Billboard : 09/29/1956
Score of 76

This is another of those Blue Note “firsts” that should become valuable inventory in time. Burrell is certainly one of the coming guitarists, Tommy Flanagan (last with Ella Fitzgerald), one of the coming pianists, and Paul Chambers (at 20) one of the better bassists. Then there are veterans Kenny Clarke on drums, and Cándido on conga drum. The latter two duet on one fascinating equipment-tester called Rhythmorama. Jazz jocks will like Fugue ‘N Blues.

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Down Beat : 10/31/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

Introducing Kenny Burrell is an impressive first-LP-as-leader for the 25-year-old Detroiter. His excellent associates are Kenny Clarke; Paul Chambers; a Detroit colleague, Tommy Flanagan, on piano, and on most of the tracks, Cándido on conga drum. Burrell is easily one of the very best of the young guitarists in conception, time, soul, and sound.

Flanagan is also a valuable import for the same reasons and will become more so as he finds more of himself on the piano. Chambers already has been lauded often in these pages, and Kenny Clarke is a natural gas no one could wisely veto. He and Cándido, incidentally, indulge in exhilarating, head-twirling polyrhythms-on-the-rocks duo on Rhythmorama that has been wonderfully recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.

The three Burrell charts are quite serviceable for their three different requirements. The Blues is a particularly satisfying track with everyone soloing strongly, including Chambers on bowed bass. The LP is another credit for Alfred Lion.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

In the course of contemplating the achievements of Thad Jones and his group on a recent Blue Note release (BLP 1513, Detroit-New York Junction), it was this writer’s pleasure to observe that Detroit and its environs seemed to be providing the jazz cosmos with more than its share of major-league talent. One of the sidemen on that session, Kenny Burrell, offered incontrovertible evidence that his talent was of a caliber to justify the initiation of a new session built around him.

Kenneth Earl Burrell was born in Detroit on July 31, 1931. Anyone deputed to take care of cleaning up the Burrell household was apt to find plenty of odd plectrums lying around, since Kenny and two brothers were all devoted to the guitar. Billy, the oldest brother, who later betrayed the family honor by becoming a bassist, worked with the Willie Anderson trio and the Don Redman band.

Except for eighteen months of classical guitar tuition in 1952-3, Kenny had no formal study of the instrument. The easiest way to learn and observe was to sit in on jobs with brother Billy. Before long, at the age of seventeen, he had a job of his own, playing with the Candy Johnson sextet. After playing in two other local combos, (Count Belcher, 1949 and Tommy Barnett, 1950), Kenny started working mainly with his own group. He first rubbed shoulders with the big timers when Dizzy Gillespie breezed into town and used him on the gig in April, 1951. (“That was quite an experience: Diz had Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Percy Heath, Kansas Fields and me. That was when | made my record debut, when he made a session in Detroit, including Birks Works and Tin Tin Daeo.”)

During the next four years, Kenny built up a big reputation, simultaneously building up his combo from trio to quartet to quintet size. Then, in March, 1955, he was given an unexpected opportunity to see something of the world outside Detroit when Herb Ellis was taken suddenly ill and Oscar Peterson sent for Kenny to replace him for a few weeks in the Peterson trio. Soon after that, armed with a brand-new Bachelor of Music degree from Detroit’s Wayne University, Kenny moved to New York and was heard at the Bohemia and similar hip spots with his own and other combos. In the summer of 1956 he played a series of dates with the Hamp Hawes combo.

Kenny, who usually sings on most jobs and plans later to record vocally, says that his ambitions are to compose, to continue playing jazz guitar and to become a college teacher of music. He names three favorites on his instrument: Charlie Christian, the tragically short-lived father of modern jazz guitar; the late Django Reinhardt, the Belgian plectrist wizard; and Oscar Moore, award-winning member of the Nat “King” Cole,King Cole Trio] of the mid-1940s. As his favorite composers and arrangers, Kenny selects Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

For his first record session as a leader, Kenny surrounded himself with a sensational rhythm team. Tommy Flanagan, the pianist, an old friend from Detroit, has been heard around New York lately with Oscar Pettiford and others. Bassist Paul Chambers, an unquestioned choice as the greatest musician of the year on his instrument, is a twenty-year-old Detroiter heard in recent months with the Miles Davis combo. In the percussion department, Kenny Clarke of course is familiar to all Blue Note fans and Cándido, king of the bongo and conga drums, has been called the logical successor to the late and memorable Chano Pozo.

The first side opens with This Time the Dream’s on Me. Kenny offers a bare outline of the familiar Harold Arlen melody, with Cándido taking over on the bridge, before the pattern evolves into a series of fast-tempo improvisations. Kenny’s stylistic qualities soon become apparent: his choice of notes is as modern as his phrasing, but his tone is richer and fuller than that of many modern jazz guitarists who prefer a dead, flat sound. This live sound helps to reinforce the evidence that his music comes from the heart, not just from a socket in the wall. Flanagan has two smooth choruses, after which Cándido and Clarke have a series of four-bar and eight-bar alternations before the theme returns.

Fugue ‘N Blues opens with Paul Chambers’ bass, to which the piano and guitar are added in succeeding choruses for contrapuntal effect. In the ensuing lengthy series of improvisations, which show evidence of use of an extensive road map, the musicians modulate about a dozen times – mostly, | was surprised to note, in sharp keys. One sure way to avoid monotony in a jazz performance, particularly on a short and simple theme like the 12-bar blues, is to change keys, and it certainly can be said that Messrs. Burrell and company scarcely missed an opportunity for a change on this session.

Cándido returns to the spotlight with some 16-beat bongo rhythms to introduce the theme of Takeela, which allegedly was not named after a bottle or even a glass of tequila, but after a girl. Weaver of Dreams engages the attractive 1951 song in a melodic excursion that shows Kenny’s aptitude for chord style as well as for single-note melodic interpretation; notice, too, the effectively gentle touch and phrasing of Tommy Flanagan’s piano interlude.

Delilah, a most groovy performance, is a medium-paced rendition of the Victor Young movie theme from Samson and Delilah, with Cándido prominently underlining the lady’s comely features.

Rhythmorama, which gave Kenny, Tommy and Paul time to relax and smoke a cigarette, is a percussion duo. Just as Message from Kenya combined the talents of Art Blakey and Sabu as an interlude for contrast in the Horace SilverBLP 1520, Rhythmorama offers a similarly challenging contest of rhythmic wits between Kenny Clarke, veteran expert of modern jazz drums, and Cándido Camero, thirty-five-year-old Latin drum master of Regal, Havana, Cuba. Cándido arrived in this country in October, 1952, after six years with a band at the famous Tropicana Club in Havana and six years on a local radio station. Like Kenny Clarke, who was a sideman and/or colleague of Dizzy Gillespie for many years in several bands, Cándido owes some of his fame to Dizzy, who introduced him to the jazz set in New York. Rhythmorama provides both participants with an opportunity for an extended workout in which Kenny’s amazing facility for sticks on snare and cymbals vies for attention with the no less extraordinary rhythmic convolutions of Cándido’s bare but eloquent fingers. This should certainly rank as one of the outstanding sides of the year for drum fans.

Blues for Skeeter, which closes the set, is named for Clifton “Skeeter” Best, a fine and greatly underrated guitarist who has been freelancing for years around New York. Taken at a medium-slow tempo with Cándido again in evidence, it shows Tommy Flanagan in a delayed-beat chord style, Kenny in some fine chord solo work, and, last but by no means least, a long and extraordinary solo on bowed bass by the magnificent Mr. Chambers.

Since Blue Note did so much to bring to public attention the work of such modern guitarists as Tal Farlow (BLP 5042) and Sal Salvador (BLP 5035), it is fitting that Alfred Lion should be the one to present Kenny Burrell in his first LP. Only just past his twenty-fifth birthday, he seems destined, if his work on these sides is any indication, for a brilliant future in jazz.