The packaging of this distillation of Jamal's first (and now out-of-copyright) decade of recordings mentions an alleged influence on Bill Evans, which is precisely wrong. If they named Oscar Peterson, that would make sense, or even more so Miles Davis. But, of all the things that Jamal did first and Miles covered (‘New Rumba’, etc), many included here are not Jamal's early versions that had such an impact, but later post-Miles adaptations (‘But Not For Me’, ‘It Could Happen To You’, ‘Billy Boy’, ‘Ahmad's Blues’, and ‘Autumn Leaves’), while some relevant items are missing altogether, including ‘On Green Dolphin Street’. So, no great praise for the compilers. As for the music, I still find Jamal disappointing because, for all his technique, the only creative tension is between the tightly-defined rhythm section and whether the pianist grooves along for a moment or skates over the top. And it's a shame that a multi-origin anthology has no room for the 1954 Parrot session with Richard Davis – not that one would learn much about Richard.