Billboard : 04/20/1957
Score of 77

Still another McKusick LP, but this one holds special interest via its specially-commissioned original vehicles – some being more truly “original” than most of those filling albums these days. George Russell, Gil Evans, J. Giuffre, J. Mandel, M. Albam and Al Cohn, writers represented, evidently saved some of their best work for the altoist-leader, his quartet (Galbraith, Hinton, O. Johnson), Quintet (A. Farmer added) and Octet. Russell’s Lydian Lullaby and Evans’ Blues for Pablo are especially intriguing. Sell as an attempt at something different.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 05/18/1957

The newest in the series of RCA Victor “Jazz Workshop” albums is one of the most interesting yet. Six arrangers are represented and the combos, ranging from four to nine men, include some of the most talented musicians in the business. In addition to alto man McKusick, group includes guitarist Barry Galbraith (one of the very best), trumpeter Art Farmer, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, baritone saxophonist Sol Schlinger, bassman Milt Hinton and drummer Osie Johnson. A tuba is included in the larger groups.

Most ambitious work in the set is The Day John Brown Was Hanged written by George Russell. Other pieces are by Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans, Johnny Mandel, Manny Albam and Al Cohn. This is carefully arranged music which demands accomplished technicians and a good deal of rehearsal time.

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Fort Lauderdale News
Don L. McIver : 04/28/1957

The fifth album in RCA Victor’s series called “The Jazz Workshop” features one of American’s top jazz artists, Hal McKusick, the alto saxist, but it leaves the same impression as its predecessors: Good musicians get dull after a while.

It’s a shame, too, because McKusick is such a fine musician. I have had nothing but the highest respect for Hal since I first met him when he was playing for Les Brown back in 1942. But in this album, he has become the victim of some so-called “jazz” promotion.

Five topnotch jazz composers wrote original scores for this recording: Jimmy Giuffre (One Score and Eight Horns Ago, Just Leave it Alone, The Blues Train), Gil Evans (Jam-Bangle, Blues for Pablo), Johnny Mandel, (Tommy Hawk), Manny Albam (Alto Cumulus), and Al Cohn (Ain’t Nothin’ But a Memory).

Then comes George Russell with The Day John Brown Was Hanged, Miss Clara and Lydian Lullaby. Russell’s billed as a “formulator of a new set of tonal principals based on the Lydian mode,” whatever that means. The result leaves the reviewer cold.

If someone had bothered to check, Russell’s “new” principles can be found in the arranging system formulated by Schillinger in the early part of the century, and used extensively by nearly every modern-day composer from Hindemith through Bernstein and by such jazz luminaries as Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jack Butler : 06/02/1957

This is for lovers of progressive jazz. But – an honest confession – this has progressed beyond me. It’s far out on the cool side. In his commentary, Russell says that the modern jazz writer has become an improviser, too, thus closing the gap between written and improvised jazz. “All the compositions in this album were approached in the same way,” Russell notes. “A preconceived plan which contained a thematic as well as an emotional objective was devised. Some followed the original plan while others exerted their own inherent will.”

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : June 1957

It has been apparent for a long time that alto saxophonist Hal McKusick is an able technician, but, for reasons of his own, he has chosen to limit himself by working in a chilly, emotionless style – a light, precise emission of uninflected notes. On this Jazz Workshop disc he finally emerges from this cocoon, revealing a swinging warmth that is a most welcome change. In loosening up, he has chosen to lean heavily on relatively formal composition, but within this formality he has ample opportunity to play with a rich, gracious flow, particularly in the blues-tinged section of Lydian Lullaby and Blues for Pablo. His use of both a quartet and an octet and the markedly differing styles of his six writers (George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans, Johnny Mandel, Manny Albam, and Al Cohn) provide McKusick with both the balance and the variety that have been noticeably missing from much of his previous work on discs.

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Jackson Clarion-Ledger
Pinckney Keel : 04/14/1957

Hal McKusick, maintaining that variety is the spice of jazz, startingly presents to the world The Day John Brown Was Hanged in a new RCA-Victor album, Jazz Workshop. Fine things he does with a four line verse (“The day John Brown was hanged, Some did a dance, Some wailed the blues, The day they hanged John Brown.”) A simple guitar statement of Battle Hymn of the Republic follows an intense opening, followed by solos and some delicate work by the quartet, composed of Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson, and McKusick. All selections are originals, from the pens of six great jazzmen. Much thought, work, and talent is in this disc, truthfully a “workshop” turning out superb products.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 05/19/1957

A new concept of jazz is being furthered by RCA Victor in its Workshop series. The best so far is titled Hal McKusick. The alto sax man has fortified the session with compositions by Jimmy Giuffre, Johnny Mandel, George Russell, Al Cohn, Gil Evans and Manny Albam.

It is Russell who wins the photo finish for imaginative writing. His piece, The Day John Brown Was Hanged, is superlative. I wish I could figure out the program notes to know who the eighth man is on the octet that offers five of the 11 originals. I haven’t enough space to offer a tortured tour through the personnel. But let it go with the statement that McKusick has anywhere from three to eight men working with him to produce what is certainly an outstanding jazz album. Barry Galbraith‘s guitar and the throbbing bass of Milt Hinton play important roles. The outstanding horns are Jimmy Cleveland and Art Farmer.

I would like to have heard more of the concluding Blues Train by Giuffre, but you can’t put 11 compositions on an LP without cutting some of them down to a simple statement.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 08/25/1957

This is virtually the same group [as The Jazz Workshop], presenting here a cross-section of modern jazz by such composers as Giuffre, Gil Evans, Johnny Mandel, Al Cohn and, again, George Russell. Especially notable is Russell’s The Day John Brown Was Hanged, a complete jazz suite which runs less than seven minutes – as bitter and topical a piece as Ellington ever wrote. Listen also to Giuffre’s One Score and Eight Horns Ago and Blues Train. This is jazz as should be.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 06/15/1957

An arranger’s set and a provocative one: G. Russell, J. Giuffre, G. Evans, J. Mandel, M. Albam, and A. Cohn in an attempt to extend cool scoring. Most jazz arrangements have been good insofar as they provide inspiration and setting. The intention here was to integrate improvisation carefully into the scores. The instrumentalists were thus given difficult tasks. Except on the pieces by Albam, Cohn, and one of Giuffre’s the improvisations seem inhibited or over-shadowed rather than aided or balanced. Russell’s John Brown tries “contrasting emotional levels… from deeply spiritual to the satirical” – a difficult task for any musician. Thus the scores invite judgment on their own. They would make fine film music – something one would hardly say of Honky Tonk Train or Bluebird.

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Down Beat : 05/16/1957
Nat Hentoff : 5 stars

This is the most important of Victor’s Jazz workshop series thus far and the one that most fits the “workshop” connotation. It also demonstrates the musical necessity for Fred Reynolds to continue the workshop, particularly if future sets can be planned with the thoughtfulness, thoroughness – and time – that this received.

For this album, McKusick wisely chose six diversified writers who score from their experience within jazz. The writing credits are: Johnny Mandel (Track 1); Russell (2, 5, 7); Jimmy Giuffre (4, 8, 11); Gil Evans (3, 10); Manny Albam (6), and Al Cohn (9). Russell, Giuffre, and Evans have particularly been among the key workers in providing jazzmen more challenging written contexts within which to blow and grow, and Mandel could be.

All the scores allow breathing space for soloists and ensembles while stimulating both the individual and the group via the tension-challenge of fresh, idiomatic structural material that makes the blowing more meaningful by making it part of a more significant, more interrelated, more durable whole.

I was most moved by Russell, Evans, and Giuffre, particularly by Russell’s extraordinarily evocative, functionally dramatic John Brown, the longest work in the set. And the one apiece by the other writers were also effective.

The musicianship of all the players is excellent. For McKusick, this is the summit of his jazz achievement to this point as an altoist. Farmer, who can make almost any scene, proves how strong a choice he was for this date. Osie and Milt project the strength and flexibility required for their assignments, and Galbraith is magnificent throughout. The others also contribute importantly.

This program is a reason for pride on the part of everyone involved, including Jack Lewis who set it going but who gets not one mention in the notes. John Wilson’s liner is not up to his standard. The personnel is not completely listed nor clearly given (by omitting Barber, for one example, octets turn into septets). More seriously, Wilson failed to recognize the significance of this LP in the context of contemporary jazz concern for more original form and, as a corollary, does not provide enough actual writing details. Don’t miss this one. It’ll be a subject for study – and enjoyment – for a long time.

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Liner Notes by John S. Wilson

Hal McKusick is the discerning type of who is disturbed when he finds monotony in a jazz set, particularly so if he detects it in his own collections. So, in laying the framework for this Workshop album, he held to variety as a keynote. One way to achieve variety, he felt, would be to give representation to several composers. He chose the six composers whose work he plays on this disc because he believes that they represent inventive thinking in jazz. Furthermore, he was curious to find out what they would do with the eight (or nine) instruments he put at their disposal on six of these selections. This instrumentation (trumpet, trombone, alto sax, baritone sax, one or two guitars, tuba, string bass and drums) is close to the famous Miles Davis Nonet of 1949. Davis, however, added a French horn which changed the ensemble coloring considerably. The particular grouping of instruments that McKusick selected (for reasons of which he is not certain except that he could hear in his mind’s ear how they would sound and he liked what he heard) was completely new to all the writers.

Five selections are by McKusick’s Quartet/Quintet which is the basic McKusick group. McKusick and guitarist Barry Galbraith started the quartet two years ago, largely to experiment with the voicing of alto sax, guitar and flute. The group rehearses every weekend at the house of bassist Milt Hinton (drummer Osie Johnson is the fourth man), plays an occasional gig, and has recorded both as a unit and as the basis for larger groups, just as it is the basis for the Octet which is heard in this set.

McKusick has been identified mainly with small groups in recent years but he has had ample big band experience, started with Les Brown and Don Bestor in 1942 when he was eighteen years old. During the next three years he was with Woody Herman, Dean Hudson and Boyd Raeburn. He was born in the East (Newton, Massachusetts) and later took to the road with bands, but in the middle Forties he settled down on the West Coast, working there for three years. In 1948 he joined Claude Thornhill, moved on to Terry Gibbs‘ Quintet and then to Elliot Lawrence with whose band McKusick, once more an Easterner, still does an occasional one-nighter.

The composers represented here are George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans, Johnny Mandel, Manny Albam and Al Cohn.

George Russell (The Day John Brown Was Hanged, Miss Clara, Lydian Lullaby) is a formulator of a new set of tonal principles based on the Lydian mode. McKusick first knew of him through Cubano Be and Cubano Bop, Russell’s first major big band work which he wrote for DIzzy Gillespie‘s old big band, featuring Chano Pozo. One day, after his quartet had been rehearsing for a while, McKusick met Russell on the street and casually asked him if he’d write something for them. Russell said, “Sure.” Eight months later he called up McKusick and told him he had the piece ready. It was Lydian Lullaby (played by the Quartet), an attempt to portray within a brief composition a variety of moods – agitated restlessness, serene romanticism and an easy-tempoed swing.

The most ambitious work in this collection is The Day John Brown Was Hanged (played by the Quartet, plus George Russell, drums). It is a product of Russell’s conviction that a serious jazz work of contrasting emotional levels, ranging from the deeply spiritual to the satirical, could be successfully composed for and performed by a four-piece group with no loss of emotional impact. Russell built it around a four-line verse (his own):

The day John Brown was hanged
Some did a dance
Some wailed the blues
The day they hanged John Brown.

The first section (“The day John Brown was hanged”) has an intensely contrapuntal and rhythmic opening, giving way to a guitar statement of The Battle Hymn of the Republic while the alto sax wails a mournful spiritual in the distance. The second section (“Some did a dance”) features the alto in an acid kind of gaiety, while the third section (“Some wailed the blues”) opens with a dissonant contrapuntal passage and builds to a mournful blues. The brief final section (“The day they hanged John Brown”) is a partial restatement of the opening section.

Russell’s third contribution, Miss Clara (played by the Octet: Art Farmer (Courtesy Prestige Records), trumpet; Jimmy Cleveland (Courtesy Mercury Records), trombone; Sol Schlinger, baritone saxophone; and McKusick, Galbraith, Hinton and Johnson) is intended to be the kind of satire, in jazz terms, that might be associated with Fred Allen or Bob and Ray.

Jimmy Giuffre (One Score and Eight Horns Ago by the Octet; Just Leave It Alone and The Blues Train by the Quintet – Art Farmer added on trumpet); had made a unique niche for himself in the past couple of years as a composer of easygoing, finger-snapping pieces in the minor, drawling vein that characterizes all three of these selections.

Gil Evans (Jambangle, Blues for Pablo) wrote for the aforementioned Miles Davis Nonet and was an arranger for Claude Thornhill from 1941 until 1948, which was where McKusick first met him. Both of his pieces are played by the Octet, with Jimmy Raney added on rhythm guitar and, on Pablo only, George Russell on tambourine. They are marked by his strong ensemble writing and his use of a striking rhythmic base – the tango feel of Pablo and the underlying boogie-woogie of Jambangle.

Johnny Mandel (Tommy Hawk/ by the Octet) was musical director of the Elliott Lawrence band when McKusick first played with it. Since 1953 he has lived on the West Coast and has become one of the most sought-after of jazz composers. His Tommy Hawk is built on a stirring but genteel war dance with McKusick, Farmer and Schlinger as leading dancers.

Manny Albam (Alto Cumulus by the Octet) was the first outside writer to contribute to the McKusick Quartet. One of the busiest composers and arrangers in the East, Albam wrote Alto Stratus for an earlier McKusick collection on Victor. Alto Cumulus is a sequel in title only and, despite the ominous quality of that title, is a bright, strutting piece with solo space for McKusick, Farmer and Cleveland.

Al Cohn (Ain’t Nothin’ But a Memory Now by the Quartet), a sidekick of McKusick’s in the Elliot Lawrence band, is an eminent experiment of the virile, swinging approach to jazz both as a composer and as a performer. This piece, typically bright and perky, is brightened by the solo work of Galbraith, McKusick and Hinton.

One more thing might be noted about this set: It’s McKusick’s album but there are no compositions by McKusick. Here’s Hal’s reasoning: “I find it more refreshing and interesting to play other people’s stuff. I prefer to do my writing for others.”