A game of two halves, with points of interest in both, but very unalike in production and atmosphere. The separate half-hour-long sets are taken from BBC broadcasts, the first from the long-running Jazz Scene series and recorded with a live audience and jocular Humphrey Lyttelton intros (before his concluding back-announcement in the studio). Two years later, there was a new, more experimental, non-live series Jazz Workshop (on Radio 2, yet!) where Michael Garrick’s revamped sextet was introduced in more formal tones by Garrick himself. The earlier show has a front line of the still-active Lowther and Themen and the almost-forgotten Philip which, despite some lingering mainstream tendencies, soon has instrumentation changes and spacious deployment of the rhythm-section, that lead to various elegiac moods. The later set is different in many ways – fairly brief contributions by the poets Robson and Smith are mirrored in several ways by the front-line of Carr, Rendell and Winstone. The use of a vocalist, particularly one as versatile as Norma, is revolutionary in retrospect since ‘poetry-and-jazz’ has seldom contrasted poetic declamation and sung adaptation of the same words.

There are typical bits of Carr and Rendell too and, despite the very square-sounding poets, Garrick’s piano is varied and always interesting.