Billboard : 06/24/1957

LP illustrates how much can be done with a group featuring four trombones and rhythm. Thru good writing and soloing, group runs a variety of moods, getting both a big and small band sound, and swinging with great strength. Most importantly, for the dealer, collection cogently covers a lot of ground: instruction-brief history of the trombone in jazz with narration and musical examples-novelty, and has sufficient jazz and pop values to keep clientele in both areas interested.

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Cashbox : 07/06/1957

The disk gets under way with an almost one full side tribute with Winding narrating to the trombone as reflected by its historical development (Dixieland, swing, blues, artist styles, etc.). Then a collection of 6 Winding Septet favorites (Come Rain Or Come Shine, The Party’s Over) roll off with the usual Winding regard for inviting swing arrangements. A disk the jazz coterie will want.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : September 1957

Trombonist Kai Winding, having tried a two-trombone group with J.J. Johnson and a trombone octet on his own, has now settled down to leading a group made up of four trombones and rhythm section. On Trombone Panorama (Columbia CL 999), this proves to be a warm and flexible ensemble, capable of lusty shouting on The Preacher and gracefully shaded delicacy on Come Rain or Come Shine. The disc contains two long productions, one a nostalgic rundown of popular trombone styles done with a surprising amount of good humor, the other a rewrite in cool jargon of Frankie and Johnny, loaded with appropriately wailing trombones but bowed down by an agonizingly arch script.

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Jazz Today
Bill Coss : November 1957

Kai Winding’s Trombone Panorama (Columbia CL 999) with trombonists Kai, Carl Fontana, Wayne Andre and Dick Lieb, pianist Roy Frazee, bassist Kenny O’Brien and drummer Tom Montgomery or Jack Franklin, is a wonderful, showbusiness presentation with time enough left for a sufficient amount of good music. Most of the first side is given over to the title presentation, presenting nine different styles of trombone playing-Lassus Trombone, Dixieland trombone, a paraphrase of Jack Teagarden (beautifully done by Fontana), Kai’s rendition of Tricky Sam Nanton, a Trummy Young styled Margie, Tommy Dorsey’s theme played by Wayne Andre, Fontana doing the Sammy Kaye theme, Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade, as his trombone section used to sound, the Bill Harris solo on Bijou, as played by Wayne Andre, the Kenton trombone section and Kai as on Collaboration, as Jay and Kai would have played It’s All Right with Me and the contemporary trombone section playing an original called Potpourri. Like the rest of the LP, these are all part of the slick professionalism and fine musicianship which Kai and new group represent.

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Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO)
R.K.S. : 08/04/1957

Jazz trombone history might be considered a somewhat esoteric subject, but now it is told (for those who care) in a Kai Winding septet LP called Trombone Panorama (Columbia). The panorama portion is a historical bit that takes up most of one side. In it, Winding gives short comments and the septet moves from Lassus Trombone to It’s All Right With Me. Several trombonists are imitated, including Jack Teagarden, Trummie Young, Tricky Sam Nanton, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Bill Harris. The group even slides through a few bars of Sammy Kaye’s theme! The history ends with a swinger called Potpourri. The other side includes a very funny version of Frankie and Johnny told in bop talk. There are five other tunes arranged in such a way that the excess of trombones is not unpleasant. The septet is made up of Winding, Carl Fontana, Wayne Andre and Dick Lieb on trombones, plus piano, bass and drums.

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Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, IN)
Polly Cochran : 07/07/1957

Instruction and experimentation are rife in Kai Winding’s new album, Trombone Panorama, issued by Columbia.

Kai leads the way with his septet in what the liner notes aptly describe as a “potpourri of devices and divertissements.” The Winding voice is heard on several of the numbers, explaining what’s to come and why, and the Winding trombone in a searching, exciting sound.

The LP, which features a striking cover photo of the four trombonists by Tommy Wadelton, The Star Magazine photographer, boasts a good band sound alternated with stimulating soloing.

A musical variety is accomplished on both sides, leading off with Winding’s concept of trombone stylings through the jazz ages. He calls it a tribute to the artistry of top trombonists. The panorama recapitulates the humorous trombone, Dixieland, swing, sentimental ballad, blues and progressive. All in all, it takes in 13 influences.

The second special item in the album is Kai’s narration, quietly satirical and modern, of the good, old honky-tonk favorite, Frankie and Johnny. In between are found smooth expansions of such tunes as Come Rain or Come Shine and The Party’s Over.

Winding’s septet includes Carl Fontana and Wayne Andre, trombones; Dick Lieb, bass trombone; Roy Frazee, piano; Kenny O’Brien, bass, and Tom Montgomery and Jack Franklin, drums.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 07/07/1957

Trombone Panorama is a presentation of the Kai Winding Septet which, besides the leader, includes Carl Fontana and Wayne Andre on tenor trombones; Dick Lieb on the bass ‘bone, and rhythm section. The title number, designed as a tribute to famous trammists (but why didn’t Kai credit Muskrat Ramble to Kid Ory?), and the finale, Frankie and Johnny, seem strictly out of a nightclub act. In between, Horace Silver’s Preacher, Potpourri, and Come Rain or Come Shine demonstrate skilled arrangements and expert blowing which ranges from mellowness to shouting.

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Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Pittsburgh, PA)
Leonard Mendlowitz : 06/22/1957

The Kai Winding Septet, who have a rabid local jazz following, have an exciting Columbia LP just out in Trombone Panorama. He came to America in 1934 from his native Denmark. Winding creates the illusion of a big band ensemble with his colorful arrangements.

His latest LP is going to win him a lot of new fans through his brilliant orchestrations of Muskrat Ramble, I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues, The Sidewalks of New York, Margie, I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You, Moonlight Serenade and especially Franky and Johnny.

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San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, CA)
Jim Angelo : 07/28/1957

In a similar groove, Trombone Panorama (Columbia LP CL999) offers four trombones and three rhythm doing everything from an accurate narration of jazz trombone history to a humorous, modernistic rendition of Frankie and Johnny.

Leader Kai Winding is narrator on both sides but leaves ample wax for musical elaboration. Trombone styles of Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, and Bill Harris are recaptured by Winding and his sliphorn sidemen Carl Fontana and Wayne Andre. Interesting and informative, this set should have diverse appeal.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 08/31/1957

There can be little doubt that the instrumental technique most elaborately developed by jazz has been that of the slide trombone. Jazz players have discovered a wide variety of characters in the horn. Big Green used it to make muted satirical comments behind the blues singing of Bessie Smith. Tricky Sam Nanton sprayed an incomparably rhythmic steam through the Duke Ellington orchestra. Tommy Dorsey sang high and purely on the horn. Miff Mole used it for the flexible projection of his intricately lovely melodic lines.

The jazz players have been able to do this through a host of technical experiments. Simply because they wanted to, they raised the slide action to high velocities, thus greatly increasing the fast staccato possibilities of the horn. They soared into the upper registers of the instrument by persistent development of embouchure (the relationship between lips, tongue and mouthpiece). They exploited lip-slurring to the point where the best of them can toss up jets of tones with the utmost liquid facility. They tried ranges of tone from the bodilessly pure to the snide and impudent, and in doing so used several kinds of mute. As with other jazz instrumentalists, they often vocalized their horns, playing with personal inflections and vibrato, singing, so to speak, a personal instrumental song.

It will be apparent from all this that modern jazz procedure for the slide trombone is often far from so-called “legitimate” teaching, which calls for pure, even tone production and frowns on vibrato. The result is that we have in the hands of the better jazz men a virtually new slide trombone which, however, can still be called upon for its classic duties.

A company of modern virtuosi are to be heard on three recent LPs dedicated to trombonology. All three feature slide trombone solo and section work against rhythm sections.

Trombone Panorama by the Kai Winding Septet (Columbia CL 999) has trombonists Winding, Carl Fontana, Wayne Andre, and bass trombonist Dick Lieb.

Trombones (Savoy MG-12086) has Bennie Powell, Henry Coker, Jimmy Cleveland, Bill Hughes, and the remarkable jazz flutist Frank Wess (the contrast between his gaily syncopated piping and the brass is delightful).

Trombone Scene (Vik LX-1087) offers Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Eddie Bert, Frank Rehak, Sonny Russo, Willie Dennis, Jimmy Knepper, and Tommy Mitchell.

Space does not encourage any detailed comment on this galaxy. There is elegant playing on all three records, with the palms going perhaps to Kai Winding, Bennie Powell, and Urbie Green. But I think something might be said about modern trombone tendencies as revealed here. By the very nature of its design, one of the glories of the slide trombone is the slide. It makes possible a whole subtle vocabulary of glissandi, of little slides and slurs and semi-tones, of musical innuendi, which have been a great part of the personalized music of jazz. Every great jazz trombonist from Miff Mole to Jay Jay Johnson has used the slide with a mastery of its nuances. Now when, as is so often the case today, players devote themselves to rapid staccato inventions, they inevitably turn their backs to a degree on the slippery spirit of their horn. They are getting around so fast that they must jump rather than slide. In terms of expressiveness they must shout rather than hint. A great deal of delicate discourse is going out of modern jazz trombone playing (indeed, many players, for the sake of fast execution, have switched to the valve trombone, which eliminates the slide altogether).

And this is only the negative side of the criticism I wish to make of the modern school. The fact is that even if the slide is betrayed, the slide remains there. The player may be bent on minimizing slide effects with his staccato brilliance, but he must work with the slide, and the slide trombone is simply not, in essence, as fast an instrument as the keyed horns. The result is that a great many of the more ambitious modern solos, brilliant as their execution may be, have a taint of the awkward, the cumbersome, the rhythmically stiff. They lack the easy genius of great jazz. And so the modern trombone virtuoso often becomes such with a loss of both the fluency of slide expression and the proper fluency of jazz rhythm. The trombone itself can’t complain, but devotees of what used to be called the sliphorn will.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO)
Charles Menees : 06/23/1957

The Kai Winding Sextet pays tribute to the instrument on which four of its members excel in Trombone Panorama. The title offering is a medley that includes the trombone smear Lassus Trombone, tributes to such sliphorn stars as Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, plus a tongue-in-cheek bow to the manner in which the trombone is featured on Danny Kaye’s theme song. Winding is the annotator for this and also a version of Frankie and Johnny, in which he tells the story mainly in jazz slang. More serious is Come Rain or Come Shine, in which bucket mutes are used to simulate French horns. Four other numbers, originals and standards, round out an attractive program which establishes this ensemble of four trombones, piano, bass and drums as one of the most unique and competent among contemporary jazz units.

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Toronto Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON)
Richard J. Doyle : 09/14/1957
Panorama Latest Stop on Trail of Winding

In the little world of jazz purists, it is not an easy thing for an artist to remain faithful to the highest standards of his craft and, at the same time, be thoroughly entertaining.

If he concerns himself solely with the progressive development of his medium, he can sentence himself to obscure record labels and small-cellar performances. If he leans to a popular approach, he can be slapped for compromising.

One man who has managed to be honest about his work and to win applause from a fairly large audience (including a fair number who are not necessarily jazz aficionados) is Kai Winding.

Mr. Winding started out in his native Denmark with an accordion, switched to the trombone at 15—three years after his arrival in the United States. Since then he’s been busy demonstrating how versatile an instrument the trombone can be.

There’s a long, long list of Winding in the record catalogues but if you were just starting to collect a sampling of the man’s work, you would probably be well advised to buy his most recent Trombone Panorama (Columbia CL 999), which repeats much of the Winding of old and has a bit to say that’s new.

A good part of the opening side of the disc is devoted to a Winding commentary on the history of the trombone from minstrel days to the days of Jay and Kay when Winding won kudos for his free-swinging, tandem arrangements with J.J. Johnson. Flip side includes a reading of new words for Frankie and Johnnie. A tip here: Ignore the recitation and concentrate on the splendid background music.

Working with Winding on this are Carl Fontana and Wayne Andre, trombones, Dick Lieb, bass trombone, Roy Frazee, piano, Kenny O’Brien, bass, and Tom Montgomery and Jack Franklin, drums.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 08/10/1957
Three Stars

Kai Winding has an interesting LP release but it must be appraised in two separate parts. Over half the record is given over to two works — a history of the trombone in jazz and a narration with music on the classic folk theme of Frankie and Johnny. On the Trombone Panorama Kai takes 12 styles of trombone playing from minstrel shows to his own present group and weaves history with words and music of the progress of this instrument in the past 50 years. With a few reservations this is an interesting and well-told story.

Franky and Johnny receives an ultra-hip treatment loaded with humor. Kai’s narration is well-written and spoken and the musical background is very complementary. It is hard to rate these two selections by musical standards.

The second half of the LP presents the group in its usual hard-swinging setting. There is much humor and vigor in this music but at the same time it is rather contrived and slick.

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Down Beat : 07/25/1957
Leonard Feather : 4 stars

Credit Kai for remembering that humor and entertainment are more compatible with jazz than pomp and pretension. Almost all the first side is devoted to a light and reasonably comprehensive history of jazz trombone, with narration by Kai; the longest and most interesting track on the second side is an extended and modernized Frankie and Johnny saga, again with Kai narrating.

Fortunately, there are few attempts at exact carbon-copying in the impressions of other bands’ trombone-focused numbers; Fontana, for instance, captures the essence of Teagarden, Andre does a brief T. Dorsey bit and a very competent impression of Bill Harris, but in general Kai and his sergeants-at-arms recreate the spirit rather than the letter. The narration is accurate and well written, and Kai’s elocution is faultless.

The Frankie and Johnny story is fun, though not first-class fantasy. Its chief faults are the use, in verbal explanations, of translations for some of the hip terms (these should have been confined to the liner notes, where the squares could have referred to them) and a general tendency to stuff in too many hip phrases in the first place. The last line of all is the best laugh. The band provides a funky thread throughout.

The other five tracks are typical Winding band items, highlights among which are Andre’s arrangement of Horace Silver’s Preacher, and a strangely somber Come Rain which, even when you play it at 45, sounds deep enough. On the other hand, Party is a little too lackluster for comfort.

An enjoyable, often amusing, sometimes instructive LP; recommended particularly to recently converted jazz collectors.

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Liner Notes by Charles Edward Smith

Kai Winding is one of the most versatile, entertaining, and musically gifted jazzmen of this generation. He orchestrates for four trombones and rhythm — the Kai Winding Septet — and suggests the fullness of big-band ensemble without being an imitation of it. He plays superbly articulate trombone, with almost faultless intonation and phrasing, yet it comes out according to mood, robust, refined, or in choruses lovely of definition, casually cool of delivery. Here, in Trombone Panorama is, to borrow one of Kai’s titles, a potpourri of devices and divertissements that range from the trombone know-how and historic interest of the title piece, a saga in sonorities, to Kai’s contemporary narration of Frankie and Johnny, the most exciting and amusing treatment of this old stand-by since it was done with jazz background — when jazz was not yet recognized in America, except by the backroom boys — in the Provincetown Playhouse premiere of e. e. cummings’ him.

At about that time (the late Twenties) Kai was playing accordion in Aarhus (pronounced Oar-hoose according to Metronome), Denmark. He came to America in 1934, at the age of 12, and took up trombone in 1937, while attending Stuyvesant High School. After a summer of burlesque-house blowing he began to work in dance bands, except for the war years, when he was with the Coast Guard band and on sea duty. There followed periods with Goodman and Kenton, to season his tone and take the kinks out of his style. Barry Ulanov wrote (Metronome, July, 1954): “With Stan in 1946 and 1947, Kai arrived, the first fresh sound since Bill Harris and J. J. Johnson, and little challenged since then for consistency of performance and ideas.”

As explained by Kai, the idea behind the Septet was to create a band, ensemble-wise, based on four trombones, that could create mellow moods or give the impression of a full band shouting. Says Kai: “Solo-wise, from within, it is always stimulating and challenging. There is no room for complacency. Yet – with an average work night of between five and six hours — we can get plenty of opportunity to play our horns and express ourselves.”

“A usual comment,” Kai remarked, “is that we sound like a big band when we start cooking in the ensemble choruses.” In this connection the title piece, which abounds in succulent swing, includes a little bit of everything from home cooking to what I have elsewhere called the cool cuisine. It might be described as a musical pastiche, or series of pastiches, brought into focus by Kai’s compositional arrangements of backgrounds and his concept of the piece in its entirety. As one might expect, some of the “conveyances” (see Kai’s Note) are brought off more successfully than others; most of them, however, more than meet the demands that Kai put to himself and the group. The text (which he wrote) is informal and, on the whole, informative, though one might hesitate to identify Teagarden with Dixieland, as Kai does (perhaps reflecting the common confusion of Dixieland and New Orleans style).

If you’re familiar with the band styles that the various segments represent — and you’re sure to know some of them – the deftness of Kai’s recapitulations (in the arranging) will give you a boot. The staccato angularity of Dixieland emerges in Muskrat. There are incisive vignettes of Lunceford and Woody Herman in, respectively, Margie and Bijou. Collaboration, very Kentonish in feeling, recalls Kai’s two seasons with Stan (the music-man) Kenton. And the exuberant fullness of It’s All Right is a swinging salute to the Jay and Kai partnership that made jazz history. All told, the impact of arranging, narration and performance is first-class jazz entertainment. And when Kai puts the band through its paces on Potpourri (written while traveling east on Pennsylvania Turnpike) the lid blows off and you get a taste of what’s been cooking. Kai’s chorus is boldly conceived, beautifully played, and the musicianship of the group on intricate brass work is solid and swinging.

Kai and the Septet continually experiment and expand, both in variety of arrangements and in approach to performance. “We have,” he said, “learned a lot with respect to the most workable writing techniques.” He fully appreciates the value of a relaxed feeling in the band. “Woody Herman once put it very plainly,” he said. “I was on the date when Woody recorded Four Others. The first takes found the four trombones struggling, trying hard to ‘make good’ on solos. Woody finally stopped the band and said, ‘Look, fellows, relax. You guys are trying to win the war in eight bars.'”

As important to Kai as clarity and flexibility of style is directness of expression. Though far from a novice in the area of complex musical thought, he prefers not to be abstruse. “I believe in simplicity,” is the way he puts it, and, getting down to cases, continues, “This album is not meant to be earth-shattering or test tube experimental material. It doesn’t take a set of blueprints or a classically-trained ear to get our message.”

There is both simplicity and good taste in The Party’s Over, a Jule Styne tune (Bells Are Ringing) arranged by Dick Lieb. Wayne Andre plays the quasi-horn introduction and there is some ballad-blowing by Kai and Carl Fontana, in that order. Toward the close Dick Lieb signs his arrangement, in deep-throated sonorities.

The minstrel mood suggested by Lassus Trombone bursts into rhythmic exuberance on Horace Silver’s The Preacher, arranged by Wayne Andre. The interweaving of rhythm instruments, the buoyancy of mood, the freshness with which the instruments are played, make this a happy listening experience, or a bright beat for dancing. There are solos by Kai, Carl, and Roy Frazee (piano). The shouting horns with their jovian jolts, as on Potpourri, admirably illustrate Kai’s remark that “The tenor of the four trombones becomes electrifying when handled properly.”

Dave Herfort did the unusual arrangement of Come Rain or Come Shine in which bucket mutes are used to simulate French horns. It is an interpretation of pungent harmonies and mellow moods. There are four-bar passages by Kai and Dick. Red, Red Robin, the pop song inspired by a doughty harbinger of spring and heat waves, in an arrangement by Dick Lieb, is a tender little tune that swings lightly. Solo passages by Kai, Carl, Wayne and Dick. On I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, ballad-burgeoning in an imaginative arrangement by O. B. Masingill, the order of solos is: Carl, Wayne, Dick, Roy and Kai.

Wayne Andre has a warm tone, heard in smooth-texture passages on, for example, Red Robin, parts of Panorama and I Can’t Give You Anything but Love. Fontana (e.g. Red Robin) has a forceful style and plays like a man confident that he has power in reserve. And all through the set, Lieb’s bass trombone brings body and warmth of tone, thought and continuity of phrasing to the ensemble effort. The rhythm adds immensely to both the swing and sense of fullness, with a good balance and disposition of rhythmic chores, the chords that build and the beat that, properly handled, gives thrust and drive. Bass and piano are apposite, which in this instance means copacetic. The high-calorie drums on Potpourri are handled by Tom Montgomery.

Frankie and Johnny is a saga of sin, the song-story of a good man who didn’t do right by his ever-lovin’ mama. It’s a honky-tonk ballad, a distant cousin to those musical brothers-under-the-skin, The Streets of Laredo and St. James Infirmary. It’s a song sung to a whanging guitar or (as in the Provincetown presentation) to a wailing clarinet. Kai Winding catches the spirit. His narration, paced to the rhythm of string-sung percussion, drums on a controlled Donnybrook and shouting trombones (that stalk the theme like foxhounds on the scent), is thoroughly enjoyable. On first listening, the spoken lyrics of what Kai calls “the contemporary version” are of such absorbing interest — his use of jazz slang is deftly satirical, quietly amusing and in good taste — that one is aware of the music without paying particular attention to it. On second listening, music and lyrics merge, building to a crescendo that reaches its shattering climax on Kai’s delivery of the Thurberlike twist with which he brings this most solid of sagas to a close.

“All in all,” Kai remarked, speaking of his 1957 itinerary of clubs, college concerts, and dances, “it is a very happy environment for us. Always stimulating; never dull. We try to keep it swinging — and swinging is contagious.”

A NOTE BY KAI WINDING

The various excerpts which comprise Trombone Panorama are not intended to be imitations in the sense of note for note “carbon copies.” They should be accepted as our concept and conveyance of the individual styles and stylists represented. It is further intended that this is to be a tribute to the artistry of this select group of trombone stylists, whose influences remain for posterity. There are, we realize, omissions of numerous, perhaps equally illustrious, contributors. However, allowing for technical limitations, we have compiled what we consider a workable cross-section of the field.

In essence, our sincere admiration goes out to these pioneers of trombone playing and we feel they have proved the theory that: Jazz is a living thing — comparable to a tree: it grows with each individual who contributes to it. We look to the future with confidence that the inevitable new branches will be healthy and strong — as the roots have been firmly planted.

Other selections included are from our ever increasing repertoire. They are numbers we have been playing in our various public appearances throughout the country in jazz clubs, concerts, colleges and dances. (Incidentally, people are starting to dance to jazz again.)

We enjoyed recording this album. We hope it will afford you some pleasant listening.