Vince Guaraldi Trio (album)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Billboard	(favorable)[3]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz	[1]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide	[4]
Five Cents Please	[5]

The Penguin Guide to Jazz commented on the "mild, unambitious variations on standards" and suggested that Duran was more prominent than Guaraldi.[1] AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow wrote that the pianist "swings lightly and with subtle creativity".[2]

Billboard wrote a positive review, “Altho [sic] sales are unlikely to be spectacular, this is one of the pleasant surprises of the month. Guaraldi is a young San Francisco pianist who has been getting rave notices with the Woody Herman band. Evidence here says he’s a tasteful, authoritative and facile modernist, and that he swings. Further, he has a sense of humor. Guitarist Eddie Duran and bassist Dean Reilly are worthy colleagues. Try their version of John Lewis' 'Django' for a real delight.”[3]

The DownBeat critic was equally enthusiastic, with a 4-star review that read, in part, “In an era when too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a narrow range of moods and skills, San Franciscan Guaraldi is an expanding pleasure to hear. A jazzman with deep roots in his language, Vince projects clearly an individual musical personality: direct, emotional, inventive, tied-to-no-school. [He] is a man of wide-ranging sensitivity.”[6]

Guaraldi historian and author Derrick Bang noted that the "absence of drums contributes to the album's quieter sound, and Guaraldi displays none of the Latin-influenced touch that later would consume him, and very little of the energetic chops he delivered while working with the Woody Herman and Cal Tjader bands."[5]

Adapted from album's original vinyl rear cover sleeve.[7]

Vince Guaraldi Trio

• Vince Guaraldi – piano
• Eddie Duran – guitar
• Dean Reilly – double bass

Additional

• Ralph J. Gleason – liner notes

• Vince Guaraldi Trio at Discogs (list of releases)