With the recent release on Sam Records of Thelonious Monk's music for Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (as the film was legally obliged to be entitled) this comprehensive 2CD set puts the record straight with the rest of the music that Marcel Romero produced for Roger Vadim's movie. The cues by the main Blakey Messengers of the time (with Barney Wilen in place of Benny Golson) are the bulk of the interest on the first CD. And as a bonus for all Bud Powell lovers Wilen's remakes of two of these numbers (‘No Problem’ and ‘Miguel's Party’) with Bud Powell's Paris quintet are also included. If you've seen the film you'd expect to be hearing Kenny Dorham on the soundtrack, as he can be seen with the Messengers in some club and party scenes, but the audio for those cues are all by Lee Morgan on incendiary form. Wilen catches his infectious enthusiasm and plays his heart out on the two master takes of the same songs mentioned above. Owing to Monk not having recorded his cues to the length of the film scenes – there's some usually deft but occasionally frustratingly clunky editing of the soundtrack – Romero decided to let Blakey (and Jordan, who had first dibs at the rest of the music) play extended pieces too. The resulting album, of course, is a delight as we hear the band well recorded at Nola Studios in NYC, just as it might have been for one of its main labels of the time (Blue Note, Fontana and French RCA). Sadly, with the exception of three long blues, normal film discipline prevailed on 1958's precursor of Vadim's film, Eduard Molinaro's Des Femmes Disparaissent, so for that we just have short cues ranging from 50 seconds to just under three minutes by the normal Messengers line-up with Golson. Overall, however, this carefully presented release with much more than the two original Fontana LP soundtrack releases is a really fine addition to the Blakey discography, sitting alongside the contemporaneous Au Club St Germain (RCA) and Jazz Corner of the World (Blue Note) live sessions, showing just how brilliant the same players (plus Wilen) could be in a studio setting. And the genuine club tracks of Wilen with Clark Terry and Bud Powell are gems, originally on a Europa Jazz LP, but here given a proper context.