San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 10/14/1956

… A remastering of two sessions played in the early 50s, which together exemplify the turn-around which occurred in jazz about that time.

In the first of these sessions, September 16, 1950, Sims appears with John Lewis, Curly Russell and Don Lamond in the role of a younger Hawkins – a little more liquid, slightly more melodious, but doing nothing Hawkins had not done before.

However, by the time he recorded the second session, on August 14, 1951, his style – and, apparently, his whole concept of jazz – had completely changed. With Art Blakey working the drums behind him (and with Harry Biss on piano and Clyde Lombardi on bass) he gives one of the most marvelous exhibitions of musical inventiveness, inner warmth, impeccability of jazz phrasing, that it has been my pleasure to hear.

The real gas in the album, I must confess, is the way Art Blakey drives him on. For track after track, it seems, Blakey keeps feeding him, driving him on to greater and greater heights almost brutally, and Sims keeps taking it and building on it and just when you think he’s made it, Blakey comes in after him again and Zoot picks up the challenge and builds it higher until you are sure no tenorman has ever ever equaled what the Zoot has put out. But no wild blowing; none of the tastelessness which has marked, say, Flip Phillips on the later JATP albums.

It is remarkable, in some ways, that these tracks have not been recognized as among the real jazz classics: something which marked the apex of a movement as the Herman records of 1945-46 marked the peak of that period. Yet it is understandable, too; by the time they appeared the jazz trend had already begun to change: understatement, playing behind the beat was the rule and the alto had emerged as the dominant reed. So Sim’s greatest work passed almost unnoticed.

(Incidentally, this record has given me for the first time an insight into the reason why many jazz musicians consider Art Blakey the greatest of all drummers; credit for the record belongs at least as much to him as to Sims.)

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Jack Haley “Zoot” Sims fits into the category of “underrated,” certainly not among musicians where his true worth is fully appreciated but among critics and especially the general jazz public. I think that this is going to be remedied now that he is shown off to such good advantage in the Gerry Mulligan group, but there is really no reason why recognition befitting his talents has not come before.

There are few musicians who have a combination of melodic richness, fabulous time and inner warmth as Zoot does. He has the talent to say something simply but make it mean so much by the way he phrases it and relates it to the mainstream of the beat. The warmth is something that floods out of the horn as an inseparable part of anything he plays.