Cashbox : 10/01/1955

The Kenton Presents Jazz series offers a new sextet featuring the baritone sax of Serge Chaloff, supported by Boots Mussulli, alto sax; Herb Pomeroy, trumpet; Ray Santisi, piano; Everett Evans, bass; and Jimmy Zitano, drums. It is, as to be expected from the Kenton jazz series, modern jazz with an exciting swing. The sextet moves from theme to theme with a maximum of freedom indulging in individual ideas as soloists and performing in close cohesion in the ensembles. An interesting and engaging offering for the modern jazz fan.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 08/27/1955

Serge Chaloff, end man in the Herman Herd’s “Four Brothers” reed section of a few years ago, is featured on a new “Kenton Presents Jazz” 12-inch LP (Capitol T6510).

Ten tunes are included and they range from good, fair, to so-so.

With baritone saxophonist Chaloff on this date are alto man Boots Mussulli, trumpeter Herb Pomeroy, pianist Ray Santisi, bass man Everett Evans and drummer Jimmy Zitano.

One of the best things in the album is Bob the Robin. Jr., actually Sweet Georgia Brown, and Sergical, based on the chord progression to Tea for Two unless my ears deceive, also come off well.

What’s New? is also pleasant enough but Mar-Dros speeds and not much happens on the others. Chaloff has a long baritone solo on Body and Soul.

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Fort Lauderdale News
Lawson E. Parker : 10/30/1955

The Serge is back and Capitol Records has had the good taste to feature an outstanding long play, high fidelity album – Boston Blow Up by the Serge Chaloff Sextet – as his initial offering.

The 10 delightfully arranged numbers in this album in the “Kenton Presents Jazz” series are about as well played as any I’ve heard. And why not? This is the personnel: Chaloff, baritone sax; Herb Pomeroy, trumpet; Ray Santisi, piano; Everett Evans, bass, and Jimmy Zitano, drums.

Bob the Robin starts the fun in a Bach-like opening, with the Santisi touch, and moves off with Serge’s fine treatment of jazz. He plays his big sax as though it were six sizes smaller.

An illustration of how fine a small combo can sound when the arrangements are correctly written is shown in Yesterday’s Gardenias. Pomeroy wrote this one and he plays the relaxed lead as well as a tender, very fluid chorus.

Sergical is a mad, “cutting” type that swings into nice solo work by Chaloff and Pomeroy, and a wonderful offering by Mussulli. The latter is not only a talented alto player (he’s considered one of the finest jazzmen in the business), but he also blows a fine baritone sax.

Chaloff starts off the ballad Body and Soul like a fog horn, arrives at a light middle chorus, played with warm feeling, and ends with cadenzas that are played so softly that you can hear the pads on the horn slap.

Nine-Year Struggle

Serge has returned to jazz as he left – a fine, talented musician. Where did he go? To the hospital. He had intense personal problems that dropped him into obscurity. But after nine years of struggle with himself, he has returned, not to build himself anew but to pick up the many fans he made while he was in the great Woody Herman band. (One of the greatest things Serge did in that band was the sterling chorus on Four Brothers.)

Other numbers in this excellent Capitol recording are What’s New?, Mar-Dros, Jr., Kip, Diane’s Melody, and Unison.

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Hartford Courant
Maitland Zane : 12/04/1955

Serge Chaloff used to blow fine baritone sax with the great Woody Herman band of the late ’40s, but in recent years has been out of the scene, due to illness and one thing and another.

He’s back now with a sextet of Beantown cronies including the great alto man, Boots Mussulli, and a trumpet player, Herb Pomeroy, an ex-Harvard boy whose career seems assured. Most of the arrangements are by Boots, and they are very advanced harmonically, but positive and even warm, in happy contrast to the current vogue for the dismal, the languid, the coy, or the half-hearted.

Warm may be the wrong word to hang on music so complex, but that’s what it is. Two originals I particularly liked were Mar-Dos and Kip. Five stars.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 08/21/1955

Surprisingly good modern jazz by baritonist Chaloff and a group featuring Herb Pomeroy, a fine trumpeter. It’s well recorded, swings like mad and despite Serge’s agonized tone, ends up good jazz.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 12/31/1955

Serge Chaloff, the warmest and most sensitive – and so most erratic – of the modern baritone saxophonists, has been out of the music business for the past five or so years. This record proves that he has lost none of his power, and perhaps has even enlarged his grasp on his instrument. He is well set off by good solos and brisk ensemble work of Herb Pomeroy, B. Mussulli, Ray Santisi, E. Evans, and Jimmy Zitano. Seven originals and three standards. A fine record.

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Wichita Eagle
Unknown : 09/18/1955

A long-play album titled Boston Blow-Up released recently by Capitol is a fitting addition to the already celebrated “Kenton Presents” series. The three surging, storming horns of Serge Chaloff, Boots Mussulli, and Herb Pomeroy bring a new supply of bouncy energy to the booming field of progressive jazz. This is not for the music fan who thinks jazz ended with Whiteman, but for every lover of contemporary music who is willing to admit the world is changing and is willing to change a bit with it. Chaloff’s surging baritone sax work sets a pattern that combines brashness with introspective moodiness. The 10 selections range from Bob the Robin, a sunny musical salute to a disc jockey who helped Chaloff in some dark hours, to Sergical, which would have been written by Edgar Allen Poe on a foggy night filled with ghosts. But the best showcase for Chaloff’s big sax is his very imaginative treatment of the ancient Body and Soul.

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Down Beat : 10/05/1955
Jack Tracy : 5 stars

Serge, for years one of music’s more chaotic personalities, has made an about face of late and is again flying right. It is evident in his playing, which has lost the frantic, where-am-I-going-next aspect it has contained for the last few years, and has become a thing of real beauty.

No one ever has questioned his proficiency on the baritone sax – just the way he chose to employ it. Here, with backing by fellow Bostonians Boots Mussulli, alto; Herb Pomeroy, trumpet; Ray Santisi, piano; Everett Evans, bass, and Jimmy Zitano, drums, he offers the best display of his talents ever to be put on wax. It swings, it has heart, it has maturity – it is the long-awaited coalescence of a great talent.

And you get the feeling the rest of the men on the date felt it, too. They play like a unit that has worked together for years, as splendid solo spots come from Boots and Pomeroy, and the rhythm section moves.

Save for the two striking, moody ballads (Body and Soul and What’s New), there is no particular need in singling out special efforts. Serge has a message to offer to them all. It would behoove you to intercept it.

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Liner Notes by Will MacFarland

Three storming horns – surging baritone, booting alto, and a pummeling trumpet – plus three rhythm go to make up a new sextet from Boston. In a spirited concert of fresh music ten tunes scored with the Forward Look are played with a zip that looks back to the happy days of early jazz. Serge Chaloff of the hawk-like profile and booming big-horn gained fame as end man to the Four Brothers in the Woody Herman Herd that featured that fabulous foursome. Boots Mussulli, probably the most popular altoist that Kenton ever had, is a Kenton Presents star on his own. Having gained his first attention in a later Kenton band, Herb Pomeroy offers trumpetwork that is assured and properly earthy, and between them he and Boots chart nine of these ten selections. The rhythm team is composed of the pick of the Cape’s current crop.

“Great conception and execution, good taste, clean tone and Bird-like style…” Leonard Feather, now of DownBeat, has said of Serge Chaloff. Thirty-one and Boston-born, Chaloff has lo9ng been recognized as one of the four or five chief soloists of his horn. How long is indicated by the fact that Feather’s praise was written over six years ago. But for several years before that and up until recently Serge was a victim of personal troubles that gradually dropped him into obscurity. Now after nine years of what he himself calls “living hell” he has come out of the hospital a whole man again, determined to blow his way back to the top; this is his musical announcement of that intention. He is writing a book about his experience which he hopes will help others with similar difficulties, but in the meantime as far as the musical evidence of his recovery is concerned, this album stands as sound testimony. The follows comments deal with the tunes in their playing order; they are accompanied by some comments by the leader himself.

Bob The Robin – Sunny and guileless as a Sunday breakfast, the opener moves out boldly, punctuated with little exclamation points of piano from Ray Santisi, a fellow who figures on the Boots item in this series. The song salutes a DJ called “The Robin” on Boston’s WVDA; Bob Martin is a close friend who saw Serge through his tribulations.

Serge: “I suppose an early interest in music was pretty much inevitable when you consider my father played piano with the Boston Symphony and my mother taught at the New England Conservatory. I took lessons on piano and clarinet but I taught myself baritone.

“At first I listened to Harry Carney and Jack Washington, the baritone men with Duke and Count. That’s how I formed my first style. But it was an alto man, the great Charlie Parker, whose work made me change my style.

“In 1945 the new jazz was still pretty strange to everybody; I worked on developing my approach to it all through Georgie Auld‘s and Jimmy Dorsey‘s bands. What evolved is the style I became identified with with I went on Woody’s band in 1947.”

Yesterday’s Gardenias – Pomeroy qualifies as an expert flower arranger with this punch big-band-sounding opening, and the staccato no-monkey-business handling of the figure. Serge is at first coy, then contemplative, and everybody behaves himself well right through to sober-faced piano. There is a nice use of dynamics in the final chorus and this has the best ensemble feel of the sides.

Sergical – Edgar Allen Poe could have had a hand in this almost frighteningly programmatic opus where, weird and mournful, the piano walks as is his wont above the others and a bustle of white-masked preparation is sense. But the trumpet hints at release, and apprehension ends abruptly as soloing begins. In a keen-edged but confident mood, Serge emerges a new man, alternatively punching and caressing the line. A delightful entrance heralds Boots’ best solo of the date. This was the first chart n the new book of music.

What’s New? – Serge cries the question in chanticleer tones, rises in soft and breathy flight throughout the statement. At one point he exhibits what is probably the widest vibrato on record; at another he weaves one long tumbling phrase that startles with its beauty. Quiet hymn-like humming from the horns and lightly sketched piano sustain him until with a light cadenza Serge settles easily to earth. Ballads are his forte.

Mar-Dros – After his talky little figure Boots leads off. A swirling, churning interlude leads into Herb in a gay and easy frame of mind. A brash, playful Serge indulges in a whimsical salute to some contemporaries and to Rampart Street; Santisi picks it up in the same mood. Eight bars go to Jimmy Zitano, whose drums swing lightly throughout; finally, there is a happy, barrel-house ending. This was named for a friend who drives Boots to rehearsals.

Jr. – Here’s a brisk and twinkling little song in which the trumpet seems about to go into “The Sailor’s Hornpipe.” Serge continues to leap, in his engaging way, from a whisper to a full shout without warming. Everett Evans’ bass is best heard and felt on this one. Jr. is a nod from the group to a “warm little man who’s been a guiding force in the development of jazz.”

Body And Soul – Serge opens with a great gruff honk; then after some dramatic gestures, wanders through the old changes, sometimes delicate and breathy, sometimes loud and brassy. At the last, in the Pagliacci-like cadenza, the studio is so quiet one can hear the thumping of the pads on the big horn. This is far and away Serge’s best; it would seem genuinely emotionally inspired; certainly it has emotional appeal. Friend Martin says, “Serge’s entire tortuous trip comes brutally alive in these wails of woe, and his come-back is reflected in the thankful, pensive ending.”

Serge: “When I came back on the music scene, just recently, I wanted a book of fresh sounding things. I got just what I wanted from Herb and Boots. I think their writing shows us as a happy group trying to create new musical entertainment by swinging all the time.

“Jazz has got to swing; if it doesn’t, it loses its feeling of expression. This group and these sides are about the happiest things I’ve been involved with. You can’t imagine what a thrill it is to be playing again with wonderful musicians, and know that everything is swinging in a healthy groove.”

Kip – Boots writes another ambitious tune in which the horns gather to shuffle in an elfish dance, with Santisi playing tag in the foothills in his high and funny way. Kip provides bed-rock for some biting choruses.

Diane’s Melody – A tiny strip in this expanse of music, this little track should nonetheless garner its full share of attention. Calm yet anxious, this modern lonely vignette by Worcester composer Jaki Byard is a modest harmonic adventure.

Unison – This clippity, argumentative little tune seems to be trying to announce something; then suddenly, triumphantly, it does. Zitano snaps off the time with vigor. Here is the best swinging feel of the set. There is an agitated lecture from Serge, some shouted asides of ensemble writing, and everybody solos with a certain spirit and facility. When the gavel raps on this final discussion, the vote is unanimous: a successful venture, an energetic program of jazz.

Chaloff has shown rare strength in conquering his intense personal problems and now stands free to conquer new fields with his horn. This second battle should prove far easier. Loyal fans from the past offer a solid nucleus for a new following. In these fast-moving times, jazz listeners are sharply divided over styles and schools, but these new samples of the surging Chaloff baritone should show that Serge still suits most everybody.