The word ‘mainstream’ was just becoming popular in 1958 and, given its multiple nuances today, it seems more appropriate now than it did at the time for this middle-of-the-road hard-bop. Packaged under Coltrane’s name since at least the mid-1960s, the group of three Savoy albums (previously compiled on Lonehill Jazz) was actually fronted by ex-Yusef Lateef sideman Harden, who also worked on a Trane Prestige album and then disappeared from view. The trumpeter himself is inventive but laid-back and recalls the mature Kenny Dorham so, with Fuller on the second and third sessions also having a rather veiled sound, it’s no surprise that an effervescent Coltrane lights up these tracks, as does Flanagan when soloing. The material is mostly straight-ahead 12-bars and 32-bars, and even most of the African-themed titles of the third album (the Tanganyika Strut session) revert to conventional blowing after the heads, the one exception being the suite-like ‘Oomba’. So this comes as a nostalgic reminder that there were many non-revolutionary musicians trying new twists and who shouldn’t be entirely forgotten.