Good luck finding a record store to buy them, but there is no shortage of new musical boxed sets available this season. And considering how long labels have been raiding their vaults, it's surprising how many big-name artists are the subjects of new mega-compilations designed for that special Dolly Parton or Rod Stewart fan in your life.

That's partly due to the music industry's tendency to rely on the tried and true, particularly in times of desperation. And it's partly because, having scavenged their supply of studio recordings, labels are unleashing a torrent of live recordings, with new in-concert collections from Ella Fitzgerald, the Doors, Frank Sinatra, Tom Petty, and the Rolling Stones.

So here's a roundup of brand new boxes for those who don't want to take the easy way out and plunk down $200 for the 14-disc box of the remastered Beatles catalog - or go all-in for $364.98 on Amazon for the 70-CD Complete Miles Davis Columbia Album Collection.

AC/DC Backtracks (Legacy ***) This is a rarities box designed for the hard-core fan that nonetheless provides a decent overview of the iconic Aussie hard-rock band. The first CD collects studio odds and ends from throughout the Angus Young-led outfit's 31/2-decade career, and a DVD gathers videos and live performance footage.

The middle disc, which pulls together dependably blistering live cuts, is the keeper, covering the early era when Bon Scott fronted the band and later decades when Brian Johnson has been doing the screaming. (2 CDs, 1 DVD, $39.98.)

- Dan DeLuca

Big Star Keep an Eye on the Sky (Rhino ****) The long-awaited Big Star box does justice to the greatest of Southern rock bands that didn't play Southern rock. Instead, the 1970s foursome led by Alex Chilton concocted their own transcendent Memphis power-pop blend of Beatles and Beach Boys influence, overlaid with Velvet Underground alienation and Chilton and Chris Bell's own acute sensitivities. Keep an Eye on the Sky, with superb liner notes from fellow Memphian Robert Gordon, includes the three studio albums, many illuminating unreleased tracks, and a 1974 live hometown concert before an unappreciative audience. (4 CDs, $69.98, $49.98 digital.)

- D.D.

Bing Crosby The Bing Crosby CBS Radio Recordings, 1954-1956 (Mosaic ****) Has there ever been a more relaxed singer than Bing Crosby? Listening to this jazzy 160-song set, which features Der Bingle effortlessly swinging through the Great American Songbook with energetic and inventive keyboard whiz Buddy Cole and his trio, leads one to conclude that the answer is no. The great majority of these sides have never been released, and the sound quality and quality of Crosby's performances, from "The Nearness of You" to "Try a Little Tenderness," are impressively high throughout. Outstanding. (7 CDs, $119.)

- D.D.

Dolly Parton Dolly (RCA Nashville / Legacy ***1/2) Beginning in 1959, when she was a precocious 13-year-old, and concluding in 1992, after she had become a multimedia crossover superstar, Dolly makes a strong case for Dolly Parton as a giant of American song. The singer and songwriter transcended her Tennessee mountain roots - and country music - without losing her genuine down-home soul, although she came dangerously close to squandering that irrepressible charm during her pop period in the '70s and '80s. The 99 songs here, including 11 of her duets with longtime partner Porter Wagoner, are not a complete portrait of the artist, because she has done some of her best work in this decade. (4 CDs, $49.98.)

- Nick Cristiano

The Doors Live in New York (Rhino ***) After Val Kilmer's fey Lizard King impersonation, it's time to salvage the Doors' reputation for putting on a ferocious live show. This package from their final N.Y.C. shows with Jim Morrison in January 1970 does the trick. The gigs find Morrison confidently caressing each dark sentiment with his duskiest baritone on the freak-flying blues original ("Roadhouse Blues") and covers (of Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley). (6 CDs, $89.98.)

- A.D. Amorosi

Ella Fitzgerald Twelve Nights in Hollywood (Hip-o Select.com/Verve ***1/2) You get the gift of Ella Fitzgerald live on these four discs caught at the Crescendo club in Hollywood in 1961 and 1962. Despite the less than perfect recording - guitarist Herb Ellis is often hard to hear - the 77 cuts provide a sonic torrent of Fitzgerald's peerless scatting, musicianship, and humor. Her imitations of singers from Louis Armstrong to Dinah Washington are funny and fabulous. And she works so hard, singing melodies and solos for hour after hour. Fitzgerald, then 44 and 45, often sounds world-weary. But the set captures an amazing artist in the moment. (4 CDs, $69.98.)

- Karl Stark

Elvis Presley Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight (Legacy ***1/2) "I don't sing like nobody," an 18-year-old Elvis Presley famously told Sam Phillips' secretary Marion Keisker when he showed up at Sun Studios in Memphis to record the version of "My Happiness" in 1953.

Billy Altman retells that story at the start of his liner notes for Elvis 75, whose title refers to the King's 75th birthday, which is coming on Jan. 8. The box, which will be released next Tuesday, has 100 songs on four CDs. None are unreleased or alternate takes.

Instead, Elvis 75 sticks to the basics, from the incandescent early Sun sessions to the late swagger of "Suspicious Minds" and "Burning Love." (4 CDs, $59.98.)

- D.D.