Her stunning recording debut in 1959, when she was in her mid-twenties, aspiring to be a classical pianist, and from the get-go — as per Daphne A. Brooks’ sleeve-notes — ‘an astonishingly daring, dazzlingly confident, endlessly adventurous artist with a deep well of formidable instrumentality up her sleeve as well as a wide and robust, rich and varied knowledge of jazz, blues, American songbook, folk and spiritual standards and aesthetics.’
Several signature tunes here already, too.

A previously unreleased recording made at the Newport Jazz Festival in July,1966.

Her last Columbia, from 1979. This includes disco mixes of Love Dancin’, and the Diana Ross classic Touch Me In The Morning.

Brilliant jazz lyricism, in the style of Kenny Burrell, by the thirty-three-year-old, at an impromptu 1965 session in the Federal Studio, with pianist Leslie Butler, drummer Carl McLeod and bassist Stephen Lauz.

Instrumentals in ska, mento and other Caribbean styles recorded in 1966, at the threshold of rocksteady. The only one of his eight Federal albums to feature ska. Super-fine LP from Dub Store.

Fire! The Federal musical director walks it like he talks it. Blazing horns and jazzy brilliance all round.

The best of Ern’s sixties LPs. A lovely bunch of rocksteady instrumentals, featuring a cool and deadly Summertime, bumping versions of Hold Me Tight and Flamingo, a moody Story Book Children, some bluesy honky-tonk, and the far-eastern stylings of Sling Shot, to close.