Tish Hinojosa 'Retrospective' (Varese Sarabande)

NASHVILLE, TN. (A&M) - The topography of Hinojosa's personal travels is neatly reflected in her artistic associations, making this multi-label collection both a geographic and professional travelogue. Born in San Antonio, Hinojosa developed a musical language that was equally influenced by the surrounding Texas hill country's music as by the sounds of her parent's native Mexico. Her relocations to Taos (where she worked with Michael Martin Murphey), Nashville and back to Taos resulted in the independently released 1988 debut, "Taos to Tennessee," and reissued commercially by Watermelon in 1992. Its songs are graceful and filled with the folk romance of the West; the easiness with which she moved from English to Spanish, covering both in her version of Irving Berlin's "Always," was an early sign of her career's individual melting pot of influences.

A one-album stint with A&M resulted in 1989's "Homeland," unfortunately not sampled here. Her association with Rounder began the following year with the critically lauded "Culture Swing," represented here by one of the album's country-styled tracks, "Drifter's Wind," on which Hinojosa's high voice sounds a bit like Rosie Flores. She'd continue to travel back and forth between labels and styles, dropping the Spanish live recording "Aquella Noche" and English/Spanish Christmas album "Memorabilia Navidena" for Watermelon, the more mainstream "Destiny's Gate and "Dreaming From the Labyrinth" for Warner Brothers, and several special projects for Rounder. Hinojosa's latest for Rounder, 2000's "Sign of Truth," is represented here by a pair of tracks that are the least rootsy of the bunch.

The generous 18 tracks are sequenced for musical continuity, rather than chronology, making this a surprisingly organic compilation of material drawn from over a dozen years of recording. This disc is an excellent place to start one's appreciation of Hinojosa's career. [�2006 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]