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The release of Bob Dylan and the Band’s “The Basement Tapes” album in CD is the latest step in the curious history of one of rock’s most celebrated recordings.

The album’s 24 selections were among a larger body of work recorded 21 years ago on a home machine in the basement of a house near Woodstock, N.Y.--a period when Dylan had stepped away from the normal touring and recording routine of the music business.

Several of the tracks--most of which were recorded in just one or two takes--were put on acetates and sent to artists eager for Dylan material for their own albums. Soon afterward, many of the tunes surfaced as bootleg recordings.

Those unauthorized discs--known collectively as the “basement tapes”--were the subject of such continuing interest that Columbia Records released an authorized version of the tapes in 1975. It ended up being voted the album of the year in a Village Voice poll of U.S. pop and rock critics.

Now in CD, the music on the two-disc, 77-minute package (around $21) still offers an enticing energy and spirit. Some songs are a bit marginal, but the vocal and instrumental performances have an almost super-charged sense of joy--the feel of artists working without the tensions of deadlines and other pressures of the studio.

Two of the songs from “The Basement Tapes” (“This Wheel’s on Fire” and “Tears of Rage”) reappeared on the Band’s own excellent, 1968 debut album, “Music From Big Pink” (available on a Capitol CD). The “Tapes” rates a maximum ****.

BONUS TRACK: Capitol Records is releasing three more Frank Sinatra albums in CD over the next two months. “Nice & Easy” and “All the Way” are due Oct. 26, while “Where Are You” will be out Nov. 16. . . . The CD of Tom Waits’ new live album, “Big Time,” carries six bonus tracks, including “Straight to the Top” and “Yesterday Is Here”. . . . Flying Fish Records has just issued a CD-only compilation by Sweet Honey in the Rock, the folk-gospel a capella quintet. The album, titled “Breaths” and drawn from the group’s previous live albums, includes a version of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko.”