Various Artists: Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens

Like the title says, this gorgeously packaged 4-CD set with full-color book is New Orleans in a box. It’s all there—75 years of darkly joyous Crescent City voodoo blues, Zydeco, doo-wop, funk, soul and Dixieland. Despite a few lesser artists who rain on the Mardi Gras Parade, the box makes good with tracks by Louis Armstrong, Dr. John, Sidney Bechet, The Meters, The Iguanas, Jelly Roll Morton, Galactic, Allen Toussaint, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Neville Brothers and more. Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens floats all the sweat-soaked jazz joints, Gris-Gris and live oaks straight to your living room on a Huck Finn river raft. Heaping plate of hot, delicious beignets not included.