Mixing the psychedelic sensibilities of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" period with a tuneful Byrds-like jangle, the first, self-titled album from the English quartet the Stone Roses was a spectacular work whose best moments laid a blueprint for scores of other British bands, namely Oasis.

It remains one of the great rock and roll debuts and was a massive success in England, but "The Stone Roses" failed to receive much attention in this country when it was released in 1989.

Twenty years later, Silvertone/Legacy is celebrating the album's anniversary by releasing the music in various editions on Sept. 8. The good news for latecomers to the Roses is that the debut still sounds fresh and inspiring. In fact, the tales of youthful independence and ambition feel like the awakening of a new generation -- much as the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan did in the 1960s and the Sex Pistols and the Clash did in the 1970s.

Though the group broke up in 1996, its reputation has continued to grow; a Legacy spokesperson estimates that the band has now sold more than 500,000 records in the U.S.

It has long been assumed that Sun Records founder Sam Phillips didn't like gospel music because he discouraged his greatest discoveries, including Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, from recording spiritual music for his Memphis label in the 1950s. But it turns out Phillips loved gospel music -- he just didn't think he could successfully market it in the mid-1950s when his rock and country records were exploding onto the charts.

"It certainly wasn't intentional neglect," Phillips says of Sun's lack of gospel focus in the liner notes to "Sun Gospel," a CD retrospective from Germany's invaluable reissue label Bear Family Records. "But you have to compromise. There is no telling what I could and should have done with gospel music from the Memphis area. I'm ashamed to say I barely touched the surface."

"Sun Gospel" contains 31 gospel recordings from Sun's vaults, most rarities, as well as a previously unreleased inspirational recitation by Phillips.

These historic recordings make you wish Phillips, who died in 2003 at the age of 80, had recorded more gospel music because he tried to draw just as much individuality and character out of these sessions as he did in his rock, blues and country selections. Phillips' other discoveries included Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Charlie Rich, each of whom is represented on this CD.

Sundazed Records' new version of the singer-songwriter's classic debut is a great way to get reacquainted with vinyl records.

There is much truth to the argument that the landmark Woodstock festival functioned more as a turning point for the business of rock 'n' roll than for music itself. The photos of hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in a field in upstate New York that were sent around the world delivered a message that youth culture could be exceedingly lucrative.

This realization ushered in the era of corporate rock, a time of increased ambition and greed on the part of radio stations, record companies, concert promoters and, ultimately, artists themselves.

But that doesn't mean the music of Woodstock wasn't extraordinary. A new DVD and Blu-ray edition of director Michael Wadleigh's movie "Woodstock," released today, celebrates famous performances from Jimi Hendrix, the Who and Janis Joplin, but also includes concert footage from two great classic rock bands, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Grateful Dead, that didn't appear in the original version of the film for various contractual or technical reasons.

Creedence plays three songs including "Born on the Bayou" and "Keep on Chooglin'," while the Dead is represented by its nearly 40-minute rendition of the Bobby Bland hit "Turn on Your Love Light." These moments haven't been edited into the "Woodstock" movie itself -- now titled "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music The Director's Cut" -- but are featured in the "extras" disc that is part of the new 40th anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD.

Read more: 'Woodstock' revisited with a director's cut.

-- Robert Hilburn

Photo: Creedence Clearwater Revival / file photo

Sinéad O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" was one of the great albums of the 1990s, a fearlessly introspective work that belongs alongside such other landmark collections as John Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" and Joni Mitchell's "Blue."

The album, which included O'Connor's absorbing version of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," was a bestseller that positioned the Irish singer-songwriter for worldwide stardom. But a crusading spirit -- speaking out against such matters as religious hypocrisy and child abuse -- and her far-ranging musical interests prevented her from following through on that opening. The result is that O'Connor might be remembered today more for her public confrontations than her music.

One of the benefits of a new edition of the album is that it could help put the spotlight back on her artistry. Almost two decades later, the work still sounds gripping and heartfelt.

Besides the original album, the new, limited edition set, released last week, also offers a second disc of rarities and previously unreleased tracks.

Did ABBA ever make a bad record? For fans of the Swedish group's nearly two dozen U.S. hits, including ear candy like "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia," it's probably hard to imagine anything not being close to irresistible.

Sure enough: a new, nine-disc retrospective from Polar Music lets us hear 90 ABBA recordings and almost 80 have at least some trace of the group's trademark effervescence. That's a success ratio level that few musicians can match.

Read more BACKTRACKING  Beyond ABBA's guilty pleasure

Insights abound in a book on Dylan and boxed sets for Buddy Holly and Bob Wills.

Can you imagine attending a Bob Dylan concert and hearing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"? Or "The Marines' Hymn"? Those are among some 550 songs that rock's greatest songwriter has turned to over the years, according to a fascinating new book.

In "The Songs He Didn't Write: Bob Dylan Under the Influence," Derek Barker doesn't just list the songs, he also gives us their history and Dylan's ties to them.

When stepping beyond his own compositions, Dylan turned mostly to folk, country and blues numbers.

The book is one of three new works that offer valuable insight into the musical psyche of three major American artists of the 20th century. The others, both CD boxed sets, are devoted to rock pioneer Buddy Holly and Western swing king Bob Wills.

Derek Barker
"The Songs He Didn't Write: Bob Dylan Under the Influence"
Chrome Dreams

Even Barker, who edits the Dylan fanzine Isis in England, can't explain the thinking behind "Old MacDonald." He just tells us "this rather odd choice of a song" was performed as an instrumental at five of Dylan's concerts in 1990. Dylan performed "The Marines' Hymn" at 17 concerts the same year.

Indeed, part of the fun of the book, which was released late last year in England and is just now surfacing in this country, is in looking for surprises. Among Dylan's unlikely choices: Marty Robbins' "El Paso" (he sang it one night in 1989 in Las Cruces, N.M.), the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" (several shows in fall 2002) and Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" (one night in New Haven, Conn., in 1990).

What is perhaps most instructive about Dylan's choice of outside material is how he has virtually ignored the so-called Great American Songbook and other pop standards that dominated the music scene before rock 'n' roll.

The recording company side of Chrome Dreams allows us to sample more of Dylan's tastes through Volumes 1 and 2 of "The Best of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour." They are two-disc sets devoted to recordings featured on Dylan's satellite radio show.

Backtracking: Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, James Brown and many others are heard on the three-disc boxed set.

If there was still skepticism six months ago that an African American could be elected president of the United States, imagine how unlikely the prospect felt to Nat King Cole a half-century ago when he recorded the song "We Are Americans Too."

Cole's recording session came just one month after some white supremacists assaulted him on stage during a concert in April 1956 in Montgomery, Ala. He never performed another concert in the South.

Because Cole's repertoire consisted almost entirely of love songs, "We Are Americans Too" was a dramatic change of pace -- though the song's message of brotherhood was expressed with an almost Sunday-school politeness. Sample lines from the song, which was written more than a decade earlier: "All our future is here / Everything we hold dear / We are Americans too."

Cole's record label, Capitol, never released "We Are Americans Too," but the song is one of several touching and revealing highlights of "Let Freedom Ring: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement," a three-disc boxed set that will be released Jan. 27 by Time Life.

In the set's liner notes, music historian Colin Escott says the label refused to release the single because "too much was at stake." Cole was, no doubt, already in discussions with NBC to become the first African American to host a network TV show, and any controversy over the single might have threatened the deal. The show did go on the air in November 1956, but lasted only a year because NBC couldn't find national sponsors.

Jeffrey Wright does Muddy Waters justice, but Beyoncé and Mos Def fall short.

Just as Joaquin Phoenix did a marvelous job capturing the music and spirit of Johnny Cash in the film "Walk the Line," Jeffrey Wright delivers a knockout portrayal of bluesman Muddy Waters in the recently released period drama “Cadillac Records.”

The actor's vocal dynamics are so striking on songs "I'm a Man" and "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man" that he alone is almost enough to make a winner out of the film's soundtrack, but he doesn't get enough help from his supporting cast.

Beyoncé’s attempts at the sultry stylings of Etta James and rapper-actor Mos Def's efforts to match the lilt of Chuck Berry fall so short that there's no reason to settle for anything less than the real thing.

Fortunately, some fast-thinking execs at Universal Music Enterprises have put together a rival collection to the soundtrack: "The Best of Chess" is a 16-track CD that contains the original versions of songs used in the film.

The set not only better salutes the legacy of Chess Records, but it also provides a more engaging look at some of the innocence and passion of rock's first decade.

In fact, the retrospective is so inviting that listeners will be tempted to dig deeper into the back catalog of Chess Records, the celebrated Chicago record company that, along with Atlantic and Sun, was one of the most important labels in the birth of rock 'n' roll.

"The Best of Chess"
Various Artists
Geffen/Chess/UME

The music: The retrospective includes the original versions of nine songs that are found on the 13-track single disc edition of the "Cadillac Records" soundtrack and seven songs featured only on the 26-track, two-disc deluxe edition -- so it's not possible to put "Best of Chess" against either of the soundtrack packages on a song-by-song basis. But it is possible to rate the versions on "Best of Chess" against the versions from the film.

Jeffrey Wright's "I'm a Man" versus Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man." In the movie, the song is called "I'm a Man," but Wright performs it more in the aggressive, rock-blues nature of the revised version that Waters titled "Mannish Boy" and recorded in "Hard Again," the 1977 album he made after leaving Chess Records. On the Chess compilation, the song is represented by the original Bo Diddley recording of "I'm a Man." In that battle, Wright deserves at least a tie with Diddley because his treatment has more of the power and lust of Waters' rendition. Tie goes to the soundtrack.

Beyoncé's "At Last" and "I'd Rather Go Blind" versus Etta James' recordings of the same tunes. Beyoncé is a gifted singer, but she's not a great stylist. She can hit all the notes, but she rarely makes us feel the extreme edges of emotion. That's a big limitation for someone who wants to operate in the shadow of James, a master when it comes to conveying what it's like to live through hardship. The difference between the versions of these songs goes a long way toward explaining why Beyoncé is known as a pop singer and James a blues singer. Score one for the retrospective.

Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes and Michael Jackson are among the array of hit-makers on a spectacular new 10-CD salute to Motown Records, but the real star of the Motown story is the man whose photo is featured on the cover of the package's booklet: Berry Gordy.

In his liner notes to the boxed set that tops this holiday gift guide edition of Backtracking, Smokey Robinson points out that Gordy's goal in starting Motown in 1959 wasn't just to build the most successful African American record company in the country. He wanted to revolutionize the music industry by making black music into an equal partner in the world of mainstream pop.

"Back then the music business was divided," Robinson explains. "If you were black, your record was called rhythm & blues. If you were white and you made the same record with that same arrangement, it was called pop. But from the day Motown started, Berry Gordy said to us, 'We are not going to make "black music." We are going to make music for everybody.' "

Sure enough, the Miracles' "Shop Around" soared to No. 2 on the pop charts in 1961, followed by the label's first No. 1 pop single: the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman." By the end of the decade, more than 50 Motown singles reached No. 1 on the pop or R&B charts. The new "Motown: The Complete No. 1s" contains all those hits and nearly 150 more, including such landmark recordings as Gaye's "What's Going On" and Wonder's "Higher Ground."

Though Motown's impact on pop has waned significantly in recent years, Gordy's influence is still evident in the work of Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Usher and dozens of other bestselling contemporary artists who, too, aim at "making music for everyone." This new set is an extraordinary slice of American pop history and is packaged in a handsome replica of Motown's historic "Hitsville USA" headquarters. It is being sold for around $120.

What follows is a list of other recommended boxed sets. Prices may vary; the one listed is the lowest found in a check of major Internet merchants.