This album is worth owning for several reasons. Firstly it celebrates the excellence of two of Britain's finest straight-ahead saxophonists. Secondly it underlines how badly we miss the exuberance of our hardest-swinging postwar drummer, Martin Drew. And thirdly how much we take for granted not only the skill of Steve Melling as an interpreter of the McCoy Tyner school of piano, but also the drive of the bass-playing Dankworth family member and, not least, the importance of regional jazz clubs like The Fleece in Boxford, Suffolk, where this heroic set was recorded seven years ago.

Dedicated to drum great Elvin Jones, with whom King and Skidmore both worked, the session has a strong Coltrane flavour with powerful performances of ‘Blues Minor’, ‘After the Rain’, ‘Passion Dance’ and other numbers associated with Trane's immortal quartet. It also demonstrates the curious fact that London-based artists always pull out all the stops in the provinces. The hardest I ever heard Ronnie Scott play, for instance, was at the Bull's Head in Barnes, as if to remind the locals just how wide the gap between full-timers and semi-pros continues to be.