Early-October sees the release of a best-of Madeleine Peyroux compilation spread over two CDs covering six albums’ worth of output of the singer-songwriter’s Rounder and Decca releases but also including songs from her Atlantic 1990s debut Dreamland (‘Getting Some Fun Out of Life,’ ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’, and ‘La Vie en Rose’). The as it often seems obligatorily unreleased song that has to be tucked in on such releases is handily the title track of The Best of Madeleine Peyroux: Keep Me in Your Heart for a While, a poignant Warren Zevon gem as it was the last track of Zevon’s final album The Wind. The song is included as the penultimate track of this 27-track collection (a classic Zevon song from the 1970s, ‘Desperadoes Under the Eaves’, is also included here in an extended version of Peyroux’s treatment heard on her 2013 ‘country’ album The Blue Room).

Peyroux, one of the biggest contemporary jazz vocalist draws on the international festival and jazz club scene, has a practically edible strongly middle-of-the-road vintage sound that encompasses early jazz styles including 1930s and 1940s Billie Holiday-esque swing and gypsy jazz quite effortlessly as well as making some sort of innate connection with retro countrified Americana via the soulfully gospelly Ray Charles route.

A former rebellious teenage busker who turned 40 earlier this year Peyroux was “discovered” by Atlantic Records A&R man Yves Beauvais in a New York club a records man who would go on to produce Dreamland, which on release in the 1990s came across as very fresh and different to the glossy but heartland Diana Krall Great American Songbook-grounded sound that was beginning to sweep the board. Francophile Peyroux sings in French on ‘La vie en rose’ as well as ‘J’ai deux amours’, and this new compilation includes Leonard Cohen (a superb supremely loose version of ‘Dance Me To The End of Love’), and Elliott Smith covers as well as original material of the singer’s.

Stephen Graham

Released by Rounder/Universal on 6 October (UK/Ireland). Madeleine Peyroux, top. Above: a live version of Peyroux singing Zevon’s ‘Desperadoes Under the Eaves’