Billboard : 03/09/1957
Score of 71

J.R. Monterose (not to be confused with another tenor-man, Jack Montrose) here gets his first LP showcase as leader. For the date he picked a simpatico group of colleagues; Ira Sullivan, trumpet; Horace Silver, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass, and Philly Joe Jones, drums. Tho there is no scarcity of boppish, Rollins-influenced tenor around today, Monterose is a serious, well-equipped musician who makes profitable use of the opportunity to express himself at length here. It’s a fairly uncompromising session; for the modernist devotee there is a lot of red meat here.

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Down Beat : 04/04/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

J.R. Monterose, if he ever gets a chance to play jazz regularly with colleagues of quality, should become one of the most heartening wailers of his generation. His initial ties were with Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry. Later, Bird, Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt were added. He has worked with Buddy Rich, Claude Thornhill, Teddy Charles, Kenny Dorham, and Charlie Mingus as well as many nonjazz, or outskirts, gigs. He’s ready. This is his first LP under his own name.

J.R. is a shouter. He blows with a staccato force that is continually exciting in the favorable connotation of that word. His conception is more and more his own, and is bitingly building. I would only suggest an occasional alternation of the staccato intensity with a softer, more legato approach for certain moods. (This set would have been better with a ballad or two, or a more introspective original than these are.) Monterose, by the way, is a hot swinging who is as far way from what is sometimes regarded as “cool” as can be felt.

The young Chicago trumpeter, Ira Sullivan, is obviously an important find. Though he also blows tenor, he stays with trumpet here, matching J.R.’s emotional intensity while maintaining his own kind of cohesion, often a somewhat more flowing conception than J.R.’s.

The rhythm section is ideal for these two cookers, and there are earthy solos by Horace (dig his head-shaking solo in Ka-Link) and Ware, the fine Chicago bassist. Philly Joe keeps refueling the conflagration with the power of his pulse and the stimulus of his accents. Good lines by Monterose, Donald Byrd, Philly Joe and Paul Chambers. Warmly recommended.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

The first LP under his own name is an event comparable in importance for the jazzman with the coming-out party, the official social bow of a debutante; it is an event to which he looks forward, an occasion that must be carried off to optimum effect. J.R. Monterose was well aware, when Alfred Lion offered him a Blue Note date, that this was one time when the credit or blame would rest with him. “And fortunately,” he adds, “these are the exact men I had in mind who would be able to do exactly what I wanted.”

Before you run to the turntable for evidence of what he wanted and how it turned out, a little background information on the fledgling combo leader may be in order. Frank Anthony Monterose Jr. (“J.R.” is simply a corruption of the Junior) is a native of Detroit, where he was born in January 19, 1927. He is not, however, a Detroiter by any other token than the accident of birth, for before he was old enough to talk, let alone blow a horn, he was transplanted by his family to Utica, N.Y., which has been home base ever since.

J.R.’s musical studies were centered mainly on the clarinet; he had very little formal saxophone training. The first great influences were Coleman Hawkins and the late Chu Berry; but “the real inspiration that decided me to take up tenor seriously rather than clarinet or alto was, believe it or not, Tex Beneke.”

J.R. was still in his early teens when his extra-scholastic musical experiences began to broaden, all the way from the Utica Junior Symphony to a nearby strip joint. Meanwhile he was learning a few things about modern harmony. “Most of my influences in learning chord changes were piano players. I dig pure harmonies; I’m for the Bud Powell school. Sam Mancuso, a guitarist with a real natural talent, helped me find the way.”

After working with various territory bands in 1948 and ’49, J.R. caught his first taste of the big time, in a somewhat distilled form, when he was invited to tour with an orchestra led by the late Henry “Hot Lips” Busse in 1950. “There was some good young fellows in the band,” he recalls, “and once in a while there was an opportunity for a few solo bars.” But after a long tour that wound up in California he felt sated with enough shuffle rhythm to last him for the rest of his life.

Back home, he worked locally around Utica and Syracuse through most of 1951 before spending six months with Buddy Rich – “That was when Buddy had a big band, with Davey Schildkraut, Allen Eager, and Philly Joe Jones playing second drums. But you just don’t get enough blowing to do in a big band. After six months I was drugged with my own playing, and I went back home and spent the next couple of years working little joints, but with good men.”

The next opportunity to display himself came in the Claude Thornhill band. Again, there were distinguished colleagues, among them Gene Quill and Dick Sherman, but again there was the frustration of big band limitations, and after a couple of months he decided he couldn’t make it. Next came a steady gig for a solid year at the Nut Club in Greenwich Village with Nick Stabulas, under a liberal arrangement that allowed him to send subs in anytime he liked. This offered him chances for gigs with such intrepid modern jazzmen as Teddy Charles and Charlie Mingus. “I learned something from those associations; I didn’t go about it the same way they did, from studying; I got it all from listening, but I guess I was doing what they wanted and they seemed to dig it.”

Since then J.R. has freelanced around New York with many first-class musicians. Hawkins and Chu have been replaced by Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt among his idols and influences, as can easily be discerned by a study of the performances on this LP.

While he was in Chicago about a year ago with Mingus, J.R. heard a young bass player named Wilbur Ware, and filed his name mentally for future reference. Ware later came to New York, along with Ira Sullivan, as a member of the reorganized Jazz Messengers. Sullivan is one of those extraordinary musicians who can play virtually every instrument, “His father plays all the instruments and had them lying around the house, so Ira learned to play just about everything that has valves or keys,” says J.R. Ira’s trumpet and Wilbur’s bass are allied here with the drums of Philly Joe Jones, whom J.R. had admired so much during his tenure with the Buddy Rich band, and the piano of Horace Silver, who was recently accorded yet another new honor when he was voted the “Greatest New Pianist” in the Musicians’ Musicians poll taken among 100 name jazzmen for The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz.

Speaking of the material used for his first session, J.R. says, “I was afraid it might sound like too much of me if we used nothing but my own tunes. Horace brought in the numbers by Byrd and Paul Chambers, and when I asked Joe if he had anything, he came up with Ka-Link, so I think we have enough variety in the material to avoid monotony.”

Wee-Jay, a Monterose original based on the chord changes of Out of Nowhere, kicked off the proceedings in an auspicious manner, as J.R.’s solo, with the repeated staccato third in the opening measures, shows the powerful swinging tendency that is maintained through three superb choruses. Ira’s trumpet takes a few bars to get going, but by the end of the first chorus he is really cooking, and in the second he is clearly inspired. Horace’s two choruses are simple and direct. The drums and bass trade fours for one chorus, then the theme returns and there is a pleasant retard at the end.

The Third, a minor opus by Donald Byrd, is based on a 12-bar construction, with solos by Horace, J.R., Ware and Ira. Notice the apparent Sonny Rollins influence in J.R.’s work here and the fine form and phrasing on Ira’s solo.

Bobbie Pin, happy-sounding, medium-fast opus, gives Ira the first solo, followed by a bass chorus that is almost guitar-like in the flexibility of its conception. J.R.’s solo here is particularly well-constructed and swings consistently. After Horace’s choruses, there are a series of fours by tenor and drums before the theme returns, going out with an unexpected Latin-rhythm fade.

Marc V moves like mad, with Ira backing J.R. on the latter’s second and third choruses, then taking a couple of his own. Following the piano and bass solos, Philly Joe gets a workout on this one with a few breaks before the theme returns.

Ka-Link, presumably a sound effect title for the cymbal beat that kicks it off, features J.R. in a long string of 12-bar choruses.

Beauteous, written by bassist Paul Chambers, is a smooth unison theme played in a tempo that might be considered moderato by modern jazz standards, and using Latin rhythm on the release. After the Monterose and Silver solos, Horace has an interesting contribution that stays almost entirely within an octave or so of middle C. Wilbur Ware has a quietly effective chorus before the reprise of the theme.

Too many musicians in recent years have been afforded the opportunity of making their own LP before they were quite ready for it. Fortunately, in the case of J.R. Monterose, it is abundantly clear that he waited until the propitious moment, and that he was as ready, willing and eager to prepare this session as his rapidly-growing fan following should be to receive it.