One of the only things John Hammond and Miles Davis agreed on was that Jamal was marvellous. Forgive me if I disagree, but it takes an awful long time to audition these six CDs. Time that could be spent on other things, like drinking the night away as the audiences in the various venues concerned are clearly doing. A good strategy, when what Jamal is doing is basically to toy with their expectations and challenge them to sing or whistle the bits he tantalisingly leaves out (fortunately, they don't, or at least you don't hear them). Some of his ploys are obviously intended as satirical, but the jokes and the multiple quotes wear thin after a while. Random thoughts on listening to all this: where would Jamal's idiosyncratic development have gone without Crosby and Fournier? And where would Phoenix and EJC have been without Mosaic, whose 2009 set brought to light the 23 unissued tracks included here?