Billboard : 01/12/1957
Score of 80

Since winning the 1956 Down Beat critics’ poll as best new trumpet star, Thad Jones has come to throw more and more weight around on the popular level. This reflected itself in the commercial success of the recent “Detroit-New York Junction” LP. As in that set, the Quintet has Jones and tenor man Billy Mitchell on horns; the rhythm section, however, consists of Max Roach, Percy Heath and Barry Harris. This is the greatest Jones album yet. Once the word has spread, the album ought to go like a house a-fire.

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Down Beat : 02/06/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars

A modern jazz trumpeter capable of a more satisfyingly brassful and ringing tone than most of his contemporaries. Thad also has an individuality, maturity and continuity of conception that mark him as one of the most important contributors on his horn. Largely wasted as a soloist in the Basie brass section, Thad is best heard in this quality of small-band context.

He plays with incisive drive on the middle and up-tempos, always controlling his fire into meaningful form; and on numbers like April and especially If I Love Again, he plays with a lucid warmth, sensitiveness, and a feeling for ballad lines and their possibilities for extension that are as rare among younger modern hornmen as is Thad’s outspoken tone.

The writing is minimal, this being a blowing session among experienced jazzmen with the heart and skill for collective freedom. Rhythm section is firstrate with Max integrating all. Barry Harris solos with attractive fluidity, but could dig in more emotionally. Percy is impressively ordered in his solo appearances. Billy Mitchell, tenor with the Gillespie band, may not be a major stylist, but he plays hot, unaffected, intelligent horn that compliments Thad’s more imaginative forays well. Good, towering cover photo by Francis Wolff.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

“Magnificent” is an apparently exorbitant adjective to apply to any performer, especially one who has arrived only recently at the inner esthetic circle of his chosen art. Yet in the case of Thad Jones the dictionary offers ample justification for its use. Magnificent stems from the words magnus, great, and facere, to do or make; and you don’t have to be a Latin, or even a semanticist, to know that Thad Jones has been doing some great things in recent months.

Generally speaking there are three stages of recognition for a musician: first the fellow-musicians start the bandwagon rolling, then the critics, and finally the fans. Thad passed the first barrier in May 1954, when a job with Count Basie landed him in the big time, and passed the second when in the summer of 1956 the Down Beat critics’ poll awarded him the palm as the year’s new star on trumpet. With the release and enthusiastic acceptance of such records as Detroit-New York Junction on Blue Note BLP 1513, he has successfully stormed the third bastion.

As on this last-named record, Thad is again teamed here with Billy Mitchell’s tenor saxophone to give his combo a powerful two-man front line. Mitchell, who led the band in which Thad was a sideman at the Bluebird in Detroit a few years back, has now completed two tours, one in the middle east and one in Latin America, as part of Dizzy Gillespie’s big State Department-sponsored band.

The rhythm section has changed since the last LP. Barry Harris is a young pianist from Detroit who recently replaced the late Richie Powell in Max Roach‘s group. Percy Heath, no stranger to Blue Note customers, means as much to the bass in modern jazz as Max Roach to the drums, which means that any further elaboration would be redundant.

Thad was clearly in excellent spirits and in wonderful condition when this session was recorded. Though it is a painfully materialistic thought, it must be admitted that the greatest hornman alive will not operate at his optimum if his lip is chapped, if he just arrived on the bus from Ephrata, Pa. after a one-night stand, or if some member of the accompanying unit is bugging him. The fact that Thad was happy when he cut these sides shines through as clearly and brightly as the bell of his horn.

April In Paris reminds me of a remark I made in the notes for BLP 1513, as follows: “For those whose picture of Thad is conceived in the memory of that everlasting Pop Goes The Weasel quote on April in Paris, his First Blue Note LP may come as an ear-opener.” Well, Thad has now made me swallow my words, by making a new version of the Vernon Duke standard, Weasel quote and all, and doing so much with it that the Basie treatment is soon forgotten.

Ingenious use is made of a low G on the piano that serves not only as a dominant note in the introduction (literally, it turns out, though at first hearing you can’t be sure whether the piece will turn out to be in G, C, B Flat or what) but is used in the course of the routine, along with Max’s smooth brush rhythm, as a bridge between solos. Billy Mitchell has the release of the first chorus, but the performance is substantially Thad’s, unfettered by any background figures, orchestral interweavings or any of the factors that tend to run interference for him in a more elaborate setting. This is not meant as any criticism of the Basie band, to which the adjective “magnificent” can be applied with equal vigor; it is just that there is in any top-ranking large jazz orchestra too much solo talent, and too much writing, for everything and everyone to get the kind of chance for personal expression that Thad deserves. I won’t go into intricate details about his three choruses on April In Paris here beyond pointing out that the qualities he has shown in earlier works – tonal zest, variety of phrasing, continuity and ideation – are enhanced by a superlative recording job that makes his presence immediate.

Billie-Doo is a wry, sneaky blues theme in which Thad, Billy and Barry Harris take solos in that order. Percy Heath follows, with Harris’ crisp chording offering substantial assistance. Thad returns, with the tenor rifting contrapuntally against him; at the end of this 12-bar stretch Max’s break soars into a closing dozen that ends with a powerful smear.

If l Love Again is a ballad written almost 25 years ago by one J.P. Murray; however, in this incarnation it represents neither balladry nor, in effect, J.P. Murray. The melody is played fast, rephrased, with varying rhythms from Max to offer an overwhelming sense of light and shade; then Barry Harris takes over for three choruses. His lines are graceful single-note contours for the most part, with the ching-chinga-ching of Max’s cymbal work underlining insistently. Billy Mitchell follows with a robust, extrovert solo; then comes Mr. Jones. You can almost hear him think on this one. It is like watching an abstract painter who senses exactly where to place which splashes of color, how to shade and gradate, and which areas of the canvas to leave uncluttered. Max takes over for a couple of choruses before the melody returns, and loath as I am to admit it, I must say that if anyone can convince me that a drum solo belongs on a record, it is Max.

If Someone Had Told Me, a Peter DeRose composition that appeared in the popular field some four years ago, shows what a man of much distinction can do to a song of very little. The first chorus is played ad lib in both senses of the term – that is, the time is not constant and Thad improvises around the melody – after which he edges his way into further ad libbing with the addition of a slow, steady beat from the rhythm section.

Thedia is a placidly happy unison theme, named for Thad’s little daughter. Billy Mitchell has three impressive choruses here in which savage torrents of notes are interspersed with more loosely swinging passages, all executed with a plenitude of tonal virility and a sense of confident mastery of the horn. A couple affine choruses from Barry Harris are followed by some Percy Heath bass solo work that has easily recognizable melodic value. Try to imagine this solo played on a trumpet, or any upper-register horn, and you will realize what people like Percy accomplish when they take a chorus. Thad has a long, brilliant solo and trades a lengthy series of fours with Max before the theme returns.

I am confident that a hearing of these performances will convince you that the adjective applied to Thad Jones for the name of this album was the most fitting one that could be used in the circumstances. I might even close by adding a further definition of the word: magnificent – characterized by sensuous splendor or sumptuous adornment; also, characterized by grandeur or majestic beauty.

You said it, Mr. Webster.