Billboard : 07/14/1956
Score of 80

Wallington continues to improve as a pianist, and here, in company with some of the brighter young virtuosi, he delivers his most salable set to date. Phil Woods on alto and Don Byrd on trumpet are also brilliant, in solos or contrapuntal ensemble. They revive the early bop opus, Our Delight, plus What’s New? and add several originals. A superior collection of modern jazz that should hold up for a long time. Smart cover.

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High Fidelity : August 1956

Jazz for the Carriage Trade by the George Wallington Quintet puts more emphasis on the work of alto saxophonist Phil Woods and trumpeter Donald Byrd than on that of pianist Wallington, who is a capable and restrained single-note swinger. Both Woods and Byrd enliven the atmosphere at times despite the disturbing shrillness of their tones.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 08/19/1956

The music doesn’t really sound any better when the album cover is bright and attractive, but it certainly must help sales. One company that never seemed to care about its covers is Prestige, but there are some changes being made.

Jazz for the Carriage Trade is a catchy title and the off-beat album photo is charming.

Now, if you will step out of the art studio and into the music room, I’ll continue the recommendation.

This is quintet music with pianist George Wallington heading up the group. Featured are Donald Byrd on trumpet and Phil Woods on alto sax. Rhythm is by bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Art Taylor.

But it isn’t an album that needs a lot of words. It’s simply enjoyable jazz, a good balance of cohesive swing and solo work.

Wallington proves he knows how to handle a ballad with his treatment of What’s New. (And I’d like to ask if anybody knows if Maynard Ferguson ever recorded that tune. I heard him play it with Kenton on the West Coast years ago and it was a gem.)

Happily, there are only six numbers on the album. And that makes LP good sense. This is a talented crew, and they seem to appreciate the extra minutes they have to explore a song.

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Down Beat : 08/22/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars

Jazz for the Carriage Trade, another absurd title with an equally artificial and phony chi-chi cover, includes George Wallington, Phil Woods, Donald Byrd, Teddy Kotick and Arthur Taylor. Delight is the Tadd Dameron modern jazz standard, the song that swings much more than its namesake is by Frank Foster, and Woods wrote Together and George. All the originals are more likely to stay in mind that most. But in essence, this is an improvising session with everybody blowing with clean heat, mainstream modern (What’s New). The rhythm section never lets down, and the solo freshness and incisiveness of Wallington, Byrd, and Woods have been detailed often in jazz that can also be deeply lyrical these pages. Very good recorded sound. Recommended.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Anyone at all familiar with Jazz knows that its appreciators are not limited to any social or economic group. Jazz is for anyone… anyone who will listen. Naturally there is a greater reward for the discerning listener, both in what he chooses to listen to and how he listens to it. The discerning listener helps to comprise “the carriage trade” of Jazz.

As modern pianist and group leader extraordinaire, George Wallington is a prime caterer to the carriage trade. Not only is his own playing important but his ability to choose musicians of talent and help combine them into a forceful unit is an attribute many musicians seem to lack, however good they are as instrumentalists.

George had disbanded a very swinging group he was heading, and when a couple of months later, he formed a new one, only Donald Byrd remained. (Art Taylor of the first group did make these recordings as Junior Bradley, who is pictured on the cover, was out of town at the time.) Donald made his major league debut with George and in the new combo, Phil Woods played his first extended engagement with a strictly jazz group. In Kotick and Taylor, George added two “veterans” who along with himself joined experience, without sacrificing any enthusiasm, to the already enthusiastic and certainly well oriented jazz voices of Donald and Phil.

Listen to Phil’s Together We Wail with the excitement generated by the singing, swinging and contrapuntal blowing of Donald and Phil; George’s solo with its wonderful sense of time; the driving pulse of Teddy and Art tied together with George’s nonpareil comping. This is how the group swings at up tempo with spirit and unity. The swinging spirit holds true in the medium tempos which range from the medium-down Our Love Is Here To Stay through Phil’s But George and Frank Foster‘s Foster’s Dulles to the medium-up revival of Tadd Dameron‘s Our Delight which lives up to its title. George’s featured fortifying of Bob Haggart‘s ballad standard, What’s New, is no less “swinging” for its tempo and George’s power and sensitivity come to the fore as he touches the keys in a confirmation of the love affair that he and the piano have had for many years.

There are many things to listen for and to in this set: the counterpoint of Together We Wail in which Donald and Phil each give the other’s solo a rousing sendoff; their chase choruses on But George the tension and release of Foster Dulles and the use of “the peck” (rhythmic conversation between the horns and the rhythm section) in that composition’s last bridge; Donald’s carrying of the melody with Phill supporting him in Our Love and the double timing in Donald’s second chorus of the same; Art Taylor’s intelligent “fours” in Our Delight and Together We Wail; Teddy Kotick’s strength and vitality throughout (listen to the way he accompanies George on What’s New).

I’m definitely for experimentation in Jazz and some interesting things have happened in the past few years, although no trend which points towards something new has been clearly indicated. The New York Mid-Forties style and its refinements remain the most valid form of jazz expression for today’s young musician. It echoes the zeitgeist. As in the “swing” and dixie styles, which are in evidence but in less abundance, the excellence of the performers as individuals is one of the main considerations, rather than whether it is “progressive” or not, in judging the value of any given recording. George is an original from the initial evolutionary period of the early Forties. Phil and Donald are in the tradition of Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro respectively, and although they show their debt, they also show their individuality in that their personalities are intact with the influences assimilated admirably. They show they are alive in their playing and make you feel that way too.