Through the Years

Her first-ever, career-spanning, multi-label box set! Abbey Lincoln started her career as a formidable nightclub singer who turned to activism in the 1960s and helped create the jazz soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement. But then she turned to other arts and did only sporadic recording, leaving her fans wanting - until the 1990s, when Abbey returned with the best music of her career. Through the Years, a new 3-CD box set compiled and originally released in France, concentrates on the latter part of her remarkable career yet covers (nearly) every corner of it.

"Follow her through these three discs and you can't help but note that they mark three phases in a musical life that makes sense now in a way it could not when it was unfolding," writes Gary Giddins in the set's generous liner notes. On Disc 1 alone, standards from her Liberty, Riverside and Candid albums of the 1950s and early 1960s segue into several tracks from her Impulse!, Philips, Blue Marge, Muse and Enja albums of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when she is exploring her independence and redefining what it meant to be a "jazz singer." On every track she is backed by some of the world's best musicians, from Max Roach to Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson to Cedar Walton. Then she stopped recording, instead appearing in films and on TV, writing songs and taking up painting. Until 1990, when she released, via Verve France, The World is Falling Down, featuring arrangements by Ron Carter; this 3-CD box set includes six tracks from the LP. She followed it up with, remarkably, even better albums: You Gotta Pay the Band, with Stan Getz in one of his last recordings; Devil's Got Your Tongue, with J. J. Johnson and Grady Tate; When There is Love, a tour-de-force duet with Hank Jones; Timelessness, a collaboration with Bheki Mseleku; A Turtle's Dream, with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden; Who Used to Dance; Wholly Earth; Over The Years; It's Me, featuring Kenny Barron; all the way through to the resplendently poignant Abbey Sings Abbey - all highlighted over the last two discs on this collection. Through the Years is an extraordinary document of a performer who became much more than a "jazz singer."