Holiday Buying Guide 2008

Surely Sony isn't cynical enough to repackage the best-selling jazz disc of all-time simply because the anniversary of its release has a nice round number? Well, even if this is a naked record company money-grab, it's an awfully good one. The remastered original disc has some false starts and muted studio chatter that will interest almost no one, but disc two collects five tracks by the Davis-led Kind of Blue crew that had previously been scattered to the winds, as well as a previously unreleased 17-minute live version of "So What" that is merely transcendent. The third disc, a DVD, has the group's 26-minute appearance on Robert Herridge Theatre as well as the documentary Celebrating a Masterpiece: Kind of Blue, which assembles seemingly everyone who knew Davis to talk about his genius, humor and eccentricity.

—Josh Tyrangiel