Billboard : 09/01/1956
Score of 73

Ex-jazz Messenger Dorham in his first disk with his new group. The idiom is rugged post-bop, like the Messengers, but Dorham’s trumpet is heavily featured. J.R. Monterose is on tenor, Dick Katz on piano, etc. Blues Elegante is one of the more satisfying tracks in a competent, down-to-earth session. Pianist Katz is especially diverting.

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Cashbox : 09/22/1956

Trumpeter Kenny Dorham heads the group of five tightly knit jazzmen. Dorham, one-time sideman to Lionel Hampton and Charlie Parker, sparks the boys in five creations rich in subtle counterpoint and some sizzling solos. In the ballad, Don’t Explain Dorham and keyboard artist Dick Katz achieve a highpoint on the platter. The opening number, The Prophet hits hard with an imaginative drive. Neat jazz waxing.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 01/27/1957

After several weeks of confining his attention almost exclusively to jazz of the new, modern, “quiet cook” variety, this reviewer has found an unexpected (and sometimes astonished) delight in in a handful of records – some new, some reissues – which go back a few years and, in doing so, demonstrate again how true it is that jazz is a continuous thing which, ever growing, ever changing, still manages to remain its own essential self.

…

Something of the same sort could be said of Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets, Vol. 1 (from ABC-Paramount). I have never been a Dorham fan but here both Dorham and J.R. Monterose, on tenor, emerge as musicians of major stature. Listen to The Prophet and, more particularly, listen (half a dozen times at least) to Blues Elegante and I think you can hardly fail to agree.

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Down Beat : 10/17/1956
Ralph Gleason : 2 stars

This splinter group of the Jazz Messengers is in the process of making a series of ABC LPs of which this is the first. The personnel includes Dick Katz, piano; J.R. Monterose, tenor; Sam Jones, bass, and Arthur Edgehill, drums, and the five tunes include four originals by Dorham.

Dorham, while at times a trumpeter of taste with a Milesian emotional cast, seems unable to sustain either mood or linear structure to the lengths necessary when two or three tunes occupy one side of a 12″ LP. There are good moments, particularly in Elegante where he is quite moving (all of the solos are good on that track) and on the ballad Don’t Explain, where he plays with a sense of rapture that is delightful, especially his quotes from Comes Love.

But on DX for example, he loses the initiative. Monterose’s excellent chorus on this track, incidentally, makes up for the squeaking reel on Suite. Overall, this is a very uneven LP, and ABC might well consider scrapping portions of sessions like this.

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Liner Notes by Tom Stewart

Kenny Dorham is one of those artists who have not as yet been accorded their deserved share of recognition. And he is certainly to be considered a man of long experience, having been active in the jazz picture for over ten years now. Going back to the middle and late forties, one points to Dizzy, Fats and Miles in terms of the trumpet. But many don’t remember that Kenny Dorham was very much part of that group.

Born thirty-two years ago in Texas, of a musical family, Kenny gained big band experience with such people as Dizzy, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton and Mercer Ellington. From 1948-1950 he played with Charlie Parker, appearing with Bird at the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949. For the following five years Kenny free-lanced with many groups until he joined Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers in early 1955. He remained for nearly a year during which time he appeared on two LPs with the Messengers. Early this year, Kenny left to form his own group which he calls the Prophets. Perhaps with this new unit he will realize some of the benefit of recognition which he has heretofore missed out on. Kenny’s influence is apparent in the playing of many younger hornmen around today.

The fellow Prophets are J.R. Monterose, the diminutive tenor saxist of the Sonny Rollins style of blowing; Dick Katz, a very busy pianist these days who continues to grow in stature; Sam Jones, bass and Arthur Edgehill, drums.

The group’s namesake opens with a minor-keyed unison line. The second and last eight bars have a chord sequence somewhat similar to All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm. The theme is followed by eight bars of what George Wallington calls “the peck” (short, staccato-phrased interplay between the two horns).

The walking Blues Elegante has a twelve bar opening by Dick Katz and twenty-four of Sam Jones’ big-toned bass. The two horns follow with the rather unusual theme, Kenny playing muted.

DX, the up-tempoed offering on the LP, follows somewhat along the I Got Rhythm pattern with the exception of the bridge which descends chromatically.

Billie Holiday‘s beautiful and seldom-heard Don’t Explain provides an excellent vehicle for Kenny’s ballad approach. Dick Katz has sixteen bars in the final chorus.

The minor-keyed Tahaitian Suite has a fairly long ensemble theme played in 6/8 time. Kenny, J.R., Dick and Sam have solos in regular 4/4 and the theme reappears in 6/8 to close out the session.