Cinema Story by Claude Bolling: Bolling, who died in December at 90, was a pianist-composer best known for his 1975 parlor-jazz collaboration with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio. Nothing even vaguely resembling that album’s curlicues and filigrees shows up among these 26 selections, which cherry-pick Bolling’s contributions to the soundtracks of five French films (beginning with 1971’s Doucement les basses and ending with 1980’s 3 hommes à abattre) and treat listeners to a dizzying display of musical heterogeneity. And—the lack of continuity notwithstanding—it all sounds good. Big band? Check. Gypsy jazz? Check. Baroque strings? Menacing organs? Saloon piano romps? Check, check, and check again.

Close to Thee by Ernest Franklin: The Jewel Records black-gospel catalog is getting reissued again, this time as downloadable MP3s. And while this 1972 album by the Texas-by-way-of-Chicago singer-reverend who’s no relation to Aretha isn’t necessarily the best, it may be the timeliest. Both “Trying Times” and “In Times Like These,” with their references to social strife, their better-than–Staple Singers lyrics, and their musical toughness (bass and drums figure high in the mix), feel like mini time capsules not to be opened until, well, times like these. Other points in Franklin’s favor: He may resemble Andraé Crouch on the cover, but he sang better, and the choir that responds to his calls on the more rousing numbers needed him more than vice versa.

Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers’ Songbook Vol. 1 by Barry Gibb & Friends: The bad news: The eldest Gibb’s panting vibrato hasn’t aged well. The good news: His country-vocalist “friends” sing lead half the time. In that and every other way, this project beats the Beach Boys’ similarly configured (and universally derided) 24-year-old Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 by a (pardon the pun) country mile. Not only do this album’s mostly pre–Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees songs have more in common with country-pop than that album’s mostly pre–Pet Sounds Beach Boys songs ever could’ve, but a few of them even flourish anew—“Words of a Fool,” for instance, and “Too Much Heaven,” which Alison Krauss sings straight through the roof.

The Rough Guide to the Roots of Gospel by various artists: The title includes the word roots because all 26 tracks predate not only gospel’s use of drums and electric instruments but also the capacity of recording studios to accommodate large, swaying choirs. They also predate the LP, the 45, hi-fi, and stereo. There’s nothing anachronistic, however, about the messages. Get worked up along with the Reverend A.W. Nix about the “Black Diamond Express to Hell.” Smile as Washington Phillips calls Nicodemus an “educated fool.” Shudder at the raw power of Blind Willie Johnson’s “God Don’t Never Change.” And marvel as Mother McCollum celebrates Jesus as her “air-o-plane” 42 years before Larry Norman would celebrate him as a U.F.O.

Encore

You can’t buy hard copies or digital files of How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (UMG), the Barry Gibb–curated sound­track to the recent HBO Bee Gees documentary of the same name. It’s for streamers only. And since streamers now outnumber everyone else by a lot, the many previous Bee Gees anthologies, 2010’s encyclopedic Mythology included, may as well never have existed. So, like Greenfields, this playlist testifies to the sole surviving Gibb brother’s market savvy. But to what else does it attest?     

The Gibbs’ pop savvy, of course. The Bee Gees not only never met a pop genre they didn’t like, but they also never met a pop genre that didn’t like them back. More to the point: Even though Barry concludes the documentary by saying (no doubt sincerely) that he’d trade all of the hits just to have his brothers back again, you know perfectly well that if such a miracle were to occur, the first thing that he and they would do is go right back into the studio and start making hits again. —A.O.