Any musician interested in developing the noble art of swinging should study the methods of these two legendary saxophone groovers. They say opposites attract, and in this case produced a great team. Ammons was the heavier-toned tenorman of the two, his delivery more deliberate and as soulful as one would expect of the son of boogie-piano icon Albert Ammons, Stitt was the lighter-toned maestro, a player of quicksilver fluency and inexhaustible invention. As one perceptive promoter put it: “Sonny talked fast and Gene talked slow. They played the same way.”

So why only three stars for these reunion sessions? Answer: the cold confines of a recording studio were never exactly their ideal environment. To give of their best, crowd-pleasers need people. Give them a solid rhythm section like the one featured here, a nightclub dance floor packed far into the night with regulars hip enough to enjoy the sax interplay while partying extremely hard, and these two would raise the roof. A handful of scratchy under-the-counter bootleg discs do attest to this, whereas these cleanly recorded studio sessions – originally released on vinyl as Blues Up & Down, Boss Tenors and Dig Him! – are somewhat passionless, as if taped the morning after one of those heroic all-nighters. The chaps play well enough, but rarely break sweat. For all that, this album is illuminating. Stitt, unfairly branded a Parker clone, in fact possessed a distinctive concept easier than Parker's to demystify. Check his alto solos on ‘My Foolish Heart’, ‘Time on My Hands’ and ‘There is no Greater Love’, and particularly his innovation in the opening four bars of ‘Autumn Leaves’, first heard on a Miles Davis concert date on tour in Europe. Ammons, a Chicagoan who wasted much of his life in jail for narcotics offences of which he was more victim than perpetrator, was influenced by Lester Young and blues saxmen like King Curtis as well as Bird. He could preach, but he was also a sexy balladeer who could make a melody like ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ glow. So, even in the cold light of day, there is much to admire here.