Billboard : 08/11/1958
Two stars

Sonny Clark, one of our good young pianists, shows off his blues-based style on this new set, backed by A. Farmer on trumpet, J. McLean on alto, P. Chambers on bass and the J. Jones from Philadelphia on drums. The set moves and Farmer and McClean have good chances for solos. For hard bop fans.

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Cashbox : 08/16/1958

These are fine, effortless takes, where no one, it seems, was out to particularly dazzle his audience, but just provide relaxed jazz tours. Pianist Clark, and trumpeter Farmer lead the way on the four numbers, inventively sizing up the affable situation. Most showy cut Slippin’ At Bells. A very worthwhile issue for the jazz coterie.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 08/24/1958

This LP has a strong lineup of players: Art Farmer, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, Jackie McLean and Clark himself. The music is very good, hard swinging, modern jazz, which is well worth having. It wears well.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 10/12/1958

A cool, easy swinging version of East Coast jazz with some of the best jazzmen of the present scene playing near their best – including Art Farmer, Jackie McLean, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Highly recommended.

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Down Beat : 10/30/1958
Don Gold : 2.5 stars

The relentless production of jazz LPs creates many record sessions which could easily pass for rehearsals. This is one such session.

I won’t get involved in attempting to guess how much rehearsal time or how many takes this session consumed. It does seem to me, however, that more time and more discipline were needed.

The results are not comparable to the potential ability of those present. Clark plays inconsistently, not as well as he can play. He alternates between moments of enlightened lyricism and strings of devices. Farmer, a far more astute trumpeter than he indicates here, seems more concerned with repetition than variations. McLean, passionately striving for individuality, remains an alto man in search of identity.

Chambers is an able supporter throughout. Jones, rather inhibited or fatigued here, plays with tasteful authority without intruding.

Clark’s contributions, Struttin’ (a blues) and Minor, are excuses for blowing, with little inherent authoritative value. On Night, the initial unison theme is expediently dispensed with for a string of solos. The best track is Bells, a blues from Bird‘s book; it contains Clark’s best solo work, some furious McLean, adequate Farmer, and a brief, pointed arco passage from Chambers.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

“A primary quality in Sonny Clark‘s playing,” notes Art Farmer, who is an astute jazz critic avocationally, “is that there’s no strain in it. Some people sound like they’re trying to swing. Sonny just flows naturally along. Also central to his work is that he has a good, powerful feeling for the blues.”

Sonny’s capacity and present strength as a stimulating, functional jazz pianist has finally been clearly outlined in his recent series of Blue Note LPs, particularly his first three as a leader – Dial S For Sonny (BLP 1570), Sonny’s Crib (BLP 1576) and Sonny Clark Trio (BLP 1579). There have also been several forceful appearances as a sideman, among them with Curtis Fuller (BLP 1572), John Jenkins (BLP 1573), Johnny Griffin (BLP 1580) and Cliff Jordan (BLP 1582).

Sonny’s biographical dues have been detailed on both of his previous LPs as a leader. Briefly, he was born July 21, 1931, in Pittsburgh, and started on piano at four. In high school, he was piano soloist with the band and also played bass and vibes. He first gigged professionally around Pittsburgh while still in school. In 1951, he worked with Vido Muso and Oscar Pettiford and had his own trio in San Francisco. A Los Angeles period followed during which he played with a large number of jazz figures, among them Art Farmer, Wardell Gray, Anita O’Day, Stan Getz, Shelly Manne, etc. Starting in 1954, Sonny was with Buddy DeFranco for two and a half years. He then joined the Lighthouse All Stars in Hermosa Beach, near Los Angeles. He came to New York in April 1957, after working across the country with Dinah Washington.

His principal activity since being in New York has been his Blue Note sessions. He’s also worked with Sonny Rollins, Charlie Mingus, J.R. Monterose and headed his own trio with Art Taylor and Sam Jones at Birdland – a trio he hopes to reactivate soon and keep together. Sonny’s earliest influences on his instrument, starting when he was 11 or 12, were Pete Johnson, Art Tatum and Fats Waller. There followed Erroll Garner and then Bud Powell. He also admires Lennie Tristano (“his technical ability and conception”), George Shearing, Oscar Pettiford (I’m guessing should have been Oscar Peterson), and Thelonious Monk whom he began to absorb after Powell, Shearing and Peterson. Sonny likes to perform Monk’s tunes and admires Monk as a pianist also (“he has technical ability for what he wants to do”). Younger pianists who impress Sonny include Horace Silver, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Ray Bryant and Red Garland.

Sonny selected the men for this date – Farmer had been on his Dial S For Sonny album and Paul Chambers had participated in Sonny’s Crib. “I met Paul,” notes Sonny, “in Detroit in 1954. He was very young and nobody outside the city knew much about him, but I dug him right then. He’s very consistent and has superior conception, choice of notes and ability to construct lines. He plays with intelligence and he always keeps it interesting.” Of Paul’s colleague in the Miles Davis rhythm section, “Philly” Joe Jones, Sonny says: “I never heard him until he was with Miles and came out to the coast in 1956.”

“Joe,” Sonny continues, “has a different way of swinging. He plays all the drums. usually, when a drummer tires to do that, he gets in the way and doesn’t make much sense. But Joe’s different. He has every musical conception – and he listens to what you and the other players are doing. Very few drummers really listen. He gets involved in the group effort, and he winds up inspiring you by the different little things he does besides keeping time. Joe really makes it happen. He’s always inventing something. I can listen to him develop rhythmic pattern and it turns into a melodic pattern that I in turn can build on. And always, underneath everything, he’s genuinely swinging.”

Sonny met Art Farmer in California as early as 1952. “I was living in Pasadena, and Art used to come over with Wardell Gray. We’d session all the time. Art, although he was influenced a lot by Miles Davis, had a style of his own even then. In the years since, he’s matured a lot and has a more masculine style of playing. Now he’s more consistent too and his conception is very impressive.”

Sonny had heard one of Jackie McLean‘s first recordings – with Miles Davis around 1953 – and had liked his “fresh, different” sound from the beginning. “He was influenced by Bird certainly,” adds Sonny, “but he’s one of the very few who has his own style of playing modern alto.” To which appraisal Art Farmer contributes a perceptive analysis: “Most of the altoists took one primary aspect from Bird – there were so many to the man – and developed that one for their own purposes. With Jackie, he took that a real agonized tone – sometimes it’s like a squawk – that Bird would use at times. It’s like someone sticks a knife in you; you holler and scream and your voice changes in the pain. It’s a real hurt thing. So Jackie developed on that and paid little attention to the more delicate elements of Bird’s playing. Jackie has a feeling in his playing that you know immediately is him. He doesn’t just copy.”

The title tune, Cool Struttin’, was inspired by Sonny’s wife. “I sort of got the name for it from the way the melody goes. It’s a feeling of somebody struttin’. I mean the old conception of the word. I guess you could say the tune itself is a funky-modern version of an old step. It’s a 24-bar blues, twelve and then twelve.”

Blue Minor, another Clark original, is thus titled because it’s in minor and “blue” connotes the “relaxed, moody” feeling Sonny was trying to project. “Actually, I wrote this tune a few years back. I’ve played it often since then, but not until this date did I feel it would be played on records the way I wanted it. I’d been saving it for the right group of guys. It’s 16, 8, and 8.”

Sippin’ At Bells, a Charlie Parker tune, “was one of the first in my jazz record collection. I never had the opportunity to play with Bird. I did meet him once in Chicago in 1954 during my first trip there with Buddy DeFranco. Bird encouraged me to continue playing. I admire those early Bird tunes. This one for its melody as well as its changes. It’s a 12-bar blues with sort of advanced changes.”

“Deep Night I like for its changes, but until I heard Bud Powell play it in Birdland one night, I’d never heard it played except in a semi-pop way. When I heard Bud do it, I knew I’d have to play it too in my own way.”

Sonny feels this is about the best date he’s done yet. “The music was played the way I wanted it and I got the fellows I’d been wanting to record with for some time.”

The session as a whole seems to me – in the musical personalities of its participants – to embody Sonny’s definition of what “soul” in jazz is: “I take it to mean your growing up to the capacities of the instrument. Your soul is your conception and you begin to have it in your playing when the way you strike a note, the sound you get and your phrasing come out of you yourself and no one else. That’s what jazz is, after all, self-expression.”