Billboard : 09/08/1956
Score of 83

Davis – and his featured soloists, Jackie McLean and Milt Jackson – cover quite a variety of material here to produce an exceptionally interesting and musically distinguished program. There is Thad Jones’ piquant Bitty Ditty, a romantic ballad, Changes, a blues, Dr. Jackie, and a vigorous up-tempo Minor March. Davis sets a tough course, but here for a change, he has a team that can make it. A “must” buy for all customers of the modern persuasion.

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Down Beat : 10/17/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

A basic personnel of Miles, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Arthur Taylor, and pianist Ray Bryant becomes a sextet on the first and third tracks with altoist Jackie McLean. Both are his tune. Bitty is by Thad Jones, and Bryant contributed Changes.

In contrast to many current sets that emphasize written frameworks and/or extended form, these conversations are in the tradition of improvised solo jazz with practically all the responsibility on the soloist, however fetching be the starting lines and sequence of changes.

Bags’ statements are as close to “pure” elemental jazz as the Hot 5 Louis. Nothing he plays is extraneous or self-consciously rhetorical; it’s all part of the swinging marrow of his jazz self-expression. Miles, more reflective, is less abandoned than Bags but no less hot-from-the-inside. McLean has the least solo space, and blows what he has with jagged warmth.

Bryant is impressive here, playing with logic, imagination, heat, and force. Rhythm section is steady. Bags is fine all the way through; Miles flows particularly in his muted solo in the oddly melancholy Changes, but also has intense personal reflections of value elsewhere. A no-frills, this-is-my-story collection, the LP is recommended.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

l recently counted the number of times I have written about Miles Davis and Milt Jackson in various liners. The total came to well over ten. After all these words and all this time I haven’t lost any of my enthusiasm for their playing. Why should I? I also know that the many people who feel the way I do about them, also have their other albums. They don’t want to read more biographical material because they know all about them. Those who are not informed should go out and buy their other recordings. No… not just to learn birthplaces and past accomplishments… for the music. As a matter of course they will learn about them too.

Percy Heath is another, who, although never a leader, has been written about extensively.

The three others are not so well known and it behooves me to tell you something about them.

John Lenwood “Jackie” McLean is one at the up and coming young alto saxophonists in the tradition of Charlie Parker. He made his record debut with Miles Davis while still a teenager (Dig, Prestige LP 7012). This LP was his first recording since that period. Jackie, as a writer, is represented by Dr. Jackle and Minor March, the two numbers on which he augments the group to sextet size. An interesting tracer of his development can be heard by listening to the aforementioned Dig, this LP, and his latest and first as a leader, Lights Out (Prestige LP 7035).

In the matter of first recordings. these were the first of any consequence for Raphael “Ray” Bryant, the young Philadelphia pianist who has since been heard with Sonny Rollins (Prestige LP 7020), and his own trio. Ray is a swinger of much sensitivity. His composition, Changes, contains some beautifully soulful, mournful changes and his solo is, quite logically his best one of the set.

High up in drumming echelons is Arthur Taylor who has come on swiftly in 1955 and ’56. A native New Yorker, A.T. shows traces of Max Roach and Art Blakey but it is with his own authority that he moves everyone along.

Jackie’s blues, Dr. Jackle, has the feel of a Charlie Parker melody in its opening line. Milt takes two separate solos at beginning and end while Miles, Jackie and Ray solo in between.

The piquant Bitty Ditty, by Thad Jones, is done by the quintet. Miles solos first and then again after Ray and Milt.

Jackie returns for his own suspensions-filled, descriptively titled Minor March and takes the first solo. Milt hard-swings a trio of choruses and then Miles extends himself for five telling ones. Ray finishes things off in this, the only up number in a medium tempo set.

A romantic introduction by Ray leads into his relaxed Changes which are some augmented changes on an old, familiar 12 bar pattern. Everyone seems to reach for and find a sad, reflective beauty that kind of gets you “here”. Milt is first, followed by a tender muted Miles and a lightly swinging Ray. Miles pokes his mute in again to close things out.