Cliff Jordan

Clifford Jordan was about 26, a tenor player from Chicago who had gone to DuSable High School with Johnny Griffin, John Gilmore and John Jenkins. In three months he had been on three Blue Note dates: Blowing in from Chicago, shared with Gilmore, then Paul Chambers's quintet two weeks before this one, and now a record with his name alone on it. He had just left Max Roach and joined Horace Silver's quintet.

Robert Levin opens the original notes with Silver's view of the LP age: it had made record dates easy to get, sometimes too easy, but it had also given a chance to players like Jordan and Curtis Fuller. Levin credits Alfred Lion's ear for finding them.

The date was Sunday, June 2, 1957, at Van Gelder's in Hackensack, with Lion producing. It was a big front line: Lee Morgan on trumpet, Fuller on trombone, Jenkins on alto and Jordan on tenor. Ray Bryant, from Philadelphia, played piano, Chambers bass, and Art Taylor, the only New Yorker in the room, drums. Fuller, from Detroit, had his own record for the label coming soon.

He is considered by many to be the next J.J. Johnson

Robert Levin, original liner notes

Five tunes were taped and all five made the record, and the band wrote four of them. Side one opens with Jordan's "Not Guilty," nearly 12 minutes long, which Levin calls pensive and swinging. Jenkins wrote "St. John," a happy tune on which all the horns and Bryant solo. Levin adds a detail the session listing does not: Morgan sits out both "Not Guilty" and, on side two, Fuller's "Blue Shoes."

Side two goes on with the standard "Beyond the Blue Horizon," where Jordan takes the first solo, Morgan follows on open horn, and Jordan and Taylor trade fours near the end. The record closes with Morgan's "Ju-Ba," a short blues without Fuller, which Morgan opens and closes on muted trumpet. Levin thought Jordan's solo on it his best on record.

John A. Tynan, in Down Beat, gave it three and a half stars. He liked Morgan, found Taylor's drums heavy, and heard where Jordan came from:

Jordan's tone is big and tough, much like that of Sonny Rollins.

John A. Tynan, Down Beat, May 15, 1958, reprinted on The Jazz Tome

The sleeve was designed by Tom Hannan, with a photograph by Francis Wolff.

The septet scattered into records of its own. Two weeks later Fuller, Chambers and Taylor were back at Van Gelder's for Fuller's The Opener. Jenkins led his own quintet in August, Morgan and Bryant made a sextet date that month, and in November Jordan returned for Cliff Craft.