This 2-CD anthology takes its title from the debut for a vocal trio that lived up to it: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross wove its magic from two men and a woman ready to push jazz vocals to a post-bop frontier built on the vocalese of Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson (the spark behind King Pleasure's epochal transformation of jazz solos into sung lines) and fueled by a bumper crop of great instrumentals on which to build their songs. Arrangements meticulously follow the styles of specific soloists, inject healthy dollops of humor, and interact wonderfully with the accompanists, approximating the intimate scale and high-flying interplay of the small groups that dominated '50s and early '60s jazz. This is vivid, effortlessly swinging, deliriously cool jazz that will sound as good to lounge arrivistes as it will to seasoned jazz hounds, and this intelligently compiled distillation of their first few albums gets extra credit for exemplary sound and annotation. --Sam Sutherland
