Billboard : 03/02/1957
Score of 73

Pianist Kenny Drew is one of the brighter lights in the circle of the up-and-coming modernists. This LP, like most of the others he has released so far, is highly stimulating and has much to offer. On the surface, his piano style is dazzlingly streamlined, with emphases on flashy finger-work, but underneath is a basic beat and emotion that show deep jazz roots. There is a blues Blues for Nica, for example, that has a real “down Home” feel. His lyricism is best illustrated by his styling of Thelonious Monk‘s Ruby My Dear. A swinging modern program, given added distinction by the backing of Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones.

—–

Army Times
Tom Scanlan: 04/06/1957

Drew swings more than Weston and gets fine support from drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassman Paul Chambers who has several interesting solos. Album has good sound (note Caravan).

—–

Audio
Charles A. Robertson : April, 1957

A virile young contemporary pianist, Kenny Drew grew up on Fats Waller and other pianists of that era and does not neglect his left hand. He puts down a swinging beat with somewhat more economy but no less rhythmic aptitude. He acquits himself well on six standards including Caravan and Taking a Chance on Love. His two originals are the imaginative Weird-O and Blues for Nica.

It would be hard to surpass Philly Joe Jones, drums, and Paul Chambers, bass, as they join with Drew to achieve a real playing unity. Many a horn player is going to listen to this group and wish he could have such backing just once. Good engineering by Jack Higgins of Reeves Sound Studios.

—–

Hartford Courant
Jac Miller : 03/10/1957

Kenny Drew’s Trio comprised of Kenny on piano, Philly Joe Jones the drummer, and Paul Chambers on bass is brought to us on a spanking new Riverside record. Kenny, back form a long stay on the other coast, playing with the air of a well-schooled man. The western coolies may have profited from his sittings-in. He made friends among San Franciscans and ultimately took them over a hurdle or two. On these recordings he’s blowing with all fingers and his rhythm men are important, too. Bravo for Weird-O, his own tune.

—–

San Antonio Light
Renwicke Cary : 03/03/1957

The stylish Kenny Drew trio is to be heard in a new Riverside album. Pianist Kenny Drew is a modernist in every sense of the word, and besides adorning old standards like Come Rain or Come Shine, Taking a Chance on Love and It’s Only a Paper Moon, he has an exciting go at several originals, including his provocative Weird-O. With Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums).

—–

Down Beat : 03/21/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

This is Drew‘s best LP to date. The 29-year-old New Yorker has roots in Waller, Tatum, and Wilson but is especially marked by Bud Powell and somewhat by Monk. His own musical personality is maturing steadily. One particularly impressive aspect of this set is its programmatic variety. Kenny blows with power but not disordered frenzy on the up- and medium-up-tempos; his blues is undeniably funky, but it’s not a forced funkiness, rolling out, as it does, with assurance and ease.

Kenny besides does not let his ballads sag as is witnessed by a sensible, sensitive, and strong performance of Star and an unusually arresting treatment of Monk’s lyrical Ruby. The latter has a few too many flourishes for my taste, but there is no denying the personal impress in the interpretation and the potential of the shaping imagination. He also has humor as in the mildly Monkish touches in Rain; and he can just sit down and wail as in Moon, Weird-O, and Love.

Kenny has superb support in the best one-two rhythmic punch in modern jazz. Chambers also solos effectively as does Philly Joe in his few open spaces. I think Drew, as time goes on, will have even more to say in more of his own way, but this is a significant stage in his development, and a very enjoyable LP. The cover, a photograph by the excellent Roy DeCarava, is the first in Riverside’s Distinguished Photographer Group. Why not let those of the populace who want send in a nominal sum for prints to frame? The ideas of the series is a good one, and should spare us a few covers of naked women in bed waiting for early morning trumpet fanfares or a Sidney Skolsky questionnaire.

—–

Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

Jazz is both a very young and a very old music. From early New Orleans days to the present is a time-span that fits comfortably within the limits of an average man’s life expectancy; yet that span has witnessed amazingly drastic changes in structure and sound – even though (most people will grant) the whole of it can readily be described by the same single term: “jazz.”

This is hardly a new or original thought, but it seems a particularly relevant one here. Kenny Drew is among the best of the rising generation of jazz pianists (and, incidentally, there is a startling quantity of really good pianists, still in their twenties, on hand these days, which is surely a good sign for the immediate future of jazz). Kenny is thoroughly a modernist, by inclination and by experience. He belongs to that substantial group that came out of high school, during the mid-1940s, into a post-graduate course that involved hard listening and some sitting-in at the several highly active centers of bop strewn along New York’s 52nd Street. But note one important distinction between Kenny and most of his contemporaries:

Many current jazzmen (I might as well say too many) function as if their music sprang suddenly into life sometime after 1940, with no visible ancestry; as if it were almost a matter of pride with them not to dig those who played in the dim, dead ’20s and ’30s. It might be considered almost accidental that things are not that way with Drew. He was born, in New York City, in August of 1928, which is certainly not too long ago. But his mother, a classical pianist, began his musical education early, with private piano lessons at the age of five. (It’s an education that hasn’t stopped yet: Kenny continues to take classical piano lessons, from William Lawrence, and is studying orchestration with A. Jack Thomas.) The home atmosphere was heavily musical: a brother is also a professional pianist; a sister teaches music in the New York public schools. So it wasn’t too surprising that before he was twelve Kenny was in a position to be appreciating Fats Waller and trying to play like him.

From Waller, it was natural enough progression to Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson (and it’s not even unnatural that Kenny was known, early in his stay at New York’s Music and Art High School, as an ace boogie woogie man). None of this, however, has kept him from developing into a highly original handler of modern-jazz ideas. Today he certainly doesn’t sound like Waller – no more than he sounds like Bud Powell, whom he credits as his Number One influence. What he absorbed from Fats or Wilson or the Tatum of the early ’40s may not even be recognizable as such to a listener unfamiliar with those pianists. But it’s there all right; it’s present as an underpinning that helps keep Kenny an infallibly swinging and emotionally moving performer, and one who feels strongly that music without a basic beat and without “soul” simply “isn’t jazz, but just a reasonable facsimile.”

Kenny Drew’s career is notable for the quantity of top talents with whom he has been associated. His first job, as accompanist to dancer Pearl Primus, coincided with his first visits to 52nd Street. He played jazz gigs with a young crowed that included Sonny Rollins and Art Taylor; he became friendly with Al Haig, who was then working with Charlie Parker and let Kenny sit in for him at times. Kenny’s first record date was with Howard McGhee in January, 1950; since then he has worked or recorded with (among others) Parker, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and has led groups on LPs for Blue Note, Norgran and Jazz: West. In 1952-3 he toured with Buddy DeFranco‘s quartet, along with Curley Russell and Art Blakey, after which he spent three busy years in San Francisco and Los Angeles, returning East in the late Spring of 1956 as Dinah Washington‘s accompanist. He then worked with Blakey’s “Jazz Messengers,” and has most recently been freelancing in New York.

When asked some of those standard questions about personal favorites, Kenny noted that, on piano, he feels Horace Silver “is cooking the most these days,” and among the new names, is “a fan of Randy Weston‘s.” Among drummers, he singles out Blakey and Philly Joe Jones; on bass, Percy Heath, Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins.

Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers, fortunately enough, were available for this occasion. For, as Kenny would eagerly admit, they have a lot to do with lifting this LP far above the average run of trio sides. (They also helped make these among the smoothest running, minimum-of-“takes” recording sessions I’ve ever heard of.) For one thing, both men have worked with Drew before; they know his musical approach and approve of it (which isn’t necessarily always the case when even the best of musicians are thrown into a studio together). Equally important is that Paul and Philly have worked with each other consistently for the past year, as members of the Miles Davis Quintet. Rather than digging into the usual stockpile of adjectives to describe their abilities, I’ll settle for quoting Miles, whose explanation, when he was being told how good his group sounded, was simple: “I have the best rhythm section in the country.”

The repertoire here is solid material to work with: structurally sturdy standards, by men like Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen and Vernon Duke, that lend themselves to imaginative adventuring (my biggest personal kicks come from the waltz touches in Rain Or Shine); a tricky original; a blues with guts. One ballad – When You Wish Upon A Star – that you might think a touch of corn, but that is turned into a piece of rare delicacy, and another – Thelonious Monk‘s Ruby My Dear – that Kenny describes as “a beautiful tune that I play a lot and never tire of playing; a lot of people don’t realize that Monk’s writing can be very lyrical.”

The overall combination adds up most interestingly: a pianist of solid experience, depth and imagination, with an awareness of men who came before and with an unusual degree of sheer technical skill; playing good tunes with two associates who are not only first-class musicians but are able to join with Kenny to make a real playing unit, not just a casual one-shot combination. It surely sounds quite promising on paper; the results, as can be heard in this album, are every bit as much as you could possibly expect.

The Cover Photograph…
is the first of a series, by outstanding American photographers, to be reproduced on Riverside albums. The material in this Distinguished Photographer Group, although not directly related to the contents of the LPs, displays much the same qualities of perceptiveness and sensitivity as characterize the best of current jazz.

This picture is by Roy DeCarava. Born in New York City in 1919, DeCarava began his serious interest in photography in 1947 (originally a painter, he has had several one-man shows). His first photographic one-man show came in 1950; in 1952 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been represented in two major shows at the Museum of Modern Art: “Always the Young Stranger” and “The Family of Man,” the celebrated exhibit created by Edward Steichen, and his work also appeared in the book based on that show. DeCarava recently collaborated with Langston Hughes on “The Sweet Flypaper of Life,” a picture-and-text book, and is currently working with Hughes on a book concerned with jazz.