Juggling the Divine, 4 out5 Stars
To be an artist that can jump from style to style and genre to genre is a rarity in any medium. And in this day and age, it's consider a surefire career snuffer. Which makes Bette Midler a national treasure. She has wrapped her pipes around popular standards, bawdy bathhouse songs, sentimental ballads and - in the process - created a few standards of her own. While "Jackpot! - The Best Bette" nicely replaces Experience the Divine, it isn't a perfect set.
There are 19 songs here, but the emphasis is on the sentimental. It would have been nice to let some of Bette's naughtier moments pop in (even a routine from the out of print Mud Will Be Flung Tonight). I'm also not so sure listing the tracks out of chronological order helps with the listening experience, as hearing the 80's layer-cake reverb production of "Wind Beneath My Wings" next to the spare, breathy 1972 "Do You Want to Dance." The album as a continual platter is disjointed.
That doesn't mean Bette isn't worth listening to. From her first show on the scene, The Divine Miss M, she established herself as a unique entertainer, a singer who could slip into songs and styles with ease. Her version of John Prine's "Hello In There" from that album is probably my favorite version of a Prine song by another artist. She successfully made the leap to acting when The Rose Soundtrack took her to the number one position on the charts, and then Beaches gave her a lock on super-stardom. Only Barbra Streisand comes close to Bette as a contemporary, and Bette can rock harder.
While of late, Bette has been working the American Songbook (Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee), she can still knock any song she wants to out of the park. "The Best Bette" is not perfect, but almost every song here is.
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