Sony Music Legacy Recordings Vinyl, CDs & Cassettes

Legacy Recordings is the catalog division of Sony Music, and in practice, it serves as the keeper of the vault for some of the most important recordings in American music history. Founded in 1990, its job has always been the same: take the deep archives of Columbia Records, Epic, RCA, Arista, and their extended family of imprints, and make sure those records stay alive and in front of people who care about them.

The scope of what lives here is hard to overstate. Bob Dylan's studio albums and the Bootleg Series. Bruce Springsteen's catalog and the live recordings that have been coming out of storage for years. Miles Davis, from the classic Columbia sessions through the late-career experiments. Johnny Cash and the American Recordings era. Willie Nelson's long run on Columbia. Pearl Jam, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, Jimi Hendrix through the Capitol and Columbia years, Simon & Garfunkel.

What Legacy does well is take records that deserve more than a streaming thumbnail and give them proper treatment, with restored audio, serious liner notes, and packaging that respects the original work. The box sets and deluxe editions that come through this label are the kind of thing collectors actually seek out, not just buy once and shelve.

If you follow any of the artists here closely, there's likely something in this collection you've been looking for.