Billboard : 02/02/1957
Score of 74

Griffin is a tenor man who, unhappily for East and West Coast club-goers, sticks very close to the Chicago scene. Those hearing him for the first time here, will discover a musician with more than enough to say to keep interest high thruout the set. He is backed simply by rhythm section that includes Max Roach, Wynton Kelly and Curley Russell. In the ballads, Griffin has a big, Lester-influenced tone, that sometimes gets real “down” and raucous. In up-tempo items, he spins wild, hair-pin curve lines with calm self-assurance. All in all a relaxed, swinging, modern session that offers generous listening kicks.

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Down Beat : 02/06/1957
Nat Hentoff : 3.5 stars

Chicago tenor, Johnny Griffin, 28, well regarded by many of his more renowned contemporaries, makes his first LP as leader with excellent rhythm section support. Wynton Kelly, besides, solos with a particular combination of beauty and strength that is personally his. Having had a 10″ set of his own a few years ago, Wynton deserves another solo recital on the evidence of his work here. Griffin is a full-throated, blues-deep wailer with a big tone, a fierce beat, and that life-cry in his sound that all jazzmen of stature must have at base. He also has strong, improvising command of his instrument.

There are aspects of his conception, however, that are debatable. He has, for one thing, a determined tendency to explode in bursts of notes that often seem to be gratuitous expenditures of energy and technique rather than especially germane to the framework of the story he is telling. This note-profligacy also tends to break and shake the over-all continuity and contour of his solos so that they are sometimes less memorable as ascending wholes than as undeniably moving collection of fiery patterns. His ballad feeling on Things and Lover Man is virile and not without tenderness though I question the inexplicable bad taste at the end of Things.

Like several other young tenors of Griffin’s general direction, Johnny could also benefit by adding a less aggressive tone in certain contexts and more sustained flow of phrasing. In any case, Griffin is worth hearing certainly; and again, Alfred Lion merits credit for taking a chance on a leader whose name is not yet a sure index of sales. The Griffith [sic] originals, incidentally, are not distinguished.

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Liner Notes by Joe Segal

There is, in most every major music center, throughout the land, a relatively small handful of creators known as “musi­cians’ musicians,” one to whom, whenever they have the op­portunity, the majority of better known Jazz artists go out of their way to listen to or jam with…

Chicago, in particular, has been able to produce quite a few of this rare type of musician. The late drummer, Ike Day, was one to whom all the major jazz percussionists of today, including ours for this date, Max Roach, would sit and inten­sively listen. Another is bassist, Wilbur Ware (featured on the new J.R. Monterose Blue Note LP 1536, with another Chica­goan, trumpeter Ira Sullivan), of whom Thelonious Monk is particularly fond. Ex-Hines/Eckstine trumpeter, Gail Brockman, and the late guitarist, Ronnie Singer, are two others. Among saxophonists, Johnny Griffin, by many, is considered to be “the man!”

Johnny credits the erstwhile leader and musical director of Chicago’s DuSable High School, Capt. Walter Dyett, with impounding in him the, oh, so necessary basics of those without which, he feels, he could not have hoped to have musically survived as a top professional… Some of Capt. Dyett’s other pupils, Gene Krimons, Nat “King” Cole, and Bennie Green, to name but a few, are testimonies to his fine teaching…

Although Johnny, a family man, 28 years of age, prefer to “make it at home,” he has spent many a formative year on the road, most notably, when only 17, with one of those wild and wooly Hampton bands. Those were the invaluable woodshedding days of playing everything, everywhere, night after night, after night. Most recently he has received a personal request from Dizzy Gillespie to join his great new band! Johnny, however, is now leading his own quartet at the Flame Show Lounge here in Chicago.

Among his personal preferences and influences, Johnny lists Byas, Bean, Bird, Bud, Pres, Fats (Navarro), Dizzy, and Dex, with especial bows to Thelonious Monk. Johnny’s two week stay with Monk, at the Bee-Hive in Chicago recently, was one of the Hive’s all-time musical highlights in its ten year history of presenting Jazz…

On side one, Johnny leads off with an original, Mil Dew, an up tempo “rhythm-type” thing which takes off like a rocket from Max’s intro, and maintains itself steadily throughout Johnny’s choruses, with Wynton and Curley really keeping things moving right into Max’s dynamic fours with Johnny and on into the final out chorus…

The title number of the album, Chicago Calling, is a light airy little ditty composed by Johnny, which gives a feeling and mood not unlike the pretty Gigi Gryce tune Social Call. This particular rendition points out the many fine facets of Johnny’s playing; his natural buoyancy, complete freedom with the techniques of his horn, and the way his figures, no matter how far out they travel, always come back home and resolve.

The standard lovely, and favorite of Modern Jazz musicians, These Foolish Things, follows. An outstanding Wynton Kelly solo, surrounded by Johnny’s really big-toned offerings, provides a perfect contrast; with a truly excellent example of the basics of control necessary for good ballad playing, with the easily discernable evidence that Johnny’s seasoning years spent playing all types of dance music is experience of an irreplaceable stature. “Pretty humorous ending there, John.”

Closing the side is a beautiful tune usually associated with sad voice vocalists. To Johnny, however, the subtle changes involved in The Boy Next Door indicated that a swinging bounce treatment might better enhance the original structure of the song. Wynton’s pretty intro leads Johnny right into the melody, which, with that singing quality his tone possesses, permits him to really “tell the story,” and invite “the boy” right into your front yard…

Nice And Easy, by Johnny, opens side two, and is a blues with just that feeling the title describes; and not unlike that old favorite, Red Top, Johnny’s raucous choruses have the inevitability of a steamroller. The Kelly chorus, followed by one of Curley’s few recorded solos, and the way Max brings the whole works back into the closing theme, is a high spot of Modern Jazz making which, when years have elapsed, will still be a natural “gas” !!!

Johnny’s rendition of It’s Allright With Me, which follows, is one of the few significant versions, the other being by Jay and Kai, and Sonny Rollins. Taken at a break-neck tempo, the novelty of “Latinizing” the bridge throughout, is carried along by Max behind Wynton’s solo. If this particular number were the only good one in the entire album, which, of course it isn’t, I suspect all of the young tenor-men in the country would cop this LP for it alone!

Ever since Sarah and Bird recorded Lover Man, it has been a favorite not only of mine, but of most every Modern Jazz fan and musician. It’s one of Johnny’s also, and he treats it with a strident tenderness and richness of sound that can do naught but enhance an already beautiful tune. Wynton’s not unfunky solo is outstanding, and the way Max and Curley help Johnny bring the proceedings to a lovely end is one of the reasons these two are so sought after for gigs and record dates…

The release of this, the first Johnny Griffin LP, proves many things. Mainly, of course, that here is a young talented tenor saxophonist who, for too long, as been taken for granted, and who will, no doubt, soon be reaping some of his past due rewards… Also, for the sceptics of modern listening, who have been claiming otherwise, Max Roach has once again proven that his drumming is not only that of a soloist, but that of the all important pace setter of the rhythm section. All of the good taste, fire, spark, imagination, dynamics, SWING, and technique which NO other drummer possesses to his nth degree, is so readily heard that no further comment is necessary!

This, then, is Chicago Calling, with Johnny Griffin on the other end of the wire. You’d better answer the phone!