Billboard : 10/27/1956
Score of 78

Set valiantly aims to please the general public, but without compromising principles. The result is, perhaps not the most swinging jazz ever produced, but it’s a listenable, danceable sort of middlebrow jazz that can rope in the casual listener. , on tenor and alto, and Dave Burns, on trumpet, carry the load most of the way. An occasional gutbucket lapse might have been a relief. The humor and swing of the parody on Donkey Serenade make it perhaps the best demo band.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

If the music itself didn’t fill me with a feeling of revulsion and illness, I might have to laugh when the apologists for the form of musical prostitution known as “rock and roll” rationalize the existence of this abortion with the statement, “It has got the kids started dancing again.”

If the “kids” couldn’t have been started dancing by a band such as James Moody is heading, then they were dead from the crown down to begin with and only responded in a combination of mass hysteria and fad to the orgiastic, over-exaggerated beat and synthetic, insincere music and words of the rock and rollers.

Let’s face it – even those who appreciate jazz and other forms of good music when they are young need guidance in the form of intelligent critics and disc jockeys. When I first began listening to music I remember that there were several jockies who never told their audiences to swallow everything they played but did play a variety of music for their listeners to choose from and form their own tastes. Records by James Moody are a bit too musical for the “rock and roll” disc jockey.

The spokesman for “rock and roll” might point out that your parents dance the Charleston and were thought wacky for doing it. But if the Charleston looked weird then and seems absurd to us now, at least we can see the relation of its music to the jazz and/or popular music of that time. “Rock and roll” is nothing but the worst elements or “rhythm and blues” magnified and twisted further out of proportion. “Rhythm and blues” can be good or bad depending on which pole it is gravitating. Moody’s band is a jazz group pointed towards the blues, much akin to a larger band in spirit and feeling. The arrangements are far from monochromatic and the beat is always there without being vulgarized into a sledgehammer-on-the-head type of thing. The band has a gamut of emotions which it runs very effectively.

Typical of one brand of number they do is The Golden Touch by the talented Quincy Jones. Quincy has that golden touch both in the writing of his music and in its successful presentation. Golden Touch is “pretty” writing which incorporates swinging. Pee Wee Moore, Dave Burns and Moody on tenor are the soloists.

The ballad department is taken care of by Moody’s tenor as he does The Nearness of You complete with tempo changes.

Humor, never lacking in this band, is coupled to hard swinging in The Donkey Serenade. This donkey must be the one who thought he was swaps, bolted, and threw Allan Jones off his back. Riders Moore, Burns and Moody (on alto) are more adaptable to this agitated ass.

In Moody’s Blue Again, the opening and closing theme has been borrowed and enlarged on from a figure which was used to close Moody’s Mood For Blues (PRLP 198). Dave Burns and Moody are the only soloists.

The two come back for the elongated Wail Moody, Wail! (one wail for tenor, the other for alto) where Dave does some wailing too and both do some “stomping.” This recording session was perhaps Dave’s swan song for he has since left the band and the music business. As you read this, however, he may be active again. When you have a feeling for jazz, as Dave has and shows in his playing, it’s hard to stay away.

So listen “kids,” dig this LP… it’s mean to be danced to as well as heard. We have few big bands left but there are some “big” little bands left and James Moody has one.