Another of my favourite albums in recent years is 'The Works' by Jonatha Brooke. Jonatha's been one of my favourite singers for about 15 years, and in the last 5 or so has become a friend, after she and her husband spent 3 months here a while back, and I helped hook her up with a cool 'Bob Harris Presents' gig.
She told me about this album not long before she got to record it - the wishlist of players involved, the unparalleled access to the Woody Guthrie archive... it was dreamlike stuff, and not something she was talking about publicly as the chances of it all coming off were slim.
...But they did - the album is every bit as awesome as I imagined it to be from Jonatha's excitement about it. The band of Christian McBride, Steve Gadd and Joe Sample is pretty much unparalleled and they play SO sensitively on these tunes.
The whole album's awesome, but this is one of my favourite favourites :)