28 examples of the scorching guitar work of Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown ' one of the most influential guitarists from the Texas school, influenced himself by T-Bone Walker. These, his earliest recordings spanning 1947 through 1953 were equally influential of the next generation of guitarists. Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan were all influenced by these seminal recordings.

Without Bernard Herrmann's accompanying score, you could argue that Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 movie starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, would not be celebrated as one of the greatest chillers of all time today

This is one of the last recordings made by the late Charles Mingus. The session was recorded in New York during November of 1977 under the auspices of Lionel Hampton and amongst the 10 strong line-up of musicians were Gerry Mulligan, baritone sax, Woody Shaw, trumpet and long time Mingus collaborators, Ricky Ford, tenor sax and Dannie Richmond, drums.

The title speaks for itself. Piano solos by the legendary Erroll Garner recorded in the early stages of his distinguished career. These rare recordings predate his Bop credentials by a few months prior to his jam sessions with Charlie Parker and other pioneers. Although best known for his trio works throughout the Fifties these classic recordings illustrate his technique and depth of expression beautifully.

Alberta Hunter was one of the most prominent jazz and blues singers of the early inter-war years, working with many of the major names of the period, as well as being a noted song writer. This great-value 94-track 4-CD set covers the two decades which comprised the greater part of her core recording career - she recorded only a couple of times after 1940 while she was travelling to entertain troops, and retired from the business to take up nursing when her mother died in 1957, returning to singing in her 70s after she was obliged to retire from nursing. Her style spanned the blues and jazz genres, in that while her accompaniment was often jazz-flavoured, the songs were very much in the blues idiom. She worked with solo or small band accompaniment, collaborating with many luminaries of early jazz, such as Eubie Blake, Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, Fats Waller, Lovie Austin, Tommy Ladnier and Perry Bradford, with the likes of Louis Armstrong Lil Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Buster Bailey featuring in the groups she worked with. Also included are recordings she made in London in 1934 with the Jack Jackson Orchestra. This anthology comprises a very high proportion of the recordings she made during the period, and is a thorough overview of her work, so provides a comprehensive showcase for her unique talent.

Jimmy Reed was a hugely influential figure of the blues and R&B scene during the 1950s and early '60s, not only for the fact that he brought his distinctive style of electric blues to mainstream audiences, but also because in the process he inspired many aspiring talents on both sides of the Atlantic, notably The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Van Morrison, who all recorded versions of various Jimmy Reed R&B hits. He came to prominence in the early '50s when he was one of the first artists to sign to VeeJay, and over the years scored around twenty Top 20 R&B hits, with a dozen or more pop chart entries as well, underlining his importance as a crossover artist. Among them were memorable classics, which have been much covered over the years, such as "Ain't That Loving You Baby", "Honest I Do", "Little Rain", "Baby What You Want Me To Do" and "Bright Lights, Big City", all of which are included in this great value 54-track 2-CD collection, which comprised every A and B side he released from his debut in 1953 through to the first months

In 1958, the first issue of a new magazine named Jazz Review contained an essay by musicologist Gunther Schuller, titled "Sonny Rollins and Thematic Improvisation". The piece's premise was simple - to examine a single Rollins' solo on a recording called Blue 7 (heard on the saxophonist's iconic 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus), whose title gave away the basic structure of the performance - that of the back-bone of jazz, the twelve bar blues. Rollins was already one of the most talked-of jazzmen of his generation, seen by many as a genuine heir to Bebop's founding father Charlie Parker, but Schuller's painstaking analysis elevated him further still, to the rank of innovator whose blues improvisations had a level of compositional cogency of one "who spends days or weeks writing a given passage". Rollins, Schuller believed, had provided a defining example of the art of jazz. Yet, like all good critics, he was aware that such a performance didn't come out of nowhere. Although Blue 7 was undoubtedly a high spot, it was a peak that dominated a landscape littered with other such achievements. Indeed, it was just the latest in a series of classic blues solos Rollins had been setting down on record with his own groups and those led by others since the early 1950s. This new collection collates a selection of those great performances - the first ever issue to concentrate solely on Rollins; blues specialist. Well-regarded for his musical wit and penchant for oddball song choices, since Blue 7 remarkably little has been written about the great saxophonist's ability to wring pure invention from the most fundamental format in jazz, yet the blues (part of his artistic DNA since his days as a teenage Louis Jordan fan) has been at the back of all Rollins' stylistic shifts over a sixty year career. Packaged with period photographs and a fascinating booklet note by saxophonist Simon Spillett, this anthology charts a course through some of his greatest musical encounters - with other giants like Dizzy, Miles, Coltrane and Monk - as well as documenting his never-ending quest for the most stimulating of instrumental contexts. There are pianoless trios, a series of classy quartets and quintets and one especially memorable session, a two-piano sextet. Whatever the setting though, and whatever the tempo (which ranges from a roar through Sonnymoon For Two to the slow purr of Sumphin'), this is Sonny Rollins proving time and again that the blues is at the very core of his immense contribution to the music. Number of Discs: 2

George Shearing, who died in 2011, was one of the most illustrious jazz pianists of his era, overcoming blindness to become one of the truly distinctive keyboard stylists, equally at home as soloist, small group leader, with big bands or as an empathetic accompanist for some of the fine singers who were his contemporaries. This collection traces his recording career over a crucial 20-year period from it's very beginnings just before the outbreak of WWII through to classic albums towards the end of the 1950s, including some rare early recordings. It demonstrates the extraordinary breadth of his talent, including his adeptness on the piano accordion, and the way his unique style developed, and we hope that as well as providing thoroughly entertaining listening it is a fitting tribute to a true giant of the genre.

Charley Patton is widely regarded as perhaps the archetypal early exponent of Mississippi Delta blues. He was a true original with a distinctive slide guitar technique, and he performed a range of blues, spirituals and ballads in a powerful, intense, even primitive, fashion which uniquely captures the style and spirit of the genre. His recording career was restricted to a few sessions between 1929 and 1934, from which around thirty double-sided '78s were released, first on Paramount and latterly on Vocalion, and that was the entirety of his recorded output before his premature death from a heart disorder in 1934 aged 45. This collection comprises the entirety of that canon, including six tracks on which he played guitar, with Henry Sims and Bertha Lee erspectively performing the vocals. Anyone seriously interested in the blues and it's history needs to have heard Charley Patton, and this anthology provides a comprehensive overview of his work.