Billboard : 04/20/1957
Score of 78

This package has long been overdue, and as bassist Ray Brown‘s first “solo” effort, it’s a gasser. An example of the great diversity of which the bass is capable. Backed by a swinging band helmed by Marty Paich, who also penned the arrangements, the contrast achieved between Brown’s solo work and that of some of the sidemen is admirable. Alone Together is a superb demo track.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 06/02/1957

An all-star group got together out on the Coast to make a big thing of the debut of bassist Ray Brown as the top jazzbo for an album. It’s Verve’s Bass Hit with Marty Paich directing 12 good men. To name a handful: Herb Geller, Jimmy Giuffre, Sweets Edison, Pete Candoli and Herbie Harper. Listen for Brown on My Foolish Heart and you’ll have a fine reason for adding this one to your shelf.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 05/19/1957

Bassist Ray Brown, who for the past six years has submerged his individuality in the three-man entity called the Oscar Peterson Trio, demonstrates his undeniably great talent on this album. It is the first to showcase Ray and it has been long overdue. He plays with a swinging, 12-piece band which includes Harry Edison, Jimmy Giuffre, Herb Geller, Herb Ellis, and Mel Lewis. The noteworthy arrangements by ex-Oaklander Marty Paich not only give Ray a chance to display his versatility but also provide plenty of room for other soloists. The sound is fine. Highly recommended.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 04/14/1957

Brown‘s first album as a leader shows him off to perfection as a soloist and as a rhythm section kingpin. The 12-piece band with which he plays includes Harry Edison and Jimmy Giuffre and the album is a dandy. Highly recommended.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 06/15/1957

Brown is one of the best bassists currently playing – hear the Jacquet set above. Here he is heard in eight scores for twelve pieces (for some reason) with one solo track. His opening and closing choruses on Will You Still Be Mine are particularly good.

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Down Beat : 05/30/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 4 stars

“First of all, I wanted to make an album that would be worth hearing, musically, that’s the most important thing, overall. After that, I wanted to show that the bass can produce interesting music on its own and for that I would take some solos – but I didn’t want the bass hogging the scene, either.” These are Brown‘s statements in the notes.

This album certainly fulfills the intentions of the artist. It is worth hearing musically, from start to finish, being a neat, tidy, ever-swinging series of arrangements for a medium-large band (12 men) in a rather modern Basie style.

The men on the date are all up to that unusual standard where they can read down the arrangements and produce something worth hearing even if they have not played together enough to develop a group feeling.

The arrangements, all of which were written by Marty Paich, who also conducted the band but did not play piano, are artfully contrive to present the bass in the best possible fashion without relinquishing any inherent swing. And the bass does not hog the scene at all; instead it retires gracefully into the body of the arrangement and lets some fine solos by such as Edison, Giuffre and Geller come forth.

On one side only, the unaccompanied Solo, does the bass take over completely, and this number is going to be an object of study by bass players for quite a while. Such a task as an unaccompanied solo is a tremendous challenge. I think that, at least in the sense that this solo should communicate to the nonmusician listener, Ray has fallen somewhat short of his aim here although musicians all will be intrigued by it.

The great driving swing he brings to an ensemble section, his ability to kick along a soloist and his great tone, all of which are shown to a high degree in the other numbers, somehow seem to be more impressive than the sheer dexterity with which he plays on Solo.

Brown has such a mastery of his instrument, and the basic honesty with which he plays it is so strong that there is never a moment in the bass sides where he does not do exactly what is needed, where his solos fail to reach the listener emotionally, and where his magnificent beat is not felt.

It may be that the bass itself cannot be made into an instrument for unaccompanied solos (although I have heard Charlie Mingus and a cellist, Janos Starker, do incredibly exciting things unaccompanied.) Or it may be that what Ray has attempted here is too complicated to get across to ears unaccustomed to hearing the bass alone. At any rate, this is the only side not completely satisfying, the rest are wonderful, and Ray himself never sounded better.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

For this album, the first major one in which he receives top billing, bassist Ray Brown had some concrete aims which he expressed along the following lines: “First of all, I wanted to make an album that would be worth hearing, musically. That’s the most important thing, overall. After that, I wanted to show that the bass can produce interesting music on its own and for that I would take some solos – but I didn’t want the bass hogging the scene, either.”

This, in short, is an album to reflect the Ray Brown bass and musical personality; these are shown to sharp advantage throughout and there is also at hand a big, swinging band led by Marty Paich, who provided all the arrangements as well. Actually, this is the first time that Ray Brown has found himself in company with a big band since 1946 and his stint with the Dizzy Gillespie aggregation and for that reason Brown admits he was just a mite apprehensive before the session began. Nonetheless Brown also will tell you that playing with a big band after a decade with a smaller unit also offers its own special brand of excitement. The band itself is an all-star group including, to name a few, such stalwarts as trumpeters Harry “Sweets” Edison, Pete Candoli and Conrad Gozzo; Jimmy Giuffre on tenor saxophone and Herb Ellis – along with Brown an integral part of the Oscar Peterson Trio – on guitar. As for the tunes, all of them were selected by Brown himself with an eye toward variety of mood and pace along with melodic content. The titles of three of these tunes call for further amplification: Little Toe, a Brown original, is the longtime nickname of Ray Brown’s wife, better known as Cecilia: Blues for Sylvia, on which Brown and Paich collaborated, is named for the former’s sister-in-law, who lives in Detroit, and finally, Blues for Lorraine, another Brown-Paich collaboration, refers to Marty Paich’s four-year-old daughter of the same name. Concerning some of the other tunes, Alone Together, a Schwartz–Dietz hit from the 1932 musical “Flying Colors,” contains something of an experiment since on this one Brown plays some four-note chords in the introduction, a most difficult achievement on the bass. The saxophone solo here, incidentally, is Jimmy Giuffre’s and the muted trumpet solo belongs to Harry Edison. Another departure from the ordinary turns up in Brown’s own Solo for Unaccompanied Bass. Here Brown decided to forego the use of a bow, a more common procedure when a bassist plays at length without accompaniment. There was no multi-taping here, either. In musical terms Brown explains his Solo as follows: “It was kind of an experiment. In the first chorus I state the melody. In the second I tried to play band figures in front and then answer them myself, while the third was a ‘shout’ chorus. There’s also a rarity in the selection of All of You in a jazz album since this Cole Porter tune from “Silk Stockings” (1954) is seldom heard other than as a vocal. To a lesser degree, especially in recent years, this holds true for Matt Dennis‘ quizzical Will You Still Be Mine.

Raymond Mathews Brown, a native of Pittsburgh, was born Nov. 13, 1926. “We always had a piano around the house,” Brown recalls, “and my sister took lessons and so did I, but I always yearned for a trombone. They didn’t have any trombones at school – Hill Junior High and Schenley High in Pittsburgh – but they did have an aluminum bass and that’s what I started on.” In time Brown became a professional, headed for New York and after playing with Dizzy Gillespie and fronting his own unit he became a regular on Norman Granz’ “Jazz at the Philharmonic” tours and a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio. A winner of the Metronome poll, the Down Beat Critics Poll and the latter publication’s Readers’ Poll for four consecutive years, Brown says his major influence was Jimmy Blanton, the Duke Ellington bassist who, until his death in 1942, brought the instrument to a new plane of authority in jazz. “I liked the sound that Jimmy got,” Brown explains. “His choice of notes, his taste, his imagination and the nice, big, deep sound have yet to be duplicated by anyone.” If anyone has a right to take over Jimmy Blanton’s mantle it is, however, the same Ray Brown.