Billboard : 04/28/1958
New Jazz Talent Album

Smith is one of the freshest newcomers on trumpet in some time. He has imagination, tone, and versatility. His ballads are handled as well as the rhythm numbers. He is excellently paced by a rhythm section including A. Taylor, drums; Duke Jordan and T. Flanagan, piano and D. Watkins, bass. B. La Funke is heard on alto. With exposure this could step out. Standout set is Tribute to Brownie.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : June, 1958

A high school teacher form Atlanta who majored in music at Tennessee State University and went to the University of Michigan for postgraduate studies, is the latest trumpet discovery to be placed under contract by the label which introduced Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan. At the age of thirteen, Louis Smith began to play his horn in a Memphis high school, but it was some years later that he formed a personal style, influenced by Fats Navarro and the man he salutes in a gripping solo on Tribute to Brownie. Two of his originals show his blues strength, and on Ande, he creates lines on the changes of Indiana. The lone ballad, an impassioned Stardust formed with a full tone and skyrocketing phrases, passes all too quickly.

His choice of a teammate also involves, under a pseudonym, a former member of the teaching profession and the alto saxist in the Adderley family, who is suitably explosive on South Side. Tommy Flanagan alternates on piano with Duke Jordan. Bassist Doug Watkins and Art Taylor on drums fill out the rhythm section. Tom Wilson supervised the date for Transition, a label now unfortunately in state of suspension.

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Pittsburgh Courier : 05/03/1958
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

Memphis-born Louis Smith makes an auspicious debut on wax with his extremely intelligent approach to his trumpet on Here Comes Louis Smith.

Smith utilizes an attack based upon the phraseology of the late Clifford Brown which is intense in its interpretation of the basic theme and utter devotion to linear construction. With Smith on the wax are Julian Adderley on alto, who masquerades under the name of Buckshot La Funke, the irrepressible Duke Jordan, Tom Flanagan and Doug Watkins plus Art Taylor.

Trumpeter Smith has bene playing the horn since 1944 when he was 13 years old. He majored in music at Tennessee A&I and did graduate work at the University of Michigan in music. He also took time out to teach at the Booker T. Washington High School on Hunter St. in Southwest Atlanta. We liked in particular the treatment given Ande (a takeoff on Donna Lee), Star Dust and Tribue to Brownie.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 09/21/1958

It is the boast of Alfred Lion, head of Blue Note Records, that he has discovered more top jazz talent than any record man in the business – and it may be true. Louis Smith is the latest: a fine young trumpet man who shows up well here with such men as Cannonball Adderley, Duke Jordan, Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins and Art Taylor. A fine example of the modern “hard bop” school.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 05/31/1958

Watchers of the trumpet skies will not want to miss the brilliant debut of Louis Smith, a young man from Memphis who is superlative in rapid tempi, quietly inventive in Stardust, and who is paired with a powerhouse alto saxophone player, who, for reasons I suppose I should respect, prefers to be known on the label as “Buckshot La Funke.” A good part of the disc is an incredible fast workout in the musical gymnasium; there may well be a champion in the making.

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Down Beat : 06/26/1958
Martin Williams : 3.5 stars

The title of the first track tells the story.

There is nothing wrong and everything that it is right with a man’s modeling himself, in the beginning, on another for whom he feels an affinity. But so long as he is in that stage, it is difficult to see much beyond comments on how well he seems to absorb the model, otherwise, be silent and not interfere.

Smith has Brown‘s conception, I think, and better than many who have tried for it. He does make an occasional mistake and does a bit of mere valve-flicking – but rarely not so it amounts to a real drawback. One could add that space, rests, and silence are legitimate musical devices and can be very effective ones. On Stardust he handles lyric statement effectively. So many younger men seem embarrassed by such a slow ballad tempo and resort to double-time “cooking.” Smith double-times – but sparsely.

I think it is high time, however to stop talking about Adderley and Charlie Parker and acknowledge the fact that he is a man with style of his own, a lot less like Parker’s than that of several others. He can play, no doubt about that, fluently and strongly. But often he will establish a context in the first eight bars or so of a solo, and then throw in an idea that neither complements it nor contrasts with it buy only breaks down that context.

Perhaps some kind of answer for all lies in Jordan‘s solo on Brill’s Blues; it is a simply lyric development, every melodic phrase in it contributes to the unfolding of a singing line that says something fragile and lovely.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

“I’m sending you some test pressings,” said Alfred Lion. “Let me know what you think.”

I was intrigued by the way he worded it. Usually it would be “I’m sending you a new Jimmy Smith and I’d like you to write the notes for it,” or “I’d like you to do the notes for a new Sonny Rollins I just sent you,” but this time he was playing it cagey; pressed for further details, he clammed up.

Clearly the inference to be drawn was that the man who had gone out on a limb for Clifford Brown five years ago, and for Lee Morgan in 1956, had another discovery under his stylus. Sure enough, next morning there arrived two sides that confirmed not only my suspicions, but also the continued soundness of Alfred’s judgement.

Lous Smith is an unknown trumpet player. Unknown, that is, at the time these notes went to press; his obscurity will certainly be short-lived. He signed an exclusive contract with Blue Note Records after Lion, having heard the music on this LP supervised by Tom Wilson, promptly decided to purchase the masters.

Edward Louis Smith was born May 20, 1931, in Memphis, TN. He and the trumpet first became acquainted in 1944; acquaintanceship became firm friendship when he was enlisted in the Manassas High School Band. Graduated in 1948 with a scholarship to Tennessee State University, he majored in music. Soon he was a member of the Tennessee State Collegians, which to the 1950s has become to a large extent what the famous Alabama State Collegians were to an earlier jazz generation. The college crew has produced such alumni as Jimmy Cleveland and Phineas Newborn. It was during the group’s performance at Carnegie Hall celebrating a college poll victory that Louis Smith became, in his own words, “a determined jazz neophyte.”

Beginning postgraduate work immediately after graduation, he later transferred from Tennessee to the University of Michigan where he continued studying trumpet under the tutelage of Professor Clifford Lillya. “During this period,” he recalls, “I enjoyed some of my most memorable moments as a young jazz musician, in the form of opportunities to play with visiting musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thad Jones and Billy Mitchell.”

Drafted in January 1954, Louis was assigned to the Third Army Special Services unit and again found himself associated with Phineas Newborn. After complete the tour of service duty he found his next civilian job, in late ’55, at the Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, GA., and since that time he has remained at the school, thus sharing the profession of such distinguished teachers as Cannonball Adderley, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims.”

For this, his first recording date, Louis found himself a similarly impressive list of names to serve as teammates. Buckshot La Funke (of the Florida La Funkes) is one of the modern alto giants and has been described by Nat Adderley as “my favorite soloist and main influence.” Tommy Flanagan, of the Detroit Flanagans, has spent most of the past year or so with the J.J. Johnson Quintet while Duke Jordan, his alternate, has worked around New York with Cecil Payne et al, as has Art Taylor. Doug Watkins has been a colleague of Flanagan in the J.J. combo.

It will not take you long to discern, on the strength of these sides, what it was that Alfred Lion found in Louis Smith to give him the same faith he had in Brownie, in Horace Silver and Lee Morgan and all the many others whose careers he has helped. On the very first track, a medium-fast minor theme entitled Tribute to Brownie, Louis inaugurates the session with some thirty measures of free-wheeling ad lib horn accompanied only by Taylor’s percussion. The perfect timing of his sequences of eighth notes, the skillful use of the appoggiatura, the casual incorporation of a cycle-of-fifths thought, the swinging confidence of the phrasing – all testify immediately to a degree of musicianship and maturity not too often found among newcomers.

As the listener makes his way through the rhythmically buoyant territory of Louis Smith’s first LP grooves, he will find answered all the questions that may have been stirring in his subconscious. Can he play funky? Dig the first five choruses of Brill’s Blues. Can he write interesting lines? Hear what he did with the Indiana changes on Ande, which he says was “written and named for my wife, who is a devoted jazz lover and my inspiration.” Can he handle a ballad? The answer is provided by his treatment of Star Dust, a challenging piece of material in that everything conceivable would seem to have been said about it in a hundred previous interpretations on record; for Louis it represents a chance to show that restrained and tasteful melodic variations on a theme are just as important and effective a part of his musical personality as the ability to swing thoughtfully and originally on a fast-moving set of chords.

Then there are the two originals with which the second side continues – the moderato South Side, partly unison and partly voiced, in which the sympathetic vibrations between Smith and Buckshot make for a beautifully rounded opening chorus; and the swift, ingenious reworking of the perennial twelve-measure pattern on Val’s Blues.

Lest it be assumed that in our enthusiasm for Mr. Smith we have failed to observe the operations of his fellow-conspirators, or that in Blue Note’s own ecstasy he was allotted all the solo item, it must be reported here that everyone else involved is thoroughly represented. Buckshot, scattering his cartridges throughout the battle lines, is especially effective when dealing in sixteenth-note hand-grenades on South Side. Both pianists are accorded space compatible with their merits. Flanagan offers a discreetly efficient backing to Louis on Star Dust and covers some spirited solo ground on Ande and Val’s Blues; Jordan on Brill’s plays the kind of slow, single-line blues I have always felt shows him at his best, and is no less capable in his solo contributions to Brownie and South Side. Taylor, though functioning mainly as an inventive sectional backstop throughout, is heard in some felicitous fours with the horns on Val’s Blues and Ande; Watkins, though also serving mainly in the section, grabs the spotlight for one of his relatively rare recorded solos on South Side and walks awhile on Val’s Blues.

These are, of course, merely extra added attractions. Most of those who invest in this disc will do so on the strength of the new name it introduces. Bearing min mind that this is Louis Smith’s first record date, conscious too of Blue Note’s previous record in the presentation of new talents, they will listen for evidence of the sounds that produced this faith in Louis Smith as a star of the next jazz generation, and they will be richly rewarded.