Acrobat’s sumptuous 4-CD collection devoted to trumpeter and star Ellingtonian, Cootie Williams (1911-1985), states: “Features performances with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Pearl Bailey, Bud Powell, Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson, Rex Stewart, Johnny Hodges… and many more”.

Many more indeed, over these 93 tracks, compiled by author Steve Bowie, whose biography of Williams is to be published by the University of Mississippi Press later this year. As he says, “This selection of music is just a small sample of his rich recorded legacy”. Phew!

Williams tried various instruments until he alighted on the trumpet, his early promise enabling him to tour with the Young family band (alongside Lester Young) when only 14. By 1928 he was in New York, playing briefly with Chick Webb before joining Ellington in February 1929 and staying. It’s from more or less this point that Bowie kicks off his choices, Williams taking on the Bubber Miley plunger-muted growl role in his solo work, his eerie sound inexorably linked with Ellington from then on.

For all his association with the ‘wa-wa’ style, Cootie’s open playing, with its Armstrong influence was equally noteworthy, marking him out as a true jazz master, viz his jaunty work on ‘Frolic Sam’ by the Bigard-Ellington small group.

By 1940, having been extensively featured with the myriad Ducal offshoots and with the orchestra, whose greatest sides are all here, Williams attracted a one-year offer from Benny Goodman, then hugely successful, this placing him next to Christian et al in BG’s marvellous sextet. ’Wholly Cats’, with Basie on piano and Christian at his supple best sets the ball rolling, Goodman imperious.

A year later, Cootie launched his own big band, its theme ‘Fly Right’ later known as ‘Epistrophy’ and written by Thelonious Monk, suggesting some awareness of the new music, this cemented with the presence of Bud Powell as band pianist. Vinson’s vocal on ’Red Blues’ brought the band its biggest hit, even as it issued the first-ever commercial recording of Monk’s ‘Round Midnight’, brought to them by Powell, Williams solemn on the theme.

When Vinson left briefly, Parker came in, the sole evidence of his presence, a sextet air-shot of ‘Floogie Boo’, a jump blues, Bird sounding at ease among these swing guys. Always exciting, the big band did well but was hampered by the recording ban and the military call-up, Williams eventually reducing to an R&B sextet, and disbanding in 1948.

Thereafter, he led a combo and was in demand for sessions with his fellow swing stars, these rounding out this marvellous compilation, track 93, a blues, marking his memorable return to the Ducal fold. If a number of tracks have a slightly curtailed cut-off and the booklet proof-reading could have been improved, there’s sufficient here to confirm writer George T Simon’s opinion, ‘Cootie was a giant all right’.