Cashbox : 03/09/1957

The jazz of Shorty Rogers and His Giants is employed in this Victor issue in musically analyzing five winds. In the process, Rogers and his four other colleagues kick up several storms of their own (Hurricane Carol) and/or smoothly ride the state of weather (The Chinook That Melted My Heart). Such stellar jazz names as Jimmy Giuffre (sax and clarinet), Lou Levy (piano), Ralph Peña (bass) and Larry Bunker (drums) form Rogers’ expert support. Some of the most imaginative and slickest jazz tricks in quite a while.

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Fort Lauderdale News (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Don L. McIver : 03/10/1957

The Shorty Rogers Quintet is featured in a new RCA Victor album (LPM-1326), Wherever the Five Winds Blow, and the music is just as breezy as the title and the somewhat unusual album cover. The quintet is the same that Rogers took to Chicago, Detroit and eastern cities in 1955-56. It’s made up of Rogers on trumpet (and sometimes on flugelhorn); Jimmy Giuffre, clarinet and sax; Lou Levy, piano; Ralph Peña, bass, and Larry Bunker, drums. All five are famous in musical circles in their own right.

Hurricane Carol, a wild tribute to all types of violent winds, kicks off the album and features some tasteful solos by Rogers, Giuffre and Levy. Breezin’ Along in the Trades is a slow jump, “bluesy”-type tune that spotlights Giuffre’s rather breathless clarinet, Rogers’ trumpet, Levy’s piano and even Peña’s string bass.

Next comes a deceptively mild medium jump tune, Marooned in a Monsoon, with the same soloists, rather short compared to the other numbers, but nice for listening.

The Chinook That Melted My Heart isn’t quite as interesting as the title and neither is the medium jump finale, Prevailing on the Westerlies.

Although the album is excellent as far as the jazz played (and the musicianship) is concerned, it can get rather boring before it reaches the end. In this reviewer’s opinion, this is a cumulative effect. The recording is another in a long series of jazz albums, all played by fine musicians, that are long, stereotyped (one chorus of melody, four or five choruses of solos, and a supposedly slam-bang finish) and dull. The jazz fan who buys one or two of the albums is satisfied, perhaps; but he who buys them all is bound to be bored somewhere along the way. After all, it is said, variety is the spice of life.

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Jazz Monthly (UK)
Charles Fox : 10/1957

This record only comes alive when Lou Levy takes a solo. Incisive, economical, at times a little like Hampton Hawes, Levy creates music that has shape and coherence. The same can hardly be said of Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre, a couple of doodlers if ever there were. Rogers’ trumpet-playing is timorous to the point of cowardice, his solos one long procrastination. I seem to remember I once compared Giuffre’s clarinet-playing with that of Pee Wee Russell and Lester Young; I was right about the tone but nothing else.

T. S. Eliot used to be called “Ole Possum” by his friends because he “just lay low and said nuffin’.” Giuffre seems to have caught the habit too. He stays obstinately in lower-register, stonewalling as stubbornly as Trevor Bailey. A little enterprise seeps in when he picks up the tenor saxophone, though not much. What dreary, featureless music this is; mixed-up but scarcely crazy.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 04/28/1957

Balance is often the key to success with combo jazz. You’ll find a tendency to overload the name player in some long-play albums, especially in quartet music. Put a horn man with a rhythm section and too often the only variation you’ll get is use of a mute.

For a well balanced quintet, try Shorty Rogers and his giants on Wherever the Winds Blow (RCA Victor LPM 1326). The four giants are Jimmy Giuffre, clarinet and sax; Larry Bunker, drums; Lou Levy, piano, and Ralph Peña on bass.

The trumpet leads, but doesn’t dominate as the group swings easily through five Rogers originals. Giuffre has some excellent choruses. Bass and piano counterpoint is another strong point to this imaginative album.

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Music World
Helen McNamara : 07/15/1957

Just how far record companies are stretching their imaginations to find unique ways of presenting their wares is aptly illustrated in Victor’s Wherever the Five Winds Blow.

It is, in fact, such an exquisite example of the fine art of album note writing that I could hardly bring myself to listen to the record itself. Somehow the music diminishes in importance when one reads such enlightening statements as this: “For this album, Shorty Rogers quite deliberately turned meteorologist. And he did it without changing his style of anything…” (Shorty Rogers a meteorologist? I thought he was a flugelhornist.)

The album note writer then continues: “The meteorologist instructed me to include the following explanatory notes.” Some of them follow: “Until comparatively recent times the movement of air was a mystery. However, while we know a great deal about winds and what they do, we are still not able to predict faithfully what they will do next. Around the Equator, extending from a hundred…” etc., etc., etc.

I could go on but I might spoil your weekend reading. Instead, here is the closing paragraph: “Such is the nature of the winds and this, in effect is Shorty Rogers’ adventure into the atmosphere. … a stunning musical salute to everywhere that the five winds blow.”

It is then that the collector can clear up the mystery of the titles, whose meaning, if he hadn’t read the liner notes, could easily have eluded him. They are: Hurricane Carol, Breezin’ Along in the Trades, Marooned in a Monsoon, The Chinook That Melted My Heart and Prevailing on the Westerlies.

The odd part of it is that Shorty and his men—Jimmy Giuffre, Lou Levy, Ralph Peña and Larry Bunker—sound exactly as they do under any other circumstances. They have turned out lightly swinging, compact arrangements, with good enough solos. None of them though is as exciting as the titles. Whatever this music has to do with the five winds, in fact, is all strictly accidental.

One thing, though, an album, such as this, does prove one point. The writers are showing more imagination than the musicians.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 04/28/1957

Wherever the Five Winds Blow marks the return to this label of Shorty Rogers, one of the important figures in jazz on the West Coast. His five originals have such names as Hurricane Carol and Marooned in a Monsoon, hence the album title. Shorty’s associates are Jimmy Giuffre, Lou Levy, Ralph Peña, and Larry Bunker. Rogers is in fine form, Giuffre’s clarinet playing maintains its distinctiveness and Levy’s piano work is some of his best yet. The album notes are worthless, so far as the music is concerned.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 06/09/1957

It was probably a very good thing for jazz when RCA Victor snatched Shorty Rogers from the smaller labels where he had been working and set him up in business as, in a fashion, their maestro of modern jazz.

For one thing, Shorty is one of those rare musicians who can go commercial without losing his fine jazz feeling. For another thing, Shorty takes with him a flock of the West Coast’s really fine jazzmen and sets them in a showcase where they can be displayed to those who may not be entirely hep to the intricacies of modern jazz, but who are least susceptible. For still another thing, Shorty makes more records that way and every Rogers record is in some way a delight.

All of these things, and perhaps some more, can be derived from the two most recent Rogers releases by RCA Victor — The Shorty Rogers Express, on which he shows how modern jazz sounds in a big band setting, and Wherever the Five Winds Blow, where he appears with the quintet. On the first set are men like Bob Cooper with his tenor, Johnny Graas with his French horn, Bud Shank, Shelly Manne, plus about four other unnamed trumpets, a full sax section, etc. On the second are Rogers, Giuffre, Lou Levy, Ralph Peña and Larry Bunker.

The “Five Winds” album, incidentally, has probably the most inane album notes ever written.

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The Record Changer
Larry Gushee : March, 1957

Jimmy Giuffre continues his campaign to make the clarinet sound like a bastard saxophone (would that be a bastard to the second power?).

The album swings lightly in a well-worn groove. Both horn men tend to fall into a highly redundant, stylized way of playing on up tempos (Hurricane). This is particularly true of Giuffre; either his fingers or his mind is uncomfortable with the faster tempos. Then his phrases become short winded and show no particular pattern or musical logic.

In contrast, the slow bands such as the minor blues Breezing and Prevailing (a reincarnation of Walk, Don’t Run) are more representative of the best features of Rogers and Giuffre. Shorty’s rather “flah” sound seems to fit better with these more moderate tempos, and Giuffre plays nice things over a solo bass line on Chinook.

The rhythm section is steady and subdued throughout, with Ralph Pena playing particularly well.

A neatly composed photo of Shorty and his cohort decorates the front of the album, while scholarly notes explaining the hocus-pocus titles take up the back. The meteorological explanations are perhaps as interesting as the contents of the album.

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Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
Paul Sampson : 03/17/1957

Another excellent Victor LP is Wherever the Five Winds Blow (LPM-1326), by the Shorty Rogers Quintet, which includes Jimmy Giuffre, Lou Levy, Ralph Peña and Larry Bunker, playing five extended compositions by Rogers.

The unison passages of Giuffre’s clarinet and Rogers’ trumpet are very well done, and the group plays well together. Giuffre and Levy, who plays better in a group than as a leader, take excellent solos, notably on The Chinook That Melted My Heart, the title of the year.

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Wichita Falls Times (Wichita Falls, TX)
Bob Herdien : 03/03/1957

Modernists can get their charge from Shorty Rogers’ Wherever the Five Winds Blow (RCA Victor – LPM-1326) that features the bearded one plus Jimmy Giuffre, Ralph Peña, Larry Bunker and matchless Lou Levy on piano. All five tunes—if you want to so regard ’em—are Rogers originals. It’s the same swingin’ outfit Shorty employed on tour last year and the platter is tastefully done.

Especially on Breezin’ Along in the Trades is the Rogers horn at its utmost. He displays exceptional taste and finesse and doesn’t try to shatter the highball glasses on your bar. Warning—for progressives, only!

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Down Beat : 04/04/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

Shorty’s first LP for Victor after the Atlantic interim is mostly a blowing session. Shorty himself plays well, with a consistent feeling for form and supple beat. Giuffre is at his best on his shy but warmly expressive clarinet. His two tracks on tenor are capable but not nearly as distinctive as is his clarinet.

The rhythm section is well integrated with Levy’s solos the most burning of the date. Lou attacks the piano with a percussive, blues-driven force (for all his harmonic modernity) that is a head-shaking gas. His pungent chordal sense also underlines the striking musical personality Lou projects. The originals are all Shorty’s, and the two most attractive tracks are the easy-rolling Trades and the somewhat faster Chinook.

I don’t know why Shorty allows himself to be tangled in silly titles and equally silly programmatic ideas like this one. The liner notes, for example, consist of an essay on winds from doldrums to hurricanes. The trend toward covers that have no relation with the music inside has now apparently extended to the backside, and it is Victor’s dubious distinction now to have pioneered in wholly meaningless jazz liners. Better he should have told how hastily the date was made. These criticisms of packaging, by the way, never affect the rating in any of our reviews. The rating is determined only by the music.

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Liner Notes by Roy Morse

In no sense whatsoever has Milton “Shorty” Rogers ever been known heretofore as a windy fellow. He blows trumpet (flugelhorn sometimes) with finesse, taste and feeling rather than with any effort to shatter glass windows; his mannerisms are gentle and exceedingly mellow, while his conversation is soft and generally as lazy as the Mississippi. “Shorty” may well be the only truly southern gentleman from Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

For this album, however, “Shorty” Rogers quite deliberately turned meteorologist. And he did it without changing his style of anything. Here is the same mellifluous and tastefully swinging group that “Shorty” took with him last year when he played engagements in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. The themes for improvisation—for such they are—are original compositions by that same Mr. Rogers, who is ever unpredictable and may yet venture into a Coda for Water Skiers While Being Towed by the Lone Ranger. So be it. The meteorologist instructed me to include the following explanatory notes. (The music itself is beautifully explanatory and none of the players need introduction, for all are rightfully famous.)

The Bible will tell you: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” Until comparatively recent times that was quite true—the movement of air was a mystery. Now, however, while we know a great deal about winds and what they do, we are still not able to predict faithfully what they will do next. Around the Equator, extending from a hundred to several hundred miles wide, is a belt of calms, known as doldrums, usually overcast with moisture clouds which have been pushed there by the trade winds. On either side of the doldrums are the southeast and northeast trades. Here the skies are bright, the air is clear, and the wind is generally fresh and steady. The word “trade” originally meant a path or beaten track; hence the trade winds are winds that always blow in the same direction. The poleward limits of the trades to both north and south are about latitude 30, but the trade winds have been felt as far northward as latitude 40 on the eastern side of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The actual heart of the trades is the South Indian Ocean, where they have their greatest strength.

The calms of Cancer and Capricorn, known as horse latitudes, are at the poleward limits of the trade winds. North and south respectively of these calm belts are the regions of what are called the prevailing westerlies. About these Joseph Conrad once wrote: “The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty south of the equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank, barbarous recklessness. For he is a great autocrat, and to be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.”

Two supreme factors are involved in the motion of the winds—the rotation of the earth and the inequalities in the heating of its atmosphere. Everyone knows that land heats and cools more rapidly than water; thus the land is colder in winter and hotter in summer than the lake, sea or ocean near it, and it follows that land is also cooler at night than water and warmer by day. These seasonal differences are so great in Asia as to cause the celebrated monsoons, which blow from land to sea in winter and from sea to land in summer. The dry or winter monsoon is the product of cold northwest winds blowing over Asia from a high pressure area in northern Siberia; the wet, summer monsoon occurs because the heated air over the land rises and cooler winds heavy with moisture from the Indian Ocean drift in to take its place, ever giving forth huge torrents of rain.

There are, of course, irregular winds, localized in many instances, but still of such importance as to carry their own particular names. Such a wind is the chinook, which blows down the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, compression-heating it during its descent so that it melts snow and often withers vegetation. Then there is the hurricane, about which too much and yet too little is known. The hurricane is the blockbuster.

Hurricane Carol—a tribute by Rogers to all storms everywhere—hit Long Island and eastern New England with practically no warning whatsoever on August 30, 1954. It was a terror. Striking inland, the wind reached a velocity of 105 miles per hour at Providence, 100 miles per hour at Boston, and 78 miles per hour at Portland, Maine. Hurricane Carol had more tales to tell than Rip Van Winkle, bowling over trees and houses, wrecking powerlines, piling up boats, and generally acting terribly like an atom bomb on the loose. It is now conceded that Hurricane Carol was the most costly storm ever, doing over $500,000,000 worth of damage, including the toppling of the famous Old North Church steeple in Boston, from whence Paul Revere was reputed to have seen “one if by land and two if by sea.”

Such is the nature of the winds, and this, in effect, is “Shorty” Rogers’ adventure into the atmosphere—a stunning musical salute to everywhere that the five winds blow.