VA - Soulful Divas - Dance Queens [Remastered] (1998)

Dance Queens' disco and postdisco vocal showcases all hit the dance charts, but few people who aren't seriously into dance history will know more than a couple of them. Some of this stuff is very much of its era--it's hard to hear Linda Clifford's 10-minute disco version of "Bridge over Troubled Water" as anything other than over-the-top kitsch, and the extended versions of late-'80s numbers like Cheryl Lynn's "New Dress" carry on their consummately boomy synth-drum patterns too long for casual listening. But compiler David Nathan also turns up some legitimate lost classics, like Chic singer Norma Jean Wright's longing "Saturday" and Vicki Sue Robinson's deliciously polyrhythmic "Hold Tight," a seldom-heard follow-up to "Turn The Beat Around." --Douglas Wolk