[3] "Scenes in the City", however, includes narration performed by Mel Stewart and written by actor Lonne Elder with assistance from Langston Hughes.

[11] The CD issues of the album include three bonus tracks: the Dizzy Gillespie standard "Woody 'n' You", Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce", which is listed as "Bounce" and miscredited to Mingus, and an alternate take of "Slippers".

[12] The AllMusic review by Scott Yanow called the album "an excellent set of challenging yet often accessible music".

[3] The Penguin Guide to Jazz deemed it "an opportunity for Mingus to experiment with texts and with pure sound".

[5] The Penguin editors furthermore cite Clarence Shaw's performance on "New York Sketchbook" as "the best trumpet heard on a Mingus album for some time before or since".