Billboard : 04/06/1957
Spotlight on… selection

The charming cover and diversified contents indicate that Verve has pop sales in mind for this set, and they could be forthcoming. Jazz sales are taken for granted. Besides the popular title track, there are some great slow-tempo items, swingers, jazz showpieces and even an exciting Mambo Inn. This band gets better and better, in solos and ensembles. Put the needle down anywhere.

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Cashbox : 04/13/1957

Count Basie and the ork clicked a short while ago with a devastating “triple” run-through on April In Paris. This number plus 9 other Basie pressings (What Am I Here For, Corner Pocket) make up this Verve release. Basie’s swinging, fun-packed ensemble carry lots of impressive jazz doings. April in Paris is spring and some great Basie swing.

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Jazz Monthly (UK)
Raymond Horricks : 11/1957

April in Paris, with ‘pop goes the weasel’ solo from Thad Jones and triple-decker ending, and Magic, a Frank Wess score featuring good trombone by Bill Hughes, have been available in this country for some time; the majority of the remaining scores here recorded were presented by the band on its recent tour of England. The recordings of the latter vary in quality.

Corner Pocket, Freddie Greene’s tune arranged by Ernie Wilkins, is the best of them, with the band combining effective drive with impressive musical precision. Thad Jones and Joe Newman take the solos on this one. Did’n You, by Frank Foster, and Sweety Cakes by Wilkins are also to be commended. Henry Coker is featured at length with the former, while Wilkins’ piece is designed for Basie’s piano and the ensemble. Frank Foster’s other tune, Shiny Stockings, contains some of the best Thad Jones on record and in itself is a delightfully melodic theme. The one fault of the performance is caused by Sonny Payne’s too rigid drumming, which never really gets with the light swing from the remainder of the rhythm section. It is a pity that Gus Johnson had to leave the band.

What am I here for is the dullest arrangement Frank Foster has contributed to the band book, and unworthy of one of Ellington’s best tunes. Also, I don’t know whether the title was crammed in at the end of a recording session, but the performance is technically imperfect and one brass error is particularly noticeable. Mambo Inn has no place with this band and I am surprised the leader allowed its inclusion here. Dinner with friends, the Neal Hefti score, has solos that are not outstanding by Newman, Wess and Payne, the latter’s considerably cut down from what he does normally within this arrangement at concerts.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 05/19/1957

The Count shows his brass in a new Verve album called April in Paris (MG V-8012). You guessed it. The Basie band presents the favorite of our time one more time. And it never fails to move me. This is the current Basie brood. Sonny Payne keeps things moving for the sidemen. Close the windows and play this one loud.

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Washington Post (Washington, DC)
Paul Sampson : 04/07/1957

Aside from the title song and a welcome revival of Ellington’s What Am I Here For, the program is all originals – good ones. The band plays with its customary brassy power and precision. One of the best of the recent Basie records.

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Down Beat : 05/16/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.0 stars

The Verve LP makes clearer the defects as well as the virtues of the present Basie band. There is the earthy impact, the smack of powerful authority, the soli soloists, the drive of the band which, however, swung more loosely when Gus Johnson was on drums. But there are problems. The material is frequently too much of the same mold. Only the Newman-Wess Midgets is outstanding here, and Mambo Inn is a mistake, indicating also that this band is not especially flexible. It’s great on blues in varying frameworks but is often characterless on ballads and is somewhat disoriented on something like Mambo. And April in Paris is a bore.

Writing on the LPs is by Wilkins, Neal Hefti, Newman, Reunald Jones, Foster, and Wess. Solos are by the usual members of the company, with Newman outstanding in the trumpets; he fits this context more fully than does Thad. The trombonists are good. The two tenors are blowing with more authority, and while neither is of major imaginative ability, they can preach. The key men remain Basie and Green – for reasons that often have been detailed.

Contrary to the liner, the solo on Magic is by altoist Royal and not tenorist Wess. And Wess does not have a flute solo on What Am I Here For? It might pay Granz to hire more accurate annotators.

There is no gainsaying that this is still a roaring jazz band, the best for the blues now in existence, but it has weaknesses, and it compares quite unfavorably with the Basie band that had Pres, Sweets, Herschel, Wells, Clayton, etc.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

One night in Birdland the Count Basie band was playing a new arrangement by William “Wild Bill” Davis of an old song by Vernon Duke – April In Paris. It’s a striking arrangement, this one, for a song that has been played and sung in any number of ways since E.Y. (Yip) Harburg fashioned words to Duke’s melody, it becoming the most memorable feature of a 1932 Broadway show called “Walk A Little Faster.” In Davis’ arrangement there is one sequence which might well be an instrumental solo except that in Basie’s hands the entire ensemble goes to work – the effect being, to say the least, highly unusual; hearing it for the first time one assumes that the band is playing ad lib melody. Finally, there’s the ending, which is a delightful fooler, as all jazz followers are aware by now. Well, on this night in Birdland it seemed natural for Basie to give his orders verbally. “One more time,” he directed. Then: “One more – once…

The result? One of Basie’s biggest hits and, now, on of the most frequently requested tunes wherever the Basie aggregation goes. It’s typical Basie, of course – swinging, exciting, weightless with a sound that’s immediately identifiable. The solos in April In Paris, incidentally, are authored by Thad Jones on trumpet and Benny Powell on trombone, and the piano, of course, belongs to William “Count” Basie.

The various facets of the Basie band, a three-time winner in Down Beat’s annual Jazz Critics Poll, come to light with infectious vigor in the other selections in the album. Taking them in order, Corner Pocket is an Ernie Wilkins arrangement, with the trumpets of Thad Jones and Joe Newman coming in strong after a brisk little introductory figure by Basie’s piano; Frank Wess, tenor saxophone, also takes a solo. Frank Foster’s Did’n You shows the reeds to good advantage and there’s a very mellow trombone contributed by Henry Coker. Sweety Cakes, by Ernie Wilkins, is likewise in the mood with almost gentle piano work by Basie. Magic is a tricky Frank Wess tune with Wess himself featured on the tenor saxophone. Frank Foster’s Shiny Stockings reveals the Basie crew in a particularly hard-blowing jazz mood while another Foster arrangement, this one of Duke Ellington’s What Am I Here For, features Joe Newman’s trumpet and Frank Wess on flute along with Basie’s piano. Midgets, by Joe Newman, will put you in mind precisely of little people at play – the muted trumpet is Newman’s, too. For a change of pace, Mambo Inn sends the Basie band into a Latin-American tempo and some blistering ensemble work. Joe Newman’s trumpet and Frank Foster on tenor handle the solos in the jumping Dinner With Friends, a Neal Hefti arrangement.