Billboard : 09/08/1958
Two stars

Eddie Davis turns in some driving, pounding work on tenor on this new release, ably assisted by Shirley Scott on organ and Jerry Richardson on flute. His wildest sides are Have Horn, Will Blow, and Three Deuces, and he turns in some softer work on But Beautiful and a pretty blues, The Chef. Davis fans will enjoy his cooking on this new release and especially the performance of Miss Scott.

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Audio Magazine
Charles A. Robertson : December, 1958

The principal staple from the Davis kitchen is the blues served in all tempos, shapes, sizes and flavors, with a choice ballad as specialty of the house. A self-taught musician, he collected recipes not conveniently reduced to the printed page, while jousting with a long line of tenor saxists during a decade spent in numerous bands. In 1952, Basie engaged him as featured soloist, an association renewed on last year’s tour of Europe and currently at the Count’s club where his trio is the main attraction. His partners are Shirley Scott, a 24-year-old electronic organist whose emulation of Jimmy Smith is fresh and feminine, and Arthur Edgehill on drums.

For this banquet, Jerome Richardson is added on flute by way of leavening, along with George Duvivier’s well-seasoned bass. But Beautiful, a tender tune previously recorded by Davis and rapidly becoming his trademark, finds him intent on developing a phrase with the care of a Herschel Evans and the rich, full tone of a Coleman Hawkins. He keeps his blues basic and goes to the heart of the matter, revealing an insight possessed by few younger practitioners. Richardson switches to tenor sax for a series of bright exchanges on Three Deuces.

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Cleveland Call and Post (Cleveland, OH)
Bob Snead : 05/16/1959

Eddie Davis or “Lockjaw” as he is sometimes called isn’t going to be remembered as one of jazz’s great influences. We think his aim is to get the swingingest sound possible out of his horn. This he does, even if it means sacrificing a portion of the tonal quality.

Until recently we have made no attempt to hide the fact that we were slightly annoyed at certain squawks that emanated from his horn. On several occasions we have stated that ‘Lock’ who blows such sweet ballads should stick to that endeavor. During recent weeks we have reevaluated and capitulated. We don’t think we’d want Eddie to cease and desist.

That Eddie is a “mainstreamer” is no denying, but somewhat like Webster and Hawkins he has managed to move with the times. He began his career in the middle of the swing era playing with such bands as
Cootie Williams, Andy Kirk, Lucky Millender, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie. It was his seat in the Basie band that, you might say gained him recognition. We might add that prior to that time (1952) Eddie had gained considerable experience with small combos of his own. The year with Basie gave him not only recognition but confidence. Leaving Basie he once again fronted small combos and made recordings with various bands and small groups. One of his earliest being with Bennie Green on Prestige (7023).

In 1955 he teamed up with Shirley Scott a swinging young organist who was barely out of her teens, George Duvivier a bassist, and Arthur Edgehill a drummer. Their association together has been uninterrupted with the exception of an engagement Eddie did with Basie at Birdland for four months in 1957.

Today the Eddie Davis Trio is one of the outstanding small combos in jazz. It is said that he is a wonderful person to work with, and that would seem to be true since his present group has remained faithful to him over, what might be called, a long time in jazz. Although the featured attraction he has never failed to allow room for “Wowing” by other members of his group. He, more than anyone else besides Shirley is responsible for her recognition as one of the two best jazz organists of the day.

His two latest releases are Cookbook Prestige 7141 and Eddie Davis Trio — Roulette R52019.

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Down Beat : 12/25/1958
John A. Tynan : 4 stars

To avoid using our beloved word “funky” in a review of this album is not only impossible—it is unthinkable. And one must be prepared to take the set for what it is: a living, throbbing example of unadulterated funk in the most honorably basic tradition of booting jazz. The musicians involved in this mudlark gambol apparently couldn’t have been having a better time.

Lovers of the cerebral and experimental in jazz probably will look down their persnickety noses at Jaws’ rough-hewn blowing on Have as well as that of the other wailer. He does not fool around, this gentleman. He blows with everything inside him behind his playing.

Fortunately, Davis also has four supporting musicians of like persuasion. Shirley Scott plays outstanding jazz organ, modern yet rooted deep in the blues and with ample technique to implement her wide-ranging imagination. (Her sudden interpolation of whistling high treble in the solo on the slow blues, Kitchen, is just great.)

Richardson, one of the most able flutists in jazz—and a tenor man of no mean ability, too—is less rowdy than Jaws, but he more than holds his own in a series of solos revealing his polished, almost glib flute style.

Duvivier and Edgehill make a well-nigh perfect rhythm team. The former’s time, taste, and full-blooming tone can serve as an example to the youngsters on the instrument. The drummer is crisp, swinging, and unobtrusively efficient.

But Beautiful is just that, setting off Davis’ foundation in Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. This track is the more effective coming after the two opening rompers and concluding the first side.

The weakest track is the too-frantic Have Horn. From Bar 1 it tears along at the highest pitch, so that there’s no place to go but down.

A very good album because of a) Jaws, b) Scott, and c) Duvivier. But let’s have some more ballads by this big man on tenor.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Since the Swing era, when Harlem was a real hot-bed of jazz, there has been present a certain kind of music, a type of popular jazz compounded from the large Swing bands, the “jump” bands and the fly, little combos which formed the best of what later became known as rhythm and blues. Actually, rhythm and blues was a new title that replaced the offensive labels of “race records” or “sepia series”. All three names designated a music which was the popular one with the general Negro public, especially the urban portion. I might add that rock & roll contains the worst characteristics of rhythm and blues combined with synthetic hillbilly music and the worst syrup of Tin Pan Alley.

The best of rhythm and blues, however, has always been within the mainstream of jazz and is a happy, swinging, bluesy kind of music which contains both humor and warmth.

Although Harlem is no longer a hot-bed of jazz in the true sense of that term, there are still things happening uptown. Count Basie’s (132nd & 7th) has been the recent home of the Eddie Davis group featuring Shirley Scott at the organ. With drummer Arthur Edgehill they have brightened Basie’s casements on a regular basis since January of 1958.

For this first culinary session, the first chapter of the Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Cookbook, two additional chefs, Jerome Richardson and George Duvivier, have been added to the kitchen staff. In the case of this broth, the cooks are not too many.

Eddie Davis is what you could call a natural musician for he never took a lesson in his life; not one that he didn’t administer himself, anyway. When Eddie decided he wanted to play the saxophone, he bought one second-hand and with it an instruction book which he studied from diligently for eight months. At the end of this period, he played his first job at Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, one of the first bastions of modern jazz. Starting in 1942, when he joined Cootie Williams, Eddie was with several bands including Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk and Louis Armstrong and also worked with his own combo af Minton’s, the other incubator of modern jazz in Harlem. Later in the Forties, he was heard on 52nd Street and similar clubs in other Eastern cities with his own groups. It remained for a year as featured tenorman with Count Basie’s orchestra (1952-53) to really establish him. Afterwards, he worked as a single with various local rhythm sections until February of 1955 when he formed an alliance with Shirley Scott. Outside of a European trip and Birdland engagement with Basie (October 1957 to New Year’s Day 1958) by Eddie, the group has stayed intact. Eddie feels that the organ is not a novelty instrument when in the right hands and that it can be utilized in jazz.

The girl who is helping him prove this is a native Philadelphian, age 24, named Shirley Scott. Scottie, as she is known, started on piano at the age of six and studied at the Germantown Settlement House and later at the Ornstein School. Her organ career began in 1955, the same year she became allied with Eddie. Together, they have appeared at Birdland, Basie’s, theatres like the Apollo and the Howard and clubs in Philadelphia and Washington. When I asked her who her favorites on organ and piano were, she responded with Jimmy Smith and Jackie Davis on the former: Erroll Garner, Red Garland and Thelonious Monk on the latter. I believe you will hear the affinity for Garner quite strongly in several places. Of the group, Scottie says, “Playing with Eddie is a pleasure and not a job at all.”

Jerome Richardson is one the most talented and versatile reedmen in jazz. Born in Oakland, California, he started in music, as a professional, at the age of 14. In the Navy, from 1942 to 1945, he played in a band under the direction of Marshall Royal. After his discharge, he worked around the San Francisco area but left with Lionel Hampton (1949-51) and again with Earl Hines (1954-55). Then he migrated to New York where he worked with two of the bands Eddie Davis had been with ten years earlier, Cootie Williams and Lucky Millinder. Like Eddie, he also had his own group at Minton’s. From 1956, until the new screen ousted the stage shows, he was in the pit band at the Roxy Theatre. Jerome who plays clarinet, alto sax, tenor sax and flute, has become well known on the silvered cylinder. He names Parker, Stitt and Getz as his favorite saxophonists and Frank Wess as his preference on flute.

Bassist George Duvivier is a musicians’ musician who is also a talented arranger. He studied violin first at the Conservatory of Music and Art in his native New York and composing and arranging at New York University. In the Forties he worked with Coleman Hawkins and Lucky Millinder. From 1942-45 he was in the Army and thereafter arranged for Jimmy Lunceford for a couple of years. George has been in the accompanying units for many singers in the Fifties including Nellie Lutcher, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Billy Eckstine. He also worked with the groups of Bud Powell and Chuck Wayne among others. He has expressed a liking for the playing of Jimmy Blanton and Ray Brown. His precise, yet powerful, work gives credence to this line of thought.

Drummer Arthur Edgehill was with Horace Silver at Minton’s in 1954, Kenny Dorham’s Jazz Prophets in 1956 and the Jazz Lab group of Gigi Gryce before joining Davis in January of 1958. Stylistically he is descendant from the Roach-Clarke-Blakey mold.

The fast riff blues, Have Horn, Will Blow is the opener. “Lockjaw” begins followed by “Scottie” and Jerome (what no sobriquet?) creeps in with just bass and drums backing him. Then Shirley melts in lightly. Duvivier has a walking solo and Eddie returns before the finale.

A medium riff blues with a minor flavor is The Chef, which, like the preceding number, is a Davis recipe. “Jaws” again is first with Shirley booting him along. She follows with a single-line and block chord solo. A mellow Richardson leads back to Eddie and the out riff.

But Beautiful is as the title indicates. Eddie, who has named Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Herschel Evans as his three favorite tenormen, balladizes here in a way reminiscent of the Don Byas-Lucky Thompson section of Hawkinsville. Jerome is next; then a Garnerized Scott. Eddie closes as beautifully as he began with Jerome commenting underneath.

The second side contains two more from the Davis menu.

In The Kitchen is a slow blues started by the rhythm section and a lengthy Scott mood setter which gives Eddie a rousing sendoff at its end. Jerome is next, sometimes sounding like a junglebird and George has a melodic solo before Shirley takes it on a fade-out.

A dedication to 52nd Street and one of its many defunct clubs is Three Deuces, which features a tenor joust between Eddie and Jerome. Their solos, in that order, are divided by an offering from Shirley. Then they trade eight bars apiece for a chorus and four bars apiece in the next chorus until Duvivier takes the bridge and the ensemble finishes the last eight. Davis and Richardson appear in the same order in the exchanges.