Army Times 
Tom Scanlan : 12/28/1957

Clark Terry, trumpet sideman with Duke Ellington who has been tagged one of the most underrated musicians in the business by several critics, is featured on Serenade for a Bus Seat. Others in the group are tenor man Johnny Griffin, a newcomer who can stir up considerable excitement if you can “get with” his style, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassman Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones. There is some music worth hearing on this set, but the opener, Charlie Parker‘s Donna Lee which by any other name would still be Indiana, speeds and should have been cut over again. I’ve heard some solos by Terry that I prefer to any here but it’s probably a matter of taste. And speaking of underrated trumpet men, why doesn’t some record company put the spotlight on Ray Nance? Nance, now the veteran of Ellington trumpet section has always been underrated by just about everyone except musicians, especially trumpet players.

—–

Audio : February, 1958
Charles A. Robertson

Since the unquenchable Bubber Miley sparked his early band, Duke Ellington has usually managed to keep one exceptional trumpet player and at one time supported both Cootie Williams and Rex Stewart. None of them surpassed Miley in stature and it is not likely that any of the present section will do so, circumscribed as they are by the thoroughly-arranged character of today’s band. Clark Terry, the most able of the current crop, was raised on the half-valve effects of Stewart, as opposed to the muted growl developed by Miley and used by Williams. But when he makes an infrequent appearance with a small group, as here, he has the same heady fire and creative drive which Miley used to pull his cohorts along beside him.

Thoroughly modern in concept, Terry is able in his five originals to negotiate things not thought of thirty years ago. He is technically assured in the title tune and its sequel Cruising. But in Digits and the blues called Boardwalk, he engages in a call-and-answer effect with Johnny Griffin, on tenor sax, to show an earthy quality which, like Miley’s feeling for the blues, is pre-Ellington. Griffin was demanded by Terry for the session, and he proves his worth from Parker‘s swift Donna Lee to the standards Stardust and That Old Black Magic. The rhythm section consists of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. After this album, Clark Terry will not be sold short.

—–

Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 02/02/1958

Clark Terry, a topdrawer trumpeter who has been buried for years in the brass section of the Basie and Ellington bands, gets a chance herein to display his distinctive sound and his fine feeling for ballad and blues. His work highlights the bop-tinged offerings by a quintet whose other members are tenor Johnny Griffin, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Griffin needs to learn to slow down now and then and Philly to play for the group.

—–

Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 11/16/1957

This takes off with a sunny dance on Donna Lee and is sustained with wit and pensiveness for eight numbers by Terry‘s trumpet and J. Griffin‘s answering tenor. Terry does a lot of interpolating but one cannot help but be amused by the direct quotes in, say, Boardwalk of everyone from Bolden to Gillespie, nor delighted by the unique, jocular conception which holds them together.

—–

Washington Post
Paul Sampson : 01/05/1958

Griffin plays even better in a first-rate Riverside LP, Serenade to a Bus Seat. Although the style here is the familiar “hard bop,” it’s given added interest by Terry, who plays trumpet with an individual style, avoiding the sameness of sound and attack of most of the trumpeters in the Donald Byrd wing. The quintet also includes Wynton Kelly, Philly Joe Jones and the ubiquitous Chambers. Recommended.

—–

Down Beat : 01/23/1958
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

While for the most part this is a swinging, often exciting set, I found the whipping bop of the solos a bit wearing on repeated hearings. This particularly struck home when on Stardust, the rhythm section double-timed behind Griffin, who blows perhaps the longest, multi-noted line of all tenor men today, but who should have, I felt, been represented on this track with more than his usual bristling offering.

Terry’s five originals, in varying degrees of uptempo, left me with an overall feeling of glibness. Cruising, taken at title tempo, was most memorable of the group. The once-through treatment of Magic, probably the shortest on record, was colorful and smartly played. But I wondered what had happened to the rest of it.

Parker‘s Donna, clipped off at furious pace, sizzles. I believe it would have been considerably more effective and an album standout if the pace of many of the other selections had been varied.

Kelly is spotted handsomely on the title tune, and Terry shines throughout. All in all, though, it’s good to hear Terry out of the Ellington band context. I hope that his next album has a few more changes of pace, largely because he has a lovely ballad sound and it seems a shame to leave that side of him fallow.

—–

Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This album celebrates the “discovery” of a superior talent that has been around for the finding for several years. Clark Terry has been able to hold his own with the top men on trumpet for nearly a decade, yet even moderately well-informed followers of jazz could be forgiven for not being overly familiar with his work. In such cases of buried talent (and there are more than a few on the current scene) it is easy enough to say smugly that it’s the public’s loss: Clark’s horn has a lot to say, and those who have missed it up to now have been kept from a rare jazz experience. But such things work both ways: by not reaching the jazz public directly and often, a musician is being deprived of an essential outlet and important satisfactions.

Terry has scarcely been hiding in obscure places. His particular dilemma is indicated by the album title: Serenade to a Bus Seat. Clark suggests, with an ironic smile, that this is “the story of my life,” for the bus referred to is the king that big bands use on the road. The St. Louis-born trumpeter started with Lionel Hampton, after being discharged from the Navy in 1945; since then his major jobs have been long stints with Count Basie (1948-51) and Duke Ellington (from 1951 to date). Like a good many others faced with the tricky task of functioning as a jazz musician and supporting a family (his wife, Pauline, and their two sons), Terry has chosen the comparative stability of the successful big band. And while his work with the Duke has brought him to the attention of many, it has also had to meaningfully limited solo opportunities and a general subordination of his personal style and ideas to the quite specific requirements of the Ellington sound. Clark has of course appeared on a number of non-Ellington records, but this LP represents one of the very few occasions when the spotlight has been turned squarely on him.

The manner in which Clark Terry and Riverside came together demonstrates that “buried” jazz talent can come to light in odd ways. We had known, in a general way, something of his efforts with Ellington, had known that critic Leonard Feather has called him “one of the most original trumpet players in contemporary jazz” and that Nat Hentoff considers him one of the most unfairly underrated of current musicians, but it took coincidence to shake us into action. A jazz-magazine editor had suggested that we do a Clark Terry album. At precisely that time, we were in the midst of cutting a Thelonious Monk LP. One sideman unexpected left town on a long road trip. Terry happened to be in town, and Monk unhesitatingly picked him to fill the gap. That meant a lot all by itself: Monk’s approval, never loosely given, has always counted for a great deal around this label. The clincher came in hearing Clark at the session (the completion of RLP 12-226: Brilliant Corners).

The present album seems to us to substantiate fully the enthusiasm Terry sparked at that Monk date, and to more than justify the critics’ praise. It is an unusually relaxed, cohesive, and happy-sounding LP, not only because the overall level of musicianship is about as high as you can get, but probably also because a good deal of enthusiasm was involved – a quality that doesn’t always seem to be on tap these days of very frequent (and sometimes casually flung-together) recording activity. Johnny Griffin, for example, is on hand because Clark, hearing him when the Ellington band was in Johnny’s hometown of Chicago early in 1957, wrote back that he had to have Griffin on his album. Through good timing (Griffin came to New York to join Art Blakey‘s group) and the courtesy of Blue Note, for whom Johnny currently records, it was possible to use this sensational young tenor man. The rhythm section includes Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, two of the very best in the East, who at the time had been working together for over a year (which always helps) in Miles Davis‘ quintet; and Wynton Kelly, presently with Dizzy Gillespie‘s big band, a pianist whom fellow musicians, through not nearly enough of the public, recognize as a formidable performer.

The emphasis here is on swinging medium-to-up tempos, a groove into which Clark and Johnny fitted together immediately. Both men have the rare ability to handle swift passages with unrushed ease (as a prime example, listen to Donna Lee). Emphasis is also on Terry as a writer. He contributes five fresh and unpretentious originals; and he also demonstrates his ability to get away from standardized routining of tunes (note, for example, the passages in both Digits and the blues called Boardwalk in which the two horns ‘answer’ each other most effectively). The two standards have their own special touches, too; the inclusion of the beautiful, neglected verse of Stardust; and the Latin treatment of Old Black Magic (with cowbell by Terry and claves by Griffin).

Above all, there is the consistently warm, clean, brilliant tone of Clark’s horn, and the play of his fertile jazz imagination. There is also evidence that he belongs to that solid core of current jazzmen who are able to incorporate and transform their own uses material that is not strictly and narrowly “modern.” There is fundamental gutbucket in Boardwalk; and there’s also the fact that, although Terry at least partially “inherited” half-valve effects from his predecessor with Ellington, Rex Stewart, he has adapted them in ways that are uniquely his.

On this LP, Clark Terry comes into his own. It does not seem exaggeration to say that a few more like this will establish him as a truly major jazz figure.