Billboard : 04/06/1957
Score of 81

Valve trombonist Brookmeyer once again acts as collaborator and catalyst in producing an outstanding, swinging, modern jazz program. It’s the best set in Coral’s new batch of disks by far, and can be sold with very little effort. some of the contrapuntal ensemble, tho modern, can even capture the fancy of Dixie fans. Cohn, when he can swing freely, away from the over-written arrangements, is now one of the most consistent tenor men on the scene. Most shops should be able to handle it.

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Cashbox : 03/30/1957

Two trusted jazz forces, the tenor sax of Al Cohn and the valve trombone of Bobby Brookmeyer, play the principal roles in this Coral release of a series of swinging, and original jazz thrusts. Against expert 3 man support, Cohn and Brookmeyer compliment each other with persuasive attacks on the original-evergreen material. Reliable jazz stock.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : June 1957

Bob Brookmeyer is given only featured billing on this disc, but it is at least as much his as Cohn‘s. This is not to underrate Cohn’s contributions, which are generally excellent; but Brookmeyer, a sturdy, deep-rooted jazzman who is becoming better and better, has rarely been heard to as good advantage. Like Gerry Mulligan, Brookmeyer is a present-day jazz musician who seems to have absorbed the feeling of early jazz and to be able to express it in terms that are neither narrowly modern nor old-fashioned. He stomps, he swings, he evolves a flowing, many-noted solo – all with apparent ease and a delightful leathery tone. He has also brought several arrangements to this session, the best being a slithering Ill Wind, a vigorous swinging S-h-i-n-e, and a swaggering original called Lazy Man Stomp.

Although Cohn rarely achieves the very personal distinction that is Brookmeyer’s, he is one of the breeziest of the post-Lester Young swinging tenors. He shows this side frequently here, along with a rich mood style on one of his own tunes, Winter. But his best contribution, and the highest point in a generally high-spirited collection, is his imaginative arrangement of The Lady is a Tramp which he and Brookmeyer lash into with leaping zest.

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Down Beat : 05/02/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars

Since Sonny Lester took over as Coral’s jazz director, this is the best LP he’s released. Bob and Al have three originals and six arrangements apiece. The writing is tasty, economically inventive, and almost always is flowingly in context with the blowing sections. I found Cohn’s Winter particularly worth remembering among the originals.

The essence of the set, however, is the soloing. Both Al and Bob, backed by a fine rhythm section, work successfully toward what Al describes in that notes as “originality with logic.” Both have roots, especially in the Basie heritage. Both combine technical command of their horns with individual, consistently clear-thinking and strong-feeling voices. Both swing constantly. And what makes the LP a ball is that both obviously so dig each other’s playing that they interweave in ensemble passages as if they were extensions of each other.

The rating would have gone all the way had it not been for Coral’s insistence on 12 tracks “so the disc jockeys will play them.” Strongly recommended anyway.

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Liner Notes by Charles Edward Smith

In writings about jazz, two presumptions stand out to claim the sore thumbs award. One is that history repeats itself, the other is that the best jazz is slowly losing its identify and being swallowed up in art music. Apart from providing good entertainment and rewarding listening, these numbers by the Al Cohn Quintet, with Bob Brookmeyer, help to dissipate such notions. They are traditional and modern. They can be danced to or listened to. A variety of moods are presented, from bumptious humor to ballad-blown sentiment, unified in a forceful style characterized by driving rhythms and suspense in swing – the element of surprise that Al Cohn blandly calls a striving for “originality with logic.”

As the cool front in jazz succumbs to climatic influences of the environment, frigid, sometimes frost-bitten sounds give way to blowing that varies from lukewarm to hot, though in the lexicon of some fans (and even some musicians) the latter term implies a subjectively emotional creative license. This would seem a misuse of the word. Certain of Louis Armstrong‘s choruses of 1927-28, for example, are as objective as one would want, and too hot for any other trumpet man to handle. So much for terms. In this lead-off set of Coral’s Quintet series, featuring Al Cohn and Bob Brookmeyer – each of whom contributes three originals and six arrangements – there is an awareness of tradition and a sureness of style linking these men and this group to Louis, Pres, Count Basie and others, and any narrow application of these terms becomes meaningless.

Modern jazz, if it is to deserve the name, does not base its claim to musical distinction on scalar-harmonic affinity to Debussy or even to the more avant garde composters, but on a freshness of treatment in interpreting and adding to discoveries in jazz itself. And jazz begins with swing, a subtle sense that involves the unceasing presence of a non-notable rhythmic and tonal distortion. (Technical pre-conditions to swing may, of course, be written – as in Fletcher‘s arrangements for Goodman.) “Neither Bob nor I try to be different for the sake of being different,” Al insisted, and in this he spoke the simple truth. These men have a dynamic approach to jazz, of whatever period or style, that is reflected in a remark made by Brookmeyer, in an interview with Leonard Feather (Down Beat, 9/7/55): “Count Basie was my only influence – not Basie on piano but the general feel, the spark generated by the orchestra.” That’s a whole lot of tradition, wrapped up in one band!

In his use of harmonic and rhythmic devices (in writing for instruments,) Al remarked that he didn’t necessarily go by the book, which might be said of Bob as well. Both have technical training but in jazz, as in other of the arts, lessons most worth learning are often extra-curricular. Born in Kansas City, Bob got his first horn in 1948. “That was the year Gerry Mulligan and Kai Winding came to town with a combo;” he recalled (ibid) “Kai was very kind, very encouraging.” He played piano with bands led by Beneke, McKinley and Louis Prima; with Thornhill he shifted to 2nd piano and trombone and somewhat later played trombone for a few weeks with Woody Herman. There was a frustrating interval on the West Coast playing with groups that assayed a type of music that seemed to him at timres more dead than dead-pan. (That there were other types of jazz on the Coast goes without saying; it was his luck to run into what was, for his endeavor, a mess of musical smog.) In New York, as he explained in the interview quoted, “There are plenty of wonderful musicians to work with, starting with Al Cohn and all the way down the line. I’m really very happy.”

Al Cohn played in and sometimes arrange for the Erasmus High School Band in his native Brooklyn, NY. He studied clarinet and piano but never studied tenor sax. Though he did not take special courses in orchestration his grasp of musical theory prepared him for work in this field, from stints for radio shows to big-band arrangements for George Auld and Woody Herman. He was with bands led by Joe Marsala and Georgie Auld, both well known for their reed work. Among favorite tenors he lists Zoot Sims, Sonny Stitt, and, of course, Lester Young. His own style is extremely adaptable, a swinging style as expressive in a powerhouse attack as in delineating the lyric line of a ballad.

Having a mutual respect for good jazz, of whatever school or era, a knowledge of and appreciation for craftsmanship in playing and in arranging, and a creative sense of swing, Al and Bob hit it off musically from the first jam session they played together. It is gratifying to be able to say of a five-piece outfit – other men have featured spots but these notes concentrate on Cohn and Brookmeyer – that it has exhilarating drive and swing. not on every piece, of course, but on the ones where you’d expect it, if a big band was on the job.

The arrangements, admittedly subordinate to performance according to Al Cohn, nevertheless deserve mention. In the use of unusual harmonies, chord changes, and occasionally, a breaking up of the 4/4 rhythmic pattern, and particularly in a freshness of phrasing in background licks and so forth that avoids cliché, the writing appears to this listener more than casual. Details that might otherwise go unnoticed, contribute structurally and hold new sounds for tired ears. In treatment of ballads (which are so often presented as schmaltz with window dressing) latent musical values are assessed in thoughtful writing that blends unobtrusively with choruses. The latter, Al pointed out, were the big thing. Yet the backgrounds contribute to the realization of form that also distinguishes the best choruses. They give breadth and depth to the composition of each performance, the focal points of which are the solos since, to quote Al Cohn, “The most important thing on this job was blowing.”

The following are brief comments that spell out one listener’s reaction. In this venture in personal expression in jazz, Al and Bob had excellent support, as you’ll note in listening, from Mose Allison, piano; Nick Stabulas, drums; and Ted Kotick, bass.

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The Lady Is A Tramp (arr. Al Cohn).
The minimum arranging opens in blocks of sound and closes with licks that might be called riffs, since they have a structural function. Al’s get-off is solid and strong, like a jazz tap dancer coming on with a shattering break. His style (intonation, accent, phrasing) combines fluid definition with a rhythmic stabbing of notes. Bob sets off chain reactions in the valves and is not afraid of roughness as he manipulates tone. One seldom hears the valve trombone played with such assurance.

Good Spirits (original & arr. Bob Brookmeyer).
These are happy sounds, especially as rendered by Al’s tenor. This is not to say ingenious – a shade sardonic might be nearer the mark. Bob Brookmeyer is one of the few trombonists who can play fast runs of notes, or crowd a lot of notes into a small space, without suggesting the bouncing ball technique. He plays around the beat like a veteran. An antidote for a blue Monday.

A Blues Serenade (arr. Al).
Organ chords are here to stay but in this treatment have a nut-like flavor, not the gooey stuff of many dance band arrangements. Note Al’s interjections as Bob takes on the theme. In Bob’s hands the valve trombone, which is a sort of cross between a low-voiced trumpet and the ancient slide trombone – and is itself a venerable member of the brasses – reminds one of a tigron. (If you’ve been to the Central Park Zoo in New York you’ll know that this is, as one might say, a cat of another color. The tigron is a cross between a lion and a tiger and, however improbably it seems, you wouldn’t want to be left alone in a cage with one.) This tigron of the brasses explodes in a controlled fury of sound as Bob realizes the utmost in tonal possibilities.

Lazy Man’s Stomp (orig. & arr. Bob).
In Buddy Bolden’s day stomps were sometimes called joys and this one is in more or less that spirit. It is actually no lazier than the tempo indicated. Nevertheless, it is very relaxed – like a person who is late and has to make time, yet appears unhurried. These men swing mightily when they’re with it and both have fine solo spots, in fast-paced phrasing that is beautifully articulated. Like certain other numbers in this set, it closes with an amazing sense of ensemble fullness.

Ill Wind (arr. Bob).
In the solo work, Al proves once again that when a jazzman gets off he can be with it, with the most. One gets the mood of a conversation piece toward the close and the rhythm at times, unobtrusively, spells cat – in Latin.

Chlo-e (arr. Al).
This is a bright portrait, in bright tempo, as Chlo-e’s charms are limited in fluid definition by Al’s tenor. Bob’s chorus illustrates his grasp of form, as it build up in a heightening of interest. The number opens in a slightly Dixieland manner but this is knowingly deceptive. Shortly Al attacks in lush cheerful tones and Bob’s horn explodes arpeggios all over the place. This is a swinging interpretation, spiced with rhythmic variety. Toward its conclusion there are glimpses of Chlo-e in modern dress.

S-h-i-n-e (arr. Bob).
A standout treatment of a standard, characterized by pungent harmonies and vigorous soloing. Al gives it an initial workout in a display of tone, tension and technique that combines gutty attack and good taste. Then Bob’s bucking trombone worries the beat with very short-noted stuff – the opposite of that touch-the-bases, bouncing-ball, easy-way-out style of lesser artists. As with Jack Teagarden his many-noted phrases (that might seem merely decorative on first listening) have genuine melodic interest.

Back To Back (orig. & arr. Al).
A pleasant exercise in medium tempo, notable for rhythmic contrasts. The adaptability of style is of interest. Bob is a man-about-tones, if one may be permitted an awkward but appropriate play upon words, and Al’s plumed melodic line has a kind of baroque grace.

So Far So Good (orig. & arr. Al).
This pleasant tune, reflecting Al’s considerable melodic gift as composer, is of moment for solo work above the rhythmic-tonal foundation. And his lyric, somewhat rhapsodic tenor is lush listening, beginning in clipped notes and featuring curved, legato lines.

Winter (orig. & arr. Al).
This is a sweet tune, ballad-blown, subtle and thoughtful in treatment. Al’s statement of theme is most effective and Bob’s chorus is in a similar vein of deliberate exposition and restrained mood. This song-in-search-of-a-lyric presents orchestra dynamics in a small group.

I Should Care (arr. Bob).
Al breathes balladry in this sometimes plaintive, sometimes world-weary interpretation of a familiar plaint of ill-begotten romance. (There may be a name for this style of aspirated intonation; if there is, it escapes the writer.) The art of blowing ballads reminds one of the glass-blower’s craft – which you may have seen in films if not in the flesh – there is the same instant magic of creating curved loveliness.

Bunny Hunch (orig. & arr. Bob).
A jumpy Bunny, a get-with-it-tune – and they do, in a solid way, with a judicious, knowing use of instruments.