Jazz

Harry Edison: The Swinger and Mr Swing (Verve Double)

Edison, who died a few weeks ago, was the last of the great swing era trumpeters, a Basie alumnus whose style reached its trademark, pared-down maturity by the 1950s, when his muted punctuations became an indispensable feature of some classic Sinatra-Riddle albums. He could get more out of one beautifully inflected, perfectly placed note than most could achieve in a whole solo, using this gift to shuffle a deck of personal cliches with magisterial aplomb. It's partly a key to the success of two of his finest small group albums from that time, The Swinger and Mr Swing, now on this superb double; the rest is down to like-minded colleagues in Jimmy Forrest (tenor), Jimmy Jones (piano), Freddie Green (guitar) and Joe Benjamin (drums). It's deceptively casual, insinuatingly groovy and completely irresistible.

Ray Comiskey

Horace Silver: Retrospective (Blue Note)

With comparatively little of Silver's considerable output now available, this four-CD, 45-track set, covering the years 1952-78, is timely, since it documents his generally distinguished and consistent recording career as leader on Blue Note. What's also remarkable about it is the talent involved - Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Carmell Jones, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tom Harrell, the Brecker brothers - all shrewdly chosen for Silver's sunny version of bop. Despite the later material included, some of which doesn't match the joyously down home 1950s and 1960s quintets, there's enough from his finest albums, including The Cape Verdean Blues, Song For My Father, The Jody Grind and The Tokyo Blues, to make the set worthwhile.

Ray Comiskey