Billboard : 08/19/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

Excellent small band session with traditional overtones fired by trumpeter Braff, who has never sounded better. Great degree of set’s impact is due to emotional quality of the blowing and strong yet tasty rhythmic support all the way. Such names as C. Hawkins, D. Elliott, L. Brown should arouse interest of jazz browser. If shown, both traditional and more modern fans could be sold.

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Cashbox : 09/21/1957

The jazzist offers twelve sessions on standards which reflect an eclectic approach equally at home in Basin Street or the modern jazz idiom. Braff’s work produces clear tones, and a melodically inclined attack. Various combo make-ups include as personnel Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax); Nat Pierce (piano); and Don Elliott (vibraphone). Reliable jazz waxing.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX)
Jack Butler : 12/08/1957

For those who like their jazz hotly swinging-may their tribe increase-Ruby Braff seems to be the mostly likely candidate to carry the banner.

Earlier this year Braff did an album for Epic that has been well up on jazz polls of the best for 1957. Now he comes along on an RCA-Victor album with a performance that certainly should at least follow in the footsteps of the earlier recording.

RCA-Victor entitles this one Hi-Fi Salute to Bunny by Ruby Braff and his Men. The men are such jazz notables as Nat Pierce on piano, Pee Wee Russell on clarinet, Buzzy Drootin on drums, Walter Page on bass, Benny Morton on trombone, Steve Jordan on guitar and Dick Hafer on tenor sax.

The idea behind the album is that it salutes the late Bunny Berigan, playing some of his more famous successes. Berigan, who poured beautiful music out of his trumpet and too much alcohol out of bottles and died of cirrhosis of the liver at 31, did some notable work with the Dorseys, Norvo, Goodman, Miller, etc.

In the days of great swinging bands, he was a top-notch trumpet with a tremendous facility- and a fine sense of swing.

The album cover emphasizes Braff does not necessarily have the same style-but that he can and does swing. Add to Braff the fact that Russell and Morton have played many a lick with Berigan, and it turns out to be a big salute, at that. Anyway, the three of them, backed by that fine rhythm section, do some happy work on It’s Been So Long, I’m Coming Virginia (just great), I Got It Bad, Downhearted Blues, Marie.

This kind of music is what I remember when some of the modern jazz men perform with their tremendous technical proficiency – and little feeling. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way you do it.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : November 1957

Braff, a performer of rare and heartening consistency during his short career on records, here produces his soundest and most satisfying disc yet. Over a light, bright, and swinging beat, his mellow, lyric trumpet, open-belled or with a variety of mutes, floats through equally mellow tunes — Just One More Chance, Blue Turning Grey Over You, How Long Has This Been Going On. There’s variety here, too, for Braff is heard with three different groups – two small ensembles, in one of which he receives the stimulating backing of Freddie Green’s rhythm guitar while the other is enlivened by some of Dave McKenna’s churning piano solos. A larger group includes Coleman Hawkins, Lawrence Brown, and Ernie Caceres. It’s all excellent, meaty, middle-ground jazz.

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Jazz Today
Bill Coss : November 1957

12 tracks with varying personnel including Coleman Hawkins, Lawrence Brown, Don Elliott, Dave McKenna, Nat Pierce, Freddie Green, Eddie Jones and Buzzy Drootin. As Charles Edward Smith’s intelligent album notes put it: “… basically jazz, not basic jazz or traditional jazz or any other fashion of past or present…” Despite the publicized iconoclasm of leader and group, however, that it is only jazz and not otherwise identifiable, it is securely and happily tied to the music prior to bop; tied, particularly to Armstrong, Berigan and Basie no matter what short combination of ensemble or solo notes might surprise you into thinking otherwise. In any case, it is a delightful jazz album with good playing all around, especially by Ruby, Hawk, McKenna, Pierce, Brown and vibist Elliott who plays remarkably like Hampton here.

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Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO)
R.K.S. : 09/08/1957

Trumpeter Ruby Braff and his All-Stars do some highly successful swinging on a new Epic album called Braff!!. The mood of this music is relaxed and mellow. The style is pure swing. It isn’t particularly modern and no one seems to get very excited. It’s just solid swing, something on the order of those fine, old John Kirby numbers. Due to an error in cover printing, I can’t report who the members of the All-Stars are, but I can say that there is some good piano, vibes and baritone sax on these sides. Some of the tunes are Moonglow, How Long Has This Been Going On? and ‘S Wonderful.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 01/05/1958

Even the landlady likes his trumpet playing. That’s a private joke until you see the cover photo of an album Epic calls simply Braff!! (LN-3377). It’s one of those albums that appears to have been put together casually. But the result is a studied success. Ruby Braff heads out with three groups on a dozen tracks, nine of them on the standard side. Four from a quartet, four from a sextet. I don’t know the word for nine men. But in this group are such giants as Coleman Hawkins, Lawrence Brown, Don Elliott, Nat Pierce and Freddie Green. Buzzy Drootin is the drummer throughout.

I enjoyed the close reed harmony from the big group. The opener on Here’s Freddie glistens. What follows is some intelligent conversation with the Braff horn riding clear. This man Braff, incidentally, has mastered the instrument. There’s power and poetry in his music.

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 09/08/1957

A happy-sounding collection of jazz efforts featuring trumpeter Braff and a small ensemble. It’s loose, free-blowing semi-Dixie in character and utterly delightful in effect. Braff is reminiscent of Beiderbecke and Berigan.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 12/01/1957

Ruby Braff is an uncommonly good trumpeter, an extension into the fifties of what Andre Hodeir, the eminent French critic, calls the “classical period of jazz” – the late 30’s and early 40’s in which the old jazzmen had reached the height of their power and had not yet been succeeded by modern jazz. This album is not Dixieland, nor swing, nor “modern,” it is basic jazz played by a lot of good men, including Braff, McKenna, Coleman Hawkins, Lawrence Brown, Buzzy Drootin, Freddie Green and others. A good record for any collection, unless you’re stuck with the moderns.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO)
Charles Menees : 10/27/1957

One of the year’s more attractive middle-road jazz albums is Braff!!, played by an ensemble of all-stars headed by Trumpeter Ruby Braff. Braff’s solos are performed with impeccable taste and his playing, like that of most of his cohorts, is instilled with emotion. Among the other participants are Pianists Dave McKenna and Nat Pierce, Trombonist Lawrence Brown, Tenor Saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and Vibesman Don Elliott. The program includes one original, called Here’s Freddie, and featuring Guitarist Freddie Green. The rest is made up of such evergreens as Stardust, Moonglow and Indian Summer. There is little to find fault with in any of it.

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Toronto Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON)
Patrick Scott : 09/28/1957

The Trumpet of Ruby Braff Is Best Since the Golden Age

Like a gust of cool, clean air through the forest of phonies comes the trumpet of Ruby Braff on a 12-inch Epic LP entitled, with fitting directness, Braff!!.

In an era unlikely to go down as the golden age of jazz trumpet, the 30-year-old Braff stands out from the Chets, the Mileses, and the Brownies like a bright star in a dark sky. He is the best to come along since Bird only knows when, and he may even make it fashionable for trumpet to sound like a trumpet again.

He has some stalwart support on his new LP. Such straightforward swingers as Lawrence Brown, Coleman Hawkins and Ernie Caceres make the most of a rhythm section that includes, at one time or another, Nat Pierce, Dave McKenna, Freddie Green, Steve Jordan and Buzzy Drootin.

You have heard most of the tunes before, but even such familiar items as Star Dust, ‘S Wonderful and How Long Has This Been Going On? acquire fresh lustre in these surroundings.

There is also a glowing rendition of Just One More Chance, and on Fats Waller’s Blue Turning Grey Over You and a steaming When My Dream Boat Comes Home, the performers sound suspiciously like men who hadn’t been told they were dealing in art forms.

Ruby is a standout on every track, with Brown blowing hot on his heels, and McKenna’s two-fisted piano is a newfound delight. And even the jacket photo, for that matter, is more entertaining than most of the music on these days’ other LP’s.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 09/28/1957
Three stars

Ruby Braff is one of the few young trumpet players in recent years to gain a considerable reputation outside of the modern jazz field. Although he has taken the best of both modern and traditional styles, his main influence has been Armstrong and he is primarily a swing-era musician.

This record shows his many attributes to good advantage. Ruby is relaxed and restrained but at the same time he drives and swings mightily. Ideas come easily and there is much humor in his work, but the most impressive thing about Braff is his flawless technique and no-nonsense approach to jazz. His playing is sincere and direct and seemingly without a care in the world.

The bad thing about this LP is that with the diversity of personnel, most of whom are excellent soloists, they included 12 tunes. The musicians rarely get a chance to show their full potential or build convincing solos. The sextet sides are the best, particularly Moonglow and When My Dreamboat Comes Home. Don Elliott plays excellent Hampish vibes and the rhythm section is superb on these and the sides with the nine-piece group. The sextet alone would have produced a better record.

The large group is very good on a slow Just One More Chance which has a brilliant Hawkins solo. The quartet is marred by Jordan’s tight overbearing rhythm guitar. Braff makes good use throughout of his solo-space but again unfortunately it is all too short.

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Down Beat : 10/31/1957
Dom Cerulli : 4.5 stars

From the fabulous cover picture through the tracks on the record inside, this album is a wonderful experience. Ruby blows with taste, emotional depth, and a singing tone that is a joy to hear.

Top honors go to the four quartet tracks—Stardust; Blue Turning Gray; So Long, and How Long—on which Braff is eloquent and lyrical. Stardust, particularly, is simply lovely. The rhythmic bite added by the guitars of Jordan and Green is cause for lament at the passing of that instrument in most rhythm sections today.

McKenna, on the quartet sides, and Pierce, on the rest, are tasty and substantial backers. Pierce, on the up tunes, feeds Ruby and the other soloists a base big enough to build a house on. Elliott proves a welcome partner in music here, too.

Hawk blows very well, indeed, as he has every time I’ve heard him lately. And Brown’s solo on Chance is pure liquid. But that track, with its gradually petering-out tempo, keeps the set from the full five.

Be sure to hear this. It’s a prime example of what can happen when fine musicians gather to play jazz.

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Liner Notes by Charles Edward Smith

Had he come up in the 1930’s, when good jazz trumpets were few, Ruby Braff might well have been hailed as yet another “young man with a horn,” and allowed to blow his lungs out in name bands of his own choosing. But he came up in the postwar years, when jazz trumpets came in all shapes and sizes, though good ones were still scarce, and having done nothing spectacular except to play good jazz, is just now beginning to be widely appreciated.

In the 1930’s Reuben Braff, having arrived at the age of seven (1934), had just about the strength to hold an instrument in his hands. Nevertheless, his eyes bugged at a big shiny tenor saxophone. He begged his parents for one. They went window-shopping, took one look at a baritone that they mistook for a tenor and, not wanting a ruptured prodigy around the house, they bought him a trumpet instead. As his interest in jazz developed, it turned out to have been a happy mistake. By his early twenties Ruby handled the trumpet like a natural-born artist.

On trumpet talent alone, Ruby would be assured of a comfortable niche in the contemporary jazz world. He has style and swing and a beauty of tone that is constantly being moulded into new shapes and textures, to the delight of those who know his work. More than this, he has an appreciation of those qualities that are basically jazz and is intent on broadening the scope of his own work, beginning with an approach to arrangements — he’s now learning to write music-based on his experience and understanding in the area of jazz improvisation.

This set is what Ruby calls “informal sessions of jazz,” all of the playing being in the nature of what (Nick LaRocca once told me) used to be called “ear music,” that is, without written arrangements. This may be a hint of things to come. Once again, in an ensemble, as all too seldom happens, it is not the harmony that is most striking, though that has a footloose quality that is pleasant to the ears, but the whole structure, beginning with the percussive sounds of the rhythm instruments (e.g. Dreamboat), and particularly the impinging of musical timbres (Here’s Freddie, which Braff named for Freddie Green). The swing and the style. The sounds of jazz.

This is basically jazz. Not basic jazz or traditional jazz or Dixieland or any other fashion of past or present held in a rhythmic suspension based on four beats to the bar. It is just what Ruby says it is, a matching up of three informal sessions. In a repertoire consisting largely of jazz standards, ballads and tunes in bright tempos like candy in a window or dancers on a floor, the listener is introduced to new work by old masters (Hawkins, Brown) and to an exuberant diversity of those fresh, unaffected sounds that seem to be increasingly appealing to the jazz public. The instrumental groups and the tunes chosen are thus not haphazard, but planned. Reminded that he had a reputation for handling the trumpet with dexterity and ease, Ruby said, “Facility doesn’t impress me—what people want is something to hear”—which, in a way, is a clue to what this album is all about.

It is taken for granted that a jazzman’s days in his school band are among his most treasured memories. Don’t let it disillusion you, boys and girls, but Ruby has a different slant on all that. When he was in grade school in a suburb of Boston, pupils who wanted to take trumpet lessons coughed up two bits a week. Ruby, aided and abetted by his parents, did so cheerfully, not knowing what he was in for. All of them got together in one room, wailing hopefully, giving the catbirds in the yard something to think about. Of his early teachers the kindest thing he remembers is that one he had when in third grade, had been a circus musician.

While still in grammar school he played trumpet in the school band. It was necessary for credits but hard on the feet. “And,” said Ruby, recalling his gripes, “I never had a uniform that fitted me right. They tried to get me to march in every parade. Finally, when I was in second year high, I was able to join the union and could get out of it.”

As a kid Ruby heard jazz bands and groups around Boston but most of the time he was on a record kick, listening to jazz records with like-minded friends. He has had no formal jazz training but Ward Silloway, the trombonist, gave him pointers on jazz technique. “He was a very helpful guy,” said Ruby. “He taught me not to force. In fact, he helped me tremendously.”

Ruby’s first jazz job was at a resort in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in a small combination with his friend Sam Margolies on tenor saxophone. Except for brief out-of-town dates in small bands, such as one with Pee Wee Russell, and an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he has lived in New York for about ten years. He recorded with Benny Goodman and in 1955 he played week ends at New York’s Basin Street.

In 1955-56 Ruby was the trumpet-player Pancho in “Pipe Dream,” the Rodgers-Hammerstein musical based on Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday.” It was a soft berth, with little blowing. When he was asked to make this set, he recalled, “I had been in ‘Pipe Dream,’ and hoped I’d be up to it, chop-wise.” As it happened, his chops held up admirably. The acting job left him plenty of time to think and his trumpet work and band ideas suggest that this has been all to the good.

You could always feel Bix in a performance, his thoughtfulness affected the whole band, and it was in this way I thought of Bix in connection with Ruby Braff, rather than with regard to some feature of his blowing style. You can say that Ruby’s style suggests Bunny Berigan in the way he gets around on the horn (Marvelous) or Louis in the strength and definition of his playing (Blue Turning Grey) but the fact is, these and many other things are merely facets of his style, among the key features of which are an often mellow and beautifully manipulated tone and an ease of playing that is peculiarly his own, when he’s at his best. But the analogy to Bix you might not get right away—I know I didn’t—because, to Ruby, jazz is not a production, it’s always jazz, and so it was with Bix, who liked to blow for the kids when they danced the Charleston at the Arcadia in St. Louis.

Ruby likes a rhythm section without one instrument fighting another. In a Down Beat article (January 9, 1957) he indicated how any one member of the rhythm section could, if he got out of hand, destroy the effectiveness of the unit. He is almost hipped on the subject of piano players, and you can make book on what kind of piano player Nat Pierce (one of his favorites) is, just by reading Ruby’s comments on piano style in general. These leave no doubt as to what he likes: “All the great pianists have ended up (without them getting together and conspiring) with the same things in common in their playing behind a soloist, varied as their styles may have been, or are. The more the soloist would play, the less the pianist would play and the more percussive he’d try to get.” One might add that a good pianist (without obtruding) “comps” the soloist, as Jo Jones expressed it, and Nat Pierce can do just that—a friend when a fellow soloing needs one! He packs a lot of solid stuff into the deep, full tones of his cleanly played choruses (Indian Summer, Here’s Freddie). He is an ensemble pianist of stature already and to some extent reflects that line of development — Jelly Roll, Hines, Joe Sullivan — that has been called by a lot of names but is really jazz piano style out of the blues.

Not out of blues piano essentially. Out of the band and, through the band, out of blues. That’s how the real jazz piano came about and that’s how it differed, back there in the days before any jazz critics were born, from the ragtime, the honky-tonk line of development, to which it owed more than a little then (and was to owe much more later on, when Harlem piano got going). There was usually no piano in jazz bands of that early period but Jelly Roll Morton, playing solo piano on Basin Street, based his style on that of the Bolden band, which was already a lot more complicated than a country blues, yet close to it in many ways.

This basic style is at once apparent in the trumpet work of Louis Armstrong and others but it affects all instruments in one or another. You can hear it, for yourself, in the playing of Moonglow, in which rhythm dances and creates moods at the same time. The country blues singer sang in long and short lines — by syllable count — but of the same bar lengths (the classic blues line is four bars), sometimes crowding many words into a line, sometimes giving a few words the burden of song. Listen to Ruby and Nat on Moonglow and decide for yourself if this link to the past is a fanciful conceit or a valid observation. Of course, it is only one of many aspects of style, but a basic one. It affected Coleman Hawkins who—way, way back—used to play a honking baritone in Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. Louis came into the band for a brief spell and Coleman got religion, becoming in a few short years possibly the first great exponent of jazz on tenor saxophone. He even employed this suspenseful style (the attack phrases alternating with legato ones) on baritone in the late twenties. Hawk has extended the range of his style since 1927 but you get an echo of it as he lashes out on You’re Lucky to Me.

There’s a good jazz feeling, too, in Just One More Chance, which is played in an easy ballad tempo. Don Elliott’s handling of the vibes teases the beat and Lawrence Brown’s trombone-that contributed to the fine sounds of Ellingtonia-sings with beautiful tone and technical ease. In an improvised session of this sort, one chorus may determine, to some extent, the shape of things to come. In listening to Ruby’s final chorus in relation to one by Hawk, that preceded it, I thought that that was what had happened. In his solo chorus the old maestro of tenor saxophone appears almost disdainful of the full technique of his past, achieving even more subtle compositional ends with an amazing economy.

The rhythm section is especially good on Dreamboat and Here’s Freddie. Everything comes through in a good balance, from drums to vibes. Freddie Green is of course one of the finest rhythm guitars ever to spark a band and Eddie Jones, another Basie man, gets a fat, solid tone as he explores the chords on bass. There is an interesting relationship between the pattern of Ruby’s chorus and Nat’s (another capsule example of the interpersonal art of improvisation) on Dreamboat. And Don’s vibes add to the aliveness of this bright up-tempo performance. On Here’s Freddie, although he grunts (like Hamp) his playing has a pleasantly dry, percussive sound that reminded me of Red Norvo, who first set the jazz style for this type of instrument (on xylophone).

There are many things to hear in these informal sessions but we will have room to mention only a few: Dave McKenna’s piano solo on It’s Been So Long, builds up strongly and effectively; Ernie Caceras’ baritone sax attacks with zest on ‘S Wonderful in a most happy chorus, and on this number Lawrence Brown puts the trombone through its paces with some very deft phrasing. On You’re Lucky to Me he takes an easy, plaintive, loaf along chorus. Lawrence Brown adds immensely to every number in which he plays, both in his solo and ensemble work. I was groping for a word to express just the quality he had on this session when Ruby said, “He has a wonderful little cry in his playing.”

There are clues aplenty to Ruby Braff’s feeling for jazz in this album: the unobtrusive use of trumpet know-how on How Long Has This Been Going On and Marvelous, the lovely bucket mute solo work on It’s Been So Long and, again on Marvelous, his ability to keep in mind the composition of an entire performance, so that his first and final solo passages have elements of surprise that are developed interestingly in relation to each other.

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Ruby (Down Beat), “one of the wonderful things about jazz is that you’re supposed to build compositions on as high a level as you can against relatively simple backgrounds.” Ruby solves this problem in various ways. One is that he employs a melodic gift with an ear for melody and form, and arrives at interesting variations, rather than imitations or those sad lukewarm choruses one sometimes hears that bounce around the melodic line looking for a home. Another is that he has strong feelings, and it seems to me, good ones, about the rhythm section and about the presence, or nonpresence, of swing in a performance. Then there is the forcefulness and tonal variety of the ensemble that, whether or not an arrangement is used, depends on the subtle relationship of the sounds of the various instruments. The tone texture of Here’s Freddie is, to me, of even more interest than the harmony (which is very good indeed) and this is achieved as each musician contributes his unique color (timbre) to the orchestral palette. A feeling for rhythmic-tonal subtleties that is not susceptible to technical analysis—this is the catalyst, the essence of good jazz sounds in which rhythm and tone are not disparate elements but one and the same thing.

Ruby disclosed that he was interested in piano—not, at present anyway—as a playing possibility (except in the privacy of his home) but because it incorporates, more than any other instrument, the orchestra. “And,” he said in conclusion, “the new instrument I’m interested in is the pen. I’d like to write arrangements. Nat Pierce is helping me.”