[1] The album features Previn's jazz interpretations of songs from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's broadway musical, Pal Joey and followed the success of Manne's 1956 album, My Fair Lady.

The AllMusic review by Scott Yanow states: "Best known is 'I Could Write a Book,' which quickly became a standard, but the other, more obscure songs such as 'Take Him,' 'Zip' and 'Do It the Hard Way' are also generally good devices for jazz improvising.

[2] On All About Jazz Dave Rickerts states "Surprisingly Pal Joey seems like it would come later on in Previn's career when he might be scraping the bottom of the barrel for musicals to swing...

It's clearly not a top shelf musical; only two songs from it became standards and it's rarely revived today.

Still, there must have been something to grab Previn over other more worthy material, and the trio make a silk purse out a sow's ear by taking the mediocre and producing some wonderful improvisations".