Not quite what it says on the tin. This would have proved to be much better focused had it been a two-CD offering that comprised just the three Blue Note albums The Hank Mobley Quintet, The Stylings Of Silver and Further Explorations By The Horace Silver Quintet. In truth, there was no need for a third disc and bookending this package with tracks on which both Farmer and Silver just happened to be among the hired help. Not that this extraneous material isn't without merit just that it's surplus to requirements. The real meat and potatoes are the aforementioned vinyl trio.

Taped by Rudy Van Gelder in March 1957, the line-up for Hank Mobley's brilliant set was basically The Jazz Messengers but with Farmer in the Kenny Dorham role and playing Hank's excellent charts (‘Funk In Deep Freeze’, ‘Wham And They're Off’ etc). Recorded exactly two months after Mobley's album, the only difference in personnel is the presence of Teddy Kotick on bass and Louis Hayes behind the drums. When Silver again took his quintet back into the studio for Further Explorations. Max Roach's sax man Clifford Jordan had swapped band jackets with Mobley who was now with Roach, and the band played on, for as with The Jazz Messengers, any shifts in personnel didn't drastically shake up the Silver aggregation just kept everyone looking over their shoulder and also checking the shine on their shoes. Meanwhile, the great piano man continued to lead from the front. Without pausing for a breather, he constantly mixed blues, boogie and bop with lashings of latin, call-and response soul, measured noirish slow funk (‘Soulville’), gospel infused fingen poppers (‘Home Cookin’) and anything useful that came to hand (‘The Outlaw’) as with unfettered vigour he stabbed out earworm riffs making certain that the intensity never slackened. Nevermind that old crock – it's Frank's (Sinatra) world and we only live in it. For a time, one had the distinct impression that between them it was Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and The Horace Silver Quintet that ruled the world, as we then knew it!