It's easy to see why Plays For Bird is often overlooked when talking of Rollins's Prestige period, since the opening 27 minutes is a medley of seven standards associated with Charlie Parker. But it's not a Granz-type ballad medley, since everything's at a medium pace with Roach soloing on each tune, and the closing ‘Star Eyes’ is a fully-fledged nine-minute-plus version. The phrase ‘plays for Bird’ is even more meaningful on the bonus tracks consisting of Miles' Collectors' Items session, where the other front-line player was Parker himself on tenor. Though the ensemble struggles a bit with the two Jimmy Heath heads, ‘Compulsion’ and ‘Serpent's Tooth’, there's an undeniable atmosphere and much inspired playing, especially on ‘Round Midnight’. The Bridge, of course, is an acknowledged classic, most recently reviewed in the Fresh Sound reissue Complete 1962 Sessions (Jazzwise 178). That version also included the two quartet tracks from What's New plus its two calypso-with-vocal-group tracks, but here the latter two are replaced by the quartet's one TV appearance, with a more cautious ‘God Bless The Child’ and an even wilder ‘The Bridge’. If you don't already have the material, this is perhaps the one to go for.