Billboard : 04/29/1957
Score of 74

Follow-up to recent Prestige release in the same vein, All Night Long (7073). Title tune, a medium-tempoed blues, takes up one full side, is equally suitable for dancing or listening, and spots fine blowing. The rest is standard boppish fare along hardcored “Bird” lines; Parker influence is equally apparent in solo and ensemble portions. Youngsters Byrd, Flanagan and Burrell carry off solo honors with a nod to a strong “cooking” rhythm section.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 05/25/1957

The young modern trumpet Donald Byrd – all lightness, ease, and flowering figuration – continues to delight in a program All Day Long with some of his vigorous New York colleagues, the pulsing guitarist Kenny Burrell; Frank Foster, tenor sax; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; and Arthur Taylor, drums. This is limber, pithy small-band jazz, the direct descendant, in the modern idiom, of the jazz of sainted Chicago memory.

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Down Beat : 06/13/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

Another convivial Prestige blowing session with minimal writing and maximum improvisational terrain. The first side is an 18-minute, medium-slow blues with everyone but Taylor soloing at length to cohesive emotional purpose. I would suggest paying particular attention to Watkins‘ solo, for Doug has been largely unheralded as a soloist since his coming to New York but has been quietly adding solo skills to his already considerable reputation as a valuable rhythm section man. The rest are in context with Foster particularly earthy.

Frank continues to blowing with an open fire throughout the second side. His power, often hitting with explosive impact, his improvising tone, and his always strong beat, are now being more and more utilized to communicate the ideas of a maturing voice. Frank is not especially a horizon-stretcher, but he has a consolidated mainstream-modern approach that is leanly functional in its conception and head-shaking in its corollary bloodstream appeal. There is firstrate work by all the rest.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Once again, as it has happened so often of late, the Detroiters populated Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio on a Friday afternoon. With Art Taylor the lone New York native among them, the Motor City emigres were occupied with the process of recording.

I had taken a Detroit girl, who was visiting New York, to the session. When I introduced her to Frank Foster amid some comments about how this was Detroit day and that Cynthia should feel at home etc., Frank replied, “I’m not really not a Detroiter.”

“Well you were born in Cincinnati but,” I interposed.

Frank answered. “No, I mean that I’m a New Yorker; I’ve spent more time here than in Detroit. I make my home here.”

Doug Watkins who has spent more time in Detroit added, “Yeah, I’m tired of this Motor City stuff whenever one of us musicians from Detroit is mentioned. I mean I’ve been here for a few years now I’m a New Yorker.”

None of this was said to disparage Detroit in any way but just Doug pointing up the fact that he, and the others, feel that they are so much a part of the New York scene that to continually connect them with Detroit is erroneous.

That they, the Detroiters (oops – I said it again) have become a vital part of the New York scene is evidenced by regarding the groups they have inhabited in the past several years.

Donald Byrd came here to study at the Manhattan School of Music and has since been heard with the best of the East’s small combos. Initially he was with George Wallington in 1955, then Art Blakey and Max Roach in 1956, finally free-lancing around New York, doing numerous record dates and filling the trumpet slot with Horace Silver‘s new combo when Art Farmer wasn’t available.

Doug Watkins was with Art Blakey’s Messengers for most of 1955 after making his first New York appearance in 1954 with Horace Silver at Minton’s. During 1956 he helped comprise the Bud Powell trio along with Art Taylor at various times. Presently he is with Horace’s new quintet and has done yeoman service on a host of small group recording dates in the metropolitan area.

Frank Foster, who actually preceded the others to New York in 1953 as a member of Count Basie’s band, has been a stalwart of the Basie reed section since. His Detroit years, where he did much playing with Wardell Gray in a period which pre-dated the rise of the present group of exported talent, were from 1949 to 1951. After spending two years in the Army, he joined Basie.

Kenny Burrell didn’t arrive in New York until 1955. In 1956 he temporarily replaced drummer Chuck Thompson with his guitar in the Hamp Hawes trio but in the main, he free-lanced around New York and by the end of the year and the beginning of 1957, Kenny was recording more frequently. As a result, recognition was being accorded him as the bright new light on guitar.

One of the last to appear on the New York scene was Tommy Flanagan. Visitors at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1956 heard him briefly in his role as Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist. Since mid-’56 he has been an important member of the, then, newly formed Jay Jay Johnson quintet.

A word about the native New Yorker, Arthur S. Taylor Jr. who is usually known as simply A.T. but is sometimes called Brushmouth or Groucho due to the rather rug-like adornment he wears on his upper lip. A.T. grew up in Harlem and some of the kids in the neighborhood included Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean. As youths they played in a sort of local band together. In late 1956 A.T. branched out as a leader in his own right when he fronted Taylor’s Wailers for weekend engagements at The Pad in Greenwich Village.

All Day Long is a soulful, subdued blues; one of a different color and yet a follow up to All Night Long from the LP of the same name (Prestige LP 7073) which also featured Messrs. Byrd, Burrell, Watkins and Taylor. The length is of extended proportion as the title implies. It begins with a soft strumming of the theme by Kenny Burrell with Doug Watkins and Art Taylor behind him. Then the horns echo the theme with Tommy Flanagan filling in funkisms. The solos are self evident as no instrument has more than one representative.

Donald Byrd’s Slim Jim has a Barbados-like introduction and a close order question and answer theme between Donald and Frank Foster.

Say Listen, Donald’s other tune, derives its name from the attention calling phrase that he often verbally employs and is a medium tempoed, winding-themed, original with pretty chord changes

A fanfare introduces A.T., a “rhythm” riffer dedicated to drummer Taylor by Frank Foster. In addition to the regular soloists, A.T. works out on this one in solo and in exchanges with the horns.