Audio : July, 1957
Charles A. Robertson

The second collection featuring Kenny Burrell is a most composite portrait of the considerable talent possessed by the young guitarist. He presents Gershwin’s But Not for Me as a melodically persuasive solo. Get Happy takes on a Latin hue as he is joined by the group heard on his first LP, with the percussion duo of conga drummer Cándido and Kenny Clarke. Saved from a jam session caught at the Café Bohemia, Kenny Dorham‘s Mexico City starts with a strong three-minute guitar solo.

Kansas City jazz days are recalled with a slow-riffed Moten Swing. On this and Cheeta, which rings the changes on I Got Rhythm, he is joined by Tommy Flanagan, piano; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Shadow Wilson, drums. The Basie tenorman Frank Foster is added for the blues-tinged Now See How You Are and the fast-paced Phinupi. Modern phrasing rejuvenates the old pop tune How About You. As far as I am concerned, Burrell here emerges as a leading contender in the current guitar sweepstakes and association with Benny Goodman should increase his stature.

—–

Billboard : 04/29/1957
Score of 73

Guitarist Burrell is heard alone, with just rhythm, in a quintet and in a night club jam session featuring two horns, rhythm and himself. Excellent company – Kenny Dorham, O. Pettiford, Tommy Flanagan, etc., will help. Consistently idealful, and possessing a fine time sense, Burrell lives up to his notices on most of this blowing session. Program is diverse, and with lengthy improvisations. Can be sold if shown.

—–

San Antonio Light
Renwicke Cary : 07/07/1957

The dazzling jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, has a new Blue Note album in which he performs a collection of standards and originals. On Get Happy, he’s accompanied by piano, bass, drums and conga drums, while the Gershwin gem, But Not for Me serves for some moving solo flights. Kenny Dorham, trumpet, and J.R. Monterose, tenor sax, are among stellar sidemen who lend variety to the settings for the album’s other tunes.

—–

Down Beat : 07/25/1957
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

Burrell is a guitarist of considerable depth and talent. On this collection, he contributes a glistening ballad solo on But Not for Me. The feeling and the artistry on this track alone are well worth the price of admission.

Burrell can swing, too. On Get Happy, where the group is a five-member rhythm section, he boots the group, and, in turn, is booted by Cándido‘s driving congas.

Mexico City recorded by a sextet on location at Café Bohemia, spots Burrell building choruses like a horn, but falling back on a repetitive cliché as a sort of breather before digging into a more creative line. Dorham disappoints on this track. After some rather aimless wandering, he appears to have settled into a line of improvisation, only to flounder again before returning to the head.

Tracks 4 through 8 have the same basic rhythm section, with Frank Wess [jazzdisco lists Frank Foster] the horn on the final three. Moten Swing is easy, relaxed, not too inspired, but with fine Burrell and fair to good Flanagan. The over-all sound is in the Shearing vein.

Flanagan gets to roaring on the sides with Foster. On Phinupi and How About You?, his choruses are fleet and forceful. Burrell also has a ball. Foster blows with taste and guts. Wilson‘s fours on How About You? are more successful than on Cheetah, but his rhythm work on these tracks is excellent. Pettiford is an asset.

Burrell is a guitar man to watch.

—–

Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

Kenny Burrell is a guitarist summa cum plecturm. His talents, first noted at length when Blue Note offered him his LP debut a while ago (BLP 1523), are even more dazzlingly displayed in the present collection, thanks to the variety of setting in which he is heard.

A total of a dozen sidemen helped to provide his accompaniment on the eight numbers in this set, though no more than five of them are heard jointly on any one track. Kenny can be heard in a completed unaccompanied excursion; in a simply rhythm section setting; as part of a wailing quintet; and taking part in a night club jam session that involves two horns, rhythm and himself. Clearly, then, there is no danger at any time that monotony will set in.

Get Happy, which kicks off the first side, mirrors Kenny B as part of a five-man rhythm team. Kenny Clarke and Cándido Camero, whose percussion duet entitled Rhythmorama was a sort of extra added attraction in the last Burrell collection, help to get the proceedings going with a Latin motif as Cándido’s eighth notes set the rhythmic and metric pattern. Piano has the melody with the guitar taking us over the bridge; Flanagan’s darting, dashing piano is almost as electric, figuratively, as Burrell’s guitar is literally. Launched by a sequence of riffs, Cándido later takes over the spotlight. Burrell, Flanagan and Chambers by the way, are old colleagues and friends from Detroit, which may explain the sympathetic rhythmic vibrations between them.

But Not For Me is a beautiful, melodic interpretation of the Gershwin standard, chorus, verse, chorus, in which chords and single note lines, melody and counterpoint are ingeniously interwoven to exquisitely moody effect. Does this swing? Is it jazz? Let’s answer with a third question – if the result is pretty and persuasive music, why should we concern ourselves?

Mexico City is a product of some of the nocturnal goings on at Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village, one of those admirable night sports where the chef is not relied on to do all the cooking. The ingredients of the dish served up on the bandstand this particular night included McKinley Howard Dorham, of Fairfield Texas, who had an entire LP with this same personnel at this same club on BLP 1524, and was also featured in two other settings on BLP 1535. J.R. Monterose, the fast-rising young tenor star, also has his on LP on BLP 1536. Arthur Edgehill‘s sticks are the first sound of which one becomes conscious in this alert, pulsing performance, for which the theme consists of minor-key bebop-type phrases. Starting with a break in the last two measures of an eight-bar interlude, Kenny sails into the first solo and keeps you just about breathless for almost three minutes of whirlwind improvisation. The light and shade of his dynamics, the fertility of his melodic resources, have never come across a microphone more effectively. He comps superbly, too, behind the Dorham solo that follows.

Moten Swing is a tune that goes back to Kansas City jazz days. A favorite of the early Basie band and of Andy Kirk and just about every other name band of the middle 1930s, it opens here with a cymbal swell, leading straight into the theme established by piano and guitar, at a tempo slows than that at which we’re accustomed to hearing the tune – 28 bars per minute. Flanagan sounds the most cool and swings gently in the third chorus; Kenny has the fourth and chords his way richly through the fifth. A repeat of the final four-bar phrase, sealed off with an Oscar Pettiford break, brings this one to a sedate and easy-going out.

The same personnel is heard on Cheeta, an I Got Rhythm outing for guitar (four choruses) and piano (three) followed by guitar and drums in one chorus of eights and one of fours. Guitar brings back the theme and there’s a sudden bop end.

Now See How You Are enables us to see how Burrell, Flanagan, Pettiford and Shadow are, as they glide through five minutes and 45 seconds of sheer groovy blues, this time with a fifth man added to noodle around behind the second exposure of the theme and later take a couple of choruses. of his own – Frank Foster, the youthful Basie tenor man who also is no stranger to Blue Note. Notice the effective crescendo and more biting attack toward the middle of the second of Kenny’s choruses. Flanagan and Pettiford also have a pair apiece before the theme, based on the most primeval of blues phrases, returns to take this one home.

Phinupi is a fast-paced, very basic theme, played by the same personnel but affording them a fine opportunity to show, at a challenging tempo, their ability to ally technique with ideation. Frank Foster plays particularly well here; note the articulation of his sixteenth notes, and the wonderful bounce of the phrasing in general. This is what you might call music with guts – the most extrovert and compulsive brand of modern, cooking jazz, yet without any suggestion of explosive raucousness. You may agree with me that Phinupi (whatever that means – I’m afraid I neglected to investigate) is the high spot of an altogether successful pair of sides.

How About You shows just as This Time’s The Dream’s On Me did on the last Burrell LP, how Kenny meets the invitation to tackle the changes of an old pop song that happen to appeal to him. It’s handled pretty fast, with three guitar choruses, two piano, two tenor, then some guitar-drums fours before the theme returns. Again the sudden bop end. How would you like it if LP program notes had sudden bop endings? ‘Bye!