Recorded 1957, November 16 - NYC

The Jazz Review - p.38
Tony Scott: The Modern art of Jazz - SEECO CELP 425
by Julian Adderley

This is not a revolutionary record, but I think it has some of the best Tony Scott I've heard since he was at Minton's, because he doesn't include the kind of things he did on some of the Victor's albums, the pretentious things. He's got all good men - I'm surprised.
Bill Evans is one of my favorite piano players. I don't thing any young modern treats a ballad like he does. He has a way of playing simple rhythmically and complex harmonically, but everything flows so. He has such a thorough knowledge of harmony that everything seems simple.
I love Clark Terry. I don't know exactly why. He's not that exceptional although he is very competent. He's imaginative, soulful, has an original sound and he uses tonguing technique better than any jazz trumpet player I know: It doesn't sound like technique when he does it; it just seems to fit. My brother, Nat, was strongly influenced by Clark and Clark has told me time and again that he's been influenced by Nat, and I'm beginning to believe it. I don't think that much of Clark stuck with Miles although Clark was an idol of Miles when Miles was a boy. I also don't think Miles influenced Clark in recent years. I think Rex Stewart was Clark's strongest influence.

I don't like the way Tony Scott plays ballads too well; he uses his technique too much on them. He's best at a slow medium tempo, like on Blues for 3 Horns, because he has tendency to build. As for Ben Webster's influence on him, I don't think it shows except for sound.
Tony has a big, fat sound: I still think Tony is more influenced by bird than by Ben on ballads. I like to hear Sahib play blues. He's what I call traditionally funky. He's able to create the mood - that's the thing that's important. Knepper is a very good trombonist.
But J.J. has spoiled me with regard to a trombone sounding like a trombone. I mean that Knepper, though he's very good, is too tied to the instrument. J.J. on the other hand, is a soloist who happens to use the trombone.
Therefore, if you call Knepper an 'original' trombonist, you may be right. If you mean an 'original' soloist, in the sense in which I'd use the term, for J.J.. that's something else. Similarly, I think Jimmy Cleveland is an original trombonist but not the original jazz soloist J.J. is J.J. has a style and it's the kind of style that allows men on other instruments beside the trombone to emulate it, and they wind up sounding in part like J.J. I said Knepper is like a modern Jack teagarden. A man like Curtis Fuller emulates J.J. from a trombone point of view and a player like Kai Winding was originally a J.J. emulator ( not in content but from the viewpoint of the trombone).
Knepper 's influences, however, sound more traditional - Teagarden, Urbie Green. Even his sound sounds similar to Teagarden's in some spots. The rhythm section in this record is beautiful. Paul Motian is one of the steadiest drummers around. Paul and Bill Evans work very well on this. The rhythm section plays better when Grimes rather than Hinton is the bassist because Milt's beat is so dominant. Henry has a tendency to sit down on the beat so that it's there when the soloist arrives. Back to Tony. His strong points are his sound, technique and genuine feeling for the blues. His weak points: for one thing he does something that some people say they find in me playing, but I don't think it's there so often. He starts something and doesn't finish the statement, but instead goes into something else. He tries to play too much; sometimes he'll triple up for no apparent reason. And there are times when I would question his taste.
Tony is one of the easiest guys to play with. He has a vast repertoire and seems to know to play tunes in the right tempo. And he certainly plays a lot more warmly than De Franco.
The clarinetists I most dig, however, are the real traditional ones- Barney Bigard, Russell Procope, Artie Show. Shaw was so lyrical and the thing that helped him was that Benny Goodman was just the opposite. Goodman was a really craftsman while Shaw was real lyrical. Some of the Shaw's solos would be classics today regardless of instrument. His record of Stardust - with Butterfield - is one of the greatest I've ever heard. Shaw has been too much overlooked. He also, by the way, had one of the original cool bands. I mean the one that was contemporary with Goodman during the heyday of swing. They showed restraint and a little more taste from the content point of view. The Goodman band was more the 'hard bop' of the swing era as opposed to the Shaw band which was cool and restrained. I think Gil Evans is an admirer of those Shaw bands. One thing I want to give Goodman credit for: he was one jazz musician who got rich playing jazz. He did get a couple of breaks, but he deserved everything he got. I don't know how he did it; I'd like to find the secret. One reason there seems to be few modern jazz clarinetists is that the instrument is difficult to begin with. It's not the kind of horn you pick up and start honking. Nobody today is really exceptional on the instrument.
The Giuffre thing is not so much a clarinet thing as the fact that he uses it to solo on as he would use any of his multiple instruments. Another reason is that it's hard for a clarinetist to get a sideman's job in present-day combos. All clarinet players, it seems, have to be leaders to stay on the instrument. Rolf Kuhn is an exception, but that's because he hasn't been here long enough. Same is true of the French horn. If Julius Watkins doesn't get a job in a big band, he has to be a leader of a small combo. Same problem with a man who wants to emphasize flute, and it's even becoming true of trombone. You have to be a lead to get a job. To summarize this record: on it Tony is back to where I think he should be - a blowing and free-swinging type thing instead of all that paper.