Down Beat : 09/05/1956
Nat Hentoff : 3.5 stars

On Hope Meets Foster, Basie tenorman Frank Foster blows with pianist Elmo Hope, bassist John Ore, drummer Arthur Taylor, and on three numbers, trumpeter Lee Freeman. Rhythmically, the LP is a shouting swinger, but there’s more to superior jazz than swinging alone. Best hornman on the date is Foster who plays with a full though hard sound, strength, man-size emotion, and good though not particularly individual or striking conception. His two influences, he states, are Sonny Stitt and Don Byas. He has yet, however, to play with some of the latter’s lyricism. But he really wails the blues as on Yaho, and he brings up the rating.

Hope plays competently throughout, but these are not among his outstanding performances on record since his solos have little freshly their own to say. His best rack is Yaho. Lee blows with heart, but his conception too is more of a school than a unique individual, and his tone, while refreshingly brassy when open, needs fleshing out.

The casual, routine original lines are by Foster (three) and Hope (two). Half of Ira Gitler’s notes, incidentally, are in the form of bristling, Jimmy Cannon-like one-lines that ought to start bagarres wherever more than one jazz listening gathers. Much of what he says makes blunt sense though I would argue with some of the homilies. The sound is so live I almost offered the participants some gin. Drums are over-recorded.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

The music in this LP is bop.
Bop is not dead.
The word became a dirty one through misuse and abuse.
They buried the word, not the music.
Bop is hot, not cool, jazz.
“Cool jazz” is, for the most part, really only cool Bop.
Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, The Messengers and Miles Davis play Bop.
Bud Powell plays Bop.
Oscar Peterson is an eclectic.
Dave Brubeck doesn’t play Bop.
Conte Candoli, Art Farmer and Kenny Dorham play Bop.
Charlie Mariano, Gigi Gryce, Phil Woods and Milt Jackson play Bop.
Imitators who assumed the superficial aspects of the idiom to make a buck helped kill the word.
Bop was a natural evolution within the mainstream of jazz.
Lennie Tristano doesn’t play Bop.
Dave Brubeck doesn’t play play Swing.
Lennie Tristano swings.
Dave Brubeck doesn’t play Bop.
Bop is, other things, a valid modern day expression of the blues.
Critics, even the most honest, tend to write about musicians they are friendly with.
Critics and musicians were more chummy in the Swing era than the Bop era.
If jazz in general gets a bad press, bop’s was even worse. It was clobbered in the trade magazines, too.
The most publicity Bop got (and that adverse) were the inane “bop” jokes which came into vogue after the music had been disassociated from the word.
Some people begrudgingly gave Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie credit.
Their duet in Dizzy Atmosphere is one of the moving movement in jazz.
Leonard Feather and Barry Ulanov were about the only critics of stature to understand and write knowingly of the new music.
Feather’s Inside Bebop clarified and illuminated a subject shrouded to many listeners by two record bans, their stints in the Armed Forces and decadent critics.
Some critics didn’t like some of the boppers because of their personal habits and attempted to judge their music on this basis just as literary critics sometimes try to judge a writer by his political beliefs rather than the content of his writing.
Now there are some new critics.
There is a second generation of boppers.
Their music is being accepted on its merit as “modern jazz.”

The title of this LP is Hope Meets Foster, Hope being Elmo and Foster, Frank. They had met before and their relationship resulted in mutual admiration that led to this new meeting. When Frank came he brought his old bandmate from Wilberforce University, Freeman Lee.

Elmo (born St. Elmo) Hope is appearing for the second time as a leader on the Prestige label. His trio LP, Meditations (7010) won approval from all quarters. Here he leads a quartet and quintet alternatively and shows off his solo work and in addition his vigorous “comping.” The blues are the subject of his compositions, Zarou and Yaho.

The handsome fellow you see sitting second from the right in the Count Basie sax section is Frank Foster. If you listen you’ll hear him blow some wonderful tenor but it is in a small group that he really “stretches out.”

Frank was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1928, studied saxophone and clarinet in high school and later played with the famous Wilberforce Collegians. He lists Sonny Stitt and Don Byas as his favorites and although the Stitt influence is strong there is also some Wardell Gray in him. Frank played with Wardell in Detroit in 1949-50 and again on the West coast while he (Frank) was in the Army between 1951-53. Wardell often spoke of Frank’s playing in laudatory terms and Frank’s feelings are made clear when you hear Wail, Frank, Wail. He imitates without imitating as he swings the blues the way they should be swung. I feel good every time I listen to it. His other compositions, Fosterity and Shutout, are more harmonically complex than their simple formats would imply.

Freeman Lee was born Charles Freeman Lee in New York City in 1927. He learned music at Wilberforce Academy where he first studied trumpet and at Wilberforce University as mentioned earlier. His professional playing credits include the bands of ex-Lunceford trumpeter Snooky Young, Candy Johnson, Eddie “Mr. Cleanhead” Vinson, Sonny Stitt and Joe Holiday. This was in the period of 1950-53. He played piano with Young and doubled on trumpet with Johnson. Since then he has devoted himself almost exclusively to the trumpet although I have heard him play piano at sessions in New York when he free-lanced here in 1954-55. 1956 found him replacing Dave Burns in the James Moody aggregation. Freeman’s favorite hornmen are Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Kenny Dorham. His intelligent solo on Fosterity shows a Dorham flavor.

Quartet: Wail, Frank, Wail; Yaho; Georgia On My Mind
Quintet: Zarou; Fosterity; Shutout