I last collared a set like this in 2008 when Proper released Strike It Rich!, a 4-CD compilation; this time Acrobat go for a triple disc combination. Yes, there is some overlap but it’s not critical. That said, Rich’s mid-career ubiquity is admirably reflected here as you contemplate the kind of company he kept on record in the 1940s and 50s. This is not the Rich of later years, heading his big band of youngsters and producing drum workouts of monumental range and duration night after night. Look to YouTube for those.

Nonetheless, the opening ‘Quiet Riot’ by his 1946 orchestra starts with a typical Rich-ian barrage. He had started his own big band and run it for two years to 1947, and it’s his mostly-Mercury sides, none of them especially remarkable which take up CD1, the band’s rhythmic drive never in doubt before Rich realised ‘big bands are out’ and moved on. Thereafter, he toured with Norman Granz’s JATP troupe and fitted in with the busy New York scene, his bandstand vitality bringing him calls from any and everybody.

CD2 continues with ’The Carioca’, all bombastic drums with the big band, before the ultimate contrast, ‘Star Eyes’ with the Parker Quartet. Never a committed bopper, Rich did the necessary, staying well out of the firing line, even if he did drop the odd bomb or two, as he did for Flip Phillips and the Basie octet when he sat in for Gus Johnson, their ‘The Golden Bullet’ like a template for swing, Rich exultant. He keeps up with Powell, who is at his most effusive, before fitting in with Bird, Dizzy and Monk relatively unobtrusively, these tracks and most of the rest for Granz’s Clef label. The Phillips Septet, with Sweets Edison and trombonist Bill Harris suited Rich down to the ground as did the Basie Sextet, with the drummer pushing hard on the classic ‘Count’s Organ Blues’.

CD3 finds him in magisterial company with Hamp, another born swinger, Peterson on piano, before a momentary reversion to the big-band world with Harry James and then continues with multiple tracks by Rich’s own all-star groups with Sweets and Sonny Criss and sundry other top players. He sings, too. And scats! Peerless in his technique, and ruthless in his drive, Rich was a phenomenon and Acrobat have done him proud. Paul Watts’ expert liner notes fill in all the details.