To some jazz fans Jazz Images’ repackaging of the Blue Note catalogue might be seen as tantamount to rewriting the Bible. While great play is made of their choice gatefold sleeves and striking Francis Wolff shots (many of which have already been seen elsewhere), the finished product rather robs Blue Note of several of the facets that made the label what is was. Out goes the original iconic cover art (reduced to an inch square reproduction on the back jacket); the scene-setting sleeve notes are cut to ribbons and, worse still, there’s a wholly anomalous addition of a non-Blue Note track that doesn’t even feature the original leader of this session! Perhaps even more worrying is the fact that Jazz Images have also seen fit to rewrite jazz history by crediting what was originally Griffin’s second solo LP under contract to Lion and Wolff as a co-headed collaboration with Coltrane. Wrong! Beneath all this spin lies a fabulous record, one which, as Bob Blumenthal pointed out in his scholarly notes to the last official Blue Note release of this session, comprises a handy compendium of cutting-edge tenor as it stood in the late 1950s. Griffin is all fire and brimstone (‘The Way You Look Tonight’), Coltrane charges in like no-one else could and Mobley once more packs his punches in a velvet glove. Add to that Lee Morgan in full-on incendiary mode and a to-die-for rhythm section of Kelly, Chambers and Blakey and you have two sides of the real thing. Shame about what Jazz Images have done to it though. File under ‘salami-slicing-opportunism-aimed-at-post-millennial-vinyl-neophytes’. Four stars for the music, none for the concept (or should that be conceit?).