Volume One in this series of transcription discoveries was reviewed in our May 2015 issue. As before, these two further volumes are presented by Vocalion with annotator Tony Middleton's best guesses for personnel and dates, since the original transcription discs emerged from hiding minus any suitable information. Soloists are identified with Hawdon, Moss, Monk, Russell, Smith, plus JD himself getting the lion's share. Of Wheeler there seems to be no citing, although the rather lovely ballad reading of ‘Embraceable You’ on Volume 2 must be by him, even though uncredited. Suffice it to say that this version of the orchestra was both exciting and splendidly musical. The writing was always spirited and the execution spot-on, with Dankworth's own light-touch alto one of the band's strengths, although the crisply boppish Hawdon, as on ‘Too Cool for the Blues’, is not far behind him and it's good to be reminded of Smith's fluent piano lines, this British expat still active in New York. The dynamics are great, Snyder's tuba sometimes underpinning the charts, the band's format eschewing the usual five-sax line-up for a section replicating the original Seven frontline by combining Hawdon, Monk, Moss and JD himself. Volume One carried the full story of these transcription recordings, all first aired on French radio and heard here with the original French announcements intact – helpfully so, in fact, for the duty man identifies tune titles and in some cases, featured players. Volume 2 and 3 carry extra little data other than the track lists plus soloists, each CD carrying some 40 performances, these including JD's sign-on and sign-off theme. Listening afresh is to confirm this as one of the more adventurous of the 1950s jazz-inflected big bands and to again be reminded of Dankworth's prowess as both a composer of nifty motifs and as an arranger with a flair for memorable voicings. Nothing to choose between the two volumes really, with the slight edge for Vol 2 in also having the later line-up.