Kirk certainly knew who to get close to when he moved from Chicago to New York City – Mingus in 1961, Haynes in ’62 – and they knew how to work with his special talents. In these basically straightahead and, on the first album, quite short tracks Kirk shows both his competence and his invention, with the ability to drop the occasional surprise an added bonus. Everyone else is playing by the rules, and trying to provide a suitable backdrop for his activity. Kirk had already moved on from Haynes, careerwise, by the time he recorded the title-track half of Domino, and that session (with young Andrew Hill at the piano) shows a less groovy rhythm-section feel, whereas the rest of that album has Wynton Kelly and Haynes happily ignoring the lumbering bass of Martin. Out Of The Afternoon was, of course, under Haynes’s name with the superior Grimes and Flanagan, and with longer solos and slightly superior sound (Rudy Van Gelder). One key moment is the exchange of 8s, 4s and 2s on ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, then still in waltz-time, but the whole album is a classic.