Billboard : 02/09/1957
Score of 77

Let’s face it, the Swedish groups on this recording turn in an album which, musically and jazz-wise, is better than about 90 percent of the jazz disks cut in the USA. Gullin could be the best active baritonist in any country. The arrangements, for big band or small groups, are top grade swingers in the modern manner, and the rhythm sections are anything but stiff. Pianist Rune Öfwerman is the great surprise, while trombonist Åke Persson‘s prowess, like that of altoist Arne Domnérus, is known here. It’s the cream of the Swedish crop, of course, and a worthwhile addition to any collector’s library. Great material here for a quiz game with your customers, if you’re so inclined.

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Cashbox : 03/02/1957

Lars Gullin is one of the better known jazzmen hailing from Europe. His baritone sax has been heard on several available-in-America pressings; this one from Atlantic catches Gullin in a fine creative light, brooding impressively over at least one selection (Summertime) and swinging heartily throughout most of the others. Gullin is well backed by musicians from his native land, Sweden. Solid sax work.

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Hartford Courant
Jac Miller : 03/10/1957

A new Atlantic LP is Baritone Sax: Lars Gullin. Since jazz music had its origin in our country, we have selfishly thought of it as exclusively American. Foreign musicians player “our” music have been listened to with somewhat jaundiced ears. However, as this disc recorded in Sweden discloses, without program notes you can’t distinguish Lars Gullin’s group by nationality. So it is with performances given by solid, listenable musicians, be they natives of Europe, the Orient, or East Hipville, USA.

Two of the tunes on side one are done with a big band – Gershwin‘s Summertime and A Foggy Day. They are perhaps too ambitious and lack the group used on Fedja, Perntz, and Mean to Me The outstanding personnel include Rune Öfwerman on lively piano, drummer Nils-Bertil Dahlander (who called himself Bert Dale when on tour here with the Terry Gibbs Quartet), and Carl-Henrik Norin, who has a sound reminiscent of Stan Getz. Gullin blows with an easy, confident sound. His solo work isn’t inventive enough to maintain keen interest, but he keeps the notes rolling melodiously.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 06/02/1957

For some curious reason, Sweden seems to be the only non-American country which produces modern jazz in an authentic but nonimitative style – and Lars Gullin seems to be the most successful of its practitioners. He appears here with a number of Swedish jazzmen. I think this is his best album to date and, for adherents of the cool but not cultish, it is very, very good.

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Down Beat : 03/04/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars

This is the best collection of Gullin yet released here, and is probably also the most consistent set of Swedish jazz to be issued in America. One reason for the superior rhythmic cohesiveness of this LP in comparison with with its predecessors is quite likely the presence on all the tracks of the same swinging drummer, Nils-Bertil Dahlander, who was known as Bert Dale when he played with Terry Gibbs in the States. The leader, of course, is also a prime factor. Gullin is a soloist of flowing warmth, astute conception, and one of the most satisfying baritone tones in jazz.

The combination of Dale’s pulsating omnipresence and Gullin’s excellence appears to have spurred the other hornmen like Domnerus, Persson, and Norin, to play with particular imagination and collective command. Persson, incidentally, has commendable fire. Note, too, Rune Öfwerman, who comes on at time, as Leonard Feather notes, somewhat like Johnny Williams. Gösta Theselius did the two big band tracks, and his writing is the weakest part of the date because of its use of obvious devices. Gullin did the rest of the arranging and wrote two originals, the more attractive of which is Fedja. A superior LP, particularly the second side. Good engineering. Sessions were cut last April.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

The tendency to write off all jazz of foreign origin as imitative or second-hand has long been a proclivity of many American jazz critics, and even of some subnormally perceptive musicians on this side of the Atlantic. This is an easy method of pigeonholing and writing off a large segment of the present-day scene and avoiding the realities and individualities that refute this tenuous theory.

All music is imitative. All jazz is imitative. From the moment a human being first hears a sound, whether it be human speech or the tinkling of a toy piano or the sound of singing in the bathroom, he tends to absorb what he hears and to mold in its image what he later creates himself. There is no such thing on earth as complete originality. This is how jazz grew, as one musician listened to another and emulated what he heard and took it to another town and where he himself became the object of study.

Swedish musicians, like musicians all over America, have listened to the American idols. Just as most of the leading U.S. trumpet men are almost certain to have a little of Gillespie or Miles in them and most tenor men are likely to reflect an interest in Pres and Getz, so do the top Swedish jazzmen mirror this impact on their ideation. This still leaves them complete freedom to improvise or write music as they feel it; in the case of Swedish jazz it happens to come out sounding as authentic and compelling as anything concocted in the native land of jazz. Indisputable proof of this has bene offered almost every time I have used Swedish records in a blindfold test. Almost invariably the performances drew warm praise, bur rarely, if ever, could the blindfoldee determine the country of origin. Swedish jazz in its solo qualities is identical with American jazz; in its orchestral work, what little there is of it has shown no special preference for East or West coast styles (if they exist – and let’s not get into that) but has simply shown expert craftsmanship and a natural feeling for the idiom.

Lars Gullin, the best known in America of all the Swedish stars, has been heard in a variety of settings, but very rarely with a big band. The reason is simple: in a small country such as Sweden it is economically impossible to keep even a single big band together playing jazz. But the interest on the part of the musicians was so great that during the late 1940s and early ’50s, after working in various small combos, some of the men would band together late at night to run down the latest scores of Gösta Theselius. These sessions ultimately results in a few concerts, one of which took place in April 1955, when a big benefit was staged for the family of the just-deceased Charlie Parker. Gullin was features with Theselius’ big band and was so excited by the results that he could hardly wait to transfer the sounds to a recording studio. It was not until April 25, 1956 that his ambition was finally realized. The two big-band items in this set, Summertime and A Foggy Day, were produced on that occasion.

Summertime, in this wonderful Theslius orchestration, brings out the basic beauty of the melody and of Gullin’s superb solo style on a ballad. Some splendid trumpet work by Bengt-Arne Wallin is also in evidence.

A Foggy Day opens with the verse, played in a slow tempo by Gullin; as the pace picks up for the chorus there is some great brass work; a trombone solo by Persson follows, as well as some trumpet by Jan Allan and piano by Rune Öfwerman.

Theselius, by the way, is well known in Sweden not only as the country’s foremost jazz arranger but also as a soloist who has played both tenor sax and piano on a number of small band sessions. A native of Stockholm, he is 34 years old.

The other items on these sides present Lars in an invigorating variety of settings from quartet to octet size.

Fedja, a Gullin original, has an attractively melancholy minor-key theme played at medium tempo with steady brush rhythms providing a swinging background. (Nils-Bertil Dahlander, the percussionist throughout both these sides, was known as Bert Dale when he visited the U.S. and toured as a member of the Terry Gibbs Quartet a couple of years ago.) Gullin is first in the solo lineup, followed by Arne Domnérus and blending with him an interesting passage of improvised interplay. Carl-Henrik Norin takes over for some Getz-like tenor and Öfwerman’s swinging piano gets a beat most reminiscent of an East Coast pianist named Johnny Williams (if you happen to have heard Johnny Williams; otherwise he will remind you of Rune Öfwerman, which is just as well).

Perntz is one of the most striking examples of Gullin’s own writing. Scored for three saxophones, trombone and rhythm, it is dedicated to a well known doctor in Stockholm who did a great deal to get Gullin back on his much-followed feet after a serious illness a year or so ago. (Whether the doctor’s name is Perntz was not made clear to me. Somehow I doubt it.) Notice the smooth continuity between the three saxophone solos, their mood so consistent and their styles so well mated that you scarcely observe where one leaves off and the next takes over.

A word about the other two reed men: Domnérus, another native of Stockholm, is 32, worked with the bands of Thore Ehrling and Simon Brehm, was featured at an early jazz festival some eight years ago in Paris, and has had his own band since 1951. Norin, who comes from Vaesteras, Sweden, was born in 1920 and worked with most of the same bands as Domnérus. His early recordings show him playing in a style more reminiscent of Charlie Ventura than of Getz, but he moved perceptibly with the times and in recent years has been accepted as the most modern of Sweden’s tenor soloists.

All Of Me, a quartet side, sails right into Lars’ first solo, with doughty support from Dahlander. After toying with the melody for one chorus Gullin grabs the chord sequence and has at it for four more. The fleet single-note lines of Mr. Öfwerman then have the spotlight for two choruses, followed by a series of fours involving first baritone and drums, then bass and drums, and before Lars takes it out there is a 16-bar drum solo.

Mean To Me, a striking example of the “relaxation-without-lethargy” approach to a medium tempo, starts with a two-beat feel, Lars playing the first sixteen with Domnérus in the background and then, after a Persson release, moving to the rear while they reverse their roles. Persson is a 24-year-old prodigy who as early as 1950 was hailed as Sweden’s answer to J.J. Johnson (Denmark had its own answer, of course, in Kai Winding). Öfwerman and Domnérus both take what well may be their best choruses on this easy-going performance.

So What is a simple riff tune by Gerry Mulligan based on the familiar Love Me Or Leave Me chord pattern that has provided the basis for Lullaby Of Birdland and many other jazz “originals.” After an ensemble chorus taken mostly in unison there is a booting three-choruses-long solo by Persson – with a pleasant touch of low-note humor in bars 13-16 – and a few moments, notably in the last eight measures of his first chorus, when the style is more redolent of Bill Harris than of the bop school. The next three choruses are Lars’, with Persson adding a little background buildup in the last of them. Öfwerman cooks in the Powell–Silver–Hope manner on his two; then comes a series of baritone-drums-trombone-drums fours before the 16-bar ensemble conclusion.

In reviewing these sides we said little about the leader’s personal background, since it has been told many times: however, for the benefit of the less initiated it might be added that Lars Gullin was born in Gotland, a large island just off the east coast of Sweden, in 1928; that he starred on accordion, picked up clarinet at 12 and gained some youthful experience in a military band. Arriving in Stockholm in 1948, he did not take up the baritone saxophone until a year later, after he had heard some records by Gerry Mulligan. Joining the Arne Domnérus band in 1951, he also recorded with such visiting fire-extinguishers as Zoot Sims and Stan Getz. In winning the Down Beat critics’ poll in 1954 he became the first overseas musician ever to win an American magazine referendum.

If ever he decides to emigrate to this country, I might add, he is going to scare a lot of people, making a lot of records and gain a lot of admirers. Meanwhile, such admirable recorded evidence of his talent as can be inspected between these covers will do very adequately until the live thing comes along.