Billboard : 11/18/1957
Score of 82

Farlow‘s tremendous dexterity and vivid imagination make this one of the better jazz guitar packages on the market. The music is bright thruout the set, with some superb piano by Eddie Costa and a pleasing bass sound by Vinnie Burke. Trio works well in ensemble and in their solos, with You Stepped Out of a Dream a choice plum. Farlow’s horde of fans make this package a must.

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Cashbox : 11/23/1957

Farlow displays the technique that has placed him among the top jazz guitarists. The artist’s powerful style is put to use on his swinging original, Meteor, as well as Taking a Chance on Love, They Can’t Take That Away From Me, and four others. Farlow is assisted by jazz notable Eddie Costa on piano, plus bassist Vinnie Burke, who recently formed the much talked about “String Jazz Quartet.” Well-sounding jazz issue.

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Down Beat : 01/09/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars
Reviewing the American Recording Society mail-order version

The Swing Guitar of Tal Farlow is blinded with the happily apt piano of Eddie Costa and Vinnie Burke‘s bass. The result is a deeply invigorating, continually flowing and interflowing session, one of the best LPs of the year. Tal’s ideas wing into patterns of apparently unending logic and invention and his time is effortlessly true. Costa, who plays piano with spontaneous buoyant zest and functional, irresistible swing, also fits mellowly into the three-play. Burke, a master of blending with a full, round tone and an irrefragable beat, also solos with characteristic force and taste.

Bill Simon has contributed another long, detailed, excellent historical study of the evolution of jazz guitar. He omits, however, among the younger guitarists one of the most impressive modern Charlie Christian disciples – Jim Hall. This is a thoroughly delightful set, one you’ll be listening to for many years.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 12/08/1957

Farlow is really my favorite of all modern guitarists now active, and this is a fine album with some surprising piano work by Eddie Costa. Highly recommended.

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Liner Notes by Bill Simon

Ask any professional guitarist – in jazz, that is – to name his own favorite guitarists and it’s 10 to one he’ll name, in this order, Segovia, Charlie Christian and Tal Farlow… Segovia for his complete mastery of the instrument and his consummate musical artistry, the late Christian for his powerful jazz drive and for his original concept of the guitar’s role in jazz… and Farlow as the currently operating individual who has carried the instrument to its most advanced and satisfying stage in modern jazz.

Guitarists comprise a well-knit clique these days. As a group, they probably are more familiar with the background of their instrument than is any other group of musicians. Also, they are the most versatile. Some of our best jazz guitarists started out as hillbillies and as blues strummers. The modern guitarist can play anything from a Bach suite to plain old country “chording.” He can play flamenco, smart show tunes, can riff like a sax section in a jazz band, and can whisper intimate accompaniment to a torch singer.

It seems that the top men are constantly in touch with each other, tossing “gigs” to each other, exchanging ideas and the like. I’ve never seen it the same way among other types of instrumentalists. In fact, it was Mundell Lowe, another of the top guitarists and one of the most successful, who recommended Tal as his successor when he left the Red Norvo Trio. Most of the top-rank modern guitarists have played with Red, and his group always has been the showcase wherein their talents have been view by the larger jazz public.

Talmadge Holt Farlow was born June 7, 1921, in Greensboro, NC. He intended originally to become a commercial artist, but also was exposed to the guitar virtually from birth, since his father played that instrument. Tal picked up the fundamentals on his own, and to this day has never taken a lesson. His teacher, we might say, was Charlie Christian. Tal picked up some Goodman records in the early 40s and heard his idol for the first time. Immediately, he wrote to Sears Roebuck and purchased a $20 amplifier and started playing as nearly as he could to the style of his idol. In fact, says Tal, “I listened and listened until I could play his parts note for note. Then I came across some Count Basie sides and that’s when I started realizing that Christian was influenced by Lester Young. This was a real exciting discovery for me.”

But Tal at this point was making his living as a sign painter. When an Army Air Force training base was set up at Greensboro in 1943, he began to get calls to play for dances there, and he formed an association with Jimmy Lyons, an excellent jazz pianist who happened to be stationed there. Later, he was heard by another pianist, Dardanelle, who persuaded him to join her unit in Roanoke. The group was booked into the Copa Lounge in New York, and Tal went along. In the big town, he heard Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the other modern sounds.

Soon after Tal joined Norvo, Charlie Mingus came into the trio on bass, and Norvo’s group hit its all-time peak for taste, proficiency and modernity. Except for a six-month leave to play with Artie Shaw in 1954, Tal remained with Red, until leaving to form his own trio in the spring of ’56.

Farlow’s new trio, which is featured in this recording, opened at the Composer room in New York and drew unanimous rave notices from the critics. A brilliant new jazz pianist, Eddie Costa, and a young, unsung bass star, Vinnie Burke, rounded out the unit. Nat Hentoff, writing for Down Beat, called this “One of the most gratifying trios to play New York in the past three years.” He spoke of “the continually inventive interplay formed of the kind of mutual pleasure in and respect for each other’s musicianship that makes for a constant, spontaneous exchange of mid-chorus smiles. Farlow idea-wise is like a swinging waterfall with a rare resourcefulness of fresh conception.” Hentoff was intrigued by the way Tal would turn off the electricity and comp time without the amplification. On this recording, note also how he will at times deaden the string tone and beat the instrument to achieve an effect similar to a snare drum.

Eddie Costa, the pianist in Tal’s Trio, could be the most talked-of new jazz musician in the ’56-’57 season. He hails from Atlas, PA, where he was born in 1930. He learned to play both vibes and piano, and straight from high school, he took off for New York, where he joined Joe Venuti. Two years in the Army followed, then club engagements of various lengths with Farlow, Kai Winding, Don Elliott, and, of course, freelance recording dates on both of his instruments.

His piano style is distinctive and forceful. Down Beat insists that Costa “swings so hard that he piles in the feeling to this listener that he’s about to disappear into the ground or break all gravitational bonds and head for Mars. Eddie has the kind of larger-than-life size pulsation that makes every chorus by him a re-energizing experience. Since he also has a wig (brain) as well as bursting emotions, his solos are conceptually successful as well in a clean, spare modern mainstream way.”

Vinnie Burke, bassist, was born Vincent Bucci in Newark, NJ, in 1921. His first instrument was guitar, but while working in a war plant, he lost the use of one finger and turned to the bass.

Vinnie is a younger veteran who has played with such as Joe Mooney, Tony Scott, Cy Coleman, the Sauter-Finegar band and Marian McPartland. He is outstanding by virtue of his beautiful, full, live bass tone, wonderful technique and a great beat. I believe that he is at his best in this type of “chamber jazz.”