2006 BEST Female Vocal CD/SACD/XRCD

John,
I have a couple OTR albums and really like them. Another CDBaby find was Third Road Home - Sister/brother act, and Trinity has a very good voice with better songwriting talents ... al but one cut is hers.

One of my fav's is Tift Merritt - her first sounds like the premature reincarnation of Emmylou Harris, her second is more roots rock, and again she writes almost all her own music. And she's a great kid (well, not a kid anymore actually)

Some other somewhat different non-traditional-best-female vocals:

Ruthie Foster (try 'Hymns' - it's not what it sounds like)
Kasey Chambers (first one more 'country', second and third more rock, but categorization is blurry)
Ollabelle - bluegrass and gospel

And a final favorite - Maura O'Connell. Try 'Stories' - produced by Jerry Douglas (who also plays on it along with Edgar Meyer, James Taylor and many others). More of the 'traditional best voice' with a Celtic/Country/rock twist.

Sara K - Water Falls, is a nice bluesy album, and extremely well recorded. I also love Rosie Thomas's When We Were Small. It's leagues above the rest of her small catalog (mentioning that so if you've heard anything else by her don't judge). It's become one of my all-time favorites, actually.

Jacintha - "Jacintha Is Her Name"
Linda Ronstadt - "What's New".
Eliane Elias - "Dreamer"
Madeleine Peyroux - "Half the Perfect World" this one is a 2006 release

forgot one...

Cesaria Evora - "The Very Best of Cesaria Evora"
brilliant singer by the way

Keeping it to 2006 narrows things down a bit, but a very nice standards singer is Robin McKelle, who debuted this year with her self-titled cd. Just a couple of years older, coming out in 2004, the "all of our names" cd from Sarah Harmer gets a lot of play on my system -- the sound quality is also quite good. Audphile1, I've heard Peyroux and she is very good but I've not yet purchased any of her cd's -- need to leave something for the gift list ;-)