Billboard : 09/27/1969

In these days of jazz guitarists like Benson, Szabó and Montgomery making the charts, it is good to welcome back Kessel, who has always been one of the finest – and listenable – of them all. Here he is backed on a set of blues originals, plus a Latin track, some Bacharach-David and The Sounds of Silence by a trio of vibes, bass and drums.

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Cashbox : 09/27/1969

Barney Kessel is really feeling free on this bright, inventive set, and the music has freshness rarely heard these days Kessel is able, with his guitar, to build the tunes he works with into complex and fascinating adventures. His group (Bobby Hutcherson on vibes and Chuck Domanico on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums) perfectly accents his own very good yet very controlled guitar style. Lovely great guitar music and all fans of excellent jazz should take note.

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Cedar Rapids Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA)
Les Zacheis : 10/12/1969

People who dig jazz guitar and others who just like the guitar to provide them with easy listening music will appreciate Feeling Free by the veteran Barney Kessel. This is his first LP in a long time. His associations with quality jazz go back several decades. Kessel showcases his inventive genius with a trio that has vibes, bass and drums. All are Kessel original developments with the exception of the Bacharach This Guy’s in Love with You and the Paul Simon Sounds of Silence.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Don Heckman : February, 1970

Performance : Groovy rhythm-section jazz
Recording : Very good
Stereo Quality : Very good

Barney Kessel has been the jazz guitar player’s guitar player for years now, but he has been so active in the Los Angeles recording studios that opportunities for him to stretch out have been few and far between. Apparently, he finally has decided to make the break. After twenty-six years in the L.A. studios, Kessel has packed up and moved to London where he hopes to work more as a “live” performer.

Before leaving, Kessel recorded this collection, presumably in an effort to prove that his playing credentials are still of the first order. Well, I’m convinced. But Kessel impresses me, as he always has, as a better section player than soloist; he is at his best here when he lays down a stunning series of short, comping chops and feints behind vibist Bobby Hutcherson’s solos – the kind of crisp accompaniment that makes all soloists sound good. And, of course, he is assisted by a rhythm team that matches his every move. But the final impression is that of a superb rhythm section churning out a powerful flow of contemporary jazz rhythms. Hutcherson responds well to that flow, but even he seems intimidated by its power. Too bad somebody like Sonny Rollins wasn’t around to take advantage of it. The sonics are very good.

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Lafayette Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)
Frank Arganbright : 01/16/1970

Feeling Free is the title of a groovy Barney Kessel album issued by Contemporary Records on a stereo disc (S7618). Kessel’s guitar playing here is swinging. He’s assisted by Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Chuck Domanico on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. This is one of Kessel’s better albums. He expresses the free form of modern music better than most musicians. His version of This Guy’s in Love With You is beautifully performed with gentle brushwork by Jones and the lilting strokes of Kessel on guitar. The Sounds of Silence is pretty delightful with Jones again scoring on drums. Moving Up is an uplifting tune excitingly performed by the group. It is terrific modern jazz.

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Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, NE)
Vernon L. Hoyt : 10/12/1969

Contemporary doesn’t issue many jazz records, but when it does you’re pretty sure to get a good one. Feeling Free (S7618), which includes Barney Kessel’s creative guitar, Bobby Hutcherson’s evocative vibes, Chuck Domanico’s imaginative bass and Elvin Jones’s ever-changing drum rhythms, makes up in colorful, long treatments of six themes for what it lacks in the number of pieces.

Moving Up, Blue Grass, Blues Up, Down & All Around, Two-Note Samba, This Guy’s in Love With You, and Sounds of Silence receive insistent playing, particularly the driving Blues Up and the soft-lighted Sounds of Silence.

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The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
William Hilliard : 09/28/1969

Barney Kessel is back and it is about time. Kessel couldn’t have come back in finer company. Kessel is a jazz guitarist who for the past several years succumbed to the economic comforts of the Hollywood studios. On this outing, he abandons the confines of commercialism – who can play commercial in such company as Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Chuck Domanico, bass, and Elvin Jones, drums. Kessel considers this album one of the freest he has made, and after playing 25 years in the studio, he is on safe grounds. Moving Up, Blue Grass, This Guy’s in Love with You, Blues Up, Down & All Around, The Sounds of Silence and Two Note Samba make up the listening.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

When the subject is jazz, the way a man feels is directly reflected in his music. Everybody knows that. But I mention it here because this album, considered by Barney Kessel to be one of the freest he has ever made, was created during a time of liberation for the man who is the musician. After twenty-six years of highly successful, pervasively proficient studio work on the West Coast, Barney had decided the life of the craftsman was not for him.

“Actually,” he told me, “it took five years of planning for me to make the move.” The move is to London where Barney will write for films, pursue other musical interests, and form a small unit which will play throughout Europe. He left the security of the studios because, he notes, “The reason I started playing music was it made me feel good. It’s the creative aspect I love, and it’s that which gained me recognition. But in Hollywood, I became very unhappy in my work. The economic steps upward were not synonymous with creativity, and so I just had to make the break.

“With my plans finally set,” Barney continued, “I feel so alive! Sure, there’s an element of risk, but I see too many people living their lives without ever getting around to whatever it is they really want to do. That’s death in life.”

Feeling free, Barney was especially receptive to making his first album with Elvin Jones. “It was an unusually rewarding challenge. Since I hadn’t ever played with Elvin before, I didn’t go on the date with any pre-set ideas. It was entirely spontaneous. I drew on whatever I have, on my total musical experience, and responded to his stimulus.

“And the nature of that stimulus is remarkable, Barney added. “Elvin constantly creates an undercurrent, a kaleidoscope of sound and rhythms that is always changing. This continuous change results in a constant tension that makes you unusually alert and responsive. At times we were improvising opposites that intersected intriguingly. And then there were occasions we created similarities – passages that sound carefully worked out and honed, but were wholly improvised.”

I asked Barney about the choice of the other two musicians on the date. “I wanted Bobby Hutcherson, Barney explained, “because vibes seemed to me the right instrument in this context. Tonally, we needed something on the high end, and vibes are also particularly evocative in free-form music. They have a kind of floating. ethereal quality, and furthermore, they supplied all the harmonic inferences I needed without being as rigidly confining in that regard as a piano. And Bobby was especially compatible – he doesn’t play with a strictly blues or bop feeling on the one hand, or in a softly impressionistic way on the other, but has a crisp attack and an avant-garde openness of conception.”

As for Chuck Domanico, Barney regards him as “a very talented bass player with tremendous chops and imagination. He’s got everything you need – big tone, and a good harmonic sense. In most cases, among bassists today, I find the melodic content of their solos appalling. Chuck is a brilliant exception.”

All but two of the performances are based on Kessel originals. Moving Up received its title because “at one point, around the eighth bar, there’s a particular progression that is very exhilarating, very uplifting to me.” I mentioned the feeling of buoyancy, of celebration, that came through to me in the performance. “Well,” Barney answered, “the first or second takes were used for that very reason – because they had that feeling. In succeeding takes the overall performance was better coordinated, but with less of the spontaneity, the creativity we wanted to capture.”

Blue Grass has an arresting bass introduction. “Talk about spontaneity,” Kessel grinned. “At the very last moment, just as I was counting out the tempo, it occurred to me we ought to have a bass intro. I told Chuck, and he went right into what you hear. Incidentally, this was the only take we made. As for the theme, it’s a melody I’d been playing for my own amusement. It’s a blues, and there’s no particular meaning to the word I chose to go with ‘blue.’ It just seemed a good title to me.” Kessel’s playing here, by the way, is joyously self-affirming, and the performance as a whole is infectious in its ebullience. For added pleasure, I find myself listening to the track sometimes just to be immersed in the marvels of Elvin Jones’s protean role throughout.

This Guy’s in Love with You is a measure of Barney’s interest in a broad range of current music including pop. “The group I’ll have in Europe,” he notes, “will be using contemporary forms and idioms if they sound good to us. The first part of this performance distills the lyrical bent of all concerned, gently shaded by Elvin Jones’s easeful brushwork. Then the beat quickens, the attack hardens, and the four engage in resiliently resourceful interplay until the final ruminative summing up.

Blues Up, Down & All Around is, Barney says, “a typical blues, but I gave it this title because at the end of each chorus the last two bars move in an unorthodox manner that is, however, musically correct and, to me, refreshing. Something happened here, by the way, that further illustrates the pleasures of the spontaneity of the date. The way the three of us played behind Bobby Hutcherson’s solo is one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had in a recording studio. And then, on Bobby’s third chorus, there’s one of those unexpected moments: I’m trilling a chord and he’s trilling a note – it sounds so perfectly cohesive that it must have been worked out. But it wasn’t. That’s just the way it happened – Bobby and I suspended against Elvin.”

The Sounds of Silence, after the ceaselessly surging momentum of Blues Up, Down & All Around, is a sunny transmutation of that introspective essay into quite another dimension of sense and sensibility. And again, Elvin Jones is a cornucopia of possibilities.

Two Note Samba, Barney observes, “sounds a bit like One Note Samba but is totally different. The chords are different as well as the bridge. The title, of course, comes from the fact only two notes are used in the very beginning.” As in the rest of the album, the playing is incisive, inventive, and a witness to the pyramiding pleasures of unpredictability among four jazzmen of so high an order of skill and emotional involvement.

“This is one of the most satisfying albums I’ve made,” Barney said in retrospect. “It captures the way I feel and play today.”