Billboard : 09/29/1956
Score of 77

Altho sales are unlikely to be spectacular, this is one of the pleasant surprises of the month. Guaraldi is a young San Francisco pianist who has been getting rave notices with the Woody Herman band. Evidence here says he’s a tasteful, authoritative and facile modernist, and that he swings. Further, he has a sense of humor. Guitarist Eddie Duran and bassist Dean Reilly are worthy colleagues. Try their version of John Lewis‘ Django for a real delight.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 10/14/1956

Vince Guaraldi Trio is still another of this Bay Area firm’s commendable albums designed (among other things) to show the world that all West Coast jazz doesn’t originate in Smogville. Playing with the former Herman pianist (who now is with Cal Tjader‘s group) are guitarist Eddie Duran and bassist Dean Reilly; all are San Franciscans. Vince establishes his individual melodic and harmonic conception and proves also that he can be lyrical as well as groovy. Duran is in the same category and Reilly not far behind. Selections range from John Lewis‘s Django, through Billy Strayhorn‘s Chelsea Bridge to the uptempo It’s Delovely. This LP will rate with the best in its class.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 08/12/1956

Pianist Guaraldi plus guitarist Eddie Duran and bassist Dean Reilly in some fine, middle-of-the-road, small-group jazz. The best side is a lovely, warm and moving version of Three Coins in the Fountain, a pop tune of a couple of years back. Vince is a fine pianist and Duran a great guitarist – witness his solo side, Osso-Bucco.

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Washington Post
Paul Sampson : 10/07/1956

Eddie Duran, guitar, and Dean Reilly, bass, blend with Guaraldi‘s piano to form a well-meshed group. They do especially well on John Lewis‘ Django. Guaraldi has the rare gift of playing ballads in a flowing, unflowery style. Recommended.

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Down Beat : 10/17/1956
Nat Hentoff : 4 stars

In an era when too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a narrow range of moods and skills, San Franciscan Guaraldi (who has been with Woody Herman the last year) is an expanding pleasure to hear. A jazzman with deep roots in his language, Vince projects clearly an individual musical personality – direct, emotional, inventive, tied-to-no-school.

Vince, moreover, is a man of wide-ranging sensitivity. He and his equally large-sized guitarist, Eddie Duran, and able bassist, Dean Reilly, can make John Lewis‘ Django their own while remaining true to the blues-requiem-honesty of the piece. Vince can be naturally funky on his own Farfel; can be unabashedly romantic without making arpeggio confetti out of the song as in his solo monologue, Never; and can appreciate the potential for lyrical reflection from Chelsea Bridge, Rhythm and Lady are straightaway swinging.

Sweet is played with a pulsating tenderness and sustained taste. Duran’s Mexico-tinged Ossobucco is a relaxed gas (Vince lays out on this). The slowly upfolding Coins becomes a better tune than I’d remembered, and Delovely winds up the set well. Very good recorded sound. I hope a lot of pianists get to listen to this LP.

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Liner Notes by Ralph J. Gleason

Off and on during the fall and winter of 1955 the hungry i (all lower-case, it’s Bohemia!), a San Francisco night club offered its patrons modern jazz by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

The hungry i is one of those downstairs clubs where the customers are as entertaining as the acts and the management is more entertaining than both. However, in 1955 it had blossomed forth as one of the top attractions on the tourist circle in San Francisco and as the crowds lined up to enter the main room to catch Mort Sahl, Prof. Irwin Corey or whatever wild wit was currently holding forth, they were beguiled by the music of Vincent Anthony Guaraldi in an adjunct of the foyer called “The Other Room.”

Vince and his guitar-playing friend, Eddie Duran, grew up together in San Francisco and have worked all kinds of jobs over the years until now they have an instinctive mutual musical mind reading act. Dean Reilly, a comparative newcomer to the Bay Area, has in a few years established himself as one of the better, if not the best, modern bassist in the area.

At the hungry i, Guaraldi and company had no restrictions on what they played. Part of the time, they accompanied singer Faith Winthrop, but the rest of the time they were on their own and the hungry i gradually attracted a number of jazz fans who were there solely to hear Guaraldi and Duran make modern music. Early in 1956, Guaraldi left San Francisco to join Woody Herman as pianist with the Third Herd, taking over from Nat Pierce.

In the spring, while home on a vacation from the Herman band, Vince reassembled the Trio for this album. Already the recipient of considerable critical praise for his work with Herman, it seems likely that this album will further enhance his stature.

Vince is more than an interesting pianist. He is not ridden by an unconscionable demon to prove something; he just loves music and loves playing and swinging. This uncomplicated approach allows him to poke fun at himself, (“I’m just a reformed boogie woogie pianist”) which is refreshing, but most of all, it enables him to like, appreciate and want to play all sorts of numbers from John Lewis‘ reflective Django to the hit tune of a few seasons back, Three Coins in a Fountain. It enables him to play simple, emotionally pure piano, as on the ballads, and to get pixieish, funky and hard-swinging, as on the original and some of the standards.

For my personal taste, Vince’s work on Django, Chelsea Bridge and Three Coins in a Fountain is just about perfect. Here is an example of how he can retain the jazz mode in a popular tune that is essentially sweet and can easily run over into schmaltz.

Eddie Duran, who maintains his hobbies are girls and astronomy and is a licensed barber with an abiding interest in electronics and amateur radio operations, is now beginning to emerge as one of the best young guitar players in modern jazz. He has a wonderful sense of rhythm, fits in perfectly with the two other men on the album and when he solos, he does so with authority, taste and a classic sense of construction.

Dean Reilly provides throughout the album the proper rhythmic pulse beneath the work of the guitar and piano and his sound blends perfectly with the other two voices.

For the program, Vince selected a variety of material. Django is the lovely John Lewis composition that the Modern Jazz Quartet has made into contemporary classic of jazz. Fenwyck Farfel is Vince’s own puckish sense of humor at work naming a sprightly original tune. Never Never Land is a lovely ballad which is played as pretty as you please by Vince. Chelsea Bridge is one of Billy Strayhorn‘s compositions for Ellington which was a classic record by the Duke and is too seldom heard nowadays. Fascinatin’ Rhythm is the Gershwin standard done at a bright pace by Vince & Co.

On the second side, Frank Loesser‘s lovely The Lady’s in Love With You is followed by Sweet and Lovely. This is a pop tune from years back written by the bandleader Gus Arnheim, and it is played slowly and sweetly and lovely by Vince, Eddie and Dean. Ossobucco is a composition by Eddie Duran with an exotic Latin flavor. It is named after a little town in old Mexico wherein Eddie spent many happy vacation hours loaded with colorful impressions of the happy Indian natives who came to town bi-annually for their rain dances. Three Coins in a Fountain is a number right off the hit parade of recent years and It’s Delovely is one of Cole Porter‘s all-time top tunes.