Billboard : 06/09/1958
Three stars

An excellent and hard-driving session by the Griffin crew. D. Byrd is showcased on trumpet; P. Adams, baritone sax; K. Drew, piano; W. Ware, bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Top track is a swingin’ go on Dizzy Gillespie’s Woody’n You. It can appeal to hard bop buffs. Added potential of the other names will increase interest in the tenor man’s latest effort. Other tunes include What’s New and Catharsis, a Griffin original.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : September, 1958

In almost direct contrast to Shorty Rogers’ slickness is the basic, sometimes raw emotion of the Johnny Griffin Sextet. There’s ample room for all the soloists and there’s no mistaking the full-strength jazz content of the material. On Johnny G. G., everybody jells in one of the most substantial performances of the year. The rest is more uneven; but throughout, there is consistently exciting work by Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe Jones.

Drew plays some of his best piano on record on the second side: Byrd continues to develop, and Adams is vigorous. Tenor saxophonist Griffin is at his worst on the one ballad in the album, confusing stiff sentimentality for sensitivity. On the others, Griffin is certainly fervent enough, but even on up-tempos, his tone in this set isn’t as firm as it could be. Griffin, in fact, has sounded better on other records, but the album is worth investigating for the long Johnny G.G.

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Jazz Review
Bill Crow : July, 1959

This is essentially a blowing date, each soloist having plenty of room to develop whatever he likes with the rhythm section. The writing is limited to the opening and closing choruses. Consequently, the strength of each track lies in the rhythm section itself and the improvisational abilities of the individual horn men. It’s one hell of a rhythm section-Kenny, Wilbur, and Philly Joe are all strong, warm, sensitive swingers. Wilbur has a magic touch, setting up such a rolling, naively profound quality on his solos and generating such a good feeling on his line that it would be quibbling over rivulets and ignoring the sea to complain about his occasional crude attack, stumbling time, sloppy intonation. His enthusiasm for the simplest lines makes them fresh and wonderful, and he plays with the swing in a delightfully simple, original manner.

Philly Joe plays with his usual excellent rhythmic sense plus a taste and balance that suggests that his overbearing volume with Miles’s group had more to do with the demands of the leader than with the taste of the drummer. He gives each soloist here full support without drowning them and plays some excellent solos of his own.

Kenny Drew has absorbed rich qualities from a number of schools of piano playing and utilizes them cleanly and intelligently in his own way. He produces a beautiful sound on his instrument and plays that good, sweet time that revives us again. He finds a fresh approach on each tune instead of couching them all in the same terms. The piano is a versatile instrument in his hands, and jazz a fun-lover’s paradise.

Griffin plays his best where the tempo moves him right along. When he sustains notes, his tone thins out, and his attempt to give it more body by using an exaggerated vibrato only adds to the impression of strain and rigidity. Some of his best choruses are those with only Wilbur playing time behind him; he gets a much less hard-jawed sound and lets the notes roll out more freely. Woody’n You is played without the assistance of the other two horns and sustains very well.

Donald Byrd sounds better every time I hear him. His choruses here are strong and straight, played with a good, full trumpet sound, well in tune and thoughtfully constructed.

Pepper Adams’ stiff reed often cheats him out of the bottom half of the available resonance of his instrument but allows him fast response and subsequent clean articulation. He puts together well-ordered lines, often running each change of a series with the same pattern, sometimes sounding as though he were about to fall asleep, but turning in a generally commendable performance.

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 06/22/1958

(Riverside 12-264). Don Byrd, Pepper Adams and Philly Joe Jones are in this group and they are a great help. Griffin is not nearly as hysterical here as he is with the Jazz Messengers; in fact, he calms down enough to play a slow ballad. Best track is Woody’n You which is a fine tune anyway and very excitingly done here. Jones’ drumming is consistently inspiring throughout.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 07/12/1958
Four stars

This is vigorous, exciting, outspoken jazz by newcomer Griffin from Chicago. The five tunes, three originals and two standards, have driving, full-bodied ensembles and an abundance of solo space. Griffin is a big-toned tenor man with a fluent, emotional style. Both he and Adams have occasional intonation trouble but it is more an annoyance than a hinderance. Byrd plays clean and strong, Drew plays conclusive solos and ties the group together with his ‘comping. Jones is rousing and Ware is extremely impressive on this album.

Woody’n You with Griffin and rhythm, is excellent and features some fine Griffin-Ware duets. Johnny G.G. has Griffin’s best solo sparked by the other horns punctuating behind him. Stix’ Trix and Catharsis are both fast-paced, “blowing” tunes but What’s New, the only ballad, seems weak and out of place in the LP’s general rambunctiousness.

Griffin is not yet a major jazz musician but by good planning he has shown himself to best advantage on this album.

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Down Beat : 09/18/1958
Martin Williams : 3.5 stars

Both Griffin and Adams are masterful, even astonishing virtuosi of a style which involves long solos played with a knowledgeable (though frequently rather pat) use of harmony: they “run the chords.” To run them, they pay little attention to melody, either the one they begin with or their own, and string together licks from what amounts to a stock pile with a minimum of repetition—almost any track here will do as an example. They blow hard with exuberance and at times tenseness that leads almost to frenzy. Therefore, what they play can sound, at worst, both contrived and tense.

They have acquired an harmonic sophistication (if not ease) from bop, and have acquired some of the rhythmic freedom over the quarter note which bop had, but they have (except in fairly stock runs) little of the linear freedom or the melodic inventiveness the best bop men could show. They are tied strongly to the changes. And their long solos, at worst, lack internal order: on the levels of note values, of rhythm, of melody, of harmony, or of emotional projection.

In other words, they play a modernized version of the swing-riff style of the late ’30s and early ’40s. Or, to put it differently, they are, in a sense, young Hawkinses, not young Websters or Prez’s.

As I say, both Griffin and Adams play this style excellently. Griffin seems to me to get more variety of ideas in his work than Adams does and an occasional use of humor in his playing helps that variety a great deal. Aside from What’s New, which I don’t think came off, this is probably his strongest and best playing on records. Adams, however has projected more firmly elsewhere.

Donald Byrd seems to me to have a real (if almost undeveloped) melodic imagination and is acquiring a kind of relaxation which may be foreign to this “hard” concept.

Wilbur Ware has solos on Woody’n’ You and Johnny which are very original and lovely songs. He again uses the bass as a stringed instrument and not a substitute horn.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This album marks the addition of Johnny Griffin to the Riverside roster of jazz artists, and it is an addition of which we are particularly proud. For Griffin is in our opinion one of the most exciting performers on the current jazz scene, and clearly among the top handful of today’s creatively blowing’ tenor men.

This first Griffin Riverside LP has a long background, actually beginning back in 1956; when Thelonious Monk (whose musical praise, never handed out lightly, carries much weight with us) returned from a Chicago engagement talking about the local tenor man he had worked with. But before we could get around to acting on that recommendation, another label had moved first and signed Griffin to a recording contract. As it happened, a first chance to hear Johnny didn’t come until nearly a year later, in March of 1957, when Art Blakey sent for him to join the Jazz Messengers at New York’s Cafe Bohemia.

That first night it seemed as if most of the sax players in town were in the house: some of them knew Griffin from trips to Chicago; others were drawn by curiosity about his advance reputation. What we all saw was a slight, bespectacled, mild-looking man; what we heard was a wonderfully big, fluent tenor sound and, most notably, a truly astonishing ability to play flowing, complex and (above all) thoroughly coherent solos even at those murderously swift tempos Blakey can reach.

It had previously been arranged, at trumpeter Clark Terry’s urgent request, to borrow Johnny for a sideman spot on Clark’s first Riverside album (RLP 12-237); at the recording session, about a week later, the strong first impressions of the vigor and talent of Johnny Griffin were fully confirmed. Eventually, it became possible to bring the tenor man back into that same studio, with a top-level supporting cast, for the present sextet LP, the first of several by Griffin for this label.

Griffin’s two most noticeable qualities are his dexterity and his roots. “Roots” simply means that this is not one of those modernists who think that a reference to an old-time jazzman probably means Charlie Parker. Johnny has a deep awareness of who and what preceded him. He has been described as “influenced” by Sonny Rollins, but any similarities that may exist between these two talented contemporaries seem more a matter of a shared regard for the deep-toned tenor tradition of men like Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Don Byas. Griffin includes these three on the roster of those who have affected his playing, along with Lester Young, Dexter Gordon and (inevitably) Bird. He notes also the impact of specific trumpet players (Dizzy, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown) and pianists (Monk, Bud Powell, Art Tatum). Perhaps even more importantly, there is in Griffin’s warm, early music the rich influence of the blues and of the gospel-linked jazz often called “church blues.”

As for “dexterity,” his previously-noted ability to get around easily at what many would consider killingly fast tempos, this is clearly a natural way of playing for Griffin—not a way of showboating. But he is in some danger of having too much attention focussed on his work at full speed. Johnny does enjoy playing up, and he does do it better and far more meaningfully than most. But he is no one-tempo man. Actually Griffin, like just about everyone else, takes his tempos where they feel right. On this LP this leads him from up to medium-swinging and on down to the languid ballad feeling of What’s New. The point is that tempo is irrelevant to the fact that Griffin, at any pace, plays with skill, depth, emotion—with (to resort to an overworked but apt term) much “soul.”

This was, by design, a stretching-out kind of session, making effective use of the rich trumpet-tenor-baritone ensemble sound, but with primary emphasis on plenty of solo room. To achieve a relaxed, blowing atmosphere (but not its too-frequent alternative: a haphazard, too-much-like-a-jam-session looseness) involved a balance between freshness and familiarity. This is not just the same old gang playing the same old changes; actually, only Ware, a close associate of Chicago days, had played extensively with Griffin before. (For a brilliant example of their musical rapport, note the duet passages in Woody’n You.) But these six are all musicians of top caliber: and sufficient experience together—the listing below traces some of their joint appearances on Riverside LPs—and similarity of approach helps make them into a more than usually cohesive unit.

Pepper Adams, a recent Down Beat Critics Poll “New Star” choice, is a comparative newcomer to the New York scene; he first drew attention with Stan Kenton, but his agile, swinging command of the baritone sax seems better served by his preference for warmer company. He is thoroughly at home with his fellow Detroiter, Donald Byrd, one of the most highly regarded young trumpet men, who at the time of recording was working in Pepper’s quintet at New York’s Five Spot Cafe. The rhythm section has worked as a unit on Riverside several times before: Kenny Drew, among the best of the younger pianist, has sparked a long list of top names in clubs and on records; Wilbur Ware’s strong, distinctive bass style is rapidly gaining the admiration of musicians, critics and public; Philly Joe Jones, best known for his work with Miles Davis, is widely regarded as the most formidable drummer to come along in many a year. There are also new tunes by Chicago musicians to spice up the proceedings: drummer Wilber Campbell’s Stix’ Trix; pianist John Hines’ Johnny G.G.; and Griffin’s driving Catharsis (dictionary definition of the word: “a purging or reliving of the emotions by art”).

As for Griffin himself: born (April, 1928) and brought up in Chicago; learned clarinet, oboe and saxophone in high school; and launched his professional career by joining Lionel Hampton’s band just three days after graduation (June, 1945). Originally an altoist; switched to tenor for the job with Hamp, with whom he stayed for most of two years. Then formed a sextet, with Joe Morris, that lasted until early 1950. Gigs with ex-Basie drummer Jo Jones, Arnett Cobb, and eighteen months with the 264th Army Band in Hawaii. Out of service late in ’53, then worked a variety of Chicago spots until joining Blakey in 1957. Toured the country with the Jazz Messengers; then back to Chicago in the Fall of ’57 to organize his own group for a highly successful stand at Swingland (on the site of the old Cotton Club).