This may be the first time Farmer has been given Avid’s Four Classics treatment and if so, it’s overdue. That said, Avid’s choices stand the test of time, running to When Farmer Met Gryce (Prestige, 1954-55), Farmer’s Market (New Jazz, 1956), Last Night We Were Young, with the Quincy Jones orchestra (ABC-Paramount, 1957) and Art (Argo, 1960).

Once settled in New York in the mid-1950s, Farmer kept fast company – as the personnel listing suggests – his consistency an always valid attribute, often with bassist twin brother Addison alongside. Art’s quintet with Gryce, quite sedate for hard bop, offers easy fluency from both principals but with a clever eye for detail, Gryce’s tunes well worth hearing. Each of the nine tracks with the strings-laded Jones Orchestra is designed to allow Farmer ‘to be like a vocalist’, his trumpet sound never better caught, each interpretation quite solemn and ultimately rather striking.

It’s even possible to detect a hint of Satchmo himself in the stately way these pieces are played. Farmer’s Market has more of that pert, almost staccato bebop trumpet, with Mobley less effective than usual but Drew absolutely on fire, especially on the title track. Farmer has Gryce’s ballad ‘Reminiscing’ to himself and it is sumptuous. By 1960, Art was teamed with Benny Golson in their Jazztet, and riding high, this final quartet session including Williams and Heath from that band, Art meshing superbly with Flanagan, bebop trumpet to perfection. Ahead for Art there was more, lots more, to come. For now, seek out any of the ballad performances here and you’ll recognise a jazz master.