Billboard : 04/20/1957
Score of 74

Gusto galore here for the go-go fans, with a romping brand of swing that never lets down. Accompanied by some excellent sidemen: Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Jimmy Jones, piano; Ray Brown, bass; Herb Ellis, guitar, and Jo Jones on drums, the package moves from the very start. Have You Met Miss Jones is the best of the lot and shows the group to excellent advantage.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 05/04/1957

Illinois Jacquet is one of the most underrated tenor saxophonists in jazz. This is undoubtedly because musicians and others tend to pigeonhole Illinois as the man who plays down to the crowd with honking, tasteless, upper register gymnastics. But Jacquet can play real fine when he wants to and swings a good deal more than many more highly rated tenor men.

If you doubt this, I suggest you hear Swing’s The Thing which finds Jacquet playing with trumpeter Roy Eldridge and a rhythm section composed of pianist Jimmy Jones, bassman Ray Brown, guitarist Herb Ellis and drummer Jo Jones.

Illinois does not resort to upper register honks and squeaks on this record. Instead, he blows some good, solid swinging tenor with a warm tone and a healthy, down home approach to jazz.

Eldridge, one of the few truly great trumpet stylists, has a number of fine solos, several muted. Tunes include Have You Met Miss Jones, Lullaby of the Leaves, and Can’t We Be Friends. Not a great jazz record but a good one.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 04/14/1957

Good mainstream swing tenor by Illinois, trumpet by Roy Eldridge and rhythm by Joe Jones and friends. Tunes are ballads and blues and it’s all well recorded. Top number is Las Vegas Blues.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 06/15/1957

Jacquet is a highly capable swing saxophonist who combines a Hawkins–Berry attack with some Young metre and phrasing. (His honks and squeals are happily not here.) The contrast on Have You Met Miss Jones is a lesson: Jacquet plays melody plus an obbligato, Eldridge transforms the line. Jo Jones on drums shows again what a superb musician he is; he can even adapt his playing to the sound and style of the individual player.

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Washington Post
Paul Sampson : 06/09/1957

The swing era revived by Jacquet, Roy Eldridge, Jimmy Jones, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Jo Jones. Jacquet is on good behavior here and plays well, especially on a pulsating Have You Met Miss Jones, which is refreshingly non-languid. Eldridge is as electric as ever.

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Down Beat : 05/30/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 3 stars

Communications have so speeded up the process of cultural assimilation in the Western world in the last 20 years that artists such as Roy and Illinois, who, if they had lived in, say, the 18th century, would have spent their entire life spans perfecting their style and getting their message disseminated. Now they find themselves, on the verge of middle age, sort of musical anachronisms.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with what they play, it is every bit as good as it was when their initial appearance made such an impression. They are every bit the musicians they were 10 years ago, and yet what they have to say no longer seems to have any relevance. It is tragic. They are left stranded on a plateau which they reached when it was important to get there. But now the main stream of history has gone on by, and they are talking in the language of another era to an ever-diminishing audience.

It is good to hear them. Nostalgic, warm-feeling, and evocative of the good old days. But it is impossible to escape the conclusion that they have made their contribution, and unless they manage to grow and develop and keep in touch with the pulse of the times, they will remain without an audience, though not without fans.

This album offers excellent romantic tenor by Illinois, on Nocturne and Miss Jones (there is a gorgeous typo in the notes on this indicating that Granzville needs a proofreader), and Roy, on Achtung brings back memories of Swing is Here. This is a further indication of the appropriateness of the above remarks.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

Swings the Thing? Well, it is most definitely with Illinois Jacquet, whose swinging approach to the tenor saxophone has long marked this youthful product of Houston, TX as one of the foremost artists in jazz. Actually, it is one of the curiosities of jazz that Illinois Jacquet invariably is the first to come to mind when the subject of high notes, played in a swinging vein, arises in conversation. At least, this happens when the subject comes up among jazz fans. Among musicians, however, Jacquet is known and widely respect for his work on pretty ballads as well. Mr. Jacquet, in short, is a versatile jazzman along with being an extremely popular one. The first aspect of Jacquet’s career, his propensity for the emotion-charged solo, stems from his days with the Lionel Hampton band with Flying Home – with its sweeping chorus after chorus by the Jacquet tenor – became one of the most enduring of jazz classics. The reputation thus gained Jacquet maintained in his many concert appearances with the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe. So far as technique is concerned, it’s an interesting sidelight that Jacquet found that the best way to play high-note tenor was to employ clarinet fingering, this being a chance discovery that was put to very rewarding use. Originally, when Jacquet joined the Hampton crew, he was an alto man but Hampton himself suggested the change, a conspicuously wise move as it turned out. But then, young Illinois had to do a bit of experimenting before discovering his true métier. Born into a musical family – his father played bass in a railroad company band – Illinois began as a high school drummer, later trying his hand at the clarinet, then the soprano saxophone and then the alto, and finally, as noted, settling on the tenor saxophone.

On this record Jacquet is heard in combination with five other topflight musicians and the unity achieved therein makes for jazz on a high order as Jacquet and trumpeter Roy Eldridge are supported by the following rhythm section: Jimmy Jones, piano; Jo Jones, drums; Herb Ellis, guitar, and Ray Brown, bass. A variety of moods are expressed by the soloists throughout Eldridge’s tenor swings in happy style in an Eldridge original, Las Vegas Blues, on which Roy contributes his muted horn; in fact, Eldridge does the bulk of his blowing in this one with mute, one of the notable exceptions being his exciting work on Have You Met Miss Jones. Jacquet is sensuous, warm and soulful on Harlem Nocturne, pleasantly pretty on Can’t We Be Friends, which also contains an appealing Jimmy Jones piano solo. Achtung, a Jacquet original, gets a crisp, jump treatment. Herb Ellis sets things to stirring with a guitar introduction to Have You Met Miss Jones which develops into a swinging romp for both Jacquet and Eldridge. Lullaby of the Leaves is still another example of the superlative swinging tenor of Illinois Jacquet.