“The thing about that band,” the late, great British jazz trumpet giant Derek Watkins once told me, “is that it was very, very subtle; it wasn't just knock ’em dead hard bop.” That “band” is, of course, the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet of 1954–56 – or Brown/Roach Inc. as it was sometimes known. This beautiful double-CD contains pretty much all of its most important work, including all of the recordings that forever secured the tragically short-lived Brown's place in the great jazz firmament; three of the original EmArcy albums plus a ringer on Prestige. So, where to start? The blistering yet cogent ‘Cherokee’ perhaps? Or how about Brown's ever-shifting bop anthem ‘Joy Spring’? And while both editions of the band are the real deal – the first with the gauzy-toned Harold Land on tenor, the second with young buck Sonny Rollins – for this writer's money it's the earlier incarnation that wins the prize. Just listen to the glorious feast they make of Richie Powell's delightfully detailed ‘Jacqui’. The later sessions with Rollins – including the saxophonist's own date, Plus Four, in which he co-opted the entire Brown/Roach band for what was Brownie's last studio session – are both joyous and bittersweet affairs, the trumpeter's mature concept (he was all of 26) making one wonder where he would have gone next had he lived on. In sum, indispensable.