Miami News
William G. Moeser : 04/06/1958

Leroy Walks, a Contemporary release featuring Leroy Vinnegar and a tightly knit sextet, is another in a series of giant steps the West Coast bassist is taking toward the top among those who pluck the big fiddle in the jazz idiom.

It’s been only four years since Leroy’s gig with Barney Kessel at Jazz City in Los Angeles, but the number of LPs in which he has participated since is lively evidence of his value to the craft. Here – with a sextet featuring the swinging vibes of Vic Feldman; the trumpeting of Gerald Wilson; tenor sax voicings of Teddy Edwards; Carl Perkins‘ tasty piano and the drumming of Tony Bazley – he strides through a flock of “walking tunes” that give the LP its gimmick for a title.

But there’s no gimmick to the solid rhythmic progressions laid down by Leroy and his confreres. Trumpeter Wilson’s Harmon muted choruses are gems, and the bass-playing leader gets a little room to exercise his ingenuity in a quite pleasing jazz manner. The sound is excellent and the LP is good evidence of what makes for enjoyable jazz listening.

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Providence Journal
Philip C. Gunion : 06/15/1958

Perhaps the best walking bass player in the business today is Leroy Vinnegar, a comparatively youthful newcomer to the jazz scene, and it is entirely fitting that his latest album is Contemporary’s Leroy Walks.

This one is good, solid jazz all the way, and a plus value is the fact that Vinnegar is spotlighted throughout in his best walking moods. A musician who isn’t inspired by the sort of bass Leroy plays just isn’t fit for anything but the back row of Lawrence Welk‘s little aggravation.

With Leroy are Victor Feldman, vibes; Gerald Wilson, trumpet; Teddy Edwards, tenor sax; Carl Perkins, piano, and Tony Bazley, drums. Everyone is good, but Leroy really lights the fuse, just as he has on many records made with groups headed by other names.

They played Walk On, Would You Like to Take a Walk?, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Walkin’, Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, I’ll Walk Alone, and Walkin By The River. Wonder where they got the title for the album?

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 04/13/1958

As if in answer to the objections raised against the jejune nature of the bulk of recent West Coast or Hollywood jazz, comes a new album – Leroy Walks! The Leroy Vinnegar Sextet.

Where many records from the Hollywood studios are lacking in all but a sort of febrile content, the Vinnegar Sextet is strong, forthright, vital and pulsating throughout but never misses an opportunity to combine with this strength a sense of beauty and tenderness that reaches heights of lyricism on occasion.

Vinnegar is a bass player, one of the best in the jazz field (he’s currently recovering from a serious auto accident. But he is more than just a bassist, he is a well schooled musician and this ability to think is evident throughout this album.

It is no small feat to retain the basic freedom and sense of immediacy which characterizes all good jazz and still organize the music to the best advantage of all concerned. Vinnegar does this.

He has on this album the services of the late Carl Perkins, an excellent pianist with a rather joyous sound when playing in full stride; Gerald Wilson, whose trumpet playing is exceptionally well presented here; Victor Feldman, a British vibraphonist who did the bulk of the excellent arranging; Teddy Edwards, a fine, tough-timbered saxophonist infrequently heard from on records unfortunately; and Tony Bazley, a young drummer making his debut.

All the way through the seven tracks on the album there is an undercurrent of delight, of joy and of humor and of serious jazz purpose.

Many Hollywood albums recently have seemed to me to smack more of money than of music; this is one, which it is obvious at first hearing, is a labor of love and this is the approach that is productive of the best jazz.

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Shreveport Journal
David Kent : 04/04/1958

Leroy being, of course, Leroy Vinnegar, so often winner of the bass polls. He is assisted by Vic Feldman, vibraharp; Gerald Wilson, trumpet; Teddy Edwards, tenor; Carl Perkins, piano, and Tony Bazley, drums. To “walk” in jazz practice is to establish a lively four-beats-to-the-bar rhythm, that is to say, a “walking rhythm.” Leroy is a superb walker!

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Down Beat : 05/29/1958
Martin Williams : 3 stars

Everyone should know by now of Vinnegar‘s virtues: a firm, dependable, warm, walking beat.

The most sustained track is the medium Walk On, and on it some typical things happen. Vinnegar’s solo brings his developing harmonic imagination into relief. Perkins‘ funky accompaniment gently sets and holds the mood. Edwards, a veteran of the bop movement whose welcome presence here is probably a result of the swing toward the hard in California, has a very good solo. Feldman is still generally working on Milt Jackson‘s style. Wilson, a veteran of the 1939 Lunceford band, may well be as underrated as several contend and his provocative alliance of swing plus Dizzy plus Miles leads him into a very good solo on River, but here on Walk On and elsewhere, it is largely an unsettled pastiche as yet.

The rating is a judgement of no one involved, only of the way things seemed to go this time. This and several other records do suggest that an alliance between the cool and hard idioms may be brewing out west.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

To “walk”, in jazz practice, according to The Encyclopedia of Jazz is to “establish a lively, four-beats-to-the bar rhythm (usually said of bass players: ‘walking rhythm’).”

Walking, besides, generally connotes the bassist’s ability to make these four-beats-to-the-bar melodically meaningful in terms of the line he constructs underneath the soloist. A superior walker must possess nor only unstumbling time but also the quality of ear that enables him to move from chord to chord with logic and functional taste. In short, walking isn’t as easy or impersonal as it sounds; or as S. I. Hayakawa of Language in Action might put it, walker (1) is not walker (2). And among his contemporaries, it is generally agreed that Leroy Vinnegar is one of this generation’s masters of that basic, peripatetic art.

Technical prowess alone is not sufficient guarantee of producing good walking. As in all of jazz, the emotional capacity of the bassists to “feel” the requirements of each specific situation – what the soloists and the performance as a whole need to lift them beyond just the playing of the notes into optimum personal and collective expression – is required. Vinnegar, because of his ability to project emotional power with insight has become a particularly valued member of any unit he joins. He provides, in a sense, a continually open reservoir of strength on which the soloist can “feed”, in more than just the harmonic and rhythmic senses of that term. When musicians have to cut down on instrumentation – for economic or other reasons – the bass almost invariably is the last instrument saved (a fact too many club owners are unaware of). One of the clearest ways to understand the reason for this general rule is to listen primarily to Leroy all the way through this album – or others on which he appears – and then try to imagine the music without him.

Another point concerning Leroy himself and the esteem with which he is regarded by musicians is that he is one bass player who really lays down a “bottom” for the music. He spends much of his time down in the A and E Strings, so that his support of his colleagues has the solidest of foundations. At the beginning of his career in Indianapolis (where Leroy was born July 3, 1928) he stayed at the bottom because it was harder as one went higher. But he began to realize that his spelunking deeply appealed to the musicians with whom he played. “They kept telling me, ‘That’s the way a bass should sound, baby.’ So I stuck to playing that way.”

Leroy began his professional career when he was 20 with local Indianapolis units, including that of Jimmy Coles. In 1952, he went on to Chicago, working for a time at the Beehive behind such visiting notables as Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt. There was also a gig with Bill Russo at the Blue Note. In August, 1954, he came to Los Angeles and worked with Barney Kessel at Jazz City. Red Mitchell heard him there for the first time: “I knew right away he had one of the best rhythm feelings of any bass player I have ever heard, and at that time, he didn’t even have a good bass… I always ask him to play whenever he comes in where I’m working… I can’t think of anyone who gasses me more as a rhythm player. His time really makes you want to get up and dance.”

After Barney, Leroy worked with Art Tatum (Leroy’s version of Would You Like to Take a Walk, which he used to play with Tatum, is conceived as a memorial tribute), Conte Candoli, Bob Gordon, Herb Geller, Stan Getz and on a sizeable number of record dates. He spent a year and a half with Shelly Manne and recently teamed in a duo with pianist Carl Perkins, his co-Indianapolisite, and childhood friend.

Of this sextet session, participant Vic Feldman, who is evolving into Britain’s most vital modern jazz export thus far, comments: “As you say over here, ‘it was a real ball.’ You’ll get a great kick just from listening to the rhythm section alone. This is Tony Bazley’s first jazz record – he has a fine, alive beat and together with Leroy and Carl, it’s a rhythm section with little left to desire.” Feldman wrote the arrangements for Walk On, On The Sunny Side of the Street, Walkin’ My Baby Back Home and Walkin’ By The River. The rest were heads. “You’ll note,” Victor went on, “that the arrangements are very simple, enabling everyone to relax more. A lot of the charts are built around Leroy walking, which he excels in. For me, this date was really one of my most enjoyable experiences over here.”

Vic, who recently signed with Contemporary, is a vibist, pianist, drummer, composer and arranger. He was born in London, April 7, 1934; and acquired a reputation there in the 1950s as the British modernist with the largest capacity for brilliant individuality, a reputation he has increasingly fulfilled since arriving here in October, 1955. He was with Woody Herman for much of the time from January, 1956 to the fall of 1957, and has now established himself on the West coast. He is a flowing swinger with a forcefully inventive conception.

Pianist Carl Perkins, born August 16, 1928 in Indianapolis is self-taught. Among his credits are stays with Tiny Bradshaw, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Oscar Moore, and most recently a year with the Curtis Counce group. (He also works as a solo piano). During his occasional between sets lectures on piano players, Miles Davis usually brings up Carl’s name as an example of what he considers a particularly stimulating – and rare – combination of economy, time, and that essential, unreachable “rightness” of feeling, of blues roots, he’d like all pianists to possess.

Teddy Edwards was born in Jackson, Mississippi, April 26, 1924. At 12, he began studying alto; later gigged with Jackson combos; and moved to Detroit in 1941 where he played with Ernie Fields. In 1944, Teddy came to California, and has worked with Roy Milton, Howard McGhee, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, Max Roach, Earl Bostic, Charlie Parker and the Lighthouse All-Stars, besides heading a few of his own units. He is a tenor whose work is particularly identifiable by its deeply plunging pulsation and emotional engagement.

Trumpeter Gerald Wilson has an extensive jazz history. Born in Shelby, Mississippi, September 4, 1918, he replaced Sy Oliver with Jimmie Lunceford in 1939 and remained there for three years. He later worked with Les Hite, Benny Carter, Phil Moore and the Great Lakes Naval Training Station band headed by Willie Smith. He had his own big band from 1944-46; worked with Dizzy Gillespie in 1948; and with Count Basie in 1948-49. After a period of retirement from music, he tried bandleading again in San Francisco in 1952. He’s currently free-lancing as a trumpet player and arranger in Los Angeles. He has scored in the past for Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Leonard Feather, in The Encyclopedia of Jazz, adds: “An outstanding talent, but never achieved the recognition he deserved.”

Drummer Tony Bazley was born in New Orleans, September 10, 1934. As a boy, his initial interest was in art, but the organization of a neighborhood rhythm and blues group propelled him into music when he was 14. Tony was voted the drummer, though he’d never studied that art. At 17, Tony graduated from Booker T. Washington High School where he had played in the band. He became a pro that year with the Johnson Brothers orchestra. From 1952-56, he was in the Air Force and played in special service groups. Upon his discharge, he worked in Sacramento; moved to Los Angeles in August 1956; and worked with Eric Dolphy at Club Oasis. Among his self-revealing favorites are Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones and Art Blakey.

There is a fully relaxed, happy-to-be-functioning-well-and-collectively feeling to this date that recalled to me (in its unselfconscious, natural proclamation of the walking jazz message) part of Auden’s “Precious Five,” a poem on and by the senses:

“Be happy, precious five,
So long as I’m alive
Nor try to ask me what
You should be happy for;
Think, if it helps, of love
Or alcohol or gold
But do as you are told.”