Billboard : 10/15/1955
Spotlight on… selection

The Brubeck foursome scores another bullseye with this collection of on-the-spot recordings emanating from their Basin Street (New York) appearances of October 1954 and July 1955. All three elements of the Brubeck style that have been so important in making best sellers of his other LPs are here: the use of counterpoint, Brubeck and altoist Paul Desmond “going out” while bassist Bob Bates and drummer Joe Dodge “hold the lifeline,” and so on. As if an album like this needed any additional commercial help, it nonetheless will be given extra hypo by being part of a promotional tie-in with the introduction of Helena Rubinstein’s new lipstick.

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Cashbox : 10/08/1955

The Dave Brubeck–Paul Desmond artistry is again in evidence on this latest Columbia release as the piano-sax team pass the ball to one another in a series of explorations and interesting by-plays serving to keep one another ever on their toes. Brubeck’s nimble fingerings and flights into fantasy are equaled by the accompanying sax paintings of Desmond. The glue of the group is provided by Bob Bates, bass, and Joe Dodge on the drums. Brubeck has proven to be a big factor in the sale column – and his latest will have the further impetus of added exposure through a Helena Rubinstein promotion campaign that will highlight his album in its newspaper and magazine advertisements.

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Cedar Rapids Gazette
Les Zacheis : 10/16/1955

My, my. So many good records here lately we hardly know where to start. To be on safe ground, we’ll begin with the hero of the campus crowd – Dave Brubeck. You’ll find the Quartet on a new Columbia LP titled Jazz… Red Hot and Cool.

Here is another half hour of the intriguing Brubeck adventures in harmonics as recorded right on the job at Basin Street. Some of this is easy listening and some is tortuous and complex but still fabulous listening. We are aghast at the employment of the “round” style on the old rollicking pip, Fare Thee Well, Annabelle, and were quite flipped with Brubeck’s original portrait on the Duke.

This set also has Brubeck sharing about equal time with his alto saxist, Paul Desmond. Be sure and dig Paul playing in 3/4 on top of a 4/4 rhythmic structure in Lover. Fabulous!

This set is a worthy follow-up to Brubeck’s Brubecktime, College, and Storyville sets.

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Des Moines Register
Al Rockwell : 10/02/1955

Tuesday next marks the first appearance in Des Moines of one of the most universally accepted jazz groups in the world today: the Dave Brubeck quartet with Dave on the piano and featuring alto saxophonist Paul Desmond.

Almost simultaneous with their appearance here, the record counters should have a new album by the group entitled, Jazz: Red Hot and Cool. If Brubeck follows customary music business procedure, the concert program will adhere closely to the selections in the new album: Lover, Little Girl Blue, Fare Thee Well, Annabelle, Sometimes I’m Happy, The Duke, Indiana, and Love Walked In.

The performances in the album were recorded at Basin Street, a top New York City jazz spot, in October, 1954, and July, 1955. In the tradition of the last decade, the audiences are almost unobtrusive, so refined is their applause. However, their presence seems to have sparked the group and the playing is remarkably good, even for Brubeck.

Desmond pushes Dave for top honors, although his alto is heard less than usual. Bob Bates‘ bass and Joe Dodge‘s drums are, as ever, the sustaining elements as Dave and Paul exercise their fertile imaginations, making the melody disappear behind new and ever-changing embroidery.

As previously suggested here, there’s no better way for the neophyte jazz fan to become accustomed to modern musical sound than by repeated listening to Brubeck recordings. And this set, although it may not be his greatest, offers all the hallmarks of previous work and none of the disadvantages of the more experimental recordings of the past.

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Ottawa Journal
Bob Burgess : 10/22/1955

Where Dave Brubeck is concerned jazz enthusiasts are in complete agreement. Mention Kenton, Gillespie, and some of the others and you’ve got an argument on your hands – but Brubeck is common ground.

Columbia this week release a 12-inch Brubeck Quartet album, Jazz, Red Hot and Cool, recorded at the Basin Street in New York. There’s a business tie-up in connection with the album – a cosmetic firm is issuing new lipstick bearing the name of the album. When you buy the lipstick you also get extracts from the label’s jazz catalogues.

Music on the well-fitted sides is built around the tunes Lover, Little Girl Blue, Fare Thee Well Annabell, Love Walked In, Sometimes I’m Happy, Indiana and The Duke.

It’s an exciting jazz album with something of a hypnotic quality. Paul Desmond and Joe Dodge assist Brubeck immeasurably.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 10/29/1955

The game of correspondences – Wanda Landowska is the Yogi Berra of the harpsichord, etc. – is always tempting to play even if it is also treacherous. For a good while now it has been apparent that in the past half-century jazz has described a little capsule music history of its own, from folk beginnings to the twelve-tone scale (catching up, in its own terms, with the concert hall). And a great many of the disputes over taste in the field of modern jazz are illuminated for me by the fact that they seem to reflect rifts of opinion concerning music generally.

Thus, among the leading modern jazz exponents, I detect both a neo-romantic and a neo-classic school, and most of us, apparently, are either romancers or classicists. I am fully aware of the dangerous ambiguity of these words, and someone has persuasively observed that many of the very greatest artists (cf. Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven) render the distinction meaningless. Yet, in many areas, it has its points, and, to return from the clouds to the cafes, I would say that the leader of the neo-romantic modern jazz school is Mr. Dave Brubeck and his little combination.

He is given to delightful contrapuntal play between his piano and Paul Desmond‘s sensitive alto saxophone, but the main Brubeck emphasis is on harmonic lushness, rhapsodic piano improvising, alternating with moods, so to speak, of syncopated reverie. He harks back, in his tone world, to the nineteenth-century romantics – Chopin, Schumann, Liszt. His teacher Darius Milhaud is himself one of the most noted living neo-romantics. It is small wonder that Brubeck has appealed so strongly to young college people. Even Eisenhower debutantes like to dream, and when you delicately combine the spirit of nineteenth-century nocturnes and ballads with an insistent rhythm section, some very hypnotic dreaming may be in order. All this may be gathered from an excellent new album of Brubeck’s music Jazz: Red Hot and Cool (Columbia CL-699).

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The Virginian-Pilot
Robert C. Smith : 11/13/1955

The Dave Brubeck quartet is still, to this reviewer, high among the able contemporary jazz groups, a victim at the present time of what seems to be an inevitable critical reaction to popularity. In Columbia’s Jazz, Red Hot and Cool, the quartet is caught in live performances at New York’s “Basin Street.” The question of whether the group does its best work in concert or studio is unimportant here; certainly there is much to commend this set to anyone who has any regard for what the quartet is doing. There is an astonishing Lover with 3/4 and 4/4 time superimposed, a delightful if brief tribute to Ellington (The Duke), some of Brubeck’s powerful improvisatory lines (particularly at the close of Indiana), and the lyrical alto of Paul Desmond, heard to best advantage on Little Girl Blue. These may not be the most exciting of all the quartet’s performances, but they are thoroughly representative.

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Windsor Star
Matt Dennis : 11/05/1955

Dave Brubeck holds the respect of the modern-day jazz follower and a new Columbia long-play album presents the musician and his quartet at their best. Under the title, Jazz: Red, Hot and Cool, the entire opus was recorded at the Basin Street Night Club at New York during one of the quartet’s regular appearances. A performance before an audience that appreciates the work of the musicians often spurs the jazzmen to better efforts, and that appears to be the case on this particular waxing. In a way, the music is somewhat subdued in comparison to some of the group’s previous efforts, but nevertheless mobile experiments in small-group jazz are formulated. Lover is the first number, opening with Brubeck on the piano in relaxed style but Paul Desmond, Bob Bates and Joe Dodge soon make their entrance in distinguishable fashion with a solid beat. Little Girl Blue, Fare Thee Well, Annabelle, Sometimes I’m Happy, The Duke, Indiana and Love Walked In follow. Desmond’s saxophone, Bates’ bass and Dodge’s drums are all part of each number, and after listening, the avid jazz fan can only remark that here is a unit that can fit into a sure-sounding groove, but never become boring or uninteresting.

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Down Beat : 11/16/1955
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

The latest Brubeck document, called Red Hot and Cool (after the Helena Rubinstein lipstick of the same name which is why the Vogueish Richard Avedon cover) is a generally stimulating musical experience. The numbers were recorded at Basin Street, say the notes, (though I wonder if some of the numbers aren’t studio-born) in October, 1944, and July, 1955. Dave’s colleagues are Paul Desmond, Joe Dodge, and Bob Bates. The two most interesting tracks are Lover (with the 3/4 going against Joe Dodge’s 4/4) and Dave’s affectionate, imaginative sketch of The Duke. The set doesn’t get the full five because the music seldom reaches the shattering depth and intensity of Brubeck at his very best as in Fantasy’s Jazz at Oberlin, but it’s nearly all absorbing.

Dodge and Bates are steady, though just for kicks, I wonder what would happen if Dave were to record with Ray Brown and Connie Kay. Desmond continues to be the most lyrical altoist in jazz and also one of the most consistent builders of coherent, thoughtful, sensitively personal choruses. As for Dave, I find it impossible to agree with those who claim his work lacks emotion. On the contrary, just about everything he does strikes forcefully from the heart first. Conceptually, his work continues to have particular harmonic richness. As to whether or not he swings, I feel he does – in his way. And there is more than one way to swing. Anyway, the ultimate answer for yourself is in yourself, so let neither the defenders or attackers of Brubeck mold you. Listen with your own ears.

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Liner Notes by George Avakian

This collection of performances by the Dave Brubeck Quartet was made on the bandstand at Basin Street during Dave’s engagements at New York’s top jazz spot in in October 1954 and July 1955. As usual, Dave’s time in New York was limited, so it was decided to try recording mis-en-scene, not only because of the time problem but because of the ever-present possibility that a performance before a night club audience might contain an extra dash of inspiration.

All the elements of the Brubeck style which have already won the Quartet a high place in jazz annals are in this album – the use of counterpoint, Brubeck and Desmond “going out” while Bates and Dodge “hold the lifeline,” the evocations of classical and modern musical practice, and of course the almost hypnotic way in which each improvisation unreels in a mixture of fanciful flight and a solid “always there” beat.

Something very new has been added in Lover, however. Advance reaction to public performances of this arrangement indicates that it will create something of a sensation among record fans. Dave begins at the piano in a casual sort of way, but the listener soon realizes that Dave is thinking in 3/4 despite the ever-more insistent 4/4 of Joe Dodge’s drums. Paul’s entrance in the second chorus confirms this; he, Dave, and Bob Bates romp in three, while Joe holds the fast four. Dave takes the performance out with an improvised chorus, and then throws in an ad-lib coda which rounds off this unique interpretation. This route, which as never been written down, started with a conception of Paul Desmond’s. Working with each member of the Quartet in turn, Paul got his ideas across sufficiently to try the “arrangement,” and gradually it grew to its present form. (The effect is reminiscent of some of the contrapuntal experiments begun many years ago by the Brubeck Octet.)

Little Girl Blue is an orthodox groove, if one can call such an extraordinary series of choruses orthodox. It swing all the way without losing its reflective character. It is one of the most lyric of the Quartet’s performances, despite its drive.

Most of the Quartet’s arrangements are first choruses only, with a return at the end (sometimes for only eight bars). Brubeck enjoys making these arrangements exercises in fugal or polytonal writing. Fare Thee Well, Annaballe is an example of how Dave can take an opening bit of melody and make it dominate most of the chorus; in this instance he turns it into a three-part round. The later chorus is a repeat of this intricate little game, and in between first Paul and then Dave indulge in some of their finest “free association” improvising.

Sometimes I’m Happy is happy all the way. It is an exciting romp capped by some pretty wild piano by Dave; any time you switch smoothly from a bit of contrapuntal hocus-pocus to old-school country piano to an orientale duet with a saxophone (underscored by some Sacre-type foundation piano) in the space of a few bars, there’s a lot of imagination and skill loose on the premises.

The Duke (Ellington, of course) is an admiring caricature sketched in clear ink lines: a catchy slow-jog melody which develops into quite a portrait before it is completed. Desmond joins in on the middle only, and Dave returns to the original mood for a closing. Written by Brubeck, it is obviously conceived as a whole despite the separately constructed middle section; the development is clean, spare, and sharp throughout.

Still another performance in which Dave opens and closes the arrangement is Indiana, a free-wheeling job which is actually improvised throughout, and in which Dave gets off some counter-rhythms recalling the old-time New Orleans pianists. Love Walked In lopes along in a fine series of swinging choruses, topped by Dave’s two-part counterpoint in his last solo chorus. It is a great example of how the Brubeck Quartet can get into a groove without letting the performance turn it into a rut. As with the faster Indiana, the whole effect depends on the improvisational ability of the musicians, and they come through admirably.

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The cover photograph of this album, taken by Helena Rubinstein at the hungry i in San Francisco, is the same as the one which is currently appearing in the advertisements and promotional material for Helena Rubinstein’s new lipstick, “Jazz: Red Hot and Cool.” (It’s the same shade of red as the dress worn by the young lady who is digging Dave.) Thus the cover and title of this album is part of a Rubinstein-Columbia promotion which extends to the publicizing of the Columbia jazz catalog and the inclusion of a record, containing four extracts from Columbia albums, in the special package in which the lipstick is sold. All of which proves that if someone comes up with a bright new idea, it is entirely poss8ible to do business and help a group of jazz musicians at the same time.