VA - Glass Onion: Songs of the Beatles (2003)

Beatles covers are a dicey proposition: There's not a chance of surpassing the original, so the temptation is to instead twist and subvert the songs to their extremes, more often than not rendering the flawless melodies unrecognizable and unlistenable in the process. Glass Onion: Songs of the Beatles largely avoids the common pitfalls -- assembling 21 tracks from the Atlantic and Warner jazz and soul catalogs of the late '60s and early '70s, the performances bend the Fab Four's classics without breaking them, offering consistently fresh and inventive takes on songs practically everyone knows by heart. There are a few big names -- Aretha Franklin covers both "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road," while Ella Fitzgerald delivers a superb reading of "Savoy Truffle" -- but many of the standout performances come courtesy of cult favorites, including Charles Wright ("Here Comes the Sun") and the Meters (a blistering version of "Come Together").