Cornetist Michael Downs was born in East Orange, New Jersey on April 2, 1935. He spent his teen-age years in San Francisco and worked with Virgil Gonsalves there from 1956 through 1959. In hi sown words: “In late 1959 I was playing in an  after-hours club in San Francisco. Philly Joe Jones wandered in one night after work, and he asked me to join his band in New York. This was in December 1959. At first, I felt intimidated working with so powerful a symbol of jazz in the East as Philly Joe. But he sweeps you away. I’ve learned so much on the job with him. I now can swing much more and can play much more uninhibitedly.”

[...] Downs' solos are vigorous and expressive, reflecting a pre-Miles Davis style reminiscent of Clifford Brown. Unfortunately, these were his last recordings and, at the same time, the opportunity to remember and rediscover this little-known but talented trumpeter and cornetist from Oakland, who died forgotten in New York in 1968.

—Jordi Pujol (excerps taken from the inside liner notes of FSRCD 1142)