Billboard : 07/28/1956
Score of 81

Ammons‘ tenor has not been conspicuous on the jazz scene the past few years, but the warmth and facility he shows in a relaxed blowing session with Art Farmer, Jackie McLean, Duke Jordan, Addison Farmer, Art Taylor and Candido is as impressive as ever. With only two selections to a side, each of the instrumentalists develops his ideas at length. The material is diverse: a blues, a ballad, and two absorbing rhythm items. A swinging set that won’t be hard to sell.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 10/21/1956

Jamming is a word we have almost lost in the current resurgence of jazz, but Prestige Records has latched onto it to title an album that offers solid horn talent. Tenor saxist Gene Ammons gets the biggest play in Hi Fidelity Jam Session but the best musical job is done by Art Farmer‘s trumpet. Also featured are twin brother Addison Farmer, bass; Duke Jordan, piano; Jackie McLean, alto; Art Taylor, drums and Candido with one solo on the conga drum. A well knit group in a free and easy session. Good jazz with some exceptional moments in the four works: Happy Blues, The Great Lie, Can’t We Be Friends, Madhouse.

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Down Beat : 08/22/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

Participants in this Hi Fidelity Jam Session are Art Farmer, Jackie McLean, Duke Jordan, Addison Farmer, Art Taylor, and Candido on conga drums (Candido’s only solo is on Friends). The rhythm section is a vigorous one, but I wish Taylor flowed more. In this latter connection, the sound of the conga makes the rhythm heavier. Its beat is a hard, insistent one, lacking the feel for dynamics of, say Jo Jones or Max Roach. Jordan comps well as usual and is unfailingly fluid, unpretentious, and tells his own story.

In the front line, the best horn is Farmer, who is rapidly maturing as his tone and conception fill out and his confidence grows. Farmer plays with warmth, logic, and a strong musical personality of his own. Hear especially Happy and Friends. McLean has also improved considerably in the last year and is also sharply effective in this set.

Ammons is unfortunately a classic example of a jazzman who has all the essential elements except for the ability to be inventive over more than a few bars. He blows with a devouring beat; his tone is well nourished; he’s bluntly effective on two- and four-bar breaks; but although he invariably commands attention at the start of his solos, his ideas dwindle in freshness the longer the solo lasts. (He is somewhat better on Friends, particularly his powerful basic last solo, but even there, his conception is no match in freshness for the other two horns on the date.)

The last track, Madhouse, is a swift impatient trialog. There are choruses of fours, single choruses, a round of twos, and then, as Ira Gitler notes, “for one chorus the three blow simultaneously… in a wild climax.”

That last burst of everyone making his kicking point at once is quite a listening charge. Rating might have been higher but for Ammons, but the album is recommended. The sound is very live, a little too live. Rudy Van Gelder really ought to re-examine his credo with regard to the use of echo.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

The glass in the door was painted black above my eye level. I stepped up on to the stone stoop and peered in over the top of the paint. Jackie McLean sat on the scarred desk in the very front of the store, cap on head, mouth stuffed with “hero” sandwich. I opened the door and was confronted by drum cases which were piled up between an exposed radiator and a grey bench stacked high with LP covers.

As I talked with Jackie, there came the sound of the beat-up out of tune upright from the rear office. The old piano, whose size imposed on that room, was never played except when musicians congregated.

Traveling down the light blue, musician-bepictured album cover-decorated walls with my gaze as I walked the length of the narrow store, I was in the rear office before I knew it. There was Art Taylor, who had seated himself at the wobbly gold painted piano stool, and was idly playing chords on the yellowed keys. After exchanging a few perfunctory salutations, I returned to the front office passing through an anteroom in which Gene Ammons was changing his clothes.

Prestige’s president Bob Weinstock had just come in from next door where the records are stored. He had been giving Candido some records that he had made with Billy Taylor. Candido was still in there and Jackie had gone over too to listen to records that Cliff Carmichael, the traffic manager, was playing. Art Taylor went out and came back with a “hero.” Gene went out and sat in a car in front of the store.

It was Friday, session day at Prestige.

Bob Weinstock was his usual phlegmatic self but an undercurrent of unrest was noticeable to me as we exchanged greetings. The piano player he had engaged had shown up ahead of time and, becoming bored, had wandered off. Soon the safari through darkest Lincoln Tunnel with Buick and saxophone was to begin and although Rudy Van Gelder supplies a piano, he doesn’t furnish it with a player. As the time sped on, it became more and more evident that to wait for the pianist to return meant that the session would probably take place the following Wednesday. (As a matter of fact, it was the next Tuesday when he showed, explaining that he had gone to visit a sick aunt at the Roosevelt Hospital, nine blocks away, and had forgotten the time.) Jackie McLean suggested Mal Waldron and he was called immediately with no answer. Freddie Redd‘s phone rang for nought too.

Stepping out onto the street with Gene’s manager Dick Carpenter, a slightly more corpulent version of the Roy Campanella model, we greeted the brothers Farmer, Art and Addison. As a sidewalk convention, to nominate and find a pianist, formed, I had to leave, so bear in mind that the rest of the story is second hand information. This goes for the session too which l heard on LP microgroove dubs.

When Duke Jordan was brought to mind it was remembered that he had no phone. Bob not being evenly phlegmatic, decisively jumped into his car and led the motorcade down to 26th Street where a sleepy-eyed Duke was routed out of bed. From there the caravan proceeded to Jersey, by the tunnel route mentioned earlier, to be greeted with open Telefunken by Rudy Van Gelder at the yellow ranch house on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, where jazz records are made. What Beechnut is to flavor in Canajoharie, Van Gelder is to sound in Hackensack.

And then there was a session. It was a happy session, a blowing session with a blues, a standard, an old not-so-standard and an original on an old standard. It seems as if we’ve gone off the Gold Standard and are now on the old standard. (What ever happened lo my Monopoly set anyway?)

Duke Jordan’s soulful introduction leads info the simple-riffed Happy Blues. Jackie McLean opens with one of his most relaxed solos and Art Farmer picks up thoughtful, reflective mood. Then Gene comes in on tiptoe and gradually builds it up as the band riffs behind him at different intervals. Duke’s solo duplicates his excellent intro in qualify. Before the blues are riffed lo a finish, there are five choruses of “fours” with Jackie, Art and Gene. Dig Jackie’s Birdlike growl in the fifth one.

At Art’s suggestion The Great Lie was next. Gene readily agreed as he used lo play if with Woody Herman and enjoys its lively pace and receptive changes. Art starts with a flowing, beautifully phrased solo that is so typical of him. Jackie shows that his was a consistent groove that day as he moves along with the pulsing rhythm, led by Art Taylor, Candido and Addison, driving him on. When Gene plays he demonstrates why the saxophone is often equated with the human voice. He is singing and talking on his horn simultaneously. Candido, who keeps his insistent beat in back of the solos throughout, lakes his only solo here while Art Taylor keeps the home 4/4’s burning.

Gene is cajoling and exhorting in a Prezian mood on Can’t We Be Friends? Art is muted and whispering in a caressing manner. Jackie asks with a breathless impatience and straightforwardness and Duke’s hand is offered directly and simply. When Gene re-states his intentions and finally implies that “you can depend on me”, who can refuse the camaraderie?

Madhouse finds the three horns involved in a game of tag. After the theme comes two choruses of “fours”. Then Art, Gene and Jackie each take a chorus. A return to a chorus of “fours” prefaces another round of single choruses by Jackie, Ark and Gene in that order. Duke adds one and then the horns chase each other in two bar bursts for another chorus. Then the tag players confront each other in the main room of the Madhouse and for one chorus the three blow simultaneously and everyone is “it“ in a wild climax. For years Bob Weinstock has wanted this to happen on one of his recordings and here he finally was able to make if come off.