Audio 
Charles A. Robertson : January, 1958

Like many musicians employed in studio work, the guitarist Mundell Lowe is a switch-hitter equally at home with a score, or in the fluent company of pianist Billy Taylor, engaging in a free exchange of jazz ideas. With the title tune by Taylor to set the album’s theme, they explore Easy to Love and Crazy Rhythm. Altoist Gene Quill adds his buoyant voice on Love Me or Leave Me, You Turned the Tables on Me, and an unclinical Blues Before Freud. Lowe selects It Could Happen to You to demonstrate his distinctive solo style. Bassist Les Grinage and drummer Ed Thigpen do nothing to impair the atmosphere of relaxed listenable chamber music.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 11/23/1957

A Grand Night for Swinging is a happy, free-flowing chunk of good listening triggered by guitarist Mundell Lowe, pianist Billy Taylor, and altoist Gene Quill with bass and drum accompaniment. Easy to Love, It Could Happen to You, and Crazy Rhythm are on the program which includes standards and originals in medium tempos. A real smoothie.

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Down Beat : 12/12/1957
Dom Cerulli : 4.5 stars

When you hear Billy Taylor wailing on Blues Before Freud, you may do a double take. A lot of people will. The usually impeccable pianist romps here with an abandon and funkiness that is a joy to hear.

Although Lowe is the leader, his meaty guitar is really showcased on only two tracks: Easy to Love and It Could Happen. The others are trio and quartet blowing sessions, with everybody standing up and swinging.

Quill‘s biting, almost unrestrained alto is fierce on Blues, and again evidence that he is one of the promising young artists on that horn. he is less intense on Love Me and Tables. But the characteristically abrupt and deceptively short bursts of phrases are still manifest.

Lowe’s guitar work is melodic, first and foremost. Even when he builds riff patterns, I find that he never stops inventing melodically to make a rhythmic point. He does some interesting comping that is actually more than just comping behind Billy’s sparkling choruses on Crazy Rhythm. His approach to jazz guitar is refreshing.

If all the tracks don’t match up to Blues, Rhythm, and Tables, it’s because their initial impact is hard. Hearing Billy here is almost as good as catching him in person when he’s wailing. Recommended.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

Mundell Lowe, as anyone familiar with his previous work on records knows, is a guitarist of impressive skill and a jazz artist of considerable taste and sensitivity. “Restraint” is a descriptive word that might readily come to mind. But if it does come to mind, then – as far as this particular album is concerned – forget it!

You’ll still find Lowe a tasteful and sensitive master of his instrument; it would hardly be possible for him to be otherwise. But on this occasion his intentions are specifically different than on his earlier Riverside LPs. The starting premise here was Mundell’s feeling that he had slipped into a pattern of over-emphasizing one side of his jazz nature: of stressing the ‘softer’ side and neglecting the ‘harder.’ So he set out to remedy the situation; to build an album that would be a hard-driving swinging all the way.

As a first step, there was the selection of the right men to work with. Not just capable musicians, but players that Lowe knew he could fit with immediately – with whom he could slip, without delay or tension, into the proper and vitally necessary framework of relaxed blowing. The key selection was a long-standing friend of Mundell’s, Billy Taylor. Billy has, in the past few years, risen to a top position as one of the most highly regarded and most widely popular jazz pianists. But on quick first thought he might seem a strange choice for this album. Billy has worked for several years now as leader of a trio that has played very successfully in some of the country’s ‘smartest’ jazz clubs, and there are some who tend to label him as an overly “polite” musician – which is much the same tag as has sometimes been hung on Lowe. But Mundell is one of those who knows better than that (about himself and about Taylor), and he realized that Billy would be not only able but extremely willing to take advantage of this sort of opportunity. And the superior brand of funky piano to be heard here (note, in particular, Easy to Love and Blues Before Freud) should prove that Taylor, like Lowe, is a jazzman whose talent has under-exposed and under-appreciated facets.

Mundell has most often worked with only a rhythm section behind him, a set-up that of course leaves him with the full burden of playing lead, as well as the principal solo role. For this LP, however, he felt it important, for maximum contrast and impact, that there should be other strong solo voices and also that the guitar should not be the only “horn.” The presence of Taylor took a big bite out of the first half of this problem, and step Number Two consisted of finding a horn man who would feel right for the settling Lowe had in mind. When he happened to jam, one night, with a group that included Gene Quill, that particular search was over. Quill is a young altoist on the way up, with a firm, soaring tone and the ability to ride hard and swing lyrically; his performance on the first of the two recording sessions that produced this LP adds greatly to the overall effect.

To complete the rhythm section, there are two other impressive young musicians. Ed Thigpen is possibly a born drummer; his father, Ben, sparked Andy Kirk‘s band, one of the best to come out of Kansas City in the 1930s. Ed joined the Billy Taylor Trio in 1956, and it was while sitting in with that group that Lowe learned to appreciate his tasteful, driving style. Bassist Les Grinage has played with (among others) Tony Scott‘s quartet, which is where he first came to Lowe’s attention.

Having carefully put together his unit, Mundell now turned deceptively casual. A number of possible tunes were picked out; in the recording studio they were tossed at the group. Four that provoked the best reactions were the ones that were routined, given a run-through at an agreed-upon tempo (anywhere from swinging-medium to up-and-driving) and perhaps a quick head arrangement, and were then recorded – without strain and with a minimum of ‘takes’ needed. The exceptions to this rule of procedure were: It Could Happen to You, reserved by Lowe as a primarily-solo piece; the Billy Taylor original that leads off the LP, which is one that Taylor has recorded before and that Billy, Ed and Mundell had worked out on; and Blues Before Freud, the result of Mundell’s saying “now let’s just blow some blues.” (It picked up its title because it struck someone in the control room as sounding “naturally uninhibited.”)

This lack of heavy planning was of course itself part of a deliberate plan designed to produce an album that would be… not tightly arranged, nor restrained, not experimental… not anything except a happy, free-flowing chunk of good listening. It was only afterwards that it was noted that the repertoire provided a built-in album title that was almost totally apt. If you’ll excuse the fact that this was recorded on two separate occasions, it certainly was A Grand Night for Swinging.

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Mundell Lowe stands high on the list of top-ranking modern jazz guitarists. Although, like just about every current performer on the instrument, he admits a considerable debt to that pioneer modernist, Charlie Christian. Lowe is the possessor of a distinctive, highly personal and quickly recognizable style. Born in Mississippi in 1922, Mundell has been a well-traveled professional musician since the age of twelve, his pre-war experience carrying him as far as Hollywood and ranging from hillbilly to dance bands to jazz. A post-war stint of a year and a half with Ray McKinley built the foundation of his jazz reputation. In recent years he has (like many other top jazzmen) traded the road for the steady employment offered by TV and radio studio work. But continued study, frequent recording and occasional club dates have kept his jazz ideas fresh and his skill on the increase.