Although Beauty Is a Rare Thing, a ‘complete’ Coleman Atlantic 6CD package, came out in 1993 to considerable acclaim (it was reissued in March 2015), I prefer this new vinyl 10LP box set. The CD set presented tracks in strict chronological order, so it was easy to get lost in a discographical maze as material from one date was often split between different albums. In contrast, The Atlantic Years presents each of the six albums Coleman made between 1959 and 1961 as a facsimile of the original release. This way you get a sense, both visually and aurally, of the impact these albums made back in the day, plus it's a more authentic audio experience – you get to hear the music sequenced in a way the artist and producer intended, creating a narrative arc that is often greater than the sum of its parts. Those tracks that didn't make it onto the original releases are presented on four separate albums of outtakes as The Art of the Improvisers, originally released in 1970, Twins from 1971, To Whom Who Keeps a Record in 1975, while The Ornette Coleman Legacy, comprising six songs released for the first time in 1993, receive their vinyl debut here. A nice 12-by-12-inch liner note booklet with brief, but pleasingly succinct, notes by Ben Ratliff comes with a couple of rare photos taken at the sessions by photographer Lee Friedlander. All the tracks have been remastered from the original master tapes by John Webber at AIR Studios, whose thoughtful use of equalisation has preserved the character of the original recordings extremely well, since the original discs tended to favour both Coleman and Cherry over the rhythm, and the temptation in remastering could well have been to over-EQ the original balance. On Free Jazz, a collective improvisation for two quartets, the Coleman quartet is in the left channel and the Freddie Hubbard quartet in the right. Two tracks that appeared on the CD set, ‘Abstraction’ and ‘Variants On a Theme by Monk’ by a Gunther Schuller ensemble, of which Coleman was a part, do not appear here. Returning to this music after a hiatus of a couple of years, it is striking how Coleman's melodic thinking, both compositionally and in solo, were so thoroughly immersed in blues tonality, with extensive use of blue notes and blues melodic formulas independent of functional harmony. His solo on ‘Ramblin” (from Change of the Century) is among his finest blues performances, yet he is equally profound on ‘R.P.D.D.’ with a solo that clocks in at around 10 minutes. Here, his sense of melodic development is remarkably focused as he moves from one idea to the next, in the way that Scheherazade effortlessly spun her stories to the Sultan over 1,001 nights. This idea of taking an idea and working with it – motivic development – is equally satisfying on titles such as ‘C. & D.’, while his approach to ‘Blues Connotation’ develops with equal logic, albeit pan-tonally. The impact of bassist Scott LaFaro in place of Haden on Ornette! changes the dynamic of the quartet since Haden's rhythmic thrust was never metronomic, his strength contributing a melodic counterpoint that sat well against Coleman or Cherry. LaFaro, though one of jazz's finest bassists, seemed more concerned with his own technique than the overall balance of the quartet. This is best illustrated on ‘Proof Readers’, originally released on The Ornette Coleman Legacy. Here, LaFaro's virtuosity is to the fore, especially in his solo that follows those by Coleman and Cherry, but he seems apart from Coleman's overall concept, adding a level of complexity when less might have contributed more. It is just one of many interior details that make this set so absorbing. Coleman never played better than he did on these albums, and Atlantic/Rhino have done him proud with this fine production.