Strange retitlings and strange bedfellows in the bonus material of these two CDs, but also some fine music. The main session of the first album above has authentically laid-back Brazilian rhythms, thanks to Ferreira and Romao (by the way, Mendes received no individual credit on the original release). It’s all Brazilian repertoire too, the only international standards being ‘Once I Loved’ and ‘Corcovado’ but, while it’s a pity that Brazilian altoist Moura isn’t heard except in ensemble, it works as a feature for Cannonball. More exciting, however, is Nat Adderley’s ‘Jive Samba’ by Cannon’s 1962 sextet and the – totally unrelated – octet session from Milt Jackson’s Plenty, Plenty Soul, which happens to have some of my favourite Cannonball (and early Quincy Jones) with Horace Silver and Art Blakey in support.

The second reissue leads with the quintet session recorded under Cannonball’s name, and featuring Miles’s sextet without Miles. The saxes each have a ballad feature (‘Stars Fell On Alabama’ for Cannon, ‘Weaver Of Dreams’ for Trane) and the jousting on ‘Wabash’ and a fast ‘Limehouse Blues’ is something to behold. The other half of this “Coltrane” reissue wasn’t done under his name either (it was another six months before he was allowed to do so), the material and the leadership coming from the neglected Dameron. The one jazz standard to emerge was ‘On A Misty Night’ and it’s a measure of how fast Trane developed that he is relatively unimpressive, compared to the Cannonball session. But Cannon and Dameron need to be heard.