Critic's Review
Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
The third and final CD in a somewhat flawed reissue program of Lionel Hampton's early small-group recordings as a leader contains most (but not all) of the recordings from six of Hamp's sessions, featuring such players as trumpeter Ziggy Elman and Benny Carter, tenors Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins, clarinetist Edmond Hall and the Nat King Cole Trio. Best is the Carter-Hall-Hawkins date which is highlighted by two takes of "Dinah." This music should have been reissued completely and in chronological order as it had been previously on LP, but that quibble aside, what is here is fine.
