"[3] In 2011, writer Greg Tate and musician LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs launched a print on demand magazine titled Coon Bidness, named after the Hemphill album.

[4][5] The editors of AllMusic awarded the album 4½ stars, and reviewer Scott Yanow wrote: "The music throughout is quite avant-garde but differs from the high-energy jams of the 1960s due to its emphasis on building improvisations as a logical outgrowth from advanced compositions.

[6] Writer Richard Williams stated that, on "The Hard Blues," "Hemphill seemed to have fused the harsh, elemental sound of John Lee Hooker, the warmth and colour of an Ellington small group and the collective exuberance of a Mingus ensemble into something that pointed a way to the future.

"[10] Musician Henry Kuntz noted that the first four tracks (Side A of the LP) function "as a single composition," and suggested that "Hemphill... likes to work with several layers of sound, to slowly take them apart – to the point of near dissolution – then to put them back together again (though not necessarily the same as they were before)."

He remarked: "In the U.S., it seems, the Seventies have been more a period of consolidation rather than of innovation (as if the advances of the last decade had to be justified before being built upon)... Hemphill's album offers music of this sort, and it's recommended.