Various artists, “Highlights From Crescent City Soul,” EMI. (***)

If you can’t get to this month’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, you can still celebrate the irresistible music of the city. This 30-song showcase of Crescent City recordings from 1947 to 1974 is, in fact, the official CD collection of the 1996 festival.

There’s no way you can cram all the great music of New Orleans into a single disc, especially when you are limited to material owned by a single record label, as is the case here. But this is an appealing sampler, thanks in large part to EMI’s ownership of the catalogs of Imperial, Aladdin and Minit, whose artists have ranged from Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis to Shirley & Lee and Ernie K-Doe. Special treat: the Bees’ version of Dave Bartholomew’s “Toy Bell,” which Chuck Berry later redid as “My Ding-A-Ling.”

* Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).