It's a somewhat rare phenomenon these days for a classic jazz album to be reissued by its copyright ‘owners’. The session in question was long hallowed in this country as Blue Saxophones rather than its original title above – maybe to distinguish the UK release, since it squeezed in an extra tune from the same date that appeared on a different album in the US. But, even without that, the relaxed feel of the session belies what was probably an abbreviated schedule – Norman Granz taped no fewer than 10 albums in the same week, including separate quintets led by Hawkins and Webster – and the results are truly glorious.

At this point, Ben was absolutely on top of his mature style, while Hawk was coming into his own (again!) with a slightly harder edge to his playing, culminating in the almost R&B hoarseness of his third chorus on ‘Blues For Yolande’ (played in D-major, by the way, while the Latin-tinged standard ‘La Rosita’ is in E!) It's worth noting that, apart from intros and a couple of brief piano solos, this is all saxophone, and much more a mutual admiration society than a cutting contest.

I'm not a fan of the early stereo separation of Peterson from the rest of the rhythm-section, but the contrast and the complementariness of the two leaders is what counts. The icing on the cake is Nat Hentoff's original liner-note discourse on the history of the tenor thus far.