Groovin' Hard is a most appropriate title for this welcome new CD and LP from premium soul-jazz club combo The Three Sounds, who in the mid-1960s recorded prolifically for Blue Note to the point where they racked up well over a dozen very listenable big selling albums and in the process were elevated into a major live attraction. However, due to Blue Note's then very limited distribution outside of the United States, The Three Sounds didn't enjoy nearly the same acclaim in the UK as they did back home. Yet again Resonance's jazz detective Zev Feldman has tracked down a cache of previously unreleased tapes of live performances originally broadcast during Jazz From The Penthouse, a weekly show on Seattle's KING-FM radio station hosted by Jim Wilke. To their credit, The Three Sounds had identified its core audience right from the start and went on to exploit this knowledge to their advantage. With Harris confidently leading from the front, The Three Sounds, much like their closest contemporaries Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal (plus a hint of Horace Silver), displayed a very wide reach, which embraced just about everything from Top 40 pop (‘Girl Talk’, ‘Bluesette’, ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’) to soundtracks (‘Caesar And Cleopatra’) all interspersed with Harris originals such as the spirited self-explanatory ‘The Boogaloo’. A popular totally integrated unit, The Three Sounds were as synonymous with Blue Note's hard-bop ethos as Art Blakey or Jimmy Smith and very aware of how to connect with listeners. So once you have savoured this worthy release then seek out their Blue Note back catalogue.