Cashbox : 04/12/1958

Shorty Rogers takes his giants through eight self penned goodies. The giants consist of some of the best west coast musicians on the scene, Jimmy Giuffre, Shelly Manne, Barney Kessel, etc. Rogers and aggregation offer top brass readings with five assorted instrumental groupings. A set of extremely tasty jazz compositions. Lots of good swinging. Far out cover.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : December, 1958

There is no denying Shorty Rogers’ talent for writing and playing (trumpet and fluegelhorn) tightly voiced, smoothly swinging pieces. But he keeps covering the same ground so frequently that his work becomes dully repetitive. On the Atlantic disc he works with a variety of small groups that play with a loose ease, pleasantly propulsive in a Basie-like fashion at times and, on March of the Martians, intriguingly perky. But, aside from this selection and a slow, sly re-working of Moten Swing, one is left with the feeling that the listening foot has been induced to tap in a vacuum.

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Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO)
R.K.S. : 03/30/1958

Free-Style jazz worthy of praise from modernists and figs alike is the product in Way Up There by Shorty Rogers and his Giants, a new Atlantic album (1270).

Mr. Rogers, as a leader of the West coast school, has been guilty at times of over-distillation of the mash of jazz. Not so here. One group of Giants (there are five combinations in this album) includes Harry (Sweets) Edison on trumpet, Barney Kessel on guitar, Shelly Manne on drums, Bud Shank on alto, Pete Cera on piano and Leroy Vinnegar on bass. This group plays three tunes, two blues rides and the old Kansas City number, Moten Swing. These tunes sound school-wise like they were made on the west coast of Kansas City.

Sweets has the audacity to play some phrases of that old A. T. & T. (dit, dit, dah-dah, dit, dah) style trumpet; Kessel reverts to Muskogee twangs, and Cera tries to sound like Earl Hines and Count Basie combined. The giant abilities of the musicians in this group are helped along by Rogers’ arranging efforts, his blending toots on fluegelhorn and his trumpet solos.

In the other instrumental combinations some of the men who acquit themselves well are Jimmy Giuffre, Pete Jolly, Curtis Counce, Pete Candoli and Conte Candoli. All told it’s a notable performance by a notable collection of jazzmen.

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Metronome
Jack Maher : May, 1958

It’s pretty easy to identify Shorty here too. It may look like the same band that did the above date, (Victor LPM 1561), but it’s not. All the men listed above work in small groups, five of them. The four trumpets do play as one unit though with Shorty leading in many ways, this is a much better album than (the Victor LP). First and most obvious is the fact that the individual musicians get more of a chance to blow — the solos come in choruses rather than in pieces of choruses. Second, the small band seems to swing more; it’s looser and more relaxed. Part of this, we feel is directly to the credit of bassists Pena and Vinnegar, along with Shelly Manne. Harry Edison, too, is a real spark-plug here, shouting and jumping which seems to get every one going.

CODA: Space-monger (we understand he’s got the first rights to tunes published on Mars), Shorty Rogers circles in a pre-determined orbit; his fellow travelers are flawless and rhythmically exciting.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 06/08/1958

Can think of just one other recent album that offers as lively a portrait of jazz today. It’s called Way Up There (Atlantic 1270) with Shorty Rogers and His Giants. Here again you have the imaginative writing so necessary for success. Trumpeter Rogers wrote six of the seven pieces. The outsider is Bennie’s wonderful Moten Swing. Five groupings offer the seven tracks. You’ll like the work by Jimmy Giuffre on clarinet and baritone sax. Catch also Pete Jolly’s piano and the trumpet of Harry Edison. The Rogers’ trumpet and fluegelhorn soar throughout.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 03/23/1958

Rogers leads five different groups, ranging from quintet to nonet, in eight selections marked by taste, inventiveness, and swing. There are some wonderful patterns in the two tunes by the nine-man group and some superb solos on almost all. Among participants are Shelly Manne, Harry Edison, Bud Shank, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Giuffre, Leroy Vinnegar, and Ralph Pena. Jack Tracy’s notes pay deserved tribute to Rogers as the leading figure in establishing the so-called “West Coast” jazz and point out that Shorty, unlike some of his followers, never has lost his hot feeling.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 04/13/1958

These tracks were cut for Atlantic some time before Shorty joined RCA-Victor’s staff as A&R man for the west coast. They include some of the best work Shorty has done with that fine bunch of men who centered about the Lighthouse three or four years ago. Nevertheless, they lack the element of surprise which was so important in the Rogers of that day.

Among the personnel are Harry Edison, Bud Shank, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar, Curtis Counce, Jimmy Giuffre, Ralph Pena et al.

Fine stuff if you’re not tired of Rogers’ arrangements.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 05/24/1958
Three stars

A few years ago Shorty Rogers established a mould for himself which has continually restricted much of his work. Within this mould he is an extremely engaging musician but as a result of it his music has shown more repetition than growth. In this drawback he is certainly not alone in jazz but, because he is such an enormously prolific composer and record-maker, his fault is more apparent.

On the seven originals and one jazz standard in this album, Shorty leads five different groups of varying size and personnel. The first three tunes are by a group featuring Vinnegar’s rockbottom, charging bass and some very good Edison trumpet particularly on Moten Swing. Blues Way Up There has some good Rogers and Blues Way Down There has some earthy Kessel. This group is the best of the five. Pixieland, with five trumpets, is intriguing and March Of The Martians, by a quintet featuring Giuffre’s clarinet, is arresting. The only person, other than Shorty, on all the tracks is Shelly Manne and he consistently pushes the hard-swinging rhythm sections, which are one of the most admirable things about the LP.

The tight ensembles, the staccato phrasing and the Basie feeling, characteristic of most of Rogers’ work, are mixed here with Shorty’s sly wit to produce a happy, swinging album. This is superior, stylized jazz but much the same can be found on innumerable other Rogers’ LPs.

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Westbury Times (Westbury, NY)
Dick Levy : 05/15/1958
Rated E (Excellent)

Accompanying musicians include Harry Edison, Bud Shank, Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne, Jimmy Giuffre, Pete Candoli and Lou Levy. The romping March of Martians is one of the big highlights. Shorty muted throughout and Giuffre blowing clarinet backed by a pulsating rhythm section make the tune a wailing delight. An excellent muted Edison in Moten, a very funky rhythm section with some valuable statements by Shank in Down There, a ballad like Wail with Giuffre coasting on tenor and an expressive Shorty in Pixieland featuring five brass and rhythm are also points of interest. Don’t miss this one.

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Liner Notes by Jack Tracy

If fingers had to be pointed at one man who can be held responsible for what has come to be known as “west coast jazz,” it’s my guess that most of the digits would be leveled at one Milton M. Rogers of Great Barrington, Mass.

Most people call him Shorty.

It was Shorty who became one of the first prominent jazzmen from the east to establish permanent residence in Los Angeles.

It was Shorty who shaped and patted much of the music played there into a Rogersian adaptation of that now-historic Miles Davis 10-piece band which opened up jazz’s cool era.

It was Shorty who wrote arrangements almost incessantly for every imaginable sort of recording date that emerged from the city where restaurants are shaped like hats, buildings appear to be made of papier maché, and visitors are easily distinguished because their coats match their trousers.

It was Shorty who sent easterners home shaking their heads in awe at what his tireless labors had produced in the way of material manifestations — a lovely home, swimming pool, and a pink Cadillac.

Shorty pretty well set the pattern.

That the pattern began to assume the shape of a cooky cutter was not really Shorty’s fault, despite the fact his vast output of writing would undoubtedly have elicited praise even from Thomas Wolfe.

He had started a “west coast style” and they were stuck with it.

But Shorty wasn’t.

Despite the tendency on the part of many to dilute and make almost dainty the music they wrote and played under the palm trees and sometimes-smog-beclouded sun of the west, he continued to light the type of firecrackers that were labeled That’s Right and More Moon and Keen And Peachy when he composed for and trumpeted with the Woody Herman Herd in the latter ’40s, and bore such titles as Jolly Rogers and Viva Prado when he drew his weekly bread from Stan Kenton for a couple of years thereafter.

He ignited them under an amazing number of tin cans — while playing with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars, leading his own Giants at clubs and on records, composing for films, writing charts for scores of recording groups, and while directing many various-sized organizations under his own name for many labels.

Somehow he has even found time in the last couple of years to serve as jazz artist and repertoire director on the west coast for RCA Victor (that’s also a record company).

No one has been able to prove, however, the widely-held rumor that he grew his beard only because in the time it would take to shave cleanly every day, he is able to turn out two complete arrangements and teach three students.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Before he joined Victor, Shorty was under contract to this label, Atlantic, for whom he turned out some of the best jazz yet waxed under his name.

Many of us who have watched Rogers’ career with interest still often turn back to his first Atlantic album, The Swinging Mr. Rogers, (1212), to hear a superb small group led by a facile, inventive trumpet player.

It was a bubbling, loose-tight, gleeful jazz band, and though the personnel is different on this set (varying, in fact, almost from track to track), a lot of that spirit is recaptured.

Maybe it’s because Harry Edison is around to play on four of them… and things never are dull when Sweets is on the scene.

Maybe it’s because Shelly Manne is present on all of them, and it certainly must be unnecessary at this late stage to point out that Sheldon possesses remarkable taste, time, and imagination.

Maybe it’s because the shadow of Bill Basie (a west coaster from Red Bank, N.J.) looms benevolently over much of the proceedings… and when you play things like Moten Swing it’s hard not to.

But it’s probably because the name on the cover says Shorty Rogers.

He wrote the arrangements, he selected the musicians, he set the tempos, he played on the date, and he would have tidied up the studio after the session but for a strictly-enforced clause in Local 47’s book of rules forbidding such goings-on.

From the opening Count-off Blues Way Up There to the final foot-pat on March Of The Martians there is much to be heard and admired, though I must confess in front that I was most taken with the authority and fanny-wiggling shown by the group that made Blues Way Up There and Down There and Moten Swing. The order of solos, composer credits, publishers, and time taken to perform each piece you will find in the accompanying box. I would just like to point out here some of the men and moments that moved me.

Leroy Vinnegar’s take-charge bass; Cera chewing up the piano on Blues Way Up There, Sweets on Moten Swing… and Bud Shank; the way Kessel slams in on Down There; Shorty’s line and solo on Solarization; Shorty again on Pixieland… and Shelly’s magnificence in the closing ensembles; the interweaving richness of Two Cities; Lou Levy’s driving piano behind the solos on Martians.

There may be only one thing, you know, that Shorty Rogers has not done in a work-packed-but-relatively-short recording career. He has not yet whipped up an all-fluegelhorn album called Fluegellation.

But what odds will you give me he won’t?