Billboard : 05/27/1957
Score of 70

Primarily a ‘down-home,’ bluesy collection that could interest both the jazz buyer and periphery jazz-rhythm and blues clientele. Tenorist Ammons shows to advantage in this kind of program. It is his colleagues, however, A. Farmer, K. Burrell, J. McLean and M. Waldron who create the musical interest.

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Cash Box : 6/15/1957

Ammons has recorded 3 other previous Prestige pressings, two with the All Star crew. With a respectable 7 man crew (Art Farmer on trumpet; Art Taylor on drums; Doug Watkins on bass), the disk possesses a vibrant blues feeling with the tenor sax of Ammons particularly providing understanding work. Class sessions.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 06/16/1957

Gutty jazz is often called funky, and Funky is the title of an album by a Gene Ammons septet. You have the tenor sax star playing leader for Art Farmer, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto; Mal Waldron, piano; Art Taylor, drums, Doug Watkins, bass, and Kenny Burrell, guitar. The title piece offers some scintillating trumpet work by Farmer with good piano and bass interludes before the seven men take the Burrell composition out a quavering exit.

This is typical of the headed sessions Prestige has been turning out the past year. It’s music aimed exclusively at the jazz market.

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Pittsburgh Courier : 06/08/1957
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

The Gene Ammons All-Stars present, on an album called Funky, Gene’s tenor, Kenny Burrell‘s guitar, the Art Farmer trumpet, Mr. Waldron, Doug Watkins on bass and the “electronic” drums of Art Taylor. This is a real swinging with the group taking an old Jim Mundy original Stuffy and really going to town on it.

They have renamed Stuffy to King Size and from the emanations heard here, one must come to the conclusion that it swings just as much, if not more, than when Count Basie first cut it more than a decade ago.

Stella by Starlight is also put through the wringer by the group on another fine display of musical pyrotechnics.

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St. Paul Recorder
Albert Anderson : 06/21/1957

Gene Ammons, the many-troubled saxophone artist who recently had brushes with the law in Chicago, is up on a Prestige Record label currently with an LP called Funky. The name is not be associated with the sometimes vulgar common usage of the word, for in this instance and in musical circles, “funky” is taken to mean something “real great,” and typical of blues numbers.

As the title of the album states, the whole track is indeed “funky” with the clear and vocal intonations of the tenor sax by Ammons whose fluent repertoire on his instrument has long established him as one of the better hornmen.

Ammons is particularly effervescent on the slow numbers in the track. Here the deep and different sound of his horn is heard in any number of blues changes as he shifts and juggles ideas. From a bluesy standpoint, Ammons scores solidly in the title number, Funky, which is a slow, drag-time number that gives him time to execute the multiplicity of changes and ideas that infiltrate and illuminate many of his numbers.

Sides include Funky, King Size, Pint Size, and Stella by Starlight. King and Pint Size are up tempo numbers that find Ammons straying from the arranged pattern to such a noticeable degree that the sounds result in more simplicity.

Sidemen in the session include Kenny Burrell, guitar; Jackie McLean, alto; Doug Watkins, bass; Mal Waldron, piano; and Art Taylor, drums, and Art Farmer, trumpet. Burrell is especially noteworthy as he slides in and out of the uptempo numbers with solos.

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Down Beat : 06/29/1955
Leonard Feather : 3 stars

Three stars means good, and while there is much about these sides that could have been improved, there are many of the expected virtues. The rhythm section cooks throughout, Farmer is his usual elegant, fluent self, and Burrell offers some fleet choruses.

The title number is a slow blues with a simple theme based entirely on the major seventh and tonic, played first in unison and then voice, and reiterated for a finale. For the rest, the two choruses are ad lib solos, including a gutty four-chorus excursion by Ammons.

King Size and Pint Size, though credited to Jimmy Mundy as “arranger,” actually are not arranged at all; they are merely simple lines played in unison, two minutes of theme sandwiching around ten minutes of wailing. Ammons swings hard, though at times his approach verges on the rhythm and blues kick with which he has ben associated intermittently in recent years.

Waldron‘s spare, one-finger-at-a-time solos offer some piquant moments. As for McLean, since he is highly regarded by some musicians we respect, it can only be said that his work has no personal message for this listener. Though his ideas and phrasing are adequate there is more quantity than quality to his sound, and in tackling Stella he woos her like Marlon Brando, substituting a shorn tone for the torn shirt. This title also has some of Gene’s more egregiously fulsome moments, even reminiscent at times of Vido Musso.

In sum, the session would have gained by a little more restraint and finesse; “funky” does not necessarily mean “loud.” And it would have gained even more had it been composed of, say, eight five-minute tracks with the three horns interestingly intermingled, instead of four overlong titles with virtually no prearrangement, a process that is too easy and too frequently adopted in these LP-glutted days. With this much talent and little material the men are like seven college professors conducting a seminar in a telephone booth.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

It has been around for quite a while, this characteristic in jazz which you hear mentioned so often these days. The word has been around for a long time too but it is only recently. with its wholesale infusion into modern jazz, that the characteristic and its present descriptive have been united.

Funk is what is under discussion. Originally funky meant dirty, smelly, undesirable; today it still means low down and earthy but this is most often applied to music and is by no means undesirable.

Modern jazz comes by funk as part of its heritage from the older blues, barrelhouse and boogie woogie. That Gene Ammons was brought up on a diet of that good old blues feeling is obvious when you remember that his father, the late Albert Ammons, was one of the foremost of the boogie woogie pianists. Gene has always had that basic funk in his playing due in no small part to his filial affiliation.

After his rise to stardom in the Billy Eckstine band during the years 1944 through 1947, Gene started his career as a leader of small combos. This was interrupted only once when, in 1949, he was the featured tenor soloist with Woody Herman. All of the Ammons groups had one thing in common; they were blues or blues-feeling based. Some of the earlier quintets included Gail Brockman on trumpet and Julian Mance on piano and everyone remembers the swinging due that Gene and Sonny Stitt made in the early Fifties. Even afterwards when his groups were considered to be rhythm and blues, they were playing the best of that medium which put their music within the scope of jazz.

In his series of jam session recordings for Prestige, Gene has surrounded himself with some of the best of the modernists in New York City; altoists Jackie McLean and Lou Donaldson, trumpeters Art Farmer and Donald Byrd, pianists Mal Waldron, Duke Jordan and Freddie Redd. (See bottom of liner for LP numbers.)

For Funky, McLean and Farmer, two of the regulars, are back and the rhythm section of Jammin’ With Gene, Waldron, Watkins and Taylor, supplies the fuel. In addition, there is guitarist Kenny Burrell who lends his ample talent in both the solo and rhythm departments. His chording in the rhythm section gives the session a swing-modem feeling that is echoed in Ammons’ solo work.

King Size and Pint Size are charts by arranger Jimmy Mundy, known for his work with the bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie and more recent associations with the various groups of Ammons.

Burrell wrote the title blues, Funky.

Stella By Starlight is done in three sections. The first and third have Gene romancing her while in the middle segment each soloist gets off the ground to get a better look at the stars.