Once dubbed ‘Little Bird’, a sobriquet earned for both his diminutive stature and his early allegiance to Charlie Parker, Jimmy Heath -who passed away earlier this year aged 93 – was always a musician difficult to assess. Member of a key jazz dynasty (with brothers Percy and Albert) and composer of several durable jazz anthems – ‘For Minors Only’, ‘Big ‘P’’, ‘Gingerbread Boy’, ‘The Quota’, ‘Gemini’, some of which are heard on this handy new Avid double – as a player he possessed a distinctive, choppily articulated turn of phrase, full of boppy ornamentation which made him sound at times like a more earnest Sonny Stitt. It's always been hard to say which he excelled at most – performing or writing.

These four classics, all taped for the Riverside label in just over two years, represent something of a purple patch for Heath as a recording artist. Surrounded by a phalanx of young New York hard boppers – the Adderleys, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton et al – he comes over as an organiser par excellence, although with such strong sidemen there is an ever present danger that he's about to get outgunned on his own sessions.

The pick of the bunch is undoubtedly Really Big on which a mid-sized band, ideally suited to Heath's arranging style, tackle a programme of prototypical soul jazz and choice standards. It's one of the great albums of 1960, capturing the sound of jazz modernism as it faced a brand new decade.

The other three aren't far behind. The Thumper was Heaths's debut disc, but it plays a more subtle hand than many musicians would first time out. Two sextet dates with a mercurial Hubbard and the perky-toned Watkins on french horn – The Quota and Triple Threat – are what you might term ‘thinking man's hard bop’.

Interestingly enough, none other than our own Tubby Hayes borrowed several of Heath's arrangements from these albums. Heath himself is a player of a different stripe though, his best moment coming on the genuinely moving ‘When Sunny Gets Blue’ (The Quota), a ballad which reveals a close similarity to another oft-overlooked tenorman of the era, Tina Brooks.

Presented in beautiful sound quality, these sets make an ideal introduction to Heath's music.