Various Artists: Vee-Jay: The Definitive Collection

As an important and often-ignored story about the early history of rock and roll, The Definitive Collection is priceless. Whether or not you enjoy it quite as much as a playlist will depend largely on your innate love of Chicagoland R&B, blues, and gospel... but if you love that kind of thing, you'll want this.

As one of rock and roll's early adopters, the city of Chicago doesn't get quite as much love as Memphis, New Orleans, New York, or Philadelphia. Sure, the legacy of Chess Records is often invoked, but usually as a blues stable featuring a handful of legendary iconoclasts (Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley being the most famous). But there was another label in nearby Gary, one that not only helped midwife the formation of soul music and gave crucial early exposure to the Beatles and the Four Seasons, but which stood out as the pre-eminent black-owned record label of its era, six years before Berry Gordy started Motown (and coming just after the Duke and Peacock labels were born). It's a story that needs to be told, and now, with Shout! Factory's acquisition of Vee-Jay's classic recordings, it can be. (Look for single-disc retrospectives of the label's best-known artists, coming soon.)

If that makes this four-disc remastered set sound like a dry history lesson, don't worry. You know several of these artists already: Jimmy Reed, The Dells, Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, Betty Everett, all of whom are well-represented here. There are also quite a few one-hit-wonders, at least by pop chart standards -- the Spaniels' "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite," The El-Dorados' "At My Front Door," The Honeycombs' "Have I The Right." Add in some classic Chicago Blues (John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Billy Boy Arnold) and some legendary acts in their formative years (Gladys Knight and the Pips "Every Beat Of My Heart" and the early gospel of the Staple Singers and the Swan Silvertones) and you have one prime slice of late-Fifties, early-Sixties Americana. If Chess midwifed the blues' rock and roll baby, then Vee-Jay was the label, along with Atlantic, that brought R&B to maturity. Never have the disparate strains of America's musical underclass sounded so much of a piece.