Billboard : 07/29/1957
Score of 76

Good long-run value in this one, since guitarist Burrell is a fast-ascending star. This session “cooks” all the way in a modern blues-based manner, with full swinging guitar lines and some excellent modern bari sax by Cecil Payne. T. Flanagan on piano is another plus. There’s a broad market for this, if it’s exposed. Nice cover.

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Cash Box : 8/17/1957

The guitar, holding its own very well in today’s jazz scene, is used to excellent jazz advantage on this Prestige release featuring guitarist Burrell working with a four-man rhythm section. With sessions that generally sing a swing song, Burrell meets each situation with a refreshing resourcefulness of sound that is the essence of the feeling a given track tries to convey. Expert guitar performances.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 08/18/1957

New sound in jazz is offered in an album called Kenny Burrell. Burrell is a young guitarist who really has it. This is a unique quintet, featuring Burrell and baritone saxman Cecil Payne with a stellar rhythm section, Tommy Flanagan, piano; Doug Watkins, bass and Elvin Jones, drums. Only five tracks on the album, giving the strings and the big reed space to move.

There’s a fresh version of Drum Boogie that affords all five men solo room. It’s one of those rare albums that strikes a high opening note and sustains it. The quintet takes it on Drum Boogie, Don’t Cry Baby, Bud Powell‘s Strictly Confidential and Burrell’s Perception. The guitarist works with the rhythm section on Cole Porter‘s All of You.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 08/22/1957

Every time you turn around these days some record company is issuing a guitar album. For a while it was organs. Now it’s guitars. There must be more incipient pickers and pluckers than I’ve suspected among the jazz fans.

The best of the recent guitar LPs is a set of two discs, one from Blue Note and one from Prestige and both by Kenny Burrell, a young Detroit lad. Burrell is a swinger in the good old-fashioned sense of the word and yet he can play interesting single note solos. On both of these albums he shows it’s possible to combine rhythm and solos to good effect and, since he’s always surrounded by the best possible accompaniment, he always shows to good advantage.

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Down Beat : 09/19/1957
Don Gold : 4 stars

Burrell, a Motor City Blue Blower, reinforces his stature as a mature jazz instrumentalist with this rewarding LP.

In the five-tune context, a wise one, Burrell sets rich chordal patterns, and improvises some Bird-inspired mannerisms, plays with taste and disciplined drive here.

Flanagan‘s flowing piano is very much a part of the proceedings. Watkins‘ full-sounding bass continues to impress me, particularly in a blues context, where his deep roots are best manifested. Jones plays tastefully throughout.

The material covered is performed inventively. Baby becomes a deftly woven blues spell. Drum takes on added meaning, tangential from the Krupa version. Bud Powell‘s Confidential becomes a memorably arranged composition, with the large sound of Payne‘s baritone at the bottom and Burrell chording the top at the opening and close. It would make a fine theme for a jazz radio show. All of You features Burrell in a ballad interpretation, without Payne. Burrell’s own tune, Perception, features an attractive contrapuntal opening and worthwhile solos by Burrell, Payne, and Flanagan.

There is a fine amount of discipline present here, without making the group sound like a pack of eunuchs. Above all, it is another representative expression by Burrell, indicating his present talent and the promise inherent in his playing.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Since arriving in New York in 1956, Kenny Burrell has established himself as the brightest light of the new guitarists to emerge in the last few years.

Nat Hentoff, in writing of him in Down Beat (May 2, 1957) when reviewing All Night Long (Prestige LP 7073) said, “… it is Burrell who impresses me increasingly as the most important of the newer guitarists. He pulls the hat trick – solid, full tone; bracing ideas, and a no-nonsense, this is home beat. And the blues, furthermore, is a key part of his language.”

These are truths well taken. Kenny not only has these qualities but his sound and style make him an individual jazzman, immediately recognizable.

Kenny comes from a musical family, his three brothers all play instruments. One let him fool around with his guitar when Kenny was just a youngster, but when he reached twelve Kenny was more interested in the saxophone. His mother couldn’t get him one because of the expense and he settled for a ten dollar guitar. With the knowledge he had acquired by experimenting on his brother’s guitar and the aid of several exercise books, Kenny was soon on his way to becoming a professional. Like many jazzmen, he received his most important experience by jamming and working with different local combos in his native Detroit. It wasn’t until the early Fifties that he did any actual studying with a teacher. This was accomplished at Wayne University where he received a Bachelor of Music degree.

Stylistically, Kenny derives from Charlie Christian and, to a lesser extent, Oscar Moore (his original favorite) and Django Reinhardt. The modern idiom entered more through the cumulative impact of musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell and Miles Davis rather than any guitarists.

The combination of the Burrell guitar with the baritone saxophone of the redoubtable Cecil Payne produces a sound that gives this album a unique flavor.

Payne, a veteran performer of ability and skill far exceeding the proportionate amount of recognition he has received, contributes his characteristically full-bodied, light-fingered solos on all numbers save All Of You, which features Kenny with the rhythm section.

The members of the rhythm section, like Burrell, are ex-Detroiters. Pianist Tommy Flanagan, who first played with him in 1947, is one of the consistently fine pianists in jazz today. His lightness of touch and depth of feeling are well mirrored in this set of recordings.

Bassist Doug Watkins and drummer Elvin Jones (Flanagan’s team-mate in the Jay Jay Johnson group) meld well with Tommy to offer sensitive, pulsating support to the soloists.

Two tunes which had their first association with big band recordings make up the first side here.

Don’t Cry Baby was originally done by Erskine Hawkins. (I believe the vocal was by Jimmy Mitchelle.) Here it serves as an instrumental of more than eleven minutes of blues blowing Kenny, Cecil and Tommy swim along in a deep sea of blue that will warm your soul as it goes wading. Before Kenny and Cecil take it out, Doug comes paddling by on his bass fiddle.

Kenny never heard the Gene Krupa recording of Drum Boogie but has been playing it for a couple of years. This version is slower in tempo than the original Krupa recording.

In Strictly Confidential, one of Bud Powell’s excellent compositions, a voicing is used that Kenny feels he would like to utilize further. Cecil has the bottom while Kenny, playing the melody in chords, has the top.

All Of You by Cole Porter, starts with Kenny strumming the intro and the melody chorus, sometimes unaccompanied and sometimes backed by the rhythm section with Elvin’s brushes fitting the mood. The second and third choruses are improvised in a medium groove and then Tommy has one before Kenny takes it out, slowing down to the original pace at the end.

Burrell’s Perception has Cecil stating one theme while the composer plays a counter melody. Like all the other selections, it proves that Kenny’s ken is a wide and rich one.