What you see is what you get, an excellent little compilation of the various faces of soul-jazz as presented by the Verve label with their amazing array of artists from Hugh Masekela to Willie Bobo and Herbie Mann on the one hand, and Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Hendricks (in an outstanding reading of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man") the Heath Brothers, and Teddy Edwards on the other. The track list is wonderfully varied, too: there's a smoking version of Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island" by Masekela, a pair by Jimmy Smith, and a big band – a new entry by the acid jazz group the James Taylor Quartet, but they get it deep; and Wynton Kelly goes deep into soul and blues with "Escapade." Anyway you cut it, it comes out great.

Fourteen years is a long time to spend with one label, especially for jazz and fusion groups. Azymuth celebrated 14 years with the United Kingdom's Far Out label in 2008. Butterfly is their eight record for the imprint and their first new studio album in four years. The original trio – Jose Roberto Bertami (keyboards/vocals), Alex Malheiros (bass/guitars/vocals), and Ivan Conti (drums/percussion/vocals) – is still together after 35 years. Here jazz, funk, fusion, and elegant samba are woven together seamlessly. The disc was produced by the trio with David Brinkworth (Harmonic 33). "Butterfly," the album opener, is a sultry, breezy cover of the classic Herbie Hancock track, originally on 1974's Thrust. The elegant sound of gorgeously arranged strings (by Arthur Verocai no less), warm rolling Rhodes piano, Conti's breaking drums that walk the line between lithe funk and samba, and a pronounced but languid bassline gradually and deliberately build the space, stopping at interludes to reinsert the sensuous mood in the melodic line. Certainly it's an auspicious way to begin, but it's only one of the many highlights on this set.

GRP's generally well-chosen 1991 Collection covers an entire decade of Lee Ritenour releases from Elektra and GRP. As such, those years seem to form a late-'70s plateau descending into a commercial valley by the early part of the '80s and then gradually ascending a slope as Rit's playing grows and deepens in the decade's final years. Some of the high points are the Latin-inflected numbers from Festival ("Latin Lover") and Portrait ("Asa") and two excellent straight-ahead excerpts from Stolen Moments ("24th Street Blues," "Waltz for Carmen"), the latter two with lots of Wes Montgomery-like octave work. And even "Is It You?," Ritenour's pop hit from 1981, comes off as a good, catchy piece of record-making. Recommended for those who only want a sample of Lee Ritenour's voluminous solo output.

Etta James followed her two deeply jazzy mid-'90s albums of torch songs with Love's Been Rough on Me, a flirtation with Nashville writers. On Life, Love & the Blues, she returns to her blues and soul repertoire, enlivening even the hoariest of tunes ("Spoonful," a gender-flopped "Hoochie Coochie Gal") with her growl. The tinges of funk underpinning "Born Under a Bad Sign" are given full room to stretch on a cover of Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay," and James nearly swipes "The Love You Save May Be Your Own," one of Joe Tex's great preaching ballads, from the master.

In 1978, Herbie Mann came out with two very different LPs. The more improvisatory Brazil: Once Again fulfilled his need to record a serious Brazilian jazz-pop album, while Super Mann is a commercial disco effort that finds Patrick Adams doing most of the producing. The two LPs aren't anything alike – while the instrumental Brazil: Once Again makes extensive use of the flutist's jazz chops, Mann doesn't do any improvising on Super Mann. This album isn't about his virtuosity as a soloist – it's all about the beat and the groove. So naturally, Super Mann was trashed in the jazz press by critics who made the mistake of judging it by jazz standards and wouldn't have known a good disco record from a bad one. Judging Super Mann by disco standards, one hears an LP that is uneven and isn't in a class with Chic, Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, or Sister Sledge but has its moments. While "Jisco Dazz" and "Rock Freak" are mechanical, stiff, and forgettable, Mann gets into a nice samba/disco groove on "Etagui" and demands attention with a speeded-up version of the haunting "Body Oil" (which he had previously recorded for 1975's Waterbed).