Billboard : 03/30/1958
Three stars

Johnny Griffin, one of the better and more solidly based tenormen of the hard bop school will add to his following with this new LP. It features Griffin blowing both pretty and funky showing off his technical skill and also his powerful sound. With him and Sonny Clark on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and a young drummer from Philadelphia, Kenny Dennis. Title tune, The Congregation, a happy hand clapper, and the standard I’m Glad There Is You, standout on this set.

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Cashbox : 05/03/1958

The tenor saxist, one of the many fine musicians to emerge from Chicago, leads a quartet thru five varied items. Griffin is noted for his influence from Sonny Rollins. Performing along with Griffin are Sonny Clark (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Kenny Dennis (drums). One of the LP’s best efforts is found in the mellow I’m Glad There Is You. Strong jazz package.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : June, 1958

This is the most fortunate of the sessions by Johnny Griffin, a tenor saxist recently imported from Chicago, due to the irresistible theme of the title tune. Cast in the same lusty mold as Horace Silver‘s The Preacher, it is one of the happiest jazz originals since that sermonizing classic. Full of spiritual shout, it is carefully shepherded by the commanding timbers of the composer. It sets the scene for the rest of the date as, supported only by a rhythm section, he stretches out on I’m Glad There Is You and It’s You Or No One. He toys with the melody line of Tangerine on Latin Quarter, and relaxes on a basic blues. The shadow of Silver also reaches pianist Sonny Clark, who is playing more in the same vein since his arrival from California. Paul Chambers is on bass and an able drummer from Philadelphia, Kenny Dennis, makes his recording debut.

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Down Beat : 06/26/1958
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

Griffin is presented here in a more relaxed setting than on recent outings. His inherent drive is still very much in evidence, though.

Although he carries this essentially blowing session alone, I would have preferred to hear him with another horn as a foil. Congregation is a catchy tribute to The Preacher, and to me the high spot of the set.

Latin Quarter is so closely based on Tangerine as to be Tangerine. It, too, is in a relaxed vein. Griffin’s variations on Glad show that he can walk a ballad and resorts only occasionally to double-time for expression. Clark has a fine solo here, and a quite moving one on Main Spring. Chambers is tremendous, particularly on the last two tracks where his arco solos glisten.

It’s You is taken up, and shows Johnny in full flight. This impassioned blowing, a ripping floor of melodies, is at the same time his strength and a pitfall into which he must guard against falling. Johnny shows that he has a developing lyric side to his playing, and when that reaches the peaks of excitement that his driving side as attained, he will be a major voice on the instrument. Recommended.

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Liner Notes by Robert Levin

Johnny Griffin is a symbol of jazz energy. The most immediately obvious components of this energy are his extraordinary technical dexterity and hard, muscular sound. But what seems to generate this significant method of projection is a power plant which has roots in the traditional – primitive forms of jazz. Like his contemporary Sonny Rollins (who has had a strong influence on him), Griffin draws on basic jazz elements as the essence of his playing. His strident voice has a raw, virile quality and it shouts, at times, with a strength of expression in the Bessie Smith or even Mahalia Jackson manner.

It is this analogy in Griffin’s music that lifts him above the classification of just “hard bopper.” While there is a great deal of Bird in Griffin, his tenor sax conception relates more emphatically to an earlier era than bop. Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas and Lester Young have made no small impression on him and he seems also to have listened closely to Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Rollins.

Thelonious Monk also draws “especial bows” (as Joe Segal cited in his notes for Johnny’s first Blue Note album, BLP 1533) and the reasons behind Griffin’s predilection for Monk are understandable. Monk’s awareness of his musical ancestry is evident in everything he plays and Griffin seems to be motived by what are essentially the same factors. Johnny is going in the same general direction as Monk – carrying on the jazz tradition without losing sight of its basics.

Now an intermittent member of Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers, Griffin, who was born and brought up in Chicago, has worked with, among others, Lionel Hampton Clark Terry and Monk. This is his third Blue Note LP. BLP 1559 featured expressive “battles” with John Coltrane and Hank Mobley.

Sonny Clark, the blues-informed pianist from Pittsburgh, who, until recently, spent the bulk of his career in California with the Light House All-Stars and Buddy DeFranco, provides sympathetic and firm comping and solos in a consistently interesting fashion. He says his two most important influences have been Monk and Bud Powell – stylistically the latter’s impression, filtered through Horace Silver, is the more apparent.

Paul Chambers, whose recent Bass On Top album (BLP 1569) elevated him to the realized high-potential class, is represented on almost a dozen Blue Note LPs. He is equally creative as both an arco and pizzicato soloist and is, on this record as always, a strikingly intuitive accompanist.

Kenny Dennis is a Philadelphia born drummer who makes his recording debut here. For some time an associate of Sonny Stitt‘s, Kenny shows himself to be a steady, working drummer of impressive skills.

The title tune, The Congregation, by Griffin, has him bouncing along in a blues-happy, foot tapping, hand-clapping groove. Clark, in a Silverish vein, and Chambers solo with similar effect. The tune proves that it is possible to be funky without being angry.

John Jenkins, the Chicago altoist and another of the gifted reedmen (Griffin, Cliff Jordan, and John Gilmore are only a few of the others) who have emerged from that area within the past several years, contributed Latin Quarter which has a melody line based on that of Tangerine. After the Latinesque opening Griffin takes off on the changes with a strong-toned, moving solo. Clark and Chambers deliver a pair of typical statements before Johnny returns to wail some more before finishing up with an extended ending.

The very pretty I’m Glad There Is You is taken at an unusual medium tempo but retains the aforementioned quality. Johnny’s pair of solos, which precede and follow a Clark statement, are stimulating and show a mature, cohesive flow of thought.

Main Spring by Griffin in a down-home type blues with Johnny blowing new life into what might have been just another down-home type blues. Clark, a well oriented exponent of this sort of thing, excels in the fashion of his school and Chambers succeeds him with one of his patented and absorbing bowed solos.

It’s You Or No One is rendered a medium-up treatment and, as the closing number of the set, gives everyone a chance to stretch out a bit; Johnny, Clark, Chambers (bowed), then Johnny again to trade some fours with Dennis before taking it out.

That Johnny Griffin’s roots are immersed in the funky earth of spirituals and the blues (and have grown from there) is what provokes and enables him to make basic statements in what can be described as an “up to date” way. Perhaps the primary fault with too many of today’s musicians is that they are only concerned with contemporary concepts. But jazz did not begin with Bird, and Griffin along with a handful of others suggest that it will not end with him either.