from the Last Century isn't a major work; it's a way for Michael to decompress and have some fun, and the diehards who stuck with him through the turbulent '90s are likely to be charmed.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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Little Girl Blue, released in 1957, was Nina Simone's first recording, originally issued on the Bethlehem label. Backed by bassist Jimmy Bond and Albert "Tootie" Heath, it showcases her ballad voice as one of mystery and sensuality and showcases her uptempo jazz style with authority and an enigmatic down-home feel that is nonetheless elegant. The album also introduced a fine jazz pianist. Simone was a solid improviser who never strayed far from the blues. Check the opener, her reading of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo," which finger-pops and swings while keeping the phrasing deep-blue. It is contrasted immediately with one of the -- if not the -- definitive reads of Willard Robison's steamy leave-your-lover ballad "Don't Smoke in Bed." The title track, written by Rodgers & Hart, features "Good King Wenceslas" as a classical prelude to one of the most beautiful pop ballads ever written. It is followed immediately by the funky swing in "Love Me or Leave Me" with a smoking little piano solo in the bridge where Bach meets Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons. It's also interesting to note that while this was her first recording, the record's grooves evidence an artist who arrives fully formed; many of the traits Simone displayed throughout her career as not only a vocalist and pianist but as an arranger are put on first notice here. "My Baby Just Cares for Me" has a stride shuffle that is extrapolated on in the piano break. Her instrumental and improvising skills are put to good use on Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait," which is transformed into something classical from its original bebop intent. "You'll Never Walk Alone" feels more like some regal gospel song than the Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune it was. Of course, one of Simone's signature tunes was her version of "I Loves You, Porgy," which appears here for the first time and was released as a single. Her own "Central Park Blues" is one of the finest jazz tunes here, and it is followed with yet another side of Simone's diversity in her beautiful take on the folk-gospel tune "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," with quiet and determined dignity and drama. Another of her instrumentals compositions, "African Mailman," struts proud with deep Afro-Caribbean roots and rhythms.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Ledisi's profound connection with Nina Simone's music began in 2003, when a radio DJ's spin of "Trouble in Mind" provoked a moment of catharsis at an extremely low period in the singer's life. Over the years, Ledisi performed and recorded the Simone composition "Four Women," seen on BET's Black Girls Rock, and heard on the soundtrack of For Colored Girls, headlined numerous Simone-themed concerts, and put on a Simone-honoring autobiographical play -- one that culminated in her interpretation of the song that was her providential gateway to (or lifeline from) the high priestess. Immediately preceded and followed by other celebrations of Simone, such as a PBS special and a Hollywood Bowl date, Ledisi Sings Nina strengthens the bond. Much ground is covered in its brief duration. It varies in mood and style amid a mix of songs Simone either wrote or re-envisioned, with Ledisi supported in grand style by her hometown New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and the Netherlands' Metropole Orkest. On a new version of "Four Women," Ledisi takes the spotlight after strong turns from Lizz Wright, Alice Smith, and Lisa Fischer, thereby reprising her role as "fourth woman" Peaches. She belts "I'll kill the first mother I see" as if her blood is boiling instead of cold, and the threat startles even when it's anticipated. "Feeling Good" and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" -- the latter updated with some winking modern references -- seemed done to death until Ledisi's frisky resuscitations here. On a stark and stirring "Ne me quitte pas," Ledisi craftily switches from Jacques Brel's original French lyrics to Rod McKuen's English adaptation. "Work Song" is flashier without trivializing the subject's grave circumstances. "I'm Going Back Home," high-energy gospel in original form, gets a brilliant NOLA second-line overhaul that celebrates Ledisi's origin and inspiration with equally elevated levels of conviction. What's most appealing is that Ledisi is herself at all times, empowered by Simone yet utterly distinct. Whereas most tribute sets are merely pleasant stop-gaps between proper LPs, this is as crucial to Ledisi's discography as any of her four Grammy-nominated albums. She put all of herself into it.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Released in 1955, when Tony Bennett was only 30 years old, Cloud 7 was the record he fought and earned the right to make. He'd already had a string of hits for the label and was regarded as a major talent. (In 1951 alone he charted seven times.) Bennett was looking to the then new long-playing 33-rpm format LP to bring a record to the public that showcased his voice in a more intimate, mood-setting environment. The cover says it all: it features a slightly out of focus black-and-white photograph of a woman, eyes closed, head thrown back, snapping her fingers with the words "Cloud 7" cursively written in hot pink to frame her face. Produced by Mitch Miller, Bennett surrounded himself with a smallish jazz group and recorded ten standards. The mood is nocturnal, elegant, amorous, hip. The opener is "I Fall in Love Too Easily." Arranged by Chuck Wayne, it was originally used in the soundtrack to the MGM film Anchors Aweigh. A spare, ghostly guitar ushers in Bennett's hum of the intro before the band enters slowly and when that slippery, smoky tenor enters in full, the entire night opens into oblivion. When he ups it a bit for the swinging "My Baby Just Cares for Me," with its muted yet finger-popping guitar swing, the seduction is complete. There is genuine emotion in Bennett's voice as he sings "My Heart Tells Me (Should I Believe My Heart?)," the sultry "Old Devil Moon," "I Can't Believe That You're in Love With Me," and the incredible closer, "Darn That Dream." His delivery throughout is unhurried, focused, purposeful. The music found here is more akin to that of Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours than it is to lounge mood music -- though that may have been the desired intent of the marketing department at Columbia at the time. Cloud 7 is the album on which Bennett himself realized the full potential of his gift; the album elevated him from being a great pop singer to a bona fide artist. This disc -- part of The Tony Bennett Master Series on Legacy -- may be short, but it is devastatingly beautiful and loses none of its effect nearly 50 years after its original issue.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Much like her self-titled debut from 2004, the second album by television actress and jazz-pop singer Renee Olstead finds the flame-haired teenager working with producer and arranger David Foster on a track list consisting mostly of standards from the Great American Songbook. A more than adequate singer with a surprising depth for such a young age (just 17 when this album was recorded), Olstead shines on classics like "Stars Fell On Alabama" and "Lover Man."© TiVo