Freddie Redd’s ‘Shades of Redd’ Gets Blue Note Reissue
The 1960 recording was the followup to Redd’s well-received score for ‘The Connection.’
Blue Note Records is set to release Freddie Redd’s 1960 album Shades of Redd on vinyl. The second Blue Note recording from the hard bop pianist and composer features Jackie McLean on alto saxophone, Tina Brooks on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums.
This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is stereo, all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal. Shades of Redd is scheduled for release on September 19.
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“Shades of Redd, in summary, is part of the continuing self-portrait Freddie Redd is developing as a jazz performer-writer,” wrote Nat Hentoff, co-editor of The Jazz Review, in an essay featured on the album’s back cover. “The colors are all of the jazz language, and the mixer has made them reflect his own unique view of life on and off the stand.”
Shades of Redd opens with “The Thespian,” a nickname for Redd by Joe Termini, the owner of various jazz clubs in New Yorkers City. The album includes “Just a Ballad For My Baby,” a romantic tribute to a paramour, the Spanish-tinged “Olé,” and “Shadows,” an introspective ballad. The song “Melanie” is named after the newborn baby of a close friend. “It sounded happy to me,” said Redd. “And that’s why I thought it fitted a child.”
Redd made his Blue Note debut in 1960 as the composer of the score for The Connection, Jack Gelber’s 1959 Off-Broadway play depicting the lives of heroin-addicted musicians in New York. Redd and McLean both appeared in the play. Redd’s soundtrack, The Music From “The Connection,” was later used in the film adaptation of the play directed by Shirley Clarke.
Redd recorded another album’s worth of material in 1961, but the tapes were shelved until 1988 when it was finally released as Redd’s Blues.
