Billboard : 04/29/1957
Score of 79

This package, which features the blowing of Woods and Byrd, will sell itself on the strength of their solo efforts. In addition, the Parker-designed or oriented vehicles, Dewey Square, Lover Man, etc., are interesting in their own right. Good rhythm section is a boon. One of the big kicks is hearing pianist Al Haig again, one of the more sensitive and influential moderns. In essence, an engaging set headed by two of the young leaders of the Eastern wing.

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Down Beat : 08/22/1957
Don Gold : 4 stars

This frenetic, production session features the fine work of altoist Woods and trumpeter Byrd, the splendid support of Kotick and Charlie Persip, and the welcome return to activity of pianist Al Haig.

Despite the everything-must-happen-now philosophy which crops up here, leading to many-note phrases, there are lustrous moments throughout this collection. Woods constantly expresses an ideational richness and rhythmic command. Byrd, when he resists the temptation to recreate the bop era in four bars, matches Woods’ fervency and adds his own fresh statements. Haig, who remembers when and how it all began, contributes his own authentic brand of modernism.

Woods is penetrating on his own tune, Dupeltok, and introspectively effective on the only ballad, Lover Man. A less-hurried Byrd plays forcefully on Woods’ dedication to Bird‘s widow, House of Chan. There is an interesting Kotick segment on More, which contains a fleet Haig solo as well.

Although the arrangements are skeletal, this is much more than another blowing session. The creative playing of Woods and Byrd make it so. There is no attempt here to pander to a potential audience; rather, there is a flow of perceptive, warmly felt ideas.

Unfortunately, the soloists tend to exist independently here, rather than playing toward some interrelated common end. This is due, primarily, to the absence of arrangements which are well-constructed entities. However successful Woods and Byrd are as soloists, I would prefer them in a more organized setting. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned virtues make this LP well worth the investment.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Maturity in the arts is evidenced by a completely controlled use of the knowledge and wisdom accumulated in the experience of the many preceding years of working in an art and of living in general. Because maturity is something that usually comes with the middle and later years, the work that the artist produces is most often of sober reflection mirroring the result of the maturation process. There is a pervading calm. The fiery creations of youth have been left behind although there is a continuation of growth; perhaps not necessarily ahead but inward toward the core of things.

The climate that writing and painting exist in offers more opportunity to its older artists than jazz’s does. Jazz has not yet developed a large enough nucleus within the ranks of its listeners which appreciates the best of all its aspects. Authentic practitioners from earlier phases of jazz are not given the nourishment of encouragement. Of course, jazz is relatively young and has not developed its tradition as fully as literature but if both Melville and Faulkner can be appreciated the same thing should be able to happen in jazz with Dicky Wells and Jay Jay Johnson.

These comparisons have validity but it must be taken into account that besides its youth, jazz is a very singular art, if it can be called an art in the same sense as painting and literature. This is not an attempt to downgrade jazz on my part (to me jazz is equally important (on a completely personal basis even more so) to any of the other forms of artistic expression) but rather a suggestion of perspective. Some people have verbally been making a “fine art” out of it and getting away from the essence of its life blood’s corpuscles.

The subject of age and youth in jazz ties in with what I said before. Jazz may not be solely a music of youth but there are qualities which musicians have in their youth that they seldom have again. For something gained there is sometimes something lost and vice versa. Maturity is gained through the years and the same years smother the fires of youth.

Musicians produce some of their most moving playing in their youth. There are few Radiguets in jazz (there are few in writing too) but there have been the Bix Beiderbeckes, Frank Teschemachers, Fats Navarros and Clifford Browns who never saw their thirties and yet produced music which has lasted in the ears, minds and hearts of all serious jazz listeners. There are the living too, who are to be remembered for heights they reached in earlier days. Lester Young is well listened to and appreciated today but it is sheer folly on anyone’s part to compare his playing today with the milestones he set down as a member of the Basie band and accompanying Billie Holiday in the Thirties. In this instance it is not the lack of encouragement that I mentioned before; it is the passing of the years.

The young bloods are constantly infusing new life into jazz whether it be in terms of innovations or just in spirited enthusiasm. Two of the most spirited of the young blooded blades now blowing in jazz are alto man Phil Woods and trumpeter Donald Byrd.

Phil, the older of the two, was 25 on November 2, 1956 and since he came to the fore in 1954 he has been steadily building a reputation for himself as one of the best of the post Charlie Parker altos, one who, unlike many others, does not show a slavish allegiance to Bird but definitely acknowledges him stylistically while carving out personal lines, sounds and turns of phrase. Incisive yet not strident, fluid and the possessor of a chuckle provoking, tongue in cheek musical sense of humor, Phil is excitingly adept at “wailing” the faster tempos but is also at home with a ballad. His spirit does not becloud his sensitivity. In the new star alto division of the 1956 Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz “Musicians’ Musician” poll he was voted into a first place tie with “Cannonball” Adderley by the likes of Teddy Charles, Conte Candoli, Tal Farlow, Dizzy Gillespie, Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mehegan, George Wallington, Frank Wess and Ernie Wilkins, a diversified group of his contemporaries.

On December 9, 1956 Donald Byrd was 24; this and his exuberant playing qualify him as a full blooded young blood. He and Phil have been associated before as those of you know who have heard their excellent duetting in Jazz For The Carriage Trade as the front line of George Wallington’s quintet (Prestige LP 7032). That recording postdated a lengthy stay at the Café Bohemia by the unit. Donald has drawn on some of the best of the modern trumpet influences for his inspiration; the Miles Davis style and more so, both the Kenny Dorham and Clifford Brown methods out of Navarro and Gillespie. In synthesizing these influences he has added twists of his own which dot the sprightly continuity of his blowing.

This LP marks the return to records, after a long absence, of Al Haig. Not a young blood but by no means a greybeard at 33, Al was one of the first pianists to play in the bop idiom. He was an important member of the quintet which Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie led at the Three Deuces in New York during the summer of 1945. Following that he was featured with several Gillespie bands, both large and small, and in 1949 played with Parker’s quintet here and abroad. After a couple of years with Stan Getz (1950-51), Al was heard from less and less, seemingly seeking semi-obscurity in places like Toronto and Miami Beach. He was with Chet Baker briefly at the end of 1954 but it was not until the end of 1956 when he appeared with Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra at Birdland (Phil Woods was also in the band) that he was heard from again. It was at that time that this recording was made. That Al still had his old skill was obvious to me at Birdland and it will be to you too, when you hear him here. To those of you who have never heard him before, it may show you where the softer (as opposed to Bud Powell) piano approach to the bop idiom derived.

Another member of the Gillespie band who at this writing is still holding down the drum chair in that organization (Woods and Haig have left) is Charlie Persip, a Morristown, New jersey native who was born in July 26, 1929. Charlie served his apprenticeship in rhythm and blues bands and received further training with Tadd Dameron‘s nine-piecer in Atlantic City in the summer of 1953. Then he joined the Gillespie small group and carried right over into Dizzy’s orchestra formed in the spring of 1956. His favorite drummers are Max Roach, Art Blakey and Buddy Rich.

Teddy Kotick, a jazz veteran at 28, has been with Parker, played with Haig in the Getz group and has often been allied with Phil Woods in the last three years including the Wallington quintet mentioned earlier. He and Persip see to it that The Young Bloods does not suffer from “tired blood.”

The lines, with the exception of two, are by Phil.

Once More is a relaxed blues of medium tempo that has the “once more” feeling in its melody statement. Donald carries the theme as Phil plays harmony against him.

House of Chan is an intriguing minor melody dedicated by Phil to Chan Parker.

Since George Wallington, who was picking up Teddy Kotick for a gig in Camden, New Jersey that night, made an appearance at the time the next number was being done, Phil named it appropriately, In Walked George. It is a beautiful lament in which each of the three soloists are extremely soulful.

The only ballad on the date is Lover Man, a jazz standard mainly through the efforts of Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker (not merely the “famous” version of it by Bird but the many times he used it as his personal vehicle).

Bird is connected with the other non-Woods tune on this date. It is a treat to hear his Dewey Square again. For the historically minded, this one derives its name from the area and hotel of the same name in Harlem where Bird and many other musicians lived in the early and mid Forties.

Dupeltook, which is far from doubletalk in the clarity of its engaging lines and solos, rounds out the set with some of each soloist’s best playing.