Music by the boxful

Decades into the reissue revolution that began with the advent of the CD in the 1980s, the question is: What music is there left to box up?

One answer for music fans who know what they want in the holiday shopping season of 2011: Everything.

Everything, that is, in the sense of all the work an artist has ever done in one giant box big enough to use as a doorstop or a murder weapon. The biggest all-encompassing boxed set issued this year is the 76-disc Tony Bennett set reviewed below, but there are also compendia devoted to the Smiths, Phil Spector, and others.

Another option is to excavate music passed over by popular taste the first time around. The R&B and soul of the Boddie Recording Co., early-20th-century African music found in the Opika Pende box, and rawboned gospel of the This May Be My Last Time Singing collection all fill that bill.

It's also the time of year to present classic albums in expanded editions, with outtakes added on a second disc. The U2 Achtung Baby and Rolling Stones Some Girls sets fall into that category, but they are not included in this roundup, in which three discs of audio are needed to be considered a box.

Pop

Various artists

Boddie Recording Co.:
Cleveland, Ohio

(Numero Group ***1/2)

Thomas and Louise Boddie's low-cost record company was open to all comers in Cleveland from the early 1960s to the 1980s, with an all-over-the-place R&B, funk, pop, and gospel approach that is the unkempt, and commercially unsuccessful, flip side to the streamlined Motown sound. What makes the Boddie (pronounced BOH-dee) box a kick is that this time capsule chronicles the musical ambitions of the African American community in a city with deep Southern roots, on dozens of rough-cut tunes of surprisingly high-quality bands with names like Eddie & the Ant Hill Mob and the Gospel Hebrews. (3 CDs, $50; 5 LPs, $60; 57 MP3s, $35)

- D.D.

Bobby Charles
Bobby Charles
(Rhino Handmade ***)