Judy (1998)

Unlike chart-savvy teen singers of today, young Judy Garland sounded like a soulful grown-up who had lived her songs several times over. The four-disc box Judy, more chronological portrait than definitive collection, starts with 7-year-old vaudevillian Frances Gumm (unpoetically billed as ''the girl with the leather lungs'') preternaturally singing those lungs out, and concludes just months before her drug-overdose death at 47. The first two discs are mostly highlights from her early recordings and films (though, frustratingly, they leave out such classics as ''Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'' while including multiple versions of other tunes). Discs 3 and 4 are almost entirely culled from Garland's short-lived 1963-64 variety show, complete with nifty duets with Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand. There's also plenty of her signature, emotionally fraught belting on songs like ''Old Man River.'' But the surprise is the quiet jazz ballads (''How About Me,'' ''A Cottage for Two'') where she is as subtly, poignantly transcendent as that teen in Oz.

In the end, Judy wins you over, then breaks your heart. When she sings ''Birds fly over the rainbow, why oh why can't I?'' on the final, ragged-voiced track, she expresses both defiant hope and a desperate plea. B+

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