Army Times : 02/09/1957
Tom Scanlan

Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco has some swinging moments on a new sextet record appropriately called The Buddy DeFranco Wailers. Well, they do, especially Harry “Sweets” Edison and guitarist Barney Kessel. Greatly underrated pianist Jimmy Rowles is on the date, too.

Sweets plays his distinctive, warm, soft-muted horn most of the time but on April Eyes he takes the mute out and his fat tone is a pleasure to hear. Kessel rarely if ever takes a bad solo and this LP is no exception.

Moonlight on the Ganges moves as well as anything in the set although most of the others are also well worth hearing. The rhythm section seems to chug on occasion as on A Fine Romance (is the bassman dragging?) and for my taste a straight rhythm guitar would have helped Sweet Blues, not a blues but a rhythm progression (i.e., based on the chords of I Got Rhythm minus the “tag or last four bars).

All in all, a happy session and a good record.

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Billboard : 02/02/1957
Score of 83

This probably is the most appealing set clarinetist DeFranco has ever produced. He foregoes the usual mechanical exercises and actually comes up with some warm, pensive, graceful modern jazz, especially on the several good show tunes included. Among these are A Fine Romance and How Long Has This Been Going On? The presence of lyrical trumpeter Harry Edison and brilliant guitarist Barney Kessel helps aplenty. Any clarinet fan will want this, and so will many buyers of smart, suave modern jazz in general.

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Down Beat : 05/02/1957
Jack Tracy : 4 stars

This may well be the best context in which DeFranco has ever been presented recording-wise. Group, with the same instrumentation and much the same sort of arrangements as Artie Shaw‘s Grammercy 5, has an ingratiating façade, excellent soloists, and a warm feeling of unity. In addition, Buddy is not saddled with the responsibility of being the only horn, as he has been with his road unit for years.

The tunes are pretty much standards and show songs, plus an Edison-sketched blues which is a reworking of about half a dozen familiar lines.

Ample blowing room is afforded for DeFranco’s sterling clarinet, Kessel‘s down home, Christian like guitar, and Edison’s hip-wriggling trumpet. Most of the solos are just the putting into different sequence a basic stockpile of ideas, but with him you don’t mind it – he swings so.

Rowles, who plays piano for and with the rhythm section, again shows why his work is beginning to be talked about more and more. He also contributes some good solos without fuss or flourish.

A relaxed session that turned out excellently.

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Playboy Magazine : October, 1957

A platter yclept simply The Buddy DeFranco Wailers gives a delicious hot-cum-cool treatment to a brace of fine old tunes (Cheek to Cheek, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, A Fine Romance, and others of that ilk and vintage) and features – in addition to the DeFranco clarinet – Harry Edison on trumpet, Barney Kessel on guitar, Jimmy Rowles at the piano, Bob Stone on bass and Bobby White at the drums. Believe us, you need this.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

Why on earth does a student musician elect to play the clarinet, which is one of the more difficult of the instruments? There are a number of answers, and they all might serve to indicate just why there’s such a dearth of really first-rate clarinetists around today – or why there have been so few at any time since jazz began. In the case of one first-rate clarinetist – Buddy DeFranco – the answer is indicative of the man himself.

“Many, many years ago – more than I want to remember,” DeFranco once saying, “I was studying alto saxophone and a little clarinet. I had a pretty tough teacher, a realist in every respect. This was back in Camden, NJ. I was undecided about which instrument to concentrate on – I knew I couldn’t divide my time and be a top man on both. At least it seemed that way to me. I took the problem up with my teacher. Understand, now, I must have been all of 12 years old at the time.”

“My teacher explained it this way. He held an alto in his right hand and a clarinet in his left. ‘If you learn to be good on alto,’ he said, ‘that’ll be a nice thing and I’d be proud of you. But if you become a good – a GOOD – clarinet player – ah, that will really be something!'”

“I took his advice. I still played the alto some, but I concentrated on the clarinet. I made it the instrument I wanted to master – and I wouldn’t stop until I came close to mastering it.”

The clarinet, in short, was a challenge to Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo “Buddy” DeFranco – and he made the most of the challenge that was before him. As some indication of how he met this challenge the records show that Buddy has a record nine triumphs in the Down Beat poll and has own the Metronome poll as well.

On this album DeFranco assembled a top flight rhythm section along with an equally top flight trumpeter in Harry “Sweets” Edison to play a collection of “wailers,” among them four songs for long associated with [Film:Artist29232,Fred Astaire – to cite two of them, Cheek to Cheek from the 1935 film, Top Hat; Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off from the 1937 film, Shall We Dance. In addition to the standards trumpeter Edison has contributed one of his own tunes, Sweet Blues.

The artists are: Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Harry Edison, trumpet; Barney Kessel, guitar (courtesy of Contemporary Records); Jimmy Rowles, piano; Bob Stone, bass, and Bobby White, drums