Rare alignments of the musical planets have often fine-tuned jazz’s turning points. Suppose a young Louis Armstrong had not been taught the cornet in a New Orleans reform school in 1913, while the port city’s creative multiculturalism was flowering all around him? Or if Benny Goodman’s 1930s orchestra hadn’t got rolling just as network radio was invented, to send the world the news? For Edward Brian “Tubby” Hayes, the brilliant London-born saxophonist, the planets didn’t quite line up in time to release his immense potential – British/European jazz was yet to find its liberating creative independence, and Hayes (with a heroin habit and a heart condition) died at 38 in 1973 before he could distil his skills into something as single-mindedly hefty as John Coltrane, or as capriciously flighty as Ornette Coleman. But Grits, Beans and Greens – made in 1969 just before Hayes’ health declined, long-lost and now finally mastered and released on vinyl and CD – captures his astonishing fluency as a tenor-sax improviser, and canny craftsmanship as a composer. Rugged modal themes unfold over hurtling bass-walks (from the excellent Ron Mathewson) that suggest Coltrane’s Impressions or Giant Steps but with chirpy Latin-ballroom countermelodies. There are fast blues, and smoky ballads.

But Hayes’ melodic ingenuity, in the twisting tenor improvisations and skid-turn tempo-shifts of Where Am I Going? the taut theme and spiralling embroideries of the title track, and the beautiful unaccompanied coda of the ballad You Know I Care, show how imaginatively he could transform the familiar. Unless you’re a diehard completist, though, the five finished tracks on the single album rather than the deluxe double-set, with all the out-takes, are probably all you need.

Also out this month

Nérija, the popular and prizewinning young seven-piece London collective, have released a warm-toned and sophisticated mix of danceable jazz, African and Caribbean grooves with debut album Blume. Catchily songlike hooks and fluent improv (notably from saxophonists Cassie Kinoshi and Nubya Garcia, and guitarist Shirley Tetteh) abound, if at times there’s a faint reticence to the delivery. The opposite applies to the bluff, riotous and raucous UK quartet Pigfoot, on Pigfoot Shuffle, with the horn-power of trumpeter Chris Batchelor and reeds player James Allsopp, the wacky grooving of drummer Paul Clarvis and increasingly electronic keyboard sound of Liam Noble applied to Heartbreak Hotel, Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog, Mozart, Stevie Wonder and a lot more.