In “Heartbreaker: A Memoir Of Judy Garland” (Citadell Press), author John Meyer describes the difficulty of the most routine tasks – like trying to get a bite to eat – with Judy Garland. One night early in their relationship, he takes her to P. J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue. As soon as they get through the door, they are accosted by her old friend, the former heavyweight champion Jake La Motta. Three sheets to the wind, the ex-champ very nearly flattens Mr. Meyer. Then a gentleman from Chicago gets Garland to sign his plane ticket for his wife. A drunken lady asks her personal questions, then the guy from Chicago, now drunker than any of them, tries to take over the conversation and feels the urge to take a swing at Mr. Meyer. “People took a violently proprietary interest in Judy Garland,” Mr. Meyer writes. “This wouldn’t happen if I were sitting here with Ethel Merman.”

Proprietary interest in Garland remains intense, as a new round of releases makes abundantly clear. A new edition of “Heartbreaker,” which now includes a CD of previously-unreleased rehearsal performances accompanied by Mr. Meyer, is hitting shelves this month. A steady stream of movies and television shows about Garland have been transferred to DVD, and three new CDs of audio tracks from her 1963-64 CBS TV series are available. EMI is releasing “The Essential Judy Garland,” a new anthology of her Capitol recordings, including several unissued tracks. Not only that, the first Judy Garland stamp is being issued by the United States Postal Service. It will be dedicated in a special ceremony this Saturday at Carnegie Hall, the venue where Garland made showbiz history in 1961 and where contemporary folk-pop singer Rufus Wainwright will recreate that historical concert June 14 and 15.

The most valuable of the new releases is the CD of private recordings included with “Heartbreaker.” Garland was broke and being pursued by the IRS when Mr. Meyer first met her. He arranged for her to pick up a quick $100 under the table by singing semi-informally at the piano bar where he worked. When they rehearsed for this low-budget gig, Mr. Meyer turned his tape recorder on and captured some amazing recordings of the uber-diva in action.

These are mostly incomplete performances, with the two of them chatting back and forth and setting keys. One yearns to have a few more instances of Garland singing a chorus all the way through – especially of “I’d Like To Hate Myself in the Morning.” It’s a fine song that Mr. Meyer wrote for her, but she never had the chance to record commercially. We know now that the Garland on those recording would barely live another six months, but she is in amazing shape in these recordings. Doubtless recharged by being at the start of a new romance, she is full of energy. Her voice and sense of humor are both so packed with good spirits she can scarcely contain herself.

“Great Day! Rare Recordings From the Judy Garland Show” is the third CD of material from her 1963-64 television variety series to be released in the last 10 months by Savoy Jazz. The focus on this volume, as compiled by Garland expert John Fricke, is the chance the series gave her to perform many songs she had not otherwise sung. There’s a great deal of Americana here, inspired by the death of President Kennedy (a personal friend, for whom she had campaigned). Garland sings two traditional American spirituals, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “The Whole World in His Hands,” then follows later with George Gershwin’s neo-spiritual “I’m On My Way” (from “Porgy and Bess”). She also sings the 1930 showtune “Great Day” as kind of a Broadway gospel.

While these latter two numbers are heavily decorated with a large, busy choir, the most remarkable performance in the new set is the simplest: a sparse treatment of the 1918 “Poor Butterfly,” an original torch song, done with pianist Bobby Cole.Singing of Butterfly’s disappointments (the song is pop Puccini), Garland is whispery and intimate, in contrast to her familiar belting delivery style. Instead of singing the rousing “Seventy-Six Trombones” at the top of her lungs and at the top of the world, this time she lets us hear her breathe, gasping for air at almost every rest. It only increases her vulnerability and believability. Even at her biggest and loudest, like on Harold Arlen’s blues-inspired “When the Sun Comes Out,” Garland displays a warmth and a humanity that other leather-lunged Broadway-styled divas just don’t have.

Onstage, Garland was totally in command – and, as Mr. Meyer and other observers have reported, she could manipulate the people around her as easily as she could control a crowd. Mr. Meyer himself lost control when he came to know Judy Garland. He was 15 years younger, yet he found himself proposing to her within a week. He almost immediately moved her (and her traveling companion-secretary) into the townhouse where he lived with his parents. He was the latest (but not the last) of strong men whom she enlisted in the roll of husband-manager-agentfather-factotum (and, in this case, accompanist and musical director). Their relationship lasted for two months in the fall of 1968 (she died in June 1969), and in “Heartbreaker,” he captures her in all her exhilarating, enchanting, enervating, as well as manic-depressive and self-destructive glory.

Mr. Meyer describes a Garland who is completely egomaniacal, demanding of attention at all times, but who was ultimately perhaps the most generous artist American culture has ever known – who gave so much to her audiences that she had nothing left for herself. Indeed, the unending allure of Judy Garland is rooted in her ability to present pure emotion, in its most raw, uncontrolled state. It wasn’t about thinking. It was about feeling – writ large.