Well, guess if you really wanted someone to just regurgitate the Rolling Stone essential albums guide you wouldn't have asked here

....so one I was just listening to recently, and one I love to bring up in discussions about underrated but essential classics, is the first Mink DeVille album from 1977. They probably won't have it at the store, but it's one to catalog in the back of your mind for future consideration.
Sometimes called just Mink DeVille, and sometimes (and I think more properly) known as Cabretta, which is how it is titled on the back cover. But no matter what it's called, it is and always has been a classic in my mind. Just 10 songs clocking in at about 35 minutes, yet it is sequenced with the fast and slow songs interspersed so that the flow seems to cycle, kind of an ebb and flow. Still goes by pretty fast, though. I guess it's partly because I like all the songs so much. Nothing to drag it down. Anyway, great album. Willy has a very distinctive and soulful voice and a very tight band working behind him on this one. Add in a well written collection of tunes with a couple well chosen covers and add a top producer and the scene was set. I just checked at the
Rock Around The World site and they have a nice interview section with Willy DeVille talking about "The Tale of the Mink" that you can read if you like, but I'll post a short paragraph below which ends with a very telling line, something that seems to characterize a lot of classic albums - that being, the artist really had no idea at the time how good it was, nor exactly where the magic came from. Guess that's why they so often never recreate that greatness again....
The services of legendary Jack Nitzsche were procured to produce the first Mink DeVille album . . . it was a completely natural choice, as Jack had worked with groups that had provided the soundtrack to Willy's youth -- like The Crystals and The Ronettes: "Jack and I hit it off beautifully. It's a real spiritual relationship. Sometimes it's like looking in a mirror with him . . . it got to the point where I didn't even have to talk, just say, 'Jack . . . ' and he'd say, 'Yeah, I think so . . . ' It was very tight, very magic -- a lot of pressure, but good, positive pressure. It snowballed. There is something in that album that I don't even understand."