The beauty of this music is so much greater than the sum of its parts that a listener hardly knows where to begin. The two-disc package comprises the main recordings on the Contemporary label 1956-1958 by the short-lived Curtis Counce Group, whose expressed purpose was to develop a West Coast answer to the soulful, hard-boppish East Coast sound. Each of the musicians, though no Down Beat poll winner, was among the most gifted on his instrument, yet the focus was always on a collaborative result that would reflect heretofore undiscovered possibilities within a familiar post-bop idiom. The individual solo voices, ensemble work and superior audio compare favorably with trumpeter Miles Davis' contemporaneous quintets recorded on Columbia. In short, the Counce recordings represent a high-water mark in jazz on either coast during the mid to late 1950s, a golden moment deserving inclusion in the most selective proverbial time capsule.

An accompanying booklet offers a retrospective by the leader following the death of the group's brilliant 29-year-old pianist Carl Perkins and the subsequent disbanding of the group: "In spite of the accent on the individual—or possibly because of it—we worked together so well that on some nights we felt and sounded like one person." The delicate balance so essential to the integral effect of the ensemble is apparent on the few instances when a single member is replaced—for example, Elmo Hope for Perkins or trumpeter Gerald Wilson for Jack Sheldon. The contribution of each of the five principals, therefore, invites close scrutiny:

Tenor saxophonist Harold Land, who was on most (and the best) of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet recordings, is heard to even better advantage here. Land was a small-toned, hard-edged, no-frills player whose every solo was at once a model of efficiency and flawless execution. In 1958 pianist Victor Feldman told critic Nat Hentoff that Harold Land was "the best tenor on any coast"—a debatable but defensible statement. Few improvisers played with a cannier sense of logic—it's as if he sees his destination as well as the whole playing field before each solo, then navigates his course with forward-leaning lines that reach their target with an absolute minimum of waste or predictability. If John Coltrane had a skyward vision, Land's was panoramic. His solo during his own "Landslide" is the musical equivalent of a swift and graceful Catalina opportunistically tacking its course with resourceful expertise and purpose.

Apart from the logic of his constructions, Land's most expressive tool is his phrasing. He begins by scaling down a melody's proportions to the size of his sound, then shapes and contours his own lines through careful attention to dynamics. His melodic phrases "breathe," or expand and contract, not only making him an effective ballad interpreter (his exquisite reading of "Time After Time" rarely departs from Jule Styne's original melody) but an invaluable ensemble member, whether complementing a Clifford Brown or Jack Sheldon. Besides doubling the sound of the other player, he contributes to the glowing and vibrant quality of the ensemble choruses. Few players, moreover, are so aggressively focused coming out of the chute—that unnerving break between the ensemble head and the soloist's first chorus. Land begins creating while suspended in mid-air, then hits the ground running, virtually erasing the distinction between ensemble and solo sections.

Pianist Carl Perkins was one of the most distinctive voices to emerge on the instrument in the 1950s, combining Bud Powell's urgent melodic lines with Erroll Garner's rhapsodic orchestrations into a highly personal style. As a pianist, I can attest that his chord voicings and comping defy transcription, not just the notes but the touch and placement of them opening up the spacious sound of the ensemble (bassist Leroy Vinnegar, who grew up with Perkins in Indianapolis, says of his childhood friend, "He not only played the chords—he played the beauty in the chords, and his time was perfect").

Beginning with the opening track, "Landslide," each Perkins solo is a rapturous quest, the beauty of his singing executions magnified when the listener considers the physical handicap he faced. Playing with a left hand deformed by polio, he can be seen in photos holding his arm not at a right angle to the keyboard but parallel with it, his thumb often pointing toward the bass notes being "fingered" by his elbow. Counce insisted that the truly unique sound of the group owed more to Perkins than anyone else. It's small wonder the unit broke up shortly after his death in 1958.