Billboard : 08/18/1956
Score of 85

Here’s an interesting and swinging new disk that features Rogers in a variety of groupings. In only one is the entire nine-man “Giants” crew featured, but there is a lot of satisfying listening in the quintet and septet line-ups as well as the group featuring a four-man trumpet ensemble, backed with rhythm. Solid performers include the Candolis, Fagerquist, Kessel, Manne, Edison, Vinnegar, Peña and, of course, Rogers himself on trumpet and flugelhorn. A highly commercial jazz package with an imaginative cover worth plenty of display.

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Cashbox : 09/08/1956

Composer-Arranger-Trumpeter Shorty Rogers and an intermixing of four jazz groups display some skillful, cool, swinging on this Atlantic pressing. Seven of the ight numbers (ie Planetarium, Martians Come Back) were composed by Rogers and are expertly offered by the Rogers’ crews that include Barney Kessel (guitar), Shelly Manne (drums) and Lou Levy (piano). Exciting disk that should do very well in its field.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 10/06/1956

Martians Come Back is the title of a new Shorty Rogers LP that is one of his best yet (Atlantic 1232). This is a well-rehearsed, well recorded, everybody was in good form session. Astral Alley features a remarkable trumpet quintet (Shorty, Pete and Conte Candoli, Don Fagerquist and Harry Edison) and other highlights include a swinging Dickie’s Dream with lively solos by alto man Bud Shank and guitarist Barney Kessel, and Jimmy Giuffre’s tenor on Planetarium. There is also a noteless (sic) clarinet solo by Giuffre on Chant of the Cosmos.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 09/02/1956

The story is that Shorty Rogers and his Giants got to swinging so far out that they found themselves out of this world and encountered a bunch of Martians. Shorty wrote Martians Go Home, on an LP released a few months ago by Atlantic bought by a lot of people including, Shorty fears, some Martians.

Now Rogers has heart of gold behind his goatee and, fearing he has hurt the Martians’ feeling, he has donned a space suit and written Martians Come Back which Atlantic, in the interest of interplanetary relations, has released, with a picture of shorty, in space suit, on the cover. All of which adds up to a very pleasant set of album cover notes.

But, seriously, this is one of the most delightful records to be issued this year. So far as I know, Rogers is the only musician who can write or perform serious music humorously… that is, can keep it serious and still make it fun. This is mostly far out but it is still fun.

On the eight tracks, he alternates a quintet, a septet, a trumpet ensemble, and a set of nine (is that a nonette?). Among the sidemen are Harry Edison, Pete and Conte Condoli, Don Fagerquist, Jimmy Giuffre, Bud Shank, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne.

Listen particularly to Rogers’ fluegelhorn against Giuffre’s clarinet.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 09/15/1956

The Giants here are composed of four different groups, mostly small, that include J. Giuffre, Shelly Manne (all the way through), L. Levy, H. Edison, D. Fagerquist, the Candolis, B. Shank, and L. Vinnegar. The predominant attitude is light and Basieish and there are a lot of creative solos, especially by Giuffre (clarinet), Rogers himself, and Harry Edison. As delightful – and perhaps more so, because of its greater variety – as Rogers’ first Atlantic album. Seven originals and one standard. Highly recommended.

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Down Beat : 09/19/1956
Jack Tracy : 4.5 stars

By some process that undoubtedly involves either witchcraft or hypnosis, Nesuhi Ertegun is able to get out of Shorty record sessions that sustain a high level of musicianship, a constantly pulsing rhythmic drive, and thoughtful solos, in contrast to the too-often surface glibness that has marked so many of Rogers‘ efforts on wax.

Martians Come Back is the second of his Atlantic LPs (the first was the equally vigorous Martians Go Home), and the grouping is altered for variety’s sake. Tracks 1, 3, 5, and 7 spot Shorty on trumpet and/or flugelhorn; Jimmy Giuffre on clarinet, tenor, and baritone; Lou Levy, piano; Ralph Peña, bass, and Shelly Manne, drums. Remainder consist of larger unites in which can be heard such stalwarts as Harry Edison, Don Fagerquist, Conte and Pete Candoli, Bob Enevoldsen, etc.

The title band gives a solid clue of what is to come, as Levy’s spare, Basieish introduction leads into a typically simple, booting Rogers line played in thirds by muted Shorty and Giuffre’s clarinet. Jimmy solos pensively, Shorty cooks one, Levy dances, Peña walks, and it’s back to the theme.

Alley spots the four trumpets with rhythm. Each solos, with Edison’s closing muted contribution gracefully capping them all.

Sweets comes back on Dickie’s Dream and a moving Serenade; the small group moves on Papouche and Planetarium, and Giuffre provides a shining example of his phlegmatically woodsy clarinet style on Cosmos, in which he somehow manages to make music while blowing several bars of only air.

A most satisfying and recommended collection.

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Liner Notes by John S. Wilson

Jazz has recently been receiving long overdue acclaim as a fomenter of international good will. Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Stan Kenton and everyone else with both horn and fare have been busily spreading good will with a beat on some incredibly widespread gigs.

Not Shorty Rogers, though. Shorty is a notorious avoider of ruts, a pioneer who trudges down his own path. It may be his own private path when he sets out on it but it usually turns into a well traveled thoroughfare once he has shown the way. So even while less far-reaching minds were venturing into global jazz, Shorty had already burst through the sound barrier and was using jazz to spread ill will in outer space.

Never ask why Mr. Rogers does things. There are reasons, to be sure, but means, ends and motivations sometimes become hopelessly intertwined. In this particular case, there was some talk of swinging by Mr. Rogers and his Giants. They thereupon swung so propulsively that they soon found themselves out of this world. Shorty, a man who likes to concentrate undisturbed no matter where he is, somewhat meanly and meaningfully called the result Martians Go Home.

The performance was – and is – a splendid example of light, intimate, Basie-influenced jazz, a gem of cohesive, subtle and inventive small group playing (hear Atlantic 1212). But despite its obvious musical merits, the title disturbed many Martians. At first they were taken aback; then, after thinking it over, affronted. Thus, throbbing front and rare, the Martians closed their planet to jazz and went into a square sulk.

Among Shorty’s many attributes is his appreciation of the Big Picture. He was worried by the fact that he had created an incident which could give jazz a bad name on Mars but not half so worried as he was by the realization that the inevitable Rogers-followers might compound his faux pas. Two things obviously had to be done: the ruffled Martian feelings had to be soothed and a new jazz line in relation to Mars had to be set out.

This album is Shorty’s effort to achieve both goals. There is an innate spatial texture in these compositions, all of them by Shorty except for the Count Basie-Lester Young Dickie’s Dream which has an appropriate airiness of its own. There is even a feeling of friendliness and consideration in some of the titles. The cover is printed in the two colors most favored by Martians – squirming purple and gruesome green. And Shorty himself – as the cover shows – took an extreme personal step, endangering the virility of his goatee by encasing himself in a space helmet before blasting off on his flugelhorn.

In fact, about the only other thing a sensitive Martian could ask for would be some provocative music. And that, too, has been supplied by the ever resourceful Rogers.

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Shorty puts his Basie foot forward with the quintet on the invitational Martians Come Back. Appropriately, this has some of the same engaging merits as the number that caused all the trouble – an easy, swinging ensemble, Jimmy Giuffre‘s breathy, probing clarinet and Shorty playing a punching muted trumpet. One essential difference is contributed by Shelly Manne. He spun a half dollar on a tom-tom for a break on Go Home. This time he drops $100 bills on a high-hat cymbal in back of Ralph Peña‘s bass solo.

Astral Alley introduces the Rogers Trumpet Team – Harry Edison, Don Fagerquist, the brothers Candoli and the Maestro himself. The crisp opening ensemble provides a cover from which Shorty rides out on his solo. The next soloist is Conte Candoli, followed by Fagerquist and finally, Edison in one of his bright, muted bits. Pete Candoli was busy interpreting for some visiting Martians when he was supposed to take his solo.

The deliberately paced Lotus Bud, which once served as a vehicle for Bud Shank, is revised in this quintet version to feature Giuffre’s clarinet and Shorty’s warm, languid flugelhorn, along with a sensitive and apt piano interlude by Lou Levy.

The septet steps up with a happy, driving treatment of Dickie’s Dream, a memorable Lester Young showcase which dates back to 1939. Pete Cera gives the opening an Earl Hines touch and decorates the release of the first chorus with Basieisms but later on he comes back to take a solo in his own striking fashion. The first trumpet solo is a jabbing, stabbing sample of Harry Edison’s open horn shorthand. After Barney Kessel‘s fluid guitar solo, Shorty takes a flugelhorn solo which provides a fascinating contrast to Edison’s work two choruses earlier. If this doesn’t swing those Martians into line, nothing will.

Papouche is a commentary on a relatively unheralded tendency of Shorty’s – his habit of eating. It honors the owner of a Hollywood restaurant, Robaire’s. Whether it is as essential for restaurant owners to be immortalized in music as it is for musicians to eat is an arguable point but the quintet gives Papouche an agitated uptempo boost into immortality with Giuffre playing baritone under the influence of his clarinet and Shorty scurrying and scampering around on his flugelhorn with amazing agility.

Serenade In Sweets brings back the trumpet group, with Shorty getting in a flugelhorn solo before switching to trumpet to join the other four in an ensemble statement. The soloist after the ensemble is Conte Candoli, followed by Edison and Fagerquist. Pete Candoli was busy being interpreted by a Martian when he was supposed to take his solo.

A suitably swinging atmosphere to this soothing of Martian souls is provided by the quintet’s Planetarium. It also gives Giuffre his only chance in the set to come out swinging hard on tenor saxophone. Like the rest of the numbers, it demonstrates Shorty’s ability to zero in carefully on even the smallest of targets, to land neatly on his musical bullseye when there is no Martian for error.

One of the great creative moments in jazz may have occurred in the playing of Chant Of The Cosmos. It happened when Giuffre, huffing away on his clarinet, decided to take a noteless break – nothing but air artfully articulated through the clarinet and phrased with a sensitive beat. This may be the first air break in jazz. One Giuffre has figured out how to expand the air scale a bit, we may expect a major work in this manner which will presumably be called Breath, Where Is They Swing?

Chant Of The Cosmos also serves to revive the instrumentation of Shorty’s old, original nine-man Giants (not to be confused with another nine-man group called the Giants). Bob Enevoldsen‘s valve trombone, Bud Shank’s alto sax and John Grass’ French horn add to the ensemble coloration while the solos, besides Giuffre’s unique effort, fall to Shorty, Grey and Peña. Shelly Manne contributes a masterful delayed-take, drop-that-other-shoe drum break near the end.