FREDDIE WAS ALWYAS REDDIE

The great pianist FREDDIE REDD died on 17th March aged 92!!

Although I described my happy but brief association with Freddie in another musing a while back (entitled “Earl’s Court remembered”) , it is now time to commemorate his passing and the music for which he will be remembered.

92 is a truly remarkable age for a hard-living, free-wheeling black New York jazz musician who made his name in the late fifties and early sixties. He was born and bred in big Apple and eventually died there. His driving hard bop piano style is New York through and through. But for much of his long life, he had been an independent-spirited itinerant, settling in Europe (France and Denmark) in the mid sixties and back to the West Coast scene in the States in 1974. He moved to Baltimore in 2011 and toured Europe again subsequently.

He recorded quite a lot here and there but I will always be particularly fond of the three Blue Note albums under his own name: “Music from The Connection”, “Shades of Redd” from 1960 and “Redd’s blues” recorded in 1961 but buried in the vaults and finally issued in 1988. (On drums is the splendidly named SIR JOHN GODFREY who I have not heard of before or since but I don’t think it’s a pseudonym.)

THE CONNECTION is what Freddie will be best remembered for – he wrote the music and acted and played in both the stage play and the subsequent film.

I have therefore invited my old friend, altoist PAUL ZEC to reminisce about THE CONNECTION , including its production on the London stage.

PAUL WRITES:

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“I could not think of the wonderfully expressive piano playing of Freddie Redd without calling to mind the no less eloquent alto saxophonist Jackie MacLean. In fact, I can never think of one without the other.

In 1959 a play by American playwright Jack Gelber opened in New York City. Called The Connection, it was about the lives of jazz musicians – and their “habits”. The cast included a quartet of famous musicians prforming jazz music live on stage. Among them was Jackie MacLean (1931-2006) and Freddie Redd (1928-2021), who composed new music for the production which was released on the Blue Note label.

For me, The Connection is more than a play. The transcendental quality of the music as written by Freddie Redd and the sound of the music as it reaches our ears takes it to a different level. The Connection was and is an experience. A theatrical experience - one I enjoyed by going and hearing it live when the play came to the West End. Jackie MacLean, already a hero of mine, was onstage and Freddie was performing in his role as the pianist.

It is also a physical experience. In 1963 the English pianist, composer and teacher Lionel Grigson was asked to write new music, presumably for copyright reasons, for a student production of the play at Cambridge University. I performed in Grigson’s quartet: my first live performance of The Connection. I later had another experience of performing music from the play. In the late 1960s Freddie Redd had become house pianist at the Troubadour, an Earl’s Court jazz venue, and it was here that I performed with Freddie, Lionel and Pete Burden. I have fond memories of playing the tune “Time to Smile” from The Connection with Pete at Ronnie Scott’s.

I also spent some time with Freddie off-stage, both at my apartment in Earl’s Court (with his girlfriend of the time, complete with mink stole, I’m reminded by Spike) and elsewhere in London. Some of my other recollections of Freddie Redd are connected with the law. I remember sitting in a London black cab being driven by him. How he came to be in possession of the vehicle is lost in the mists of time, as is the reason why I was his passenger. As I recollect, there may have been some legal irregularity about the situation. I certainly remember bailing him out from the police station at some point. Another encounter with the law came in a different form – playing a gig with Freddie and Spike Wells at Pentonville Prison. Again, the reason for this location is unclear but it was certainly a bizarre gig.

Freddie was a unique composer and character. His contribution to my musical life is multi-faceted, particularly his links to my great friends Pete Burden, Lionel Grigson and Spike Wells and to my experience of The Connection in all its forms.”

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Thanks, Paul. R.I.P.Freddie