Fifty years ago exactly, when people had open-reel recorders instead of YouTube, these two albums were copied for me by an educational mentor. It’s pedantically correct to say they were Byard’s second and third LPs, but the first (Blues For Smoke, Candid) was not issued until 1988, so this represents his first surprising impact on the scene. Even before he worked regularly with Mingus, all the intellectual virtuosity heard in the Jazz Workshop Concerts was on display here. The repertoire on the later of the two albums is revealing, including Monk, Powell, Shearing, Randy Weston and James P. Johnson, but there are also unforced passing references to Ellington and Basie’s pianistics. The first session has allusions to Gershwin and Garner and the earliest non-Trane version of ‘Giant Steps’, as well as highly varied originals including the first piece of latin 5/4 called, logically enough, ‘Cinco Y Cuatro’. What’s really impressive though, apart from the excellent rhythm players, is how it all comes out sounding like Jaki Byard. If you’ve never heard these insufficiently-lauded sets, please investigate now.