This double-CD repackage of the original Messengers sole live recording illustrates how ludicrously wide of the mark certain stylistic labels can be. Yes, these are the ur-texts of Blue Note hard bop. Yes, they take the innovations of the Parker generation and reduce them to something more direct. But how hard was hard, exactly? The rhythm section certainly drives things home with genuine force (check ‘Minor's Holiday’), but the dream-team frontline of Dorham and Mobley sound altogether more gentle and lyrical than legend might allow. And how do you square a performance as dance-friendly as ‘Like Someone In Love’ with the idea that post-bop was aimed more for the head than the feet? I suppose the real message here (no pun intended) is that jazz as good as this really doesn't fit neatly into any one pigeonhole. And, as was so often the case with the second-generation of modern jazzmen of the day, there were plenty of signs of this in what they chose to play. Silver, Mobley and Dorham's uber-hip compositions sit alongside a gorgeous version of the Swing Era-generated ‘Soft Winds’, a theme these young boppers may well have first heard on a Benny Goodman 78. There are also charming updates of several 1930s Great American Songbook chestnuts; ‘Alone Together’ (1932), ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) and ‘Just One of Those Things’ (1935). It's tempting to say that these are recordings that have something for jazz fans of all stripes. There, I've said it. Nicely packaged too.