Billboard : 07/25/1960

This Is a package of original material by Byrd – six numbers, several of them blues or blues-based. Byrd’s compositional style is Inventive and carries considerable mood. He plays a piccolo trumpet here, with Jackie McLean on alto, Duke Pearson on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Lex Humphries on drums. Leonard Feather has written Informative notes.

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Cashbox : 07/23/1960

A strikingly individual stylist, Byrd rates as one of the top men in his class today. With a group consisting of Jackie McLean, another hard-driver, Duke Pearson, Doug Watkins and Lex Humphries, Byrd leads them across the various funky, gospel-inspired and bop-like figures found in Low Life, Amen, Bup A Loup and Lament. Solidly swinging modern date.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : January, 1961

The extent to which a quartet or quintet is benefited by stereo depends largely upon how well the players are matched. If one of the group should never have been invited to the studio In the first place, the error is compounded and becomes more evident in stereo. When the ideas and tonal qualities of all concerned fit together, stereo aids greatly in bringing the fact home to the listener in minutest detail. Donald Byrd and Jackie McLean developed along similar lines at about the same time and share identical views. Their collaboration on a series of recordings has molded a balanced team, as effective as any in jazz, and stereo versions of the joint efforts are worth seeking out.

Top billing usually falls to the one taking credit for the bulk of the writing. In this case, Byrd assumes full responsibility and several themes deserve more than passing notice. Byrd plays B-flat piccolo trumpet this time, but the mellower tone is noticeable only during his tender solo on Lament. When comparisons are made with his work of three years ago, Byrd now not only shows maturity but fire, as the title tune both indicates and provides. McLean’s alto-sax solos are fluent and assured, and they probe the blues deeply before turning to & happier gospel shout on the rousing Amen. Duke Pearson, piano, Doug Watkins, bass, and drummer Ler Humphries complete the quintet.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : February, 1961

Interest: Attractive modern jazz
Performance: Byrd is growing
Recording: Very good

Donald Byrd has been competing on the New York jazz scene for the past live years. He has matured steadily if unspectacularly. His tone has darkened and his attack has become somewhat stronger. He uses fewer notes; and although be does show a considerable debt to Miles Davis in Fuego, he plays elsewhere with elements of an individual style.

All six tunes are by Byrd. They’re derivative, but show at least that he has taste in the models he selects. I particularly liked the title song; the mocking, march-like Low Life (with its echoes of Benny Golson); and the genuinely affecting Lament. Altoist Mcl.can provides acrid, driving support. Pianist Pearson is refreshingly lucid and gentle but only manages to reshape cliches when he plays the blues. It may be time for Blue Note to invest the time and funds to provide Byrd with a larger setting and more challenging orchestrations.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : October, 1960

After recording extensively and, in most cases, emptily for several years, Byrd appears on this disc as a trumpeter with something to say and the ability to say it in a disciplined, well-organized fashion. Here he is relaxed and economical in his playing-two qualities rarely found in his past work. The second horn in this group is the alto saxophone of Jackie McLean, who has gone through a process of development almost identical to Byrd’s. From a style made up of a disorderly array of Parker clichés, McLean has finally found an attractive means of expression quite his own. The new McLean has been in evidence for some time, but his increasing assurance has rarely been as strongly apparent as it is in this collection. The material, all originals by Byrd, is serviceable although scarcely memorable.

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San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, CA)
Jim Angelo : 08/06/1960

Gradually achieving eminence in the modern jazz hierarchy is trumpeter Donald Byrd whose most recent work may be heard on an LP entitled Fuego (Blue Note, 4026). Byrd is ably assisted by alto saxist Jackie MeLean and a formidable rhythm section: Pianist Duke Pearson, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Lex Humphries. The quintet exhibits fine rapport in ensemble passages and allows each member his appropriate solo space. Six laconic numbers are performed: Fuego, Bup A Loup, Funny Mama, Low Life, Lament, and Amen. It’s well-played East Coast jazz, an important sequel to the trumpeter’s previous set, Byrd in the Hand (Blue Note 4019).

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/20/1960

Although I have long admired Byrd’s to play the trumpet, I have been disappointed in his performances in recent years. This LP, however, is an exception and is well worth owning. At least one of the tracks on it, Fuego (the title song), is likely to be around as a jazz performance for a long time. Byrd is accompanied by J. McLean, D. Pearson, D. Watkins and L. Humphries.

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Down Beat : 09/15/1960
John S. Wilson : 3.5 stars

The two most improved musicians in jazz are heard on this LP, which might have been subtitled Donald Byrd Discovers Funk. Not that Byrd gets involved in the tired, uncreative straining that has come to represent the funkites. Instead, his playing here is merely colored by funkism, giving it a warmth, richness, and ease that have rarely been apparent before.

He is also, we learn from Leonard Feather’s notes, playing a B flat piccolo trumpet, which, as Feather astutely points out, might be simply a so-what item except that it gives him what Feather describes as “a mellower, more compact sound.” It is certainly mellower and also less cluttered and recklessly rampant. Byrd’s playing throughout is neatly turned, relaxed but glowing with a big, warm fire.

The other man who has reached a milestone (it has been apparent for some time that he was on his way) is McLean. He is now his own man, phrasing with flowing assurance in a way that is distinctly his own. The only vestige of his Parker heritage now is his tone, and who can begrudge him that?

Pearson, Watkins, and Humphries lay down a strong, lithe foundation. The tunes won’t go into anyone’s memory book, but they serve their purpose.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

Five eventful years have passed since Donald Byrd established himself on the New York scene. Don was several months short of his twenty-third birthday when he landed his first major jazz combo job here, playing with George Wallington’s quintet at the Bohemia.

The interim has seen many changes: in Donald, a maturing of the elements that were apparent in his style from the first; in jazz, a strengthening concentration on the more masculine qualities of the music, seen through the eyes, ears and embouchures of the hard-bop merchants, along with a unique advance-regression that has brought primitive funk to modern harmony, basic chords to contemporary techniques.

As Joe Goldberg appropriately pointed out in his commentary for Donald’s first Blue Note LP as a leader (Off to the Races, BLP 4007), the recognition he ultimately earned was awarded a little prematurely when, in the summer of 1957, he won out over Art Farmer in the New Star trumpet division of the Down Beat annual critics’ poll. It is interesting, in retrospect, to observe which of us were in the advance guard for Donald at that point (my own vote went to Clark Terry): the Byrd boosters were Don Gold, Wilder Hobson, André Hodeir, Barry Ulanov, Erik Wiedemann, Arrigo Polillo and the Pittsburgh Courier’s George E. Pitts. During that year, and in the period immediately following his salute from the critics, Donald was registering more achievements in musical terms than on the level of economic security. He gigged around New York with Coltrane or Lou Donaldson, sometimes with his own combo, occasionally under the leadership of Art Taylor or Red Garland. Recognition came a little more readily in 1958, when he was invited to take his own group to Europe and, like many musicians of his school, found more heavily concentrated pockets of enthusiasm in France and Sweden than at home.

1960 finds Donald at a musical peak, not only as a hornman of originality, elegance and confident spirit, but also as a composer of many attractive lines: all the writing for the present album was his own.

When Alfred Lion gave me the test pressing of this set for audition before and during the writing of the liner notes, he pointed out that this session was different in that Don plays a B Flat piccolo trumpet. I can’t say I was overwhelmed by this information, since over a period of years I have found that many musicians taking the blindfold test have been unable (like me) to make any positive assertion that they are listening to a cornet, or a fluegelhorn, or any of the other related instruments, rather than a trumpet. I had also been subjected to a barrage of publicity about a so-called pocket horn played by Don Cherry. A first hearing of Fuego didn’t seem to indicate that any startling difference had been effected by Byrd’s choice of a piccolo (Italian for small) horn. But then I played Off to the Races – and I recommend that you do the same. There is indeed a distinct difference; the little horn has a mellower, more compact sound, and though the notes he plays and the manner in which he phrases them still remain at least 90% of the essence of any soloist’s personality, the subtle change in tonal delivery admittedly is a nuance worth examining, and one that seems to add something to the overall content.

I need add little concerning the sidemen. John Lenwood (Jackie) McLean a frequent colleague of Donald’s since 1955, when they were both with Wallington, has been using the Rudy van Gelder studios as a virtual second home and the Blue Note label as his personal badge of honor. His most recent successes are Swing Swang Swinging’ on 4024 and the album of music from The Connection with Freddie Redd on 4027.

Duke Pearson was impressively introduced to Blue Note listeners in his solo album debut, Profile, on 4022. Lex Humphries, drummer on the present sides, also took part in that project. Doug Watkins, the strong right arm of many a date in these environs, was a Detroit schoolmate of Donald’s and is 15 months his junior. He was a member of the combo Don took to Europe in the summer of ’58.

The title tune, Fuego (fire in Spanish) inaugurates the set with a flaming intensity to which the title is ideally suited. Notice how the opening rhythmic figure is sustained, after the introduction, under the exposition of the theme, which is stated first in unison and then in thirds by the two horns. The overall presence is superb as Lex rides majestically through it all with his cymbal underline. Donald’s solo is basically very simply, drawing much of its strength from the effective use of repetition. Jackie McLean’s thoughts seem to gravitate around the dominant as he maintains the general fervor, and then Duke brings the level down with a relatively cool passage. The whole track has a vital and surging mood and may well be the most successful recorded example to date of Byrd as composer.

Bup a Loup is one of those themes in which the manner of delivery is more important than the matter of the melody; it’s stated by the whole group, mainly in staccato notes on the first and third beats. McLean here is fleet and original; it becomes increasingly clear that he can speak through his horn, with his own voice, no longer a ventriloquist for Parker, if he ever was. Donald’s instrument tends to lend a slightly Milesish flavor to his solo, in tonal texture if not in phrasing.

Funky Mama is a 12-bar blues, opening with two choruses by Watkins and one by Pearson. During Jackie’s four choruses it is interesting to note how Duke supports him with a chorded background that seems to be composed simply of straight quarter notes much of the way; there is some slightly Red Garlandish chording in his own ensuing solo. Donald’s solo is brilliantly constructed, the first two choruses relatively uncluttered, the third building in drive with the help of the rhythm section, the fourth and fifth each devoting their first four measures to a series of triplets in a manner that too often has been bastardized into a rock ‘n’ roll effect, though its use here is perfectly timed and placed.

Low Life is a minor theme, based on the blues pattern, and evoking Sonny Rollins — especially to those of us for whom any melody that starts with two sixteenth notes, off on their own, automatically reminds us of Sonny. Jackie is at his most fluent here, and Donald has moments when one is reminded of Clifford Brown — less in terms of actual notes or tone than in soul and general approach.

Lament is another striking example of Don’s melodic compositional gifts. Though there is nothing complex about the line itself, the relationship with the harmonic structure gives it a great charm and an exotic quality. The melody centers on the fourth and the tonic. Though the solos are up to the high level of the other tracks, it was the theme itself that I found most memorable in this generally engaging performance.

Amen is just the kind of sanctified opus you would expect with some of the chord progressions that have come to be associated with church-inspired compositions (E Flat to G 7th to C Mi etc.), and with the soloists blowing against a familiar repeated figure:

that has also acquired this type of identification.

This album will, I believe, serve a double purpose. It will show that whether they are delivered via cornet, fluegelhorn or a trumpet of no matter what size or shape, the improvised statements of Donald Byrd are consistently direct, honest and musically valid. Secondly, in his efforts as a composer he is capable no less through these written inventions of devising moods that have mucho fuego.