I heard LA-based trumpeter Clora Bryant play, interviewed her and visited her home, eventually writing her obituary for The Guardian newspaper when she died, aged 92, in 2019. She was feisty and very determined: Jordi Pujol’s booklet essay covers her life and career in copious detail, while acknowledging the prejudices she faced, both in terms of race and gender. These factors may explain why her recording opportunities were so few, despite Teddy Edwards’ assessment that she had ‘enough talent to go to the top’.

An inveterate jam session participant, Bryant is heard first here among her local peers in a highly atmospheric, 17-minute live version of ‘Rifftide’ recorded at LA’s Jazz City in early 1957. With Lewis and Counce ensuring unrelenting swing, each soloist gets to play, Adams typically hard-nosed and gritty, Harper, Geller and Perkins giving their all, the bright-sounding Fagerquist a standout, Bryant tonally thinner but undeniably ambitious, fiery too, the group riffs right on the money. Oh, to have been there!

Her one ‘name’ album Gal With A Horn, made for the obscure Mode label follows in its entirety, balancing her pleasingly zippy vocals (where Faye plays the ensemble parts) with plenty of brisk Louis-cum-Dizzy trumpet from Bryant herself. While the tune choices may seem tame, what with ‘Tea For Two’, ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ et al, there’s enough Bryant bravura to show what she could do when prompted.

There’s more on the two surprise tracks that round out the collection. Fronting the crack Jacobs orchestra, she’s muted on ‘Angel Eyes’, sounding poised and controlled, before she tackles ‘Blueberry Hill’, with organ prominent, her gruff Louis-style vocal alongside a soaring solo, this routine a performance standby for her in later years. Albums with singer Linda Hopkins, Johnny Otis and the Cheathams Sweet Baby Blues Band followed in the 1980s, with Bryant barely featured. She deserved more.