Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 12/22/1956

Bill Perkins is not one of the most famous tenor sax men in the jazz world but he is unquestionably one of the best. Like many other contemporary tenor men, he has been influenced by Lester Young, otherwise known as Pres.

His tone will remind you of the “old” Lester Young, as the cliché goes, and his melodic, rhythmic approach is a good deal nearer to Pres than is the case with most of Lester’s followers, and there are many.

Bill’s first album under his own name is now available. It’s called On Stage, The Bill Perkins Octet. Other in the group are Bud Shank, Jack Nimitz, Stu Williamson, Carl Fontana, Russ Freeman, Red Mitchell and Mel Lewis.

On two tunes, Song of the Islands and Let Me See, the original Lester solos on old Basie records are used for ensemble work. They jell well this way, too. Perkins is in a real Pres groove on Let Me See, one of the best things in the album.

The old Lunceford tune, For Dancers Only, also gets a warm, lively reading. Album is recommended.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : March, 1957

Bill Perkins, a graduate of the Woody Herman band, joins his tenor saxophone with four other alumni: Red Mitchell, bass; Carl Fontana, trombone; Jack Nimitz, baritone and bass clarinet; Stu Williamson, trumpet and valve trombone; Bud Shank, alto, and Mel Lewis, drums, complete the octet which goes all out for big band sound and gets it with the aid of an open recording made in the Music Box Theatre, Hollywood.

The arrangements, thinking, and blowing are in the big-band vein, but the curtailed instrumentation permits a more expansive perusal of ideas. They are not for lazy listening and another change of pace in the manner in the manner of Johnny Mandel’s plaintive Just a Child would have eased matters. Perkins, Lennie Niehaus and Bill Holman have written arrangements, two from the Basie book, cleverly designed to give a full sound to this small West Coast group.

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Providence Journal
Philip C. Gunion : 01/20/1957

Another man who is at the top of his class is the tenor sax player Bill Perkins, and a new Pacific Jazz album has his octet On Stage, a special hi-fi theater recording made at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood.

This is good solid modern jazz with the Basie flavor and two of the good numbers are Let Me See, and Song of the Islands, both from the Basie book with the old Lester Young solos used ensemble.

With Perkins, who is in top form, are Bud Shank, alto; Jack Nimitz, baritone sax and bass clarinet; Stu Williamson, trumpet and valve trombone; Carl Fontana, trombone; Russ Freeman, piano; Red Mitchell, bass and Mel Lewis, drums.

It would be hard to do anything wrong with a group like this and Pacific has used the personnel and sound equipment to great advantage. A real mover all the way.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 02/10/1957

I can well believe, with Perkins‘ growing crowd of fans, that he is playing the best tenor being played today. He is modern, sensitive, lyrical: always in control of every musical situation without ever letting his control show through. This is a great companion piece to Pacific’s Grand Encounter in which Perkins also appeared. The personnel on this one includes Bud Shank, Jack Nimitz, Stu Williamson, Russ Freeman, et al. This one is almost sheer joy – including even the program notes, which are written as such notes should be, but seldom are.

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Down Beat : 02/20/1957
Nat Hentoff : 3.5 stars

Bill Perkins‘ first LP as sole leader is attractive in a low-keyed way (even the jumpers tend to smile more than they shout). There are particularly good solos by Perkins and Fontana and capable work by the others, including a smoothly knit rhythm section. Perkins arranged three with two apiece by Bill Holman and Lennie Niehaus, and one by Johnny Mandel. Mandel’s plaintive Just a Child is my favorite of the originals.

The arranging, for the most part, is somewhat too bland for this listener’s taste. Even on the two Basie-identified tunes whereon the original Lester Young tenor solos form some of the material for the ensemble playing, the virile buoyancy that was so refreshing a quality of the Basie era is considerably dimmed here. The session is most successful on Years and Child. There is a bite and emotional strength partly missing in the ensemble writing-and-playing on the others, and the solos are sometimes truncated before they can really build.

The album is alright, but Perkins is so good a jazzman that he can do much better. In describing Perkins’ sound, annotator Ralph Gleason hits it exactly as “disciplined emotion.” Same is true of the rest of the rest of his approach. You ought to hear the album for him.

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Liner Notes by Ralph J. Gleason

William Reese Perkins, the tow-headed, serious young tenor saxophonist who makes his debut as a leader of his own group in this album, “has the best sound in jazz today.”

That all-encompassing tribute comes from another top flight young jazz man and Perkins’ section mate for a year on the Woody Herman band, tenor Jerry Coker.

It is also typical of the reaction of musicians and fans throughout the jazz world. Two years ago Stan Getz (and if Pres is president, surely Stanley is secretary of state) flatly told me “Perkins is blowing more than any of us.”

Compliments are coming Perkins’ way frequently these days. He was voted New Star in the Down Beat Critics’ Poll last year and received a similar honor from Metronome. Critics have been unanimous in praising his work with the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton bands. During the Kenton tour of England in the Spring of 1956, Perkins was hailed as the “most beautifully relaxed, eloquent, emotionally moving tenor we have heard in Europe since Pres’ last visit” by critic Mike Butcher of The New Musical Express.

And what does this praise do to Perkins? It makes him hang his head bashfully and talk about how great Stan and Brew and Pres and a host of other tenor players are and how dissatisfied he is with his own efforts.

Such modesty is rare in any field, but especially rare in jazz. And yet, it has always been Perkins’ trademark ever since he first appeared on the jazz scene as a member of the sax section of the Woody Herman Third Herd. Perkins, who joined Woody in 1951 after a short spell with Jerry Wald’s band in Los Angeles (Woody had fired a tenor right after a radio broadcast and put in a hurry call for a replacement. Wald sent over Perkins who sat down and stayed for two years), left to stay at home with his family a while, played played with Maynard Ferguson’s great little band, and then re-joined Herman in 1954 and toured Europe and the U.S. with him and since then has been one of Kenton’s stars.

Bill Perkins, (nicknamed “Phineas” by his fellow musicians on the Herman band) was born in San Francisco July 22, 1924. He went to high school in Santa Barbara and attended the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California. Originally he had planned to be an engineer. All his immediate family (male, that is) were engineers and it seemed natural for him to follow in their footsteps. He had played clarinet and sax with high school groups in Santa Barbara and while he was at Stanford taking his master’s degree, he studied tenor with Chuck Travis, who had played with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Eventually the attractions of music proved too great and Bill decided to make it his career.

He then enrolled in Westlake College of Music in Hollywood and after study there, played with Dan Terry, Shorty Rogers (he recorded The Wild One EP with Rogers), Jerry Wald and Desi Arnez. Today Perkins plays an imposing array of reed instruments, including the tenor, flute (he has been working on this consistently for the past few years), bass clarinet, alto sax, clarinet and oboe. He also arranges, and some sparkling examples of his ability in that department will be found in this album.

Perkins is a great admirer of “the old” Lester Young and of Stan Getz, and lists among his other favorites Bob Brookmeyer, Lee Konitz, Al Cohn and Forrest Westbrook. And his hobbies, aside from music, are sailing and electronics.

If there were but two words to describe Perkins’ tenor sax sound, you would have to say “disciplined emotion.” He is a thorough musician, never satisfied with any level he reaches, and is his own severest critic. Even on the road with a band, Perkins is famous for being on the job early and practicing. The sound he gets on the tenor is a distillation of the sounds that have gone before, melded into a beautifully controlled lyric projection of his own musical ideas.

Perkins is rhythmic, as a good tenor should be (witness his solo in Song of the Islands) and he is romantic, too (witness the beauty of his solo on Just a Child.) When he was with Woody Herman it was his fate to take the Getz solo on Early Autumn, a nightly request. It is to his credit, and a tribute to the high quality of his musicianship, that he never played it with the Getzian ghost peering obviously over his shoulder. He stood there and blew it as though it has never been blown before. Each time was the first time, and he won the ever-lasting respect of his fellow musicians for that, including Woody Herman who has heard not a few tenor in that specific situation in the past decade.

If these words sound like an unadulterated paean of praise, I have been successful. That is exactly what I would like to write about Bill Perkins. I don’t know of any musician I have ever encountered who has earned my unequivocal respect to the extent that Bill Perkins has. I think that he is well on his way to becoming one of the greatest tenor men in jazz. And furthermore, that he is indicative of the new look in jazz players: a musician, a gentleman and a credit to his art.

For this album, Perkins has joined with four other former Herman Herdsmen: Red Mitchell, Carl Fontana, Jack Nimitz and Stu Williamson. Mitchell is already acclaimed as one of the top jazz bass players. Fontana, who has been in comparative obscurity with the band of Hal McIntyre following his service with Herman, is now earning belated praise for his work with Stan Kenton. Jack Nimitz, who was anchor man in the sax section most of the time Perkins was on the Herman band, has recently been performing the same duties with the Kenton orchestra. Stu Williamson, another graduate of the Kenton and Herman bands, has possibly never been heard in such good form as on this album.

The other men are Bud Shank, one of the best known and respected alto sax men in jazz; Russ Freeman, a continually improving pianist who is very impressive on these sides, and Mel Lewis, Kenton’s current drummer, who provides a tastily swinging foundation.

As to the tunes on this album, I would like particularly to direct your attention to the two numbers from the old Basie band, Song of the Islands and Let Me See, both of which utilize the original Lester Young tenor solos for ensemble playing, Perkins’ work on One Hundred Years From Today, with its lovely ending, the trombone and tenor interplay on Zing! Zang!, and the reflective, romantic playing of Perkins on Just a Child and Stu Williamson’s mute horn on the same tune.