Jazz

Jackie McLean: Vertigo (Blue Note)

One CD, two rare albums from the early 1960s and a great altoist in splendid form. McLean was then about to make a conceptual leap that would help shape his jazz for some time, but whether playing straight bop or expanding the language he remained a towering improvisor. On both dates he kept good company. One, embracing some challenging material, included Herbie Hancock and, making his recording debut, drummer Tony Williams; three months later, both were part of the last great Miles Davis quintet. The other, more bop-flavoured session was graced by in-form trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Sonny Clark and drummer Billy Higgins. Overall, a crisp, quality, archetypal Blue Note album dominated by McLean's pungent inventiveness.

- Ray Comiskey

Houston Person: Soft Lights (HighNote)

Fans of the big-toned tenor tradition should find much to savour on this in-Person tour of the Great American Song Book. The veteran tenor, having ploughed a successful furrow in both rhythm'n'blues and the mainstream idiom for decades, knows precisely how to deliver. With skilled, like-minded colleagues - Richard Wyands (piano), Russell Malone (guitar), Ray Drummond (bass) and Grady Tate (drums) - he wraps his huge sound round songs by the likes of Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen, Ellington, Richard Rodgers and Alec Wilder, choosing pieces with enough melodic and harmonic meat to set a mood and develop it. Group standouts include a grooving At Last, It Shouldn't Hap- pen To A Dream, I'll Be Around and an unabashedly sentimental tenor-guitar duet, If.

- Ray Comiskey