1953, April - USA, NYC: Metronome:
Tony Scott at Minton's by Barry Ulanov

It's been a long time since I've heard anything so fresh and graceful and alive as the new
TONY SCOTT QUARTET. It serves no particular cause; it just falls somewhere among the precincts of swing, bop, and cool jazz in style and form. Most of all, it attends to choice mixings of clarinet, piano, bass and drums, with capable men administering the first, second and fourth instruments and one of the best bass players around taking care of the third.

If only because Milt Hinton is active in Tony Scott's band, you must hear it. he's as persuasive a bassist here as he was in the Cab Calloway band, for more than a decade after 1936, with more room now in which to work and much less cluttered up in a quartet than in a big band. I said ' as persuasive' actually, Milt is more convincing than before. Suddenly, he seems to have to have taken wing - solo after solo, line against line in solo or in the chamber ensemble. He's always been fun to watch, but never as infectious as now, standing, weaving, bobbing; bowing low over his wonderful 18th century instrument; grinning, laughing over the sheer pleasure to play well. Not since Blanton has one heard such a tone; cavernous, lovely, of impeccable precision: in a word, Milt Hinton is one of the great professional.

Professional is the word for the musicianship of the Scott quartet.
All night long, it swings away just as if it were blowing for nothing. After a while, your ears begin to assimilate among the streams of solos and the concerted openings and closings, a plan of attack and a clarity of execution that show that they're blowing for something. There's order here, handsome arrangements of standard tunes, and variations upon variations that add up to original compositions, all the more handsome and original because the scoring agreed upon never is more than skeletal and the time left for improvisation is therefore plentiful. Relaxation, then is what is called for and relaxation is what results.

Take Tony's playing, for example: this old reliable among New York clarinetists has never been more reliable and never, never half so relaxed; the notes are fewer, the tone sweeter and softer, the beat more pronounced. In this group, you know once more, after much too long, that there is a major place for the clarinet in jazz.

Dick Katz, Tony's pianist, is a supple arranger, capable of such a bright little piece of canonic writing as subterfugue upon which his associates and he work out, and also well fitted for background and foreground playing of skill. Dick is an urbane musician, smooth and polished. Philadelphia Joe Jones, Tony's drummer, is almost the opposite of urbanity, not crude, but forceful to the point sometimes of extravagance. Nevertheless, he is a man with a beat; he doesn't make the rhythm… following p.31 (to find)

1953, September - USA, NYC: Down Beat, 1953.
Caught In The Act by Nat Hentoff
(about Tony Scott Quartet at Minton's)
To this ear, Tony Scott has become our finest contemporary jazz clarinetist. In addition, the quartet he now heads at Minton's swings freely and powerfully. Pianist Dick Katz constructs his choruses with remarkably imaginative care. He never stops building, but he also never forgets to lay a firm foundation. Drummer Osie Johnson, heard a few months ago in Earl Hines' swinging group sets a full, flowing, rhythmic base that practically compels a soloist to swing. His drum breaks and his contributions on the frequent trading of fours with Tony are unflaggingly fresh and humorous. Gerry Mapp was on bass as of this review, but was to have been followed by Earl May of the Billy Taylor trio two nights later.

It is Scott, however, who is the focus of the unit. First of all, no other modern clarinetist has the fire, the drive, and the beat Tony generates. DeFranco may have more fluent technique - though I'm not sure - but Scott, too, gives the impression of being able to execute almost any idea that comes to mind. And so many do. His choruses, if transcribed from performance, would be invaluable studies of the practice of creating long-lined, cohesive ad lib solos.

Tony can surge through originals like Dick Katz's Cupcake or Milt to the Hilt and then play probingly sensitive clarinet with singing legato in Yesterdays or his own arrangement of I Cover the Waterfront.

His sense of dynamics - even while having to worry about adjusting the out-of-tune piano - is inevitably right. For the last ten years Tony Scott has studied (at Juilliard and with Stefan Wolpe) and worked until he felt he was ready really to be heard. He's certainly ready now. And I hope he has a chance to get around the country - not only for his own good, but for the sake of modern jazz as well. - Nat

1953, September 19: The Saturday Review (USA) - Pop Roundup
Jazz, Native and Imported
(about Tony Scott Quartet : Music After midnight- Brunswick BL 58040) recorded at Minton's Playhouse concert 1953, February 5)
Jazz Musicians these days appear to be reverting to danceable tempos, and a new 'swing era' may be in the making'. During the first swing era, when the big dance bands captured the imagination of a generation, these bands derived much of their excitement, and certainly their distinction, from the musical dynamism of their leaders. Today the kids buy records by such dance bands as Ralph Flanagan, Ralph Marterie, Ray Anthony, Les Brown, and Billy May, but few are aware that these men play instruments. None of them is an unusual soloist, none of them has claimed the dancers' devotion like Goodman, Shaw, or the Dorseys.

The frantic bop and the desperately relaxed 'cool' jazz styles have just about run their course, and the new school's emphasis is on 'making it swing'. When music does this it becomes especially danceable, and there's certainly a broader acceptance for a music that can be felt, even though not universally understood. A whole new group of 'super stars' is currently developing. these are legitimately trained musicians capable of producing clean, warm, and exciting music. prominent among the new names are a clarinetist -Tony Scott; a vibraharpist - Terry Gibbs; and a mellophone-trumpet virtuoso-Don Elliot. Scott is especially daring in his complex solo-line anticipation of chord changes, as evidenced in a new Brunswick long-player, Music After Midnight (BRBL 58040).

The four selections that comprise this set are not studio recordings, but informal performances tape-recorded by a hobbyist at Minton's Playhouse, reputed workshop of modern jazz. here is an expansion of the ideas advanced in the early Forties by the Goodman sextet -thoughtful, intimate, yet intense, driving jazz, played with a good mutual feel for timbre, except for some perhaps unavoidable emphasis on the drummer's high-hat cymbal.

With Scott are a new pianist-arranger Dick Katz, the veteran ex-Calloway bass man Milt Hinton. Philadelphia Joe Jones (as distinguished form Kansas City Jo Jones) is the drummer. Two of the original 'tunes' are almost as interesting as the remarkable solo paying of Scott, Katz and Hinton. A Canon for Cats, is an intriguing contrapuntal bit from which the solos take off and then return to quite logically. Scott's After After Hours is a fluid jazz melody with a strong Basie flavor. Brunswick is recording Scott and Gibbs with small 'big' bands.

RR - 1953, September 19: The New Yorker (USA)
(Tony Scott Quartet: Music After midnight- Brunswick BL 58040 - recorded at Minton's Playhouse concert 1953, February 5)
Scott Quartet, consisting of expert musicians of the modern, cool school of jazz, does some dazzling work on a Brunswick record entitled Music After Midnight. The most distinctive thread of tone in the four selections After After Hours, Katz Meow, I Never Knew and Away We Go- is provided by Scott's clarinet, but some arresting contributions are made by Dick Katz on piano; Milt Hinton on bass, and Philly Joe Jones, on drums...