Billboard : 11/26/1955
Score of 80

The first Roy-Diz set set, provocative as it was, struck many as more of a “cutting contest” than a collaboration. While the competitive element is not absent in this second set, here this acts as a mutual stimulant. This is particularly true in the medley of ballads which they style in a relaxed, swing era dress. Gillespie lets loose in Limehouse Blues and Blue Moon with the kind of virtuosic fireworks that for almost 10 years has flipped the modern wing. Eldridge rides his tail all the way, however, and gives a spectacular display himself. Names plus quality of performance spell excellent sales on this one.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 02/25/1956

A rough and tumble exhibition of how to build a brassworks, by Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, in company with O. Peterson, H. Ellis, R. Brown, and L. Bellson. The album suffers markedly from a lack of restraint and from overly relaxed frameworks, but Eldridge and Gillespie (who is still the daddy of modern trumpet players) are great jazzmen, and as a result, even their mistakes are interesting. Top moments for both men occur in their four solo ballads. All in all, eight standards.

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Down Beat : 12/14/1955
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

Roy and Diz is a brisk sequel to the first volume in this series. Again, the powerful rhythm section is composed of Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Louie Bellson. Except for the ballad medley, the set is largely involved with stimulating exchanges between Roy and Diz. For the most part, the result is exciting but on Limehouse and Blue Moon, part of the otherwise stirring proceedings is marred as the pace turns frantic and occasional high register pyrotechnics take the place of music. The ballad medley is thoroughly succesful, with Diz and Roy having two each apiece and Oscar featured in Don’t You Know. The set is generally recommended.

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Liner Notes by Unknown

In a sense, this could be called an encore album, for the first Roy-Diz recording session proved such a huge success that a second one was inevitable. This could have been predicted, of course. Give two of the foremost trumpet artists in jazz an opportunity to compare notes, with a brilliant rhythm section for an anchor, and the result has got to draw sparks.

As befits any two stars on the same instrument, there’s an undeniable feeling of competition between Roy Eldridge and DIzzy Gillespie. Still, this is in now way a “cutting contest,” as the old jazz phrase has it. Any rivalry that exists between Roy and Diz is one based entirely on close friendship and mutual respect, with each spurring the other one – all the better to create jazz of a lasting quality.

It is fitting, too, that Roy and Diz be paired on record. Virtually all jazz scholars agree that GIllespie’s style is derived in large measure from Eldridge. Certainly Roy was Dizzy’s original idol. John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was a kid trumpeter, a country boy out of Cheraw, SC, and Laurinburg Institute, likewise in South Carolina, when he moved to Philadelphia and first heard the Teddy Hill band on the air. The horn of Roy Eldridge was featured in Hill’s unit and the impression on young Gillespie was strong and immediate.

Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge, born in Pittsburgh in 1911 – six years Dizzy’s senior – picked up where Louis Armstrong left off, filling the gap between traditional and contemporary trumpet. His was a transitional step and a vital one. “I love,” Roy once said, “to hear a not crackling.” So it is with Roy Eldridge – master of a crackling style, a full tone, direct, vigorous, driving, muscular and fiercely eloquent, in Roy’s hands, the trumpet becomes truly a brass instrument – played brassy. Moreover, as Barry Ulanov put it, “Without Roy, Dizzy would have been impossible.”

By 1939, Dizzy had resolved to break away from the overpowering Eldridge influence and was playing, first with Cab Calloway, then with Benny Carter, later with Billy Eckstine’s underrated band and then he branched out with his own groups. Meanwhile, as Roy before him, Dizzy was beginning to influence a generation of trumpet men. Now, as Dizzy’s spectacular and technically forbidding style developed, it is based on a sharper, more piercing tone than Roy’s, generally higher in register, complex, aglow with inventive harmonic changes, fresh and exciting.

Topflight jazz, even on the same instrument, can be played in many ways, however, and this long-playing record proves the point.

In addition to a medium tempo version of Sometimes I’m Happy, the A side of the album comprises a ballad medley in the following order: Gillespie, I’m Through With Love; Eldridge, Can’t We Be Friends?; Oscar Peterson, Don’t You Know; Gillespie, I Don’t Know Why, and Eldridge, If I Had You. The B side consists of Roy and Diz exploring Limehouse Blues and Blue Moon. Superb backing is provided by Ray Brown, bass; Louis Bellson, drums; Herb Ellis, guitar; and Peterson, Piano.