Billboard : 04/28/1956

Johnny Hodges leads the ensembles here. On one side it’s the entire Ellington band, minus Duke, doing some typical arrangements, which, however, give the soloists space to blow. The Ellington sound is more marked on the flip, which features a small group consisting of the men who make the most typical Ellington sounds: Hodges, Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney, Jimmy Hamilton, Ray Nance and the rhythm. This is the side to demonstrate, and almost any track will do, altho, as on the flip, there are no typical Ellington tunes present. Ellington fans will want to round their collections out with this, altho for general collectors, there are more provocative disks extant.

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Cashbox : 04/28/1956

The drive that’s still keeping Duke Ellington and His Band way up there on the jazz scene is the whole story on this Norgran pressing. Though the Duke himself is not included on the platter, many of his worthy aggregation are. Leading the boys and playing alto is Johnny Hodges, a formidable Ellington colleague. The original material is expertly handled by the full band and a smaller version of the outfit. Glossy performances by Cat Anderson on the trumpet and Billy Strayhorn on the keyboard. Impressive jazz set.

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Arlington Heights Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)
Paul Little : 03/26/1956

From Norm Granz’ JATP recording studios (creators of Clef and Norgran label and the great touring JATP “live” ensemble that brings modern jazz to the nation), a splendiferous 12-inch called, aptly, Ellingtonia ’56, starring Johnny Hodges’ superb alto sax, Lawrence Brown’s redhot trombone, Jim Woods’ bass, Bill Strayhorn at the piano, Harry Carney’s baritone sax and a host of other men who worked with the Duke or who are champions of his inimitable band styling. Start off with the affable and jaunty Hi-‘Ya by Hodges himself; then hear Cat Anderson, a horn player with real class, solo in his own composition Night Walk, a lovely mood piece; another Hodges tune, with plenty of great riffs, is You Got It Comin’, and then there’s a 12-minute “jam session” of Texas Blues that’s worth the cost of the lp alone!

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : December, 1956

Johnny Hodges plays with the full present-day Duke Ellington band on one side of this disk (Bill Strayhorn sits in for Ellington at piano) and with a small group of Ellington men on the other. It is the small-group side that makes the disk worthy of attention, for the playing is in that profoundly relaxed and profoundly confident manner that has characterized Ellington small-group recordings for the past twenty years. The big-band selections are marred by repeated trumpet excursions to the furthest limits of human endurance.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 06/16/1956

One side of this features the Ellington band as it was a few months ago, plus Johnny Hodges and Billy Strayhorn on piano. The other is a small group (Nance, L. Brown, Hodges, Hamilton, Carney, Woode, Woodyard, Strayhorn). The former is extremely uneven, dissolving in places to bleary trumpet battles and fossilized riffs. The small band, however, has much of the lift and play of earlier Ellington small groups, and there is a particularly attractive Strayhorn tune, Snibor, as well as a long, rolling, elephantine blues, where everyone solos with force and feeling.

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Winston-Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, NC)
Luix Overbea : 05/03/1956

Duke Ellington and his great jazz crew brought music to the Coliseum last night, but only 500 fans showed up to hear the program.

As a result the problem of paying for the new Patterson Avenue YM-YWCA swimming pool still remains. This project was to have benefited from the performance.

On the bandstand, however, the band did not disappoint its followers. It played Ellingtonia as only the Duke can play.

There were no gimmicks, no screeching horns, no shouting falsetto tenors and no rock and roll. All the band did was present musical moods – Mood Indigo, In a Sentimental Mood, Black and Tan Fantasy, Clarinet Melodrama, Satin Doll, It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, Solitude, and more.

Each instrumentalist seemed to fit his role – Duke on the piano, Johnny Hodges on the alto sax, Cat Anderson on the trumpet, Jimmy Hamilton on the clarinet, Harry Carney on the baritone sax, Sam Woodyard “Skins Deep” on the drums and others.

Jimmy Grissom sang without histrionics, but smoothly and melodically. He even included a blues satire, Everything But You, as well as the famed Flamingo.

The fans were enthusiastic, applauding loudly. They were few in number, but after the show nearly everyone one of them went backstage to praise the Duke and his band members.

The Duke said after the concert that because the money-raising effort failed, he would make a personal contribution to the YW-YMCA pool fund.

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Down Beat : 05/30/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4.0 stars

First side (three numbers) has the Rabbit heading a small combo of Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney, Jimmy Hamilton, Ray Nance, Jimmy Woode, Sam Woodyard, and Billy Strayhorn. All three tracks are very relaxed, but lack the unique cohesiveness of the old Hodges small unit sides on Vocalion and Bluebird. First number is limited in interest by the slight theme and too-short solos. Strayhorn’s Snibor is distinctively attractive in theme and performance.

The long, loping Blues affords large areas of solo space, and although no one takes fire, it’s all good listening. The second side has the whole Duke band with Strayhorn in place of Duke. First track is lessened due to writing by Cat Anderson that is much too eclectic. Jam cooks freely and stimulating until the trumpet exchanges become too frantic and the band exits on a heavy series of stale riffs. The annotator makes counting mistakes in describing the trumpet trialogue.

Night Walk rocks strongly, while the final You Got It Coming, a Hodges theme, is the best track of the LP, being in sound and collective floating feeling the closest to the vintage Hodges combos. Hodges plays through all the sides with rich effortlessness. There are several other first-rate solo contributions and a few that could have been better. Woodyard, though a better drummer than Duke has been blessed with for some months, is occasionally too heavy. Title of the set is Ellingtonia ’56.

The Duke’s presence is sometimes missed, but the album is recommended for its general ease and – at its best – flowing strength. The notes list a Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter that isn’t on the LP.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

Through the years — three decades or more — the work of musicians playing under Duke Ellington has been marked, first of all, by sophistication, by an absence of rough edges. There’s never been a time when anyone with ears to listen was unable to recognize the Ellington sound or the Ellington musicianship which produces the sound. Time passes and musicians may change in the Ellington band — although not too frequently — but the sound remains.

How to account for it? Well, it’s partly the influence of one man, Ellington himself, and it’s also true — and no less important — that Ellington always has superlative men around him in the first place.

To cite an analogy of sorts, in baseball the legend has grown that an ordinary ballplayer may don the pin-stripe uniform of the New York Yankees and become, overnight, a champion. Another myth has a journeyman musician joining forces with Ellington and becoming, after a one-nighter, a fullblown star on his instrument. The truth is that the Yankees know how to obtain topflight ballplayers, generally, and the Duke accordingly will accept only the best among musicians — and he gets, moreover, the best that’s in them.

On this album, some of the very best musicians ever to fly the Ellington banner — mostly members of the crackling 1956 edition — have been assembled, with Billy Strayhorn at the piano, and the result is a singularly exciting musical event.

Actually this is the entire Duke Ellington band led by Johnny Hodges, the best known member of that eminent organization, with Bill Strayhorn substituting for Duke. For a change of pace in the album, Johnny used a small group as well as the full band. Also in the interest of contrast, each unit is heard in a session of jamming, a marked change from the arranged music usually associated with the Ellington name. In Duke’s Jam, for example, an impromptu but nonetheless apt title, the entire big band jams for roughly six minutes and everyone gets his chance at a solo. There is even, on this one, a nine-chorus trumpet battle of “fours” involving — in order — Clark Terry, Willie Cook and “Cat” Anderson, and individual efforts by Paul Gonsalves, tenor saxophone; Johnny Hodges, alto; Harry Carney, baritone; Britt Woodman and Quentin Jackson, trombones, and Jimmy Hamilton, clarinet. The small group does its jamming — some 12 minutes worth — on Texas Blues. (At the recording session, there remained one side to do. “Can we Jam?” someone asked. The answer, logically enough, was, “why not?” Next question: “What’ll we call this one?” Johnny Hodges had a suggestion. “How about Texas Blues?” Hodges offered. “With Texas in the title, it’s bound to be commercial!”)

The small band comprised Lawrence Brown, trombone; Hodges, Carney, Hamilton, Ray Nance, and the rhythm section — also a part of the big unit — of Jimmy Woode, bass; Sam Woodyard, drums, and Strayhorn, piano. A three-minute riff tune called Hi ‘ya, by and featuring Johnny Hodges, launches the small-band side. Hodges is likewise featured on the standard, I’m Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. Billy Strayhorn’s Snibor (an intriguing and unexplained title) is a lovely, lush arrangement in the tradition of Chelsea and Satin Doll and should in time prove every bit as memorable.

For the large band, the three arrangements are The Happy One, by Cat Anderson and featuring Ray Nance’s horn; Night Walk, another Cat Anderson selection cut from the same rock-em bolt as Night Train, and Johnny Hodges’ You Got It Coming, which serves Cat Anderson’s horn to the fore.

As indicated previously, the Ellington sound never seems to change at all and yet, in truth, it does, ever so slightly and ever so subtly because men change along with their music. This is the sound of the current Ellington band, the sound — if you will — of Ellingtonia ’56.