CD: Sonny Rollins, Young Rollins

Sonny Rollins has many fans, and it may be that only the specialists or the obsessives would feel the need for these obscure early recordings. But a little closer attention to these cuts, beginning with an 18-year-old Rollins's appearances with rather irritating novelty bop-scatter Babs Gonzalez's groups in 1949, reveals the artist's awesome maturity of conception at what ought to have been a nascent stage.

Anybody who heard him live in London a few weeks ago will recognise the same brusquely commanding attack, the same hoarse, interrogatory phrasing and sudden, lissome bursts of Charlie Parker bebop. Trumpeter Fats Navarro provides some glittering reminders of what a sadly early loss he was, while Miles Davis makes a rare acoustic piano appearance behind Rollins on the long tenor solo that brought the saxophonist his first deal as a leader.