Madison Capital Times (Madison, WI)
John Francis : 04/26/1957

To the Ivy League from Nat is the name of a new EmArcy album; strictly jazz. “Nat” is the cornet-playing member of the Adderley family. His brother, Julian Cannonball, perhaps is better known for his alto sax style, marked by a terrific beat.

With four friends, the Adderleys, hardly around a year in the big-time, ramble from No. 251 to Hayseed, with such stops as Jackleg, Fat Man, Sermonette, Bimini, Sam’s Tune and Rattler’s Groove in between. Nat gets the best solo spots and does neat justice to the opportunities. Aiders and abetters, other than Cannonball, are Junior Mance, piano; Charley Wright, drums, and Sam Jones and Al McKibbon, bass.

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Metronome
Bill Coss : July 1957

To the Ivy League from Nat Adderley (EmArcy MG 36100): with brother Julian, Junior Mance, Sam Jones or Al McKibbon and Charles Wright; arrangements by Ernie Wilkins. (Sam Jones plays cello on one track—he swings but his intonation is uneven.) The Adderley’s group now has all the strength of a group which has travelled together for some time—an ease with repertoire and with one another. The music is neo-bop, sometimes a bit shrieking when it means to wail. Otherwise, it is in familiar performance: Julian is very well recognized by now; Nat is steadily developing-but both remain largely derivative. Several of the tracks are in the Preacher’s groove-one much favored today (most times without the knowledge of what preachers customarily talk about) and with two-beat accenting; of these, Sermonette is the most attractive. Watch for the funny ending on Nearness.

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

For a hot blast, try To the Ivy League from Nat Adderley (EmArcy MG 36100). The cornetist and brother Cannonball from Fort Lauderdale are joined by Junior Mance on piano and Charles Wright on drums. Bass duty is split by Al McKibbon and Sam Jones.

I prefer the quintet on the blue side, as in The Fat Man which is a Jerome Richardson tribute to hefty Cannonball and his alto sax. It’s a rocking album throughout; on the gutty side.

Of local interest is Nat’s original, Rattler’s Groove, a salute to the old alma mater. It will remind you of Blue Bird of Happiness, that Jan Peerce cornball.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 05/05/1957

There may be something esoteric about the title but there certainly isn’t about the music; it’s practically all swinging funk. The Nat of the title is Nat Adderley and his associates (except on four of the nine numbers on which Al McKibbon replaces Sam Jones on bass) are members of brother Cannonball’s Quintet. Recommended for its excitement and vitality.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 05/11/1957

The Adderley brothers, Nat and Julian “Cannonball,” intend to maintain the traditions of mid-Forties modern. They operate quite capably, but as with others with much the same intentions, stylistically it comes out current, Café Bohemia “funky” blowing, à la Messengers, “hard-boppers,” etc. And Horace Silver’s work seems a major influence here. Any artist begins as an imitator of his predecessors, but suppose his purpose is to remain one? And can he in what is primarily a performer’s medium?

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Down Beat : 05/02/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 4 stars

The title of this album seems to be some sort of intramural ploy, as though Bobby Shad were trying to one-up Norman Granz in irrelevant titles. The music, however, is neither irrelevant nor an overt attempt to be one up on anybody. It is a straight-from-the-heart swinging session in which delicacy may suffer but robustness of soul and the excitement of swing carry it all through extraordinarily well.

Quincy Jones refers to Cannonball as “the wholesaler dealer in funk.” If this is true, a great deal of it has rubbed off on brother Nat and on the entire group. This is, except on the sides with McKibbon, the Adderleys’ current group. Funk is the key to Mance’s piano solos, to Cannonball’s wailing statements and to the rank-chank of the rhythm section.

Nat is far from being an outstanding soloist in his own right, but placed alongside Cannonball, whom he grooves with, the end result is excellent.

Cannonball for his part, is such a tremendous music personality that he cannot be denied. He may speak in the tongue of Bird, but he speaks as an individual. He has the same ability to interject the blues feeling into anything (witness his second chorus on Nearness of You) and an ability to direct the group into a delicious groove, as particularly exemplified by Jerome Richardson’s Fat Man.

There are numerous criticisms to be made of this album; there are fluffs galore, the bass sounds muddy, the cello on Sam’s Tune seems to me to throw open the question of whether anyone but Pettiford should ever play jazz cello, and there is the entire subject, pro and con, of quoting.

But in any event, the glorious swinging freedom and the pure friendliness of this group’s music transcends all these minor points to make it a thoroughly enjoyable album.

There is a curious point about Jackleg. Written by ex-Gillespie trombonist Sam Hurt, it is a modern version of My Daddy Rocks Me with One Steady Roll, originally recorded by Jimmy Noone with Earl Hines or his alter ego on piano.

In the original version, Hines strove mightily to escape from the muddy waters of the down home blues idiom to a distillation of the blues. In this version, some 30 years later, Mance goes back to rent flat and Jook Joint. A curious thing.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

The Adderley brothers have had a career on records that is not much more than a year old, yet in that time they have shown an amazing musical potential, expanding both in public recognition and in their own musical capabilities.

Nat Adderley, in particular, seems to have matured considerably as the result of a confidence acquired during the first few months playing in the big-time jazz circles of Basin Street and The Bohemia. As his brother Julian puts it, “Nat has discovered he is more capable than he realized himself; his range is expanding and there are moments when he sure sounds like Clifford Brown.”

This new set of Adderley performances marks the first appearance on records of the actual group with which they have been playing the night clubs lately. Their regular touring personnel consists of Nat and Julian plus Junior Mance on piano, Charles Wright on drums and Sam Jones on bass. Al McKibbon, best known as a member of the George Shearing quintet for the past several years, is the bassist on Number 251, Sam’s Tune, The Fat Man and The Nearness of You.

Number 251, which opens the set, is a happy-sounding original written especially for the group by Jackie Byard, a pianist and tenor saxophonist who works with Herb Pomeroy’s group in Boston. Solos by Nat, Cannonball and Mance.

Sam’s Tune is a simple blues, starting with four bars of riffing that are then repeated a fourth higher. A surprise arrives in the shape of a cello, played by Sam Jones. Though he has only had about a year’s experience in the pizzicato jazz cello approach, Sam reveals here that Oscar Pettiford may have a serious competitor in the near future.

Bimini, a haunting minor theme written by Nat, is named for an island in the Bahamas where the Adderleys used to go deep-sea fishing. Again, alto, trumpet and piano are featured in the solo roles.

The Fat Man was composed by Jerome Richardson, the saxophonist and flutist well known in New York jazz circles and heard as a soloist on several EmArcy long plays. Naturally it is named for Cannonball, who establishes the minor riff theme, with its two-beat feel, while Mance gaily fills the gaps between phrases. Nat is particularly effective in his muted solo here.

Sermonette, which concludes the first side, has a “churchy” theme representative of what might be called the “modernized ancient” school of jazz composition, of which Horace Silver’s The Preacher was an earlier example. Again the rhythm has a gently rocking two-beat accent with Jones’ bass as an effective underline.

Jackleg, a 16-bar minor theme played in unison by the two horns, was written by Samuel Hurt, a trombonist who used to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. A jackleg preacher is one who has no church of his own, but walks around preaching on street corners. You can hear this flavor both in the melody and the construction, which uses breaks on the middle four bars, along the antique but perennial lines established in the early jazz days by such tunes as How Come You Do Me Like You Do? Mance sounds very Horace Silverish in his excellent solo here, and Jones’ eloquent bass precedes the final fading theme.

The Nearness of You, a Hoagy Carmichael standard, opens with a melodic Cannonball solo. Nat improvises in a peppery, multi-noted style; Wright doubles the rhythm while the bass retains the original slow tempo. Toward the end, Cannonball and Nat indulge in a little family fun with a quote from Alouette and generally satirical atmosphere that reminds us of the Adderleys’ always latent sense of humor, a welcome element in any jazzman’s personality.

Rattler’s Groove, another original by Nat, was named, we were told “after our college football team. The team’s mascot was a rattlesnake and they called us the Florida Rattlers.” This is a boppish opus in which Julian, Nat and the other Julian are very much at ease; Wright gets a solo spot in the bridge of the last chorus.

Hayseed is another “kidding on the square” composition, at bright tempo — “We tried to depict country, folk-type themes” explains Cannonball. The rhythm section, as it has in the entire album, really wails throughout this consistently swinging performance.

We feel sure that if you have met the Adderley brothers on one of their many successful night club engagements, you will be happy to find them preserved intact on records and reacquaint yourselves with them on these sides. Of course, if the long play marks your first encounter with the jazz contributions of this outstanding quintet, we hope the situation will apply in reverse by leading you to your local bistro the next time they pass through town.