Billboard : 04/27/1957
Score of 67

The competent, but derivative German pianist needs and gets name assistance from tenorman Sims, but it’s not enough at that to make this set stand out in a glutted market. Trumpeter Jerry Lloyd is lost in this fast company, and while there is plenty of Sims, there’s more stimulating work by the cat elsewhere.

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Cash Box : 05/11/1957

Jutta Hipp is the gal from Germany who wields a free-swinging keyboard touch. On this Blue note disk, Miss Hipp is teamed up with Zoot Sims, the frequent tenor sax artist on Blue Note. The two play the principal jazz roles here as they dish some torrid and tricky work on 6 items. Others in the cast are Jerry Lloyd (trumpet), Ahmed Abdul-Malik (bass), and Ed Thigpen (drums). Driving artistry.

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Down Beat : 06/13/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

The one major soloist on the date is Zoot, and he makes the rating for reasons that have been underlined in several reviews in recent issues. Jutta, however, is certainly an asset. Her work here is more satisfying than on her first made-in-American Blue Note LP. She indicates here that she is beginning to find her own voice again after an initial compulsion on arrival here to dive head-first into the funky school of “blowing” piano. She retains lean muscularity, but there is a start in some of her work here toward regaining some of the previous linear suppleness and lyricism that her better European recordings contained (note especially her playing on Violets.)

Trumpeter Lloyd was, as Jerry Hurwitz, one of the first of the modern trumpeters in the early ’40s. For several recent years, he has driven a taxi, and at this point of his return to the scene with Zoot, his chops were apparently not at full strength. But his conception is worth following, for Jerry clearly has something of value to say. If he can play steadily for a long enough time, he should be able to express his ideas with bigger-toned authority.

The rhythm section makes it. Zoot is the chief yeasayer here, however, and he’s worth buying the LP for. The cover is a good try but doesn’t quiet make it.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

When the two volumes of music enclosed in BLP 1515 and 1516 were recorded under the title Jutta Hipp At The Hickory House, the red-headed Mädchen from Leipzig had only recently opened her engagement at that Fifty-Second Street emporium. It was her first bow on the New York scene after many months of suspense due to the lack of that most material of prerequisites, a Musicians’ Union membership card.

There was no telling how America would take to Miss Hipp or she to America. Perhaps after a couple of nervous weeks the gig would be over and the time charged off to experi­ence. It speaks eloquently for Jutta that no such thing happened. She stayed at the Hickory House for no less than six months – a run that might be the envy of 999 jazzmen out of a thousand in these days of one-week stands.

During those spring and summer months of 1956 the German jazz queen held court for many a visiting citizen at the oval bar that surrounded her trio. When not busy chatting with Duke Ellington, Lennie Tristano and other distinguished guests, she could be found around the corner at Basin Street, watching what the opposition was cooking up. It was during this time that she had a musical meeting of the minds with Zoot Sims, with results that can be heard here.

Zoot and Jutta were not strangers. They had met a couple of years earlier, when Zoot was touring the Continent with Stan Kenton‘s orchestra, and had jammed together in one of Frankfurt’s hipper cellars.

For this Blue Note reunion two-thirds of the Hipp trio (the leader and her fine drummer, Ed Thigpen, who has since joined Billy Taylor) joined forces with three-fifths of the Zoot Sims Quintet. Zoot brought along his trumpeter, Jerry Lloyd, who a few years ago was on the New York music scene as Jerry Hurwitz, but of late had taken to driving a taxicab, preferring a calling that offered advancement, in a more literal sense. It is good to know that he has shifted gears and rejoined the ranks of the blowing. Ahmed Abdull-Malik, who practices bass playing as seriously as Mohammedanism, lent a solid foundation to the proceedings.

The style for the session, as might be suspected by anyone familiar with Jutta’s musical and personal character, was completely without formality or restriction; improvisation is engagingly audible from start to finish on most of the tracks.

Just Blues is a lengthy and thorough inspection of the twelve-bar tradition In which the California-born tenor man helps himself to the first eleven choruses (and at 13 seconds to a chorus this doesn’t make him a glutton) in the firmly swinging, Young-rooted but Sims-styled manner that brought him so successfully through the Herman, Goodman and Kenton ranks. Jerry Lloyd follows with about seven choruses (we were more interested in what he had to express than in the exact numbers of measures it took him to express it,) after which Jutta takes over for a few exercises in hip restraint, her style clearly reoriented by the time spent listen­ing to Horace Silver and other modernists since her arrival in the U.S. a year ago. Ahmed walks a couple before the blues swings its way to a close.

Violet for Your Furs, possibly better known for its Matt Dennis lyrics than for the Tom Adair melody, is Zoot and Jutta almost all the way, with Jerry coming in only briefly at the end. Back Home, an excursion to Indiana along a harmonically familiar trail, starts with a thematic framework, mostly in unison by the two horns, but is again primarily a workout for Zoot, Jutta and Jerry.

Almost Like Being In Love gets right into a good middle-ground tempo and groove from the first bar, with Zoot swinging the melody before taking off into chord-based ad libbing, on the 40-bar chorus. Again the accent is on understatement in Lloyd’s slightly Bakerish approach and in Jutta’s single-note, middle-register lines, which rarely stray more than an octave or so above middle C.

Wee Dot is an up-tempo blues theme written back in the late ’40s by Jay Jay Johnson. After 24 bars of theme the solo spotlight is on Zoot from choruses 3 through 10, on Jutta for the next eight and Jerry for six more, but everyone comes back for another taste before going out on chorus 37 (this time we did happen to keep count). Too Close For Comfort is, of course, the recent hit from Broadway’s Mr. Wonderful. I suspect that Sammy Davis is going to get a big kick out of this, the first recorded cool jazz version. It hits a nice medium pace with Zoot in charge at the outset, fol­lowed by Jutta and Jerry in a mood that seemed to me slightly more assertive than some of the other performances in this set.

The total effect to be observed on these sides is similar to what you would experience if you happened to drop in one night at Basin Street or the Bohemia and found Jutta Hipp sitting in with Zoot’s combo. The same laisser-souffler (or man, let’s blow) spirit; the same concentration on individual expression. In fact, everything is there but the audience applause; it only remains to be hoped that you’ll feel like providing it yourself.