Billboard : 05/13/1967

The romantic saxophonist comes across with a solid jazz package featuring an all-string background. Sims scores from start to finish with a fresh and cohesive approach. Old Folks is a standout; so is September Song, on which Sims vocalizes.

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Cashbox : 05/20/1967

Tenor saxist Zoot Sims lays down a set of romantic ballads done up in the jazz idiom. Among the swinging tracks are It’s a Blue World, One I Could Have Loved, the theme from the flick “13”, and Does The Sun Really Shine On The Moon?. The artist performs with a serene style which is resilient even when the music is rueful. The album could be a new sought-after item in jazz circles.

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American Record Guide
Donald Heckman : September, 1967

Zoot Sims is a player whose sound and general musical conception is not unlike that of Getz. Most musicians, however, find Sims’s playing more attractive because of the crisp intensity of his rhythmic accents. Although he cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a profound player, he is always an interesting one, and usually plays with an attractive joie de vivre. For this release he is surrounded by a group of incredibly stiff English studio musicians, playing arrangements apparently written by Gary McFarland (the liner information is not specific). Sims tries valiantly to bring the whole affair together, but he is beaten senseless by one of the most heavily grounded rhythm sections I have ever heard. If McFarland did indeed write the arrangements then he has taken the final step from inadequate scoring to overblown, patently bad scoring. Everything gets in the way-obbligato lines are voiced too close to Sims’s tenor, the string textures are turgid, the doublings (especially French horn) are not effective-a veritable catalogue of miserable background-music techniques. Zoot Sims is too good a player to be mired in such a sloppy production.

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Asbury Park Press (Asbury Park, NJ)
Don Lass : 07/08/1967

John Haley (Zoot) Sims is generally known as a hard-driving “swinger” among the jazz tenor saxophonists. But here we find this premier improviser in a romantic mood interpreting seven dreamy standards and three new ballads by composer-arranger Gary McFarland. The album is one of Sims’ better efforts, and that’s a high compliment considering the remarkable consistency of this man’s work no matter what the context. The saxophonist’s light, personal sound, the fact that never neglects the rhythmic ele- ments in a tune no matter how romantic, and the beautifully textured scores (by McFarland?) for a large string ensemble make every moment of Over the Rainbow, It’s a Blue World, Old Folks, Stella by Starlight, McFarland’s lovely One I Could Have Loved,” and the rest just right for either listening or dancing. The one bad note is Sims’ singing, but fortunately he limits that experiment to one track, a dreary September Song, the lyric of which provides the title of the album.

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High Fidelity
Gene Lees : July, 1967

[Waiting Game] presents a puzzle. McFarland himself produced it in London. Nowhere does the liner note say that McFarland wrote the arrangements. Annotator Nat Hentoff sounds as if he’s copping out on the point. “With McFarland in charge of the scoring … he says. Now what does “in charge” mean? Did McFarland write the arrangements or didn’t he? Or did he hire an orchestrator to fill out his sketches? The string writing is full and rich, which makes it sound unlike McFarland, although the linear thinking and certain mannerisms are clearly his.

In any event, this is the more successful album of the two [over Kuhn-McFarland – The October Suite]: a collection of ballads (seven standards and three by McFarland) scored for large orchestra and utilizing the talents of the unusual British harpist David Snell. Sims is magnificent, his warm-toned tenor moving with restrained romanticism through the tunes.
On September Song, he sings. He doesn’t sing well. but there is a certain charm to his easygoing vocals. as there was to those of Jack Teagarden.

Gary McFarland. to repeat. is inimensely gifted. I think there is nothing wrong with his talent that couldn’t be cured by another year or two of study at some place such as the Columbia University Music Department or Juilliard.

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Saturday Review
Stanley Dance : 04/15/1967

Zoot Sims is best known for uncompromising, hard-swinging improvisation but this album testifies to his eloquent way with a ballad. Although the phrasing generally reflects the wistful romanticism of Lester Young, his tone and expression are often more emphatic. As a singer, he represents no challenge to Frank Sinatra or Joe Williams, but his performance of September Song has some of the off-beat charm of Bunny Berigan’s long-remembered I Can’t Get Started. The violins, violas, and cellos do well by Gary McFarland’s rich and imaginative scores, which were recorded in London, but the rhythm section fails to provide the positive beat the session required.

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Down Beat : 05/18/1967
Dan Morgenstern : 3.5 stars

Most jazz horn players with a melodic bent and a good sound have eyes to record with strings – a desire often ridiculed by critics with a cultural inferiority complex. It is a natural desire, for a bed of massed strings sets off a horn like nothing else.

In the main, however, string showcases for jazzmen have been scored in a less than ideal manner. With the exception of Eddie Sauter’s truly original and creative approach on Focus (for Stan Getz), string writing on jazz albums has hardly been musically significant.

On the other hand, even ordinary writing, if discreet and designed to set off a soloist, has worked very well for such diverse artists as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Dizzy Gillespie.

This album featuring Sims with strings and French horns in a program of ballads was a good idea. Too often, Sims is taken for granted as “just” a swinger, while the lyrical, singing side of his music is ignored. He is a fine ballad player, and, as holds true in this aspect of jazz playing, he gets better as the years go by.

Unfortunately, this is not the great album it could have been, though it has its moments, and Sims is consistently warm and creative. The fault, I think, lies with Gary McFarland’s arrangements and, on monoaural at least, also with the recording. There isn’t enough presence on Sims’ sound (except on One I Could), and the arrangements too often compete with the solo voice or attract too much ear to themselves.

Further, McFarland overuses certain devices, such as bossa nova interludes or (alas) that rapidly proliferating cop-out, the fade. Among the joys of jazz versions of ballads are the cadenzas fashioned by imaginative players – Sims can come up with some great ones, but he is rarely afforded the opportunity here.

Yet he comes through, especially when occasionally left alone with only rhythm accompaniment. He is particularly on form in Rainbow, Stella, the half chorus on September, McFarland’s One I Could (where he gets into some nice modal things), and Folks.

Sims’ playing has a rare quality of unaffected sincerity and directness. He never does anything for gratuitous effect or tries to be impressive – when he plays, it’s real. His ballads are romantic, but with wistfulness and good taste that exclude sentimentality. And his remarkable time never falters.

His singing of September Song makes this album a must for Sims fans. He has sung on record before (on two long-deleted Storyville albums), but that was in 1956, and his voice has deepened a bit. No one would claim he is a great singer, but it is always interesting to hear an instrumentalist do a vocal. Here, he sings with an unpretentiousness and timbre that faintly recall Jack Teagarden – though obviously not with a similar ease and flair.

Albums featuring Sims are rare these days; therefore, this set, despite the unrealized potentials, is certainly worth hearing. If McFarland’s string writing had been up to the standard he set himself on the recent October Suite (with pianist Steve Kuhn), this album could have been an unqualified success.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

“Everybody knows Zoot as a swinger,” Gary McFarland says without overstatement. “But the people who really know and appreciate him are also aware of how persuasive he is on ballads. Zoot, you see, is a real romanticist. As all the Lester Young-inspired tenors are. And yet, although he had appeared on a few string dates, Zoot had never had a full-scale string album of his own. An album written just for him.”

The idea began on Fire Island in the summer of 1966. Zoot was visiting friends, and Gary was staying at the summer place of his manager, Norman Schwartz. It was Schwartz who set the concept going. “Zoot was so eager to do this kind of date,” Gary recalls, “that he was sure it wouldn’t happen.” Schwartz contacted Bob Thiele, who reacted favorably, and the project received the green light.

In London, on November 28 and 30, 1966, it did happen. With McFarland in charge of the scoring, Zoot stood in front of eleven violins, four violas, two celli, an English horn player doubling on oboe, three French horns, classical guitar, bass, drums, and the extraordinary British harpist, David Snell. He is a harpist who is as much at east on an intricate Charlie Parker tune as during these ballads on which he complements Zoot with flowing resourcefulness. Jack Parnell was the conductor, except for Stella by Starlight and Over the Rainbow which were directed by Kenny Napper.

The program consists of vintage ballads along with three by McFarland – Once We Loved, I Could Have Loved (from Gary’s score for the film “13”) and Does the Sun Really Shine on the Moon? (from the 1964 McFarland-Donald McKayle ballet, Reflections in the Park). The vocal on September Song is by Zoot.

McFarland’s scores are romantic without being saccharine and they reveal his growing assurance with large ensembles and diverse textures. “Knowing Zoot as well as I do,” Gary observes, “it was easy to write for him. Along with his romanticism, he can be – as he shows in a number of ways on this album – a very dramatic player. And it’s not self-conscious drama. The honesty of the man comes through directly in his music. For example, the buzz he puts on each note is similar in its effect to the emotional depth you hear in Ben Webster when he plays ballads. It’s the kind of sound that makes you shake your head and say, ‘Yeah, that’s the way it has to be!'”

There are other qualities of Zoot’s playing that are place in fresh perspective by hearing him in this ruminative context. His timing, his knowledgeable use of silence. He doesn’t fill up all the space, and this economy of conception makes these ballad performances all the more affecting because the focus is not on Zoot’s virtuosity but rather on the degree to which he can get inside these songs. Nor do I think that the poignancy of which Zoot is capable has ever been so clearly and sustainedly revealed as on these tracks.

But the core of the album, as Gary emphasizes, is the emotional truthfulness of Zoot. During his time at Fire Island that summer, I spent a couple of evenings with him. He’s unusually candid as well as warm, and I noticed furthermore that as the conversations became more and more brittle with many of those on hand trying to score debaters’ points rather than tell what they were feeling, Zoot grew increasingly restless. A few times he burst through the badinage, trying to call the talk back to basics. But that’s hard to do on Fire Island. If you want basics there, you spend your time on the beach, watching the waves and the gulls.

It was on the beach that Zoot had his most pleasurable times. One afternoon I saw him bounding long like a dolphin who had learned to gambol on land. In a way, Zoot is elemental. What he loves, like playing, he loves totally. And he tries to avoid being distracted by people or events or avocations that do not engage his emotions fully.

The quality of Zoot – a rare simplicity in a guarded time – is what makes this so personal a ballad collection. Instead of filigree work and overelaborate chord-conjugating, Zoot tried simply to let these songs become extensions of him – his memories, desires, regrets, anticipations. He is, as Gary says, a romantic. But it is not a Sturm und Drang kind of romanticism. He is more serene. Not entirely serene, because there is a sense of loss as well as of love in these performances. But basically Zoot is a romanticist who takes life pretty much as it is, not brooding too long over what’s gone and being rather sanguine about what’s ahead.

As a result, his ballad playing here doesn’t weep or sigh. It’s resilient even when it’s rueful, and it’s full of life. That’s what Zoot is all about. Life. Both as an instant swinger and as a romanticist unafraid of his feelings.