Billboard : 12/03/1955
Score of 75

Here’s one that should kick up some excitement along critics’ row, and eventually garner good sales therefrom. Fruscella is a brand new trumpeter with an intimate, modern appeal. He has a happy lilting quality, intricate ideas, but a strong swinging sense, too. The writing here, including the originals, was done by Phil Sunkel, another comparative newcomer, highly regarded in the inner jazz circles. It’s certainly worth exposing to modern jazz clientele.

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Hartford Courant – Hartford, CT
Maitland Zane – 02/12/1956

Five years or so ago, the hottest tamale on the scene was one Maynard Ferguson, who blew screamer trumpet for Stan Kenton. If memory serves, Maynard even won the Down Beat poll one year, having hyped too many voters into thinking that because he could play any number of freak notes, he was a great trumpeter.

Of late, the pendulum has swung in the other direction, toward the very bottom register of the instrument. Such a horn is played by Tony Fruscella on the Atlantic 12-inch LP 1220. The arrangements are by Phil Sunkel, and they are uniformly outstanding.

Tony’s tone is sibilant, husky and sweet. He is not the obvious virtuoso that Dizzy Gillespie is, or is that man-of-many-notes, Clifford Brown. In fact, Tony is rather chary with his notes, keeping the 16th and 32nds to a minimum.

Both he and Chet Baker are lyricists, but Tony approaches a tune very differently. A healthy aura surrounds his music, something that is often hard to say for Master Baker.

Many of Chet’s records strike me as all-but-beatless, old-maidish and even precious, while Tony is sincere, uncontrived and mature.

Tony’s mood is matched by Allen Eager, a tenor sax man who made quite a reputation for himself back in the middle Forties when bop musicians were looked on by most as goateed escapees from the loony bin.

Allen plays much like Lester Young, but he does considerably more than ape Pres’ style. Allen has warmth and he swings. A particularly good track is Metropolitan Blues. Four stars.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 02/11/1956

The best things in the LP are the arrangements and originals by Phil Sunkel, a couple of which have really durable thematic meat on them, and the curious, sometimes quite beautiful trumpet playing of Fruscella, who is twenty-nine. Although of the Baker–Davis school of brass obliquity, he has a touching quality that is completely out of place in this age of crackling, glassy trumpet playing. Also present. A. Eager, D. Bank, B. Triglia, J. Bradley, B. Anthony, and C. Welsch.

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Wichita Falls Times
Bob Herdien : 07/29/1956

Atlantic’s 1220, Tony Fruscella brings Allen Eager into the spotlight once more. It’s Fruscella‘s first recording, but one that promises to make the young trumpeter more familiar to jazz fans.

He’s no hot-rod kid, but he can move all over his horn, with the rich, full whisper of his middle and especially of his lower register that sets him apart immediately. The sound is sensuous, and the jazz relaxing and absorbing.

Eager, one of the top tenor men of the late ’40s, dropped out of sight some years ago, but is back better than ever. He’s tops on Metropolitan Blues and Old Hat.

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Down Beat : 01/11/1956
Jack Tracy : 3 stars

Most of the rating here comes because of the Phil Sunkel compositions (all but Serenade) assayed by Fruscella‘s group, which includes Allen Eager on tenor. Sunkel is an extremely talented writer whose Metropolitan Blues, Raintree, and Voice might well be examined by other units as possible material.

But once the musicians get away from what is written down, there is a lack of conviction and spirit in the blowing that leads me to wonder again how so many companies can afford to record so many groups that are at best of average quality. Is there such a vast market for recorded jazz that anyone who has worked with, say, Gerry Mulligan or Woody Herman can cut an LP that will pay its way?

There are some valuable moments here. Fruscella has a thin, breathy tone and hesitancy in attack, but does posses a lyric sense that is at times very fetching. Eager has been heard to far better advantage than this, however, and the rhythm section doesn’t exactly spur the men on to great heights.

Listen to this, then picture what a really good jazz group might have done with these Sunkel pieces, and you’ll probably get what I mean.

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Liner Notes by Bill Simon

Actually, we might call this a double debut, and a doubly significant one for Jazz. It’s the first recording of Tony Fruscella to hit the market, and the first to give full scope and credit to Phil Sunkel, a distinctive modern writer.

Let us state frankly that it’s a program not without flaws, but one of poignant interest nevertheless, and one that deserves to be widely heard. It introduces into the modern jazz framework a truly unique personality; an individual too elusive to catch on for long with any of the established “schools”, and probably too personal and too introspective in his expression to command a “school” of his own.

That would be Tony Fruscella, a fascinating young trumpet player, and a carefree, Saroyanesque character who someday could inspire one of those jazz novels. Tony subsists without a telephone, and as nearly as can be determined, without an address. The kind of a guy Tony is also is the music that dances out of his horn which, to complete the romantic picture, would have to be a battered hock-shop special carried from joint to joint in a paper sack.

Reading into Tony’s music, I’d guess that he takes nothing very seriously except the way he expresses himself. This he does with his trumpet honestly, sensitively and quite emotionally. But this is no hot rod kid, no sullen malcontent. Tony lives apart from his times; a natural man who steers clear of tension and confinement. It isn’t easy to imagine him playing in an Army band (which he did), or in a big dance band. A reputedly similar spirit – that of the late Bix Beiderbecke – managed to express himself to a reasonable degree in a couple of big bands, but Tony’s trumpet is less brilliant, less propulsive. Tony is no Bix, and for that matter, no Miles Davis. Which is not to imply that he won’t develop into a modern-day giant. His own approach is something quite new to jazz trumpet, though indebted heavily to what has gone before. Remember when Bunny Berigan first attracted attention on the old CBS Swing session? That too was a different sound – that socksure [sic?] attack, swooping line, and the rich tone in the low and middle registers. Then there was Dizzy Gillespie with his icy brilliance; and Miles, who turned the abstract elements of bop into a lyrical, lilting statement.

Now we have Tony Fruscella. Apparently he can move all over his horn, but it’s the rich, full whisper of his middle and especially of his low register that sets him apart immediately. The sound is sensuous and the feeling is happy with only an occasional tinge of melancholy. This jazz is relaxing and absorbing. Lie down and enjoy it and you’re not likely to fall asleep, which is a nice way for jazz to be.

Tony was born at St. Dominick’s Orphanage, Orangeburg, N.J. on February 4, 1927. He grew up there for 14 years on a strict diet of church music. But at 14 he heard his first jazz and was deeply impressed. He left the orphanage and started studying music seriously with Jerome Cnudde. He was exposed to serious music and developed a special fondness for Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart – a taste with which few longhairs will quarrel. Then at 18 he joined the Army and was assigned to the Second Division Band. Following his release he played with the groups of Lester Young, then Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz, which is something like starting at the top these days. Also it would indicate that Tony is accepted as a “thinking” musician. His personal favorites, incidentally, are Charlie Parker and such opposite trumpet stylists as modernist Miles Davis and swinger Joe Thomas. Don Joseph is another, and he has special admiration for the trumpet playing as well as for the writing of Phil Sunkel.

Which brings us to the other talent involved in this enterprise. Phil Sunkel in the last few years has become recognized by his fellow musicians as one of the better “new” trumpet players. He too is known as a “thinking” musician. But all along he has been harboring the ambition to make his name ultimately as a composer and arranger. He supports himself by playing, mostly with big dance bands, and it is with this program, the first devoted to his scoring and direction, that he hopes to establish himself as a writer.

Phil was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1925 and started playing professionally at 16. Shortly thereafter he was inducted and assigned to an Army band overseas. It was during his service hitch that he started writing. In ’46 he joined the Jimmy Jones band out of Cinci and enrolled in the Cincinnati Conservatory, majoring in trumpet and composition. He graduated in ’50 and migrated, like almost everyone else, to New York. Here he latched on with Claude Thornhill and later Charlie Barnet. He writes jazz that swings (would it be jazz if it didn’t?). It’s honest unpretentious music that permits individual freedom to the soloists, but stimulates them and buttresses them with a well-laid foundation of rhythmic and harmonic substance. Phil tells us that his first idols were Bix and Louis, and of the current trumpeter crop he prefers Don Joseph and, of course, Tony Fruscella. He feels that outstanding contributions to jazz are being made by Thelonious Monk, John Lewis and Al Cohn.

The rhythm section on all selections here is a young one consisting of three Bills: Triglia, piano; Anthony, bass; and (Junior) Bradley, drums. In most numbers, Allen Eager is on tenor sax, and on several the unit is augmented by Chauncey Welsch. trombone, and Danny Bank, baritone sax.

Anthony, like Tony and Phil, has been associated with Mulligan and Getz. Triglia has worked around New York and New Jersey with several jazz bands and recently was featured in a recording under the direction of Hank D’Amico. His style, sometimes inspired by John Lewis’, fits in anywhere.

Junior Bradley is the son of Will Bradley, the well-known trombonist and one-time orchestra leader. Bradley is still in his teens and was blasted into the big time only last year at the Metropole with Tony Scott‘s trio. He has been keeping fast musical company since.

Allen Eager has a strange history. In the middle ’40s he developed into one of the bright young lights on then-thriving 52nd street. The street died and very little was heard of Allen for several years. Now he’s back, and determined to stay. He always played a facile and fertile horn. He’s modern and he swings and he preaches on his tenor. More than anyone else perhaps he combines the idioms of Lester Young and Charlie Parker.

Trombonist Welsch is a busy man around the radio and TV studios these days, although he likes to blow jazz when the opportunity presents itself. He’s a boyhood friend of Tony’s.

Of the numbers in this program, seven are Sunkel originals; May, Metropolitan Blues, Raintree County, Salt, His Master’s Voice, Old Hat, and Let’s Play the Blues.

In the opener, I’ll Be Seeing You, Tony makes no concession to the nostalgic Sammy Fain melody. He swings immediately into his own free conception – lilting, delicate, fluid and extremely lyrical. His two and a half choruses here are a high point in the session. May is also a minor key swinger, and there’s an almost Hackett-like quality to Tony’s first half-chorus; Allen’s tenor and Chauncey’s trombone are heard next, and piano. Tony’s work in the last chorus, plus a Latin montuno flavor, warms up the ending.

Metropolitan Blues – Phil has superimposed a warm melody line on the traditional blues. The quality of the opening recalls I’m Comin’ Virginia. Today’s chorus is set to stop time and his blues is a hands-in-the-pocket, swaggering, happy-go-lucky sort. Allen’s tenor preaching in a down-home “funky” mood and Triglia follows in the same vein. It’s a revealing side by Tony – a jazzman with study roots. In Raintree County it’s Allen’s tenor that stands out; that and Phil’s felicitous writing.

Side Two opens with a dissonant dash of Salt. The base of operations is the blues, medium tempo. Tenor and trombone come first, then Tony, who displays a firm resolve to steer clear of clichés, and comes close to tripping himself in the process. But he makes it to the finish line standing up. His Master’s Voice, a delicate, airy original by Phil, has an English Renaissance flavor, paying tribute perhaps to the Modern Jazz Quartet, who especially favor this sort of influence. The opening theme is imitated at descending intervals in turn by trumpet and tenor in this especially absorbing side.

Old Hat is a distinctive line composed of two 16-bar phrases, featuring solos by Allen, Tony and Billy Triglia – in that order. In Blue Serenade – that flavorsome standard – the tune doesn’t assert itself until the ending. Tony essays a solo break and swings right into his first improvised chorus – another of those probing, lazy, love-making things. The tenor echoes the mood effectively and the piano rhapsodizes somewhat on his half-chorus. Tony’s handling of the melody on the last eight bars is most musical.

A swingin’ blues, Let’s Play the Blues, brings down the curtain on this rewarding session. Tony and Allen pour fine new, modern wine into the traditional bottle, which actually applies to everything that has gone before on this disk.