Cashbox : 11/23/1957

Two jazz notables blend their talents and make beautiful music together. Gillespie’s slick trumpet and Smith’s catchy violin are accompanied by two of Gillespie’s band members, bassist Paul West, and pianist Wynton Kelly, as well as J.C. Heard, on drums. One of the tunes, Oh, Lady Be Good, offers a harmonious vocal effort by “The Gordon Family,” other songs are Russian Lullaby, Rio Pakistan, and It’s Only a Paper Moon. Relaxed and polished efforts.

-----

Arlington Heights Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)
Paul H. Little : 12/12/1957

Flip on next Dizzy Gillespie and Stuff Smith (Verve MGV-8214). With Diz’ redhot trumpet matched by Stuff’s viciously jazz-flavored violin, along with J.C. Heard’s great drums, and Paul West’s inspired bass through Rio Pakistan, It’s Only a Paper Moon, Purple Sounds, Russian Lullaby (in which the Smith violin solo is cool, man, cool!) and Oh Lady Be Good.

-----

Metronome
Jack Maher : February, 1958

The highly volatile, Mr. Gillespie and the highly exuberant and exhibitionistic Mr. Smith make for a rather strong bowl-’em-over combination. The playing here is hard-charging, somewhat contrived in places but almost always competent and patently good fun. There’s good humor in most of it and in many ways Stuff steals scenes from Dizzy. Dizzy on the whole though, plays well, his lines are fluid and logical and even some of his squeakers are turned into unusual rhythmic patterns.

CODA: Competent musicianship that swings the thing.

-----

San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/10/1957

Back in the halcyon days of 52nd Street in New York — when it was known as the Cradle of Swing — one of the most entertaining groups was Stuff Smith’s little band of madmen at the Onyx Club. There were times when Stuff would play one tune for the entire 40-minute set in that small, crowded bistro.

Verve records has brought back Stuff this year from relative obscurity. Their newest LP couples the talents of Stuff with those of Dizzy Gillespie under the simple title Dizzy Gillespie and Stuff Smith (Verve MGV-8214). It is a delightful album from start to finish. The two soloists have accompaniment from piano, bass and drums which never interferes but always aids the soloists.

There are only five tracks to the album. One of them, Rio Pakistan, is replete with exotic rhythms and sounds. The others are straight ahead, down home swinging of the type that Stuff has always been so good at. Dizzy plays with a mute and with a marvelous delicacy that fits exceedingly well with the thin but solid tone Smith gets from the violin.

-----

Saturday Review
Ruby Braff : 01/11/1958

The possibility of an interesting ensemble is here, but it comes out a very mysterious collection of sounds. Lady, Be Good features a vocal group called the Gordon Family. Their nice singing, and the sound around them, have a lot more to do with the world in which I live.

-----

Down Beat : 12/26/1957
Don Gold : 4.5 stars

Stuff Smith’s technique would not impress Heifetz. His immense capacity for life, however, would.

He is, as Nat Hentoff’s notes point out, “deeply, passionately involved in the act of jazz expression. He swings with deep abandon, and he builds a temperature of searing height. While his sound may occasionally be raw and hungry, it is a sound that by its blue roots and penetrating, vocalizing power proves itself linked to a past that goes beyond the blues and into a field that hollers and cries.”

Dizzy hollers and cries, too, and this set is a mixture of precious roots.

There is a fascinating interplay of horns (Smith’s violin is a horn is a horn is a horn), considerable wit and invention, and vibrant drive throughout.

The form is simple, but the thoughts expressed in string and brass are meticulously meaningful and the imaginative power displayed impressive.

The first four tracks are things of beauty. Pakistan, based on an exotic Eastern theme by Dizzy, becomes a discussion of the origins of jazz in Smith’s hands. Dizzy contributes a graceful muted solo and Kelly complements it with a comparably effective solo. Smith slashes vigorously on Moon, before Dizzy emerges on a burst of notes leading to a dazzling string of related ideas. Smith builds forcefully on Sounds, then passes it on to Dizzy; Kelly takes over as Smith punches an obligato. After a gypsy tea room intro by Smith, Russian becomes a timely race, with both men digging in and Kelly following in appropriately fleet fashion.

The final track, brief and a bit out of context after the first four, features the hip vocal of the Gordon family and less of Smith and Dizzy.

For the most part, however, this is an inviting collection. Smith and Dizzy are warmly themselves and this is enough for me. Like, you know, Wallace Beery and Victor McLaglen discussing old times.

-----

Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

In preparation for Stuff Smith’s European appearance in the spring of 1957 with Jazz at the Philharmonic, Frank Tenot, an editor of the Paris monthly, Jazz Magazine, wrote a considered essay on the history of jazz violin in the May issue of that publication.

He pointed out that at the very beginning of jazz, as we currently use the term, there were violins or at least home-made facsimiles in the peripatetic jug bands. These, however, were most often violins that were actually cigar boxes with strings hopefully attached.

In the ’20s there was Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang’s associate, whose playing Tenot describes as “swing a l’italienne.” Joe still talks on the instrument, but in recent years, has had little opportunity to address jazz audiences. Tenot also mentions a Juice Nelson, born in St. Louis, and an alumnus of the Noble Sissle orchestra when Sidney Bechet was also a member. He settled on the Island of Malta in 1931 without having recorded any major indication of his skills.

There was also the lyrical, romantic Eddie South; the resilient Stephane Grappelly of France, long a consort of the late Django Reinhardt; and Ray Nance, who can swing hard on the instrument but whose more rhapsodic moments run toward ripeness. Older doubling musicians on the violin are Darnell Howard and Edgar Sampson. There was also Ray Perry of Boston who played an unusually supple, firm-toned, horn-like violin, and recorded a few numbers with Lionel Hampton, but who died before making the impact on the field that his talent appeared eventually to insure.

Stuff Smith, whose history is included on a recent LP that marked his return to jazz recording after much too long an absence, Stuff Smith (Verve MGV-8206) is described by Tenot as possessing a style sometimes marked by “a play that is violent and brutal, very different from the approaches of Venuti, South and Grappelly. One can compare his improvisations to those of a shouting tenor. Stuff’s personality is rather intriguing. Long involved with musical shows in which jazz was not a primary factor, he tries in person to capture attention by diverse means: he sings, clowns, draws strange sounds from his instrument, but especially, he ‘cooks’ with an astonishing science in view of the delicate side of the violin.”

What especially characterizes Stuff’s playing is that it is what some schools of French thought might term thoroughly “engagé.” He is deeply, passionately involved in the act of jazz expression. He swings with deep abandon, and he builds a temperature of searing height. While his sound may occasionally be raw and hungry, it is a sound that by its blues roots and penetrating, vocalized power proves itself linked to a past that goes beyond the blues and into a field that hollers and cries. Stuff’s roots are as deep as anybody’s in jazz. And like most shouters, he has a corollary predilection for expansive romanticism (as in the opening of “Russian Lullaby“).

His front line colleague, Dizzy Gillespie, has always been a “hot” musician, even in his more polemical days. Like Stuff, he is an exuberant personality with a large capacity for love and living, and a need to swing as hard as he feels. There was one time on a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, for example, when he complained long and loud that a certain rhythm section wasn’t strong enough for him. Dizzy, like Stuff, is a virile shouter.

The rhythm section includes young bassist Paul West from Dizzy’s big band as well as Dizzy’s excellent pianist, Wynton Kelly, a first-rate soloist, accompanist and section force whose time of recognition is overdue. On drums is the veteran J.C. Heard, who has worked with Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and who stimulated the Japanese jazz scene for a couple of years. The airily hip collective vocal presence on Oh, Lady Be Good, is the Gordon family, which has recorded previously with Max Roach and Charles Mingus.

The return of Stuff Smith is of infectious value in itself. As to whether he will ignite an interest among the young toward adapting jazz violin to any of the various modern idioms, the prognosis is doubtful. There is one on the instrument, Dick Wetmore, who may continue the tradition. But meanwhile, the major reservoir of jazz violin is the antic soul of Stuff Smith, a wholly engaging and engaged individual in the main current of jazz.