Cashbox : 10/31/1959

McLean is one of the individual and important new alto voices today and this Blue Note date enables him to demonstrate his surging, hard driving technique. Trumpeter Donald Byrd comes in for some sizzling solos himself, and the package is tied up with a good rhythm section. Tunes are originals; two by McLean, three by pianist Walter Davis, Jr.. Exciting, free-blowing set.

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Audio
Charlies A. Robertson : March, 1960

Although the monophonic version appeared a month or so ago, this date took five weeks in the planning and the resulting blend of ideas indicated that it would be worth hearing in stereo. Haphazard recording sessions have left a mark on the careers of both alto-saxist Jackie McLean and Donald Byrd, his companion in the front line on trumpet. The constant shifts in personnel among modern groups are partly dictated by economics and reasons other than musical, but a good share are made in an effort to discover colleagues who think along similar lines. A good example is the alliance formed recently by Art Farmer and Benny Golson, which incidentally seems to be blessed with financial success. The team of McLean and Byrd fits equally well together and it is to be hoped that the association will be lucrative as well as pleasant.

Aiding them immensely is Walter Davis, pianist in the group and writer of three themes creative enough to serve as limber springboards for the soloists. Along with two originals by McLean, they combine current trends in blues, gospel music. and a marching beat set by drummer Pete La Roca. Rudy Van Gelder’s engineering pairs the horns in a lifelike stereo setting.

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Farmingdale Post
Dick Levy : 10/08/1959
Excellent Rating

McLean is a superb alto saxophonist who plays with fire and determination here, expertly aided by Donald Byrd, Walter Davis Jr., Paul Chambers and Pete La Roca. Hip Strut, a medium blues, finds Jackie in rare form. Latch onto his opening solo which sparkles with tasteful authority. Byrd and Davis also say much of value. Minor Apprehension cuts a wicked path thru your speakers. McLean and Byrd belt away with much vitality. Other selections include a boogie-woogie like Greasy which offers crisp and imaginative McLean playing; Sweet Cakes a lively ballad and Davis Cup another wailer with good all around blowing. Strongly recommended.

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New York Age
Chollie Herndon : 10/03/1959
Superior Rating

Alto saxist Jackie McLean, who has been a troubled personality is “not like I used to be,” he says in the liner notes. The result is, “My style’s changed, I’ve changed.” We’re in favor of the change. In company of trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist Walter Davis, Jr.; bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Pete La Roca, McLean has turned out a free-wheeling, swinging, bluesy album. From the opening flag waver Hip Strut to the fifth and final track, Davis Cup, there’s plenty of interest. Playing with a dirtier tone than formerly, McLean blows in soul baring, direct fashion that’s a joy to hear. Byrd is fluid and frequently blistering, while Chambers’ solos are a delight. There is also a unique and interesting drum solo from La Roca on Minor Apprehension, one of McLean’s two compositions for the date. The others, including the tongue-in-cheek Greasy are work of the promising Davis. We only wish a ballad had been included in the set. McLean was beautiful on them before, and we’d be interested in his current approach.

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Hi-Fi Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : January, 1960

Interest: Firmly set moderns
Performance: Strong and relaxed
Recording: Full and bright

The musicians on this record, all under thirty, are part of that generation that grew up with modern jazz, have assimilated the language thoroughly, and are be coming more and more settled in it. They seem likely to be among the new traditionalists as contrasted with other young players who have begun looking beyond. Altoist McLean has had an uneven career, but appears to be on an upswing. His playing is hot and assured; his tone is more robust; and he’s gradually becoming more personal in his conception.

Donald Byrd, when he first came to New York from Detroit in 1955, played with a skimming fluidity that caused one observer to liken him to a hummingbird. His playing has grown in emotional force and in several places on this album, he really rears back and wails. The rhythm section is steady and pianist Walter Davis cuts through with a basic, blues-oriented modern piano that isn’t startling but carries weight. The tunes – three by Davis – are easily swung, catchy frameworks. A near-parody is Greasy which is steeped in the currently fashionable funk (earthy blues) with even some boogie-woogie seasoning. Also interesting is McLean’s Hip Strut which has both blues and march elements. Most important of all, the men in this album sound as if they thoroughly enjoy what they’re doing. This is not one of those “hard bop” albums in which the musicians play as if there are submachine guns in their instrument cases. I think a more natural warmth is beginning to flow through the so-called “eastern” movement.

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Down Beat : 11/12/1959
Don DeMichael : 3.5 stars

This LP marks the re-entry of Jackie McLean on the East coast jazz scene. It’s a strange and provocative album – a mixture of the sophisticated and the immature.

Long considered one of the most promising of the crop of neo-Parker altoists, McLean has yet really to find himself. This lack of direction is very much in evidence in this album. His playing is at times self-assured and meaningful; at other times, shallow and almost amateurish. His searching often leads him to a Coltrane-like sound and conception with the inevitable overtones of Bird. His solos here seem to be built around a central note – it gives the impression of being the tonic – and his work orbits around this point, returning always to this anchorage. This leads to sometimes-leaden and unswinging playing. McLean must be given credit, however, because he has not taken the easy way out – i.e. Parker imitation – but instead is searching and struggling for his own mode of expression.

McLean’s compositions, on the other hand, are mature and consistently excellent. Minor Apprehension was recorded some time ago by Miles Davis but was then called Minor March. It is a complex, difficult theme in the Parker tradition. McLean’s one other original on this date, Hip Strut, is typical east coast blues – hard and intense. He uses the now-familiar Eastern device of “spit” notes, i.e. two 16th notes falling on the beat and spat out, as it were. McLean uses a 12 bar rhythmic device on every other chorus which, after the 19th time, becomes as irritating as an open sore.

Walter Davis, Jr.‘s scores are not up to the level established by McLean. They are commonplace and lack maturity. His rather pointless satire on rock and roll, Greasy, serves no purpose aside from showing the obvious difference between R&R and jazz – a difference we are all aware of without its being crudely spelled out for us.

The outstanding soloist is Donald Byrd. It’s a pleasure to hear a modern trumpet man with a wide range who also has a broad enough conception to use it. His solo on Minor Apprehension is a landmark of swinging, inventive trumpet playing.

Pete La Roca‘s abstract drum solo on Minor Apprehension is the evolutionary extension of the tangent Shelly Manne pointed out a few years ago in his duet album with Russ Freeman. Whether this conception of out-of-time impression will remain a tangent or be the next step in the evolution of modern drumming remains to be seen.

This album cannot be recommended without qualifications, but it is deserving of close and serious consideration.

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Liner Notes by Joe Goldberg

In this country, all professions requiring special talent are overcrowded. Perhaps one of the main reasons for this is that if a thing is done well – acting, writing, boxing, performing a surgical operation, or playing the alto saxophone – it looks so easy that anyone thinks he could do it. The quality that makes it look so easy, the quality that is easiest to detect and hardest to come by, is self-assurance. Jackie McLean has self-assurance now, where he has not had it before, and it is to be heard all through this album.

Jackie likes this album. It is customary for musicians, even when they have made an LP likely to be judged “greatest of the year”, to make comments indicating that just here and there, perhaps, are passable sections. But Jackie set out to do some particular things on the record, and feels he has done them.

“New Soil is my idea for a title,” he says. “This is a change in my career. My style’s changed, I’ve changed. I’m not like I used to be, so I play different.”

Much of the credit for the record, he feels, should go to Blue Note. “They give you time to rehearse. There’s a good band sound here, because we had time to work things out. A lot of times, you go into a studio, play, and walk out. We spent five weeks on this.”

He picked his own musicians for the date. One of them, trumpeter Donald Byrd, has been associated with Jackie since 1953. “We were in George Wallington‘s band together then. That was Donald’s first job in New York. He’s playing different now, too. He’s getting better all the time.”

The piano player, Walter Davis, Jr., appears here on Blue Note for the first time, and is a particular choice of Jackie’s. “He’s a good piano player, but he writes very well, too. Three of his tunes are on the record. One of them, Greasy, is a cross between ‘rhythm and blues’ and ‘modern jazz’. He came over to the house and played it, and I laughed, and said, “Let’s put that on the record, just like that! That tune’s a lot like Walter. A very pleasant, very humorous guy.”

For Paul Chambers, on bass, Jackie has the greatest respect. “Listen to the way he plays. You’re all right when he’s behind you.”

Drummer Pete La Roca has a solo on Minor Apprehension that is probably the most startling moment on the album, “He’s always wanted to play like that, but nobody encouraged him. He isn’t just playing the tune, you can’t tell exactly where he is in the piece, it’s not that kind of a solo. It’s impressions, really, impressions of the tune.”

Jackie started to talk about other musicians, his influences, and his career. At twenty-seven, having played professionally for more than ten years, he is in the peculiar position of being at the top of his field, while still being young enough to have a feeling that approaches reverence for some of the musicians he considers great. “I try to pattern my style after Miles,” he says. “To play a few notes that mean something, instead of just a lot of notes. Miles can play three notes, and they’re touching. And Sonny Rollins, of course. He’s such a powerful person, it’s hard not to lean on him. Dexter Gordon, from the early days, Dexter’s Deck and things like that. And Lester Young. I remember when I was a kid, my uncle gave me an alto. I didn’t like it, it had a syrupy sound. He played me some records of alto players, and I didn’t like any of them. Then he played some Lester Young, and I said I wanted to play like that. “You’re not supposed to,” he said. “That’s a tenor, and you play alto.” Then I heard a Charlie Parker record, and I said, “That’s an alto!”

He speaks of Parker with particular affection: “He was always very good to me, and told me some things I still remember every day.” And Art Blakey. “I worked with the Jazz Messengers on and off for two and a half years. Art’s the best bandleader in the country.”

At present, Jackie has some very definite plans for himself. “I’ve had some trouble, and I’ve been pretty mixed up, but everything’s fine now. I’ve got a wife and three kids. The oldest boy’s going to be a saxophone player. Alto, of course. I used his sax on this date. I stay around the house, mostly, playing chess – everyone in the house plays except my daughter, Melonae, you can always get a game – practicing and writing. We just got a piano, and I’m learning to play so I can write on it. I’d like to get to the point where I could have a group and play all night and play nothing but my own tunes, and a few other special, very good ones. Like Monk does. Of course, I wouldn’t play my tunes just because they’re mine and I wrote them. I’d like them to say something. Miles, you know, has a better repertoire than anybody, and there’s two pieces of mine, Doctor Jackl and Little Melonae, that he always keeps in the book and plays. That’s an honor, when Miles plays your tune.

“I think I have my own style now, my own sound and my own approach. Everybody’s always pointing at some alto player and saying, ‘There’s the new Bird.’ I don’t want that. There was only one Bird, of course, and he was the greatest, but I want to be myself. Maybe someday, when I’m still playing my way, I’ll be heard.”

As can be seen, Jackie McLean does not take his music lightly. That is not to say that there are solemn, cerebral sounds to be heard on this LP, nothing could be further from the truth. Jackie is within what has become known as the “funky” tradition, and there is a lot of hard, happy swinging going on. His own composition, the opening track Hip Strut, which alternates between blues, march, and sheer suspension in a way unlike anything you ever heard is one of the most exciting pieces I have heard in a long time. His furiously-paced Minor Apprehension contains much more than Pete La Roca’s amazing solo. The three Walter Davis tunes the boogie-based Greasy, up-tempoed Sweet Cakes and the lovely rhumba Davis Cup introduce a composer and pianist sure to become increasingly important.

As for Jackie himself, he is, as he puts it, “waiting patiently” for things to break for him. If things work out as they should, this record should make that wait much shorter.