Jazz Images again puts out another gimcrack reissue sold around a new cover photo. Yawn. Presenting four of Green’s earliest dates for Blue Note (besides the title album, Green Street, Grant’s First Stand and The Latin Bit) this release actually makes a neat introduction to the guitarist’s gifts. Eschewing the lush chordal approach of a Burrell or a Hall, or the mellow lyricism of Wes Montgomery, Green was the most saxophonic fretman of his generation, his tart-sounding lines spinning out spare stories in a number of classic hard-bop settings. If his best work came a shade later than that heard here (try Idle Moments), he’s already got much more than its basics covered. Grantstand finds his cutting tone nicely offset by Lateef’s horns, Grant’s First Stand is pure organ-based Blue Note, and while the last album – 1962’s The Latin Bit – might superficially come on like a cash-in on the bossa nova trend it plays out more closely to earlier latin/bop fusions like those of early 1950s Charlie Parker. Perhaps the most revealing of all these albums is Green Street, on which the leader is accompanied only by bass and drums, his horn-like constructions all the more appreciable in such a stark instrumentation. Not a bad way to encounter Green for the first time, especially given the budget price, this may be a revelation to those who only know him as a 1970s funkster. Me, I’d still plump for the likes of Idle Moments, Solid and Street of Dreams.