The title of Bette Midler's career retrospective album, which spans four decades and nine studio albums (including one previously unreleased track) in the Divine Miss M's career, seems to offer two meanings. A showbiz pro from way back — the first is obviously an on the surface tie-in to Midler’s five nights a week Caesar's Palace hit Las Vegas show entitled “The Showgirl Must Go On.” Secondly — and all cheesiness aside — it also strikes a chord for fans who have admired her work and the gutsy diva's effortless ability to make us laugh, cry, or stare in awe since upon just the first listen. They’ll feel as though they've hit the jackpot themselves with Rhino’s wonderfully produced new disc. 
A must own for anyone seeking the divinity that only Miss M can offer, admittedly the album could've as easily been named The Best of Bette. However, in keeping with the lotto theme it's The Best Bette because of its audacious diversity in showcasing Midler’s tremendous range and her willingness to take a gamble on every genre from the folksy “This Ole House,” to a rollicking cover of The Rolling Stone's “Beast of Burden.” The latter offers a fascinating female-centric take on Mick Jagger's hyper-masculine and overtly sexual lyrics.
Above all, it constantly surprises listeners from one piece to the next. Whether it's with the tear-jerker ballad “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which despite being featured in Beaches (view the music video) and earning a Grammy, became an entirely different American anthem in my youth following the devastation of NASA's Challenger mission, or the up-tempo, retro single version of the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” it's amazing when you realize you're listening to the same artist throughout the nineteen track album.
Certainly, one could chalk it up to the fact that some of the tunes — despite sounding better than ever with new technology — are quite dated and an individual's voice changes over the years. Yet, I'm more prone to side with her recent album producer Jay Landers who credits her ability as a “singer-actress” to craft “emotional song-paintings,” as he wrote in Jackpot's liner notes, likening her ability to “make magic... 
[and] to try and locate the center of the song,” with “capturing moonbeams in a jar.” No, as he continued, it's because of her talent as a showman on a number of levels, most notably in the realm of acting that she “instinctively knew how to inhabit a song... placing meaning in old lyrics, rendering them new again... the kind of rare interpreter who can make the listener see as well as hear.”
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