I dunno, the Bob James on Mercury is pretty weird - electronics, inside the piano stuff, alongside real odd versions of standards. Reminds me a bit of the Don Friedman stuff from the period, albeit with a narrower vocabulary. The trio won a single-LP deal on Mercury as a prize for an Ann Arbor Jazz Festival competition in '63. This is what I recall from my conversations with the drummer, Cleve Pozar, anyway.
It's a fine LP in my opinion, but then again, I like the ESP quite a bit as well.