Although the Julius Hemphill Sextet, comprising such heavyweights as Marty Ehrlich, Sam Furnace and Tim Berne, has been an effective vehicle for keeping alive the name of the late alto saxophonist and composer, recent covers of the anthem ‘Dogon A.D.’ by Stefan Pasborg and Vijay Iyer may have also contributed to greater recognition of an artist whose influence on many contemporary players is nonetheless significant. A founder member of both B.A.G. [Black Artists Group] and the World Saxophone Quartet, Hemphill was a man with a firm grip on both the concrete and abstract strands of African-American music and the piece that essentially highlights this duality is ‘The Hard Blues’, a perfect combination of half-time countrified shuffle groove and explosive rubato choruses that nonetheless retain some of the ecstatic holler of a tent revival. Although initially recorded with cello-drums-trumpet-baritone sax, it is featured here on the third disc, Fat Man And The Hard Blues, of this 5-CD anthology and sounds arresting in the hands of an all-reed sextet, featuring a young James Carter. The overlapping, contrapuntally rich arrangement boldly evokes a Baptist congregation, or maybe the barbershop vocal ensemble that was a template for the World Saxophone Quartet. If that configuration represented a certain density of sound in Hemphill's aesthetic then he was also looking for a stripped down but no less colourful palette. Nowhere was this more striking than on Raw Materials And Residuals where the trio of Hemphill, cellist Abdul Wadud and drummer Don Moye is positively combustible on the entangled grooving of classics such as ‘Long Rhythm’. The augmentation of that trio to a quartet featuring the excellent trumpeter Olu Dara and Warren Smith as a replacement for Moye paid dividends on Flat-Out Jump Suite but its contraction to a Hemphill-Smith duo for the live session Chile New York was also worthwhile. These different configurations bound by a common spirit of adventure are a brilliant testament to a seminal figure in the recent history of jazz in league with the blues, who produced more than bluesy jazz or jazzy blues.