Two years after the Acrobat Calloway collection (reviewed in Jazzwise, July 2022), along comes another 2-CD set, that somehow squeezes in 52 tracks. And whereas the earlier album overlooked some of the band’s musical gems (notably those instrumentals on which Cab did not appear) there’s a good cross section of these here, featuring – among others - Eddie Barefield (‘Moonglow’), Cozy Cole (‘Ratamacue’), Milt Hinton (‘Pluckin’ The Bass’), Chu Berry (‘Ghost of a Chance’) and Dizzy Gillespie (composer and arranger of ‘Pickin’ The Cabbage’).

That said, the combination of Cab and his band over 16 years is a potent one. (The final 1952 track is not by his band, but a live German recording of his performance as the character Sportin’ Life in the European tour of Porgy and Bess.)

We have his vocal gymnastics on ‘St. Louis Blues’, the band’s virtuoso handling of the quick tempo on ‘Some of These Days’, and both elements coming together on ‘Come on with the Come On’, with its polysyllabic scatting prefiguring Jon Hendricks. Styles changed a lot in the big band world between the early 1930s and late 40s, but the Calloway band kept abreast of the fashions, and so in between their own distinctive brand of hep and jive songs, they covered everything from Ellingtonia such as ‘Take the A-Train’, Goodman repertoire, including ‘A Smo-o-oth One’, and proto R&B, such as Joe Liggins’ ‘Honeydripper’. Yet in every case, although nodding in the direction of the original, it is unmistakably Calloway’s band. With excellent, informative notes from Digby Fairweather, and first-rate track selection by Ray Crick, not to mention Martin Haskell’s skillful re-mastering, if you have no Calloway, this is the anthology to get hold of.