A landmark late 50s album on Prestige Records – one of the label's key efforts to bring together some of the best talents in the hardbop business, and really let them loose on the kind of extended passages that weren't being recorded a few years before! The Cats here are all quite hip ones – an all-star sextet effort that features Tommy Flanagan on piano, John Coltrane on tenor, Idrees Sulieman on trumpet, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Doug Watkins on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums. Tracks are long, and open – and although each player is really at their best on their solos, there's still a sense of group unity that makes the record stand out from other efforts of its type – enough so that it's often cited as a key early entry in the Coltrane catalog. Titles include "Eclypso", "Solacium", "Tommy's Tune", and "Minor Mishap". LP, Vinyl record album

A landmark late 50s album on Prestige Records – one of the label's key efforts to bring together some of the best talents in the hardbop business, and really let them loose on the kind of extended passages that weren't being recorded a few years before! The Cats here are all quite hip ones – an all-star sextet effort that features Tommy Flanagan on piano, John Coltrane on tenor, Idrees Sulieman on trumpet, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Doug Watkins on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums. Tracks are long, and open – and although each player is really at their best on their solos, there's still a sense of group unity that makes the record stand out from other efforts of its type – enough so that it's often cited as a key early entry in the Coltrane catalog. Titles include "Eclypso", "Solacium", "Tommy's Tune", and "Minor Mishap". LP, Vinyl record album

Kenny Burrell on guitar with Gene Ammins, Ray Brown, Donald Bgyrd, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Tommy Flanagan, Coleman Hawkins, Joe Henderson, Philly Joe Jones, Wynton Kelly, Jackie McLean, Jimmy Smith, Arthur Taylor, Stanley Turrentine, Mal Waldron, Cedar Walton, and others. CD

Excellent work from the glory days of Impulse Records – tracks from sessions for the label's most famous albums, but never issued until this special package! We're not normally ones to dig various artists collections in jazz, but this series is wonderful – an essential counterpart to the main records on Impulse, and filled with work that really offers a fresh look at the musicians. This 2nd volume is a bit more mainstream than some of the others, but still quite nice – and titles include "Gloria" by JJ Johnson, "Dear Old Stockholm" by John Coltrane, "Anything I Do" by Tommy Flanagan, "Moon Over My Annie" by Lionel Hampton, "The Blues Ain't Nothin But Some Pain" by Shirley Scott, and "Night Lights" by Oliver Nelson. LP, Vinyl record album