Cashbox : 04/09/1960

One of the more individual alto voices around today, McLean has a generous capacity to swing and this date goes a long way in proving it. With a rhythm section comprised of Art Taylor, Jimmy Garrison and Walter Bishop Jr. in tow, McLean offers vibrant readings of Stablemates, I’ll Take Romance, What’s New and I Love You plus three others. It’s a hot session, with McLean cooking up a storm all the way.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : October, 1960

Someimtes, when reviewers feel that a big band jazz LP hasn’t really got enough jazz in it, they call the record “a superior dance set.” When I say the same thing about this Jackie MeLean quartet record (Walter Bishop, Jr., piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Art Taylor, drums) I mean it as the highest of compliments. McLean’s harsh, astringent alto takes an excellent set of tunes, including seldom-if-ever-done-as-jazz standards as I’ll Take Romance, Let’s Face the Music and Dance, and Cole Porter’s I Love You, and plays them with the sense of dance that is just beginning to
come back strongly into jazz, after a long and unnecessary absence. This is by no means a spectacular record, but is an honest and a satisfying one.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Ralph J. Gleason : February, 1961

Interest : Melodic modern jazz
Performance : Bright
Recording : First-rate

McLean is one of the clutch of young alto-saxophone players who are deeply indebted to the late Charlie Parker for their general artistic identity and who are struggling within his aura to achieve individuality. They are not always successful; but when they lend their talents to interpreting ballads, the results can be very rewarding. McLean has a forceful swing to his playing; his embroidery of ballad lines is pleasant and melodic and very easy to bear with.

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Down Beat : 05/26/1960
Barbara J. Gardner : 3.5 stars

If there is anything I detest, it is being forced to render a trite opinion. I thought that should I read just one more review suggesting that Jackie McLean is a faint echo of Bird, straight to Nutville I would go. Yet here it is, and this album leaves no honest alternative to that view.

McLean is a fundamental swinger without reservation. His horn sweeps along in a loping gallop. His ideas and phrases may not be the most original, but there is something to be said for beauty of expression, regardless of who said it first. There is no skipping ahead or lagging behind the beat with McLean. He stays right on it.

There are moments of commercialism and questionable taste. I Remember You and What’s New are filled with uncomfortable harsh boppish cliches, incomplete erratic phrases, and spurts of near honks and squeals.

Let’s Face The Music is a goody. Here McLean reaches a high level of performance and sustains it. The clean, tasteful rhythm section rises to his standard, both as a section and as soloists. Taylor is perhaps one of the most palatable drummers of today and Garrison can look forward to a great future in which to complete the promise displayed here. Bishop plays well throughout.

There is no “future promise” here. This Jackie McLean is here to stay. There will be growth in maturity perhaps, but there is no indication that McLean is searching for identity. Apparently he has found his groove and intends to work within its confines.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Swing with a capital S is a noun and besides representing an era, is still used to describe a segment of jazz which has since been redubbed mainstream. It has been advanced that swing when applied to jazz is more importantly a verb that should be unlimited in its application even when used as a noun (small s). I agree that no one jazz group or jazz man should have a priority, even a verbal one, on this essential characteristic. One musician who grew up musically long after the Swing era (actually right in the middle of the flowering of bop) but who displayed a natural swing from his first professional engagement is Jackie McLean.

It doesn’t seem like yesterday but I can remember the first night I heard Jackie. Bud Powell was playing at a new club called Birdland. In the middle of his set, he called two young musicians up to the stand for what amounted to their debut in the big time. The trumpeter, Lowell Lewis, never made it after that but the pudgy, 17-year old alto man who aped his idol, Charlie Parker, through a swift version of Night In Tunisia, grew up to be a powerful jazz-sayer in his own right. Although still playing in a style influenced by Parker, Jackie, age 27 as 1960 opened, has matured to a strong individual within his idiom, who not only still swings in a forthright, unaffected manner but who has deepened his lyric sense.

Whether or not the American writers are aware of Jackie’s coming of age, there is one British critic who has recognized it In the December 1959 issue of Jazz Monthly, Michael James has written a penetrating piece on McLean, the first article to appear on Jackie in any jazz magazine.

Among the insights James reveals are the ways in which McLean differs from Parker. “It is noticeable to even the most casual listener that his rhythmic approach is tied far more closely than Bird’s to the mechanics of the beat. The rhythmic variety that runs through Parker’s whole career as we know it from records finds but a distant echo in the younger man’s work. All the same, McLean’s lines are just as irregular, and his phrases often have a personal lilt that runs counter to the basic movement only to enhance its strength”, he states, and goes on to say, regarding Jackie’s originality, “…this growing originality has been characterized by its gradualness rather than its speed – contrasted, for instance, with Rollins’ rapid evolution from 1954 onwards – there seems to be every reason to believe that although he has already made several good records his potential is by no means completely fulfilled. McLean, I should say, is still very much a man to watch.”

Of course, when this was written James had no way of hearing Jackie’s recent work. When he does, he can consider himself a prophet with honor. I know he would enjoy hearing the assurance and control that was so evident in Jackie’s playing on stage in The Connection, an off-Broadway play in which McLean does not come off too badly as an actor either. And when Michael hears this album, the same completeness of expression will present itself. In his new, mature voice, Jackie still speaks with candor but there is more bittersweet than bitterness and a beautiful cry that says, in essence, “You’ve got to pay a lot of dues in life but it’s a groove to be alive.”

This album is a testimony to Jackie’s new strength. As the main soloist, he plays with unflagging zest through six, well-chosen selections. If listening interest remains at a consistently high level, it is only because McLean’s own interest in what he is playing is obvious.

The rhythm section contains some of Jackie’s early associates. Walter Bishop Jr. was one of Bud Powell’s first disciples. He recorded for Blue Note with Art Blakey in 1947 and was on Jackie’s first recording with Miles Davis in 1951. Inactive for several years, Bish returned to the scene in 1959 with appearances at Birdland’s Monday night sessions and later in the year with Allen Eager and Philly Joe Jones. The hot undulation of his single line is unmarred by straining to get “funky” that has shown up in some modernists since the advent of the naturally funky Horace Silver. Bishop’s solos balance well with McLean’s here and, as always, he comps sympathetically. It’s good to have him back.

Art Taylor has gotten better and better in the same gradual manner that James ascribes to McLean. Now he is as accomplished as he is ubiquitous. A.T. and Jackie played together in a neighborhood band with Sonny Rollins in the late ’40s. As pros, they show the results of over ten years of dedicated jazz playing.

Jimmy Garrison is a relative newcomer who was readily acceptable to the New York players when he came here from Philadelphia in 1958. He has since played with Lennie Tristano, Benny Golson and Philly Joe Jones among others. The standards here are all very interesting harmonically as well as melodically. If you are not familiar with them (Berlin’s Let’s Face The Music And Dance has not been recorded much, if ever, by contemporary jazz men) Jackie’s versions will serve as admirable introductions. Benny Golson’s Stablemates, a jazz standard at a very young age, is another highly lyric number in which McLean explores the changes with his heart and his mind rather than merely running them. And as if we needed any convincing as to his ability to play the blues, we are delivered to 116th and Lenox in a 12-bar train of blue steel.

The music needs no further explanation. As Alfred Lion said, “They came, swung and they split, so we called the album, Swing, Swang, Swingin’.” They came and swung all right but before they split, Jackie and his associates did more than just swing – they made some real “love” music.