Billboard : 07/20/1959

Fine four-track package offers some time solo and group work on the parts of the principals. Star Eyes is an especially rewarding band. Style is basically mainstream so that the set can get buys from many areas. Personnel includes F. Strozier, alto; G. Coleman, tenor; L. Smith and B. Little, trumpets; G. Joyner, bass; C. Crosby, drums; Calvin Newborn, guitar and P. Newborn on piano. Other tracks are Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Blue ‘n Boogie and After Hours. Good potential.

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Cashbox : 08/01/1959

The Young Men are eight jazz musicians who originated in Memphis; among them Phineas Newborn (piano), Booker Little (trumpet), George Coleman (tenor) and Frank Strozier (alto). Four pieces makeup the album, all of which are intended to display the performer’s soulful “down home” blues feeling. The tunes are Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, Blue ‘n Boogie, After Hours, and Star Eyes. Fine hard-swinging set.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : November, 1959

Musical Interest : Relaxed, modern jazz
Performance : Growing new talent
Recording : Very good
Stereo Directionality : OK
Stereo Depth : First-rate

Tom Wilson of the United Artists’ jazz a%r staff had the sensible idea of re-assembling several young jazzmen who gained their experience in Memphis and who are now in various cities with various bands. The results are generally satisfying. Of the hornmen, trumpeters Louis Smith and Booker Little and tenor saxophonist George Coleman have been heard before on record, and while none has achieved real stature yet, all are learning. Saxophonist Strozier, new to this reviewer, also has impressive potential. He plays with a strong, clear tone, a fine beat and a conception that is flexible and all his own. The rhythm section is efficient. Also it’s heartening to hear pianist Phineas Newborn continuing to lose the taste for extraneous filigree work that marred his earlier recordings.

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Kansas City Call (Kansas City, MO)
Bob Greene – 08/14/1959

This is subtitled Young Men from Memphis and employs a complete Tennessee cast: Booker Little, Louis Smith, George Coleman, Charles Crosby, Charles Crosby, Frank Strozier, Calvin Newborn and, the best known of the group, Phineas Newborn Jr.

Although the set is composed of four songs – Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Blue ‘N Boogie, After Hours and Star Eyes – the culmination of everything that has ever been written is displayed on After Hours, the Avery Parrish classic.

On After Hours the old Memphis (W.C. Handy) meets the new (the progressive tinkling of Phineas) and simply sends you. Man, this is living.

A very good buy.

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New Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, PA)
Harold L. Keith : 08/01/1959

Pittsburgh, Detroit and Philadelphia have laid claim to the title of giving birth to bumper crops of modern jazzmen. Well, they can all move over and make room for Memphis, which has been well-represented In the United Artists’ album Down Home Reunion.

Alto Frank Strozier, tenor George Coleman, trumpeters Louis Smith and Booker Little, pianist Phineas Newborn, George Joyner’s bass, Chuck Crosby’s drums and Cal Newborn’s guitar are heard on such things as After Hours and Things Ain’t What They Used to Be. This is interesting jazz with Smith and Coleman reaching peaks of ecstasy on their instruments. Incidentally, another fine UA cover is contributed here by Walt Williams, 1956 John Hay Whitney Fellowship winner.

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San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, CA)
Jim Angelo : 08/15/1959

Here is a superb example of reminiscent, free-wheeling jazz of the late 30’s-early 40’s era. Four nostalgic numbers are programmed, the extended tracks affording tremendous opportunities for solo improvisation. Particularly outstanding is the fluent alto of Strozier, especially on Things Ain’t What They Used to Be and Star Eyes. Other highlights include the notable trumpet work on Blue ‘N Boogie and Newborn’s blues-oriented keyboarding on After Hours. A topnotch session in the mainstream – early modern genre.

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/08/1959

A group of young jazzmen from Memphis including Phineas Newborn and Booker Little but notable really for the presence of a fine, wildly swinging young alto man, Frank Strozier, who sounds like John Coltrane’s alto ego (sic) and who may be one of the important new voices on that instrument.

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San Francisco Examiner (Pittsburgh, PA)
C.H. Garrigues : 08/23/1959

The “young men” are Booker Little and George Coleman of the Max Roach group, Louis Smith, Phineas Newborn and his brother Calvin, the guitarist; George Joyner, bass, Charles Crosby, drums, and a brilliant new altoist named Frank Strozier.

The record is one of the real good ones, beginning with Things Ain’t What They Used To Be in a modern version which is fair, running through Gillespie’s Blue ‘n Boogie, which is good, and then into an After Hours and a Star Eyes which are more than memorable. After Hours is the first time I have heard Phineas live up to his reputation while Strozier’s Star Eyes is comparable to the performances of Bird which we associate with this one.

The whole deal is funky, down home, yet modern as Candlestick Park.

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Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Carl Kraft : 09/06/1959

The “young men” include the much-publicized Phineas Newborn on piano and brother Calvin, guitar, George Coleman, tenor, and Booker Little, trumpet (both of whom jobbed with Max Roach last season), and new (to these ears) altoist Frank Strozier (who carbon-copies Bird engagingly on Star Eyes), and they blow mild, superficial versions of Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, After Hours, and the fine Blue ‘n Boogie (Remember the Miles – Lucky Thompson – J.J. set?). Listenable enough, but hardly to be recommended to the serious collector.

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Down Beat : 11/12/1959
Unknown : 3 stars

This is another four-track delineation of jazz in a specific locality. Here Tom Wilson moves in and depicts an up-to-date Memphis. Memphis is a city that has been identified as a town from which the late W.C. Handy went on to fame with his blues compositions, and somehow in jazz history it seemed to end at that point.

There must be still a growing jazz tradition in the Bluff City on the Mississippi, for from whence did John Coltrane, Sam Jones, and Booker Ervin emerge, besides the men on this date.

One of the highlights of this reunion is Phineas Newborn’s recreation of Avery Parrish’s great blues number, After Hours. The modern piano techniques of Newborn enhance the effectiveness of this eerie jazz-based blues.

Another important feature of this record is the introduction, more or less, to jazz records of the solo work of Strozier, a June, 1958, graduate of the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Strozier is a writer and big-band arranger as well as a fine jazz soloist on alto. His solo playing on Star Eyes is worthy of plenty of attention. Strozier showcases virtuosity and originality in his playing of this number that was probed thoroughly in times gone by in solos by Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt.

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Liner Notes by Tom Wilson

… about Down Home feeling

The Young Men from Memphis are steeped in the hard-driving, ultra-rhythmic Rhythm & Blues musical environment from which such excellent jazz artists as John Coltrane, Sam Jones, and Booker Ervin have emerged. They have that down home feeling concatenated from the quick, vigorous jump of hand clapping gospel music; the hushed soulfulness of the spiritual; the ululating cry of the mornings first song in the fields; the rough, happy blues of the Saturday night fish fry. This down home feeling resultant from the immersion of man in the racial and economic complexity of life on the Southern scene, covertly or overtly pervades almost all current jazz expression despite the erosion of folk music traditions by the increasing urbanization of the South, and the advent of the classically disciplined jazzman. In the best of jazz performances, this down home feeling, the unashamed use of direct appeal to human emotions, is alloyed with the advances of technique and theory wrought in the Bop Era, leavening the new forms, keeping alive the strain of folk meaning in modern jazz. With an honest and ungimmicked projection of warm, emotional improvisation, this album ripples with true down home feeling.

… a note on the region and the men

It is easy to become convinced that New York is the center of jazz development in America. However, the influx of outstanding talent from outlying areas such as Detroit (Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell, Pepper Adams, Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan) and Florida (Julian and Nat Adderley, Blue Mitchell, Sam Jones) during the past four years alone is indicative of the fact that most of the real jazz progress is taking place in the hinterlands of the country. The city of Memphis on the Mississippi, home of all the musicians on this recording, is famed as the locale of W.C. Handy immortal Memphis Blues and Beale Street Blues; and, is also important as the birthplace of Lil Hardin Armstrong, Buster Bailey, Jimmie Crawford, Sonny Criss, and Johnny Dunn, originator of the “wa-wa” trumpet style. Memphis represents an area of the South that has been the locus of some of America’s richest musical currents, including the spiritual, gospel songs, hill and delta folk music, traditional jazz and blues, and now modern jazz music.

The unusually fine program of public school music education offered in Memphis has been particularly conducive to the development of young jazzmen with strong technical backgrounds and a catholicity of musical tastes. Frank Strozier, Booker Little, Louis Smith, and George Coleman attended Manassas High while George Joyner, the Newborn brothers, and Charles Crosby studied at Booker T. Washington High across town, so that this really is a down home reunion in getting all these home town fellows together again.

Louis Smith and Phineas Newborn, the senior members of the reunion group, went to Tennessee State University and played in the world acclaimed jazz orchestra there, led by Professor Chick Chavis. Famous trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, also a Tennessean, played in the band around the same time. Smith continued his formal study of music to earn an M.A. in Music Education from the University of Michigan. After college and the army, Phineas joined his brother Calvin, a graduate of Lemoyne College (Memphis) for a nationwide tour in the R&B band led by their father Phineas Newborn, Sr., George Coleman, Charles Crosby, and George Joyner gigged around Memphis playing dances and socials and occasional jazz gigs at Mitchell’s Hotel and the Domino Lounge before leaving town as members of B. B. King’s R&B aggregation. The youngest member of the group, twenty year old Booker Little, left Memphis in 1957 to join Frank Strozier at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Altoist Strozier graduated in June of 1958, at which time Booker left the Conservatory on a leave of absence to join the Max Roach Quintet for a tour which included a widely hailed appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Over the past year, Frank Strozier, a writer and big band arranger as well as brilliant soloist, has worked around Chicago with his own groups and with bassist Bill Lee’s orchestra. From a common social and educational background, these young men from Memphis have chosen divergent paths to develop and enrich themselves as performing artists.

… some background on songs

A certain sentimentality may be detected in the programming of four famous tunes from past jazz epochs. The lead track, Things Ain’t What They Used To Be from the Ellington Era, is soulfully handled by the octet in a big-voiced head arrangement with solos by all the hornmen plus excursions by piano and bass. Frank Strozier’s relaxed solo, built mainly on very forceful use of economical fingerings, is worthy of comparison with the lush passages created by Johnny Hodges with the Ellington orchestra.

The second tune, Blue ‘N Boogie, has had two memorable renderings in the jazz past, one by a wonderful Dizzy Gillespie septet near the dawn of Bop recording, and the other a Neo-Bop classic combining the talents of Miles Davis, Lucky Thompson, and J.J. Johnson. This third version is particularly exciting due to the brisk, ebullient stride of the rhythm section spiced with a compelling drum-bass figure. The piano “strolls” for the opening chorus of Strozier’s taut, fleet improvisation, followed by Booker Little, George Coleman, and Louis Smith in vibrant, highly individualistic solo utterances to complete the album.

After Hours, the venerable Avery Parrish composition, is perhaps the “downest” of all down home tunes. It is still played in the neon punctuated gloom of many a bar, grill and chili house throughout the South, and is the source music of that peculiar high school dance phenomenon, the “grind” or “dirty” boogie.” After Hours is a sort of jazz national anthem which has meaning for all segments of the jazz public from the traditionalists to the “way outs” with its overtones of basic folk blues, big city hipness, and strong technical display of pianistic skill. Phineas, playing alone with guitar, bass, and drums, has made a highly charged, magically controlled version of After Hours, worthy of enshrinement with that marvelous original recording featuring pianist Parrish with the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra.

The last selection, Star Eyes, comes from early in the Bop Age and was made a jazz fixture through searing, soaring renditions by Charlie Parker. For this selection the group is reduced to quartet size where Frank Strozier’s alto recreates the exalted beauty and seductive drive associated with this great melody. The fine “comping” of Phineas Newborn deserves special notice, especially during the latter half of the alto solo. Also worthy of note in these days of the percussion tour de force is the complete absence of drum solos from all tracks. As on all four tunes, the efforts of each member of the rhythm section are perfectly integrated with Charles Crosby laying down a cooking hi-hat beat and Joyner bouncing joyfully.

… a little Down Home sociology

After two numbers had been recorded, our cast followed a time honored Down Home tradition. They stuffed themselves with a huge lunch, as the real core of any Down Home Reunion is a gala feast. The reunion, held at the church, is one of the real social events of the urban as well as rural South. An idyllic summer Sunday is chosen and those who have “grown up” in the church and moved out into the world to seek their fortunes return on this day to renew old friendships, worship together again, and visit the burial ground in back of the church where relatives are enshrined. Lincolns, Cadillacs, and Chryslers with out of state plates surround the little church, shining evidences of success. After a long and perspiring welcoming sermon, the returned natives retire to the churchyard where good sisters in long white dresses have prepared long white tables filled with choice down home goodies. Silence falls over all and reigns for a long, golden hour of feasting. At dusk, sated and happy, roots replenished in native environment, members of the reunion move once again into the bigger world.

Our Down Home Reunion repeats this great custom, bringing together old friends from their new homes in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York to relive old times, exchange new ideas, demonstrate prowess gained, and to reinvigorate themselves from a common musical heritage.