Billboard : 04/18/1960
Spotlight Winner

“The Connection” is currently one of off-Broadway’s hottest shows. The tunes in this set are those featured by a jazz group which appears in the play. In addition to the Redd Quartet, altoist Jackie McLean is also featured. It’s a cooking and driving set. At times there’s some really fine interplay between McLean and Redd on piano. Set can stand on its own, but association with the play can prove a sales booster.

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Cashbox : 04/30/1960
Jazz Pick of the Week

“The Connection” is now enjoying a successful off-Broadway run as the first play to use jazz and jazz musicians as vital, integral parts of the action in the story. Freddie Redd’s music for the show reflects his understanding of putting jazz to use as descriptive music. But the star of this recording is Jackie McLean, alto sax and major soloist with the group. It is his searing, gripping solos which brings the jazz to fruition. Album should do well.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : July, 1960

This is not the place to discuss the play from which this music comes, but I will say, briefly, that it represents one of the most promising debuts by an American playwright in years, even though the play is much less spectacular than it is given credit for, being basically a kind of “Time of Your Life” with the same old Saroyan people using narcotics instead of liquor. The music has a definite place in the production, and fulfills it excellently. Altoist Jackie McLean (along with bassist Michael Mattos and Larry Ritchie, drummer, a member of the Freddie Redd Quartet that performs in the play and on this record) reveals himself as a very interesting, natural young actor.

The music, when divorced from the play, is representative of the very best of funky, hard-swinging New York jazz. The fact that the musicians have played this music together for so long undoubtedly has contributed to the success of this album. All of the music—it was composed by Freddie Redd—is interesting, the most immediately engaging tune, one that I hope is re- corded by other groups, being Music Forever.

This album might possibly become some sort of cultural landmark, representing as it does the most complete use of jazz in the theater to date. But, even with those considerations aside, the fact that it contains some of Jackie McLean’s best work makes it worth having.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : August, 1960

If visitors to The Living Thentre’s off-Broadway production of “The Connection” are disappointed in not finding a sensational exposé of narcotics addiction, apparently they are satisfied enough by the experience to pass the word along to friends. In spite of mixed reviews, the play has just embarked on the second year of its run and Freddie Redd’s music, which forms an integral part of the action, is now available as performed by the musicians in the cast. The composer took on the difficult task of describing the varying states of mind which Jack Gelber has his characters assume as the play progresses. At the same time, the music must seem improvised by jazz as well as theatrical standards. The result also is likely to disappoint the listener who expects melodramatics. Nor will it please the cool, hip nightclub audience which resents being carried below the surface of emotion. Forced to avoid outward manifestations of joy, anger, or hope, Redd relies on the blues to express inner truths that the author can only hint at in words. There can be no doubt that his work benefits greatly from Redd’s sympathetic approach.

The restrictions imposed are not so stringent as to preclude humor on Wigglin’, determination on Music Forever, and tenderness on Theme For Sister Salvation. Besides being an ideal choice for the alto-sax part, Jackie McLean still makes his solos seem freshly minted. Joining Redd at the piano in the rhythm section are bassist Michael Mattos and drummer Larry Ritchie. As the music requires all the personal involvement the listener can give, those unable to view a performance are urged to read the play, now readily accessible in a paperback edition.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : July, 1960

Interest: Happy to harrowing jazz
Performance: Biting
Recording: Very live

Jack Gelber’s play, The Connection, is in a long run at New York’s Living Theatre. It’s an unsparing exploration of the drug addicts’ world and its perspective is wholly unsentimental. On stage are several musicians, doubling as actors. Occasionally they play jazz as part of the action, and these sections are reproduced in this album. The music is brilliantly evocative in the context of the play, and it also stands up as sharply personal, hard-swinging modern jazz on its own terms. The most effective soloist is McLean. The moods range from ravenous frustration to acute, transitory happiness.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : June, 1960

The Connection is an off-Broadway play about junkies which has been running since last July. The music heard in it (it is not quite a score in the usual sense) was composed by pianist Freddie Redd and is played in the show by his quartet, which includes Jackie McLean on alto saxophone. This is far stronger jazz than has yet been heard on Broadway, played with relish and conviction by Redd’s excellent group. Redd is a searing soloist at times, and McLean—heretofore an imitative, uncertain, but improving saxophonist—shows real individuality and creativity for the first time on records. It is interesting to note that the essential structure of these pieces is much like numerous studio performances in which McLean, in particular, has been involved, but these are far superior to those offhand studio efforts largely because, one suspects, they were thoroughly shaken down by months of playing before they were recorded. This happens so infrequently in jazz recording (the Modern Jazz Quartet is the only group that makes it a policy) that it is worth noticing what wonders proper preparation can produce.

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New York Post
William H. A. Carr : 08/24/1960
Off-B’Way

Judith Malina and Julian Beck, who run the Living Theater where Off-Broadway’s most unexpected hit “The Connection” is being presented, published a statement of their aims recently. It concludes:

“Whatever criticism has been leveled at it, the Living Theater has never been called uninteresting: its presentations are always lively; no spectator will deny that a visit here is like an adventure.”

The Becks (they are husband and wife) were guilty of understatement.

Never uninteresting? Some of the plays they produce are written with the aid of an IBM machine, and while one might argue over the artistry, there’s no question the results are far from commonplace.

Lively? At least one riot has broken out on the premises. That was a night when Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Gregory Corso, and other Beat poets were reading their works from the stage (the Living Theater goes in for poetry readings.) Two of the Beats got into an argument over a woman, one Beat proceeded to demonstrate something sexual on the stage, and bedlam ensued.

An adventure? To date, 26 persons have fainted while watching the harrowing injection scene in “The Connection,” a ruthlessly honest play about narcotics.

The Leader

The Living Theater, Which occupies the second, third and fourth floors of a former department store on the northeast corner of 14th St. and Sixth Ave., Is easily the foremost avant garde Off-Broadway theater.

The Living Theater’s admirers are never lukewarm in their enthusiasm. Alter poet-physician William Carlos Williams saw an early Living Theater production (“Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,” by Gertrude Stein), he wrote to the Becks:

“I am walking in a dream, the aftermath of what I saw and heard… last evening… it was wonderful, a truly wonderful experience to have witnessed it. I want you to know that as long as I live I will never forget it. It is so far above the level of the commercial theater that I tremble to think it might fade and disappear.”

Not everyone, of course, feels that way about the Living Theater and its productions. The Becks themselves have described the drama critics’ reactions to “The Connection” by saying they “scorned the play which they felt was insulting, tasteless, and depraved.” That was a year ago, but “The Connection” is still drawing capacity crowds at almost every performance.

Unlike most Off-Broadway folk, the Becks do not have their eyes on Broadway as an ultimate goal. For them, Off-Broadway offers everything they want, except, perhaps, a little more money (“enough for a new dress once in a while, or a fresh pair of stockings,” said Miss Malina, somewhat wistfully).

“Off-Broadway should not be a showcase for talent or a stepping stone to Broadway,” Miss Malina, a feather-thin, intense brunette, said last week. “We want Off-Broadway to be the finest and the best. There is nothing better out there, just something that’s more lucrative.”

“Broadway leads to inevitable corruption. Here, we are free to do anything we want in the theater. We are really free here.”

A Long Dream

Miss Malina was born in a theater in Germany. Her mother was an actress who ultimately gave up the theater because her husband, a rabbi, disapproved. Miss Malina takes pride in having made her first stage appearance at the age of 2.

Julian Beck originally planned to be a painter (he still picks up palette and brush when he can, and his paintings have been exhibited a number of times), was just out of Yale when he met Miss Malina in 1943. He fell in love with her, and since it was obviously a case of love me, love my theater, he enrolled in the dramatic workshop then operated by Erwin Piscator, the distinguished German director who lived in exile here until 1950.

In 1946, after their marriage, the couple began dreaming about a theater of their own. In 1947 they set up a corporation and began recruiting actors and backers. In 1951 they moved into the Cherry Lane Theater on Commerce St. in Greenwich Village. From the first it was obvious that this was to be no ordinary venture. Beginning with the Gertrude Stein play that enchanted Dr. Williams, the Becks staged poet Kenneth Rexroth’s “Beyond the Mountains,” “An Evening of Bohemian Theater” (consisting of Pablo Picasso’s “Desire,” Gertrude Stein’s “Ladies’ Voices,” and T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Agonistes”), poet Paul-Goodman’s “Faustina,” poet John Ashberry’s “The Heroes,” and Alfred Jarry’s farce, “Ubu the King.”

It was the last work that ended the Becks’ career at the Cherry Lane. As they put it, “The use of strong Anglo-Saxon words and some clinical references to homosexual love apparently cause the vigilantes to step in; and, coincidentally, the theater was closed by the Fire Dept. after three enthusiastically received performances.”

For the new few years the Becks staged productions in a loft on 100th St. and Broadway. They didn’t charge admission there; they passed the hat. The memorable day there was when they opened W. H. Auden’s “The Age of Anxiety” with the late James Agee, a respected critic, playing one role.

In 1958 the Becks found the building they now occupy. In the old way of Off-Broadway groups in the past, they went to work themselves, with their actors, building, tearing down walls, painting, decorating, until they had a theater which is probably the most comfortable and modern off Broadway.

Just before moving into the new building, Miss Malina found an unexpected temporary home: the Women’s House of Detention, at Sixth and Greenwich Ave., a few blocks away in the Village. She had been arrested with a number of other persons for refusing to take shelter, as a protest during a Civil Defense alert. (The Becks are very vocal anarchists.)

Miss Malina’s sojourn in jail must have been a bit of an ordeal to her keepers. Her cellmate for 25 days, Dorothy Day, publisher of The Catholic Worker, revealed in the current issue of her newspaper:

“Judith is an accomplished actress… She was an amazing mimic and varied her acts (in prison) from tragey to comedy. With mop in hand, in the vestibule of the jail when visitors were entering, she could suddenly be cringing in a concentration camp, cowering before a hulking matron.”

The first production in the new quarters, William Carlos Williams’ verse comedy, “Many Loves,” was generally approved by the critics, and the Becks have been kindly treated by fortune since then. In the past season they won the Newspaper Guild’s Page One award in theater, the Village Voice’s “Obie” award for the best Off-Broadway production, and the Lola D’Annunzio award for outstanding achievement in the Off-Broadway theater.

Most of the praise, of course, has been for Jack Gelber’s “The Connection,” which the New Yorker’s Kenneth Tynan has described as “a cultural must… the most exciting new American play that Off-Broadway has produced since the war.” Few other critics or theater veterans would go nearly that far in their assesment of the play, but there is no denying its power.

The success of “The Connection” seems to have filled Miss Malina with dismay.

“Our good plays are on Sunday nights,” she said. “I do wish more people owuld come to see them.”

The “good” plays are two short works that are paired—”The Marrying Maidens,” by Jackson Mac Low, with music by John Cage, and “Women of Trachis,” Ezra Pound’s version of the Sophocles drama, “The Trachiniae,” with music by Lucia Dlugoszewski.

Throw of the Dice

The dialogue, if it can be called that, of “The Marrying Maidens,” is unique. Take Scene 3 (to be acted with “enthusiasm,” the stage directions say). The scene opens with dialogue like this:

Ancient King III: “Foot tongue fire The Joyous thunder.”

The Great Man: “A large wagon the strong horses with wild courage firm and gnarled trees deep red mar The Creative.”

Ancient King II: “Pleasure a large wagon a sorceress the various kind of black-billed birds.”

The Great Man: “Dryness hard and salty soil The Receptive a spreading out brightness wood watchmen.”

From there on it begins to get a little more difficult.

The dialogue consists of words or groups of words from the Confucian “Book of Changes,” plus characters, scenes, stage directions, and adverbs, “suggestive of actors’ readings”—all thrown into the hopper and selected by chance with the use of random numbers. Cage, an offbeat composer of the electronic music school, followed a similar course: as the program noes, “the use of the score is determined by the throw of the dice.”

To work with such material, the Becks have gathered a company of talented actors and musicians. The musicians in “The Connection” play really good jazz composed by Freddie Redd, the pianist in the group. The other musicians are Jackie McLean on alto saxophone, Larry Ritchie on drums, and Michael Mattos on bass.

Probably the most outstanding actor in “The Connection” is Warren Finnerty, who won the “Obie” award as best actor for his role of Leach, the junkie whose injection scene caused those 26 people to faint. But the others are outstanding, too.

Melvin Stewart, for example, played the lead (Jesse B. Simple) in the Broadway and London productions of Langston Hughes’ hit, “Simply Heavenly,” appeared in two other Broadway productions, each of which lasted just two days, and works a good deal on television. He may go with “The Connection” to London, and if he does he’ll probably stay there for a few years. He likes working Off-Broadway—”there’s more freedom and daring Off-Broadway; the theater becomes less of a business and more of an art as you move downtown.”

There are other actors like Louis McKenzie, an actor, singer, and dancer who’s been on Broadway and off; Carl Lee, who works as a bartender to supplement his meager off-Broadway pay; Leonard Hicks, a newspaper photo engraver on the graveyard shift who motorcycles to work every night after performances; Mary Hollister, who is married, has a child, and works as a secretary in the Columbia University Russian Institute during the day.

Nothing Ordinary

Cynthia Robinson, whose dance movements are a good deal sexier than those to be seen in most strip joints, is a Providence, R.I. girl who came to New York by way of Sarah Lawrence College and now works at Time magazine as a secretary during the day and the Living Theater at night.

“There ought to be 100 more Off-Broadway theaters,” she said the other day. “Sure, Off-Broadway needs polishing, but that will come.

“The theater has to have something like Off-Broadway, that tells everyone to go to hell, that gets rid of money, pomp and nonsense and gets down to work. There’s nothing ordinary about Off-Broadway theater like this. The Becks have a kind of integrity about their beliefs, a kind of daring, as though they’re saying, ‘Come and see our productions if you like, or don’t if you don’t want to.’ It’s different here; they don’t play to the critics, they play to the audience, and so they go even if the reviews are bad.

“There has to be a place for a thing like this.”

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Pittsburgh Courier
Harold L. Keith : 04/16/1960
Five Stars

Dynamic compositional work on the part of pianist Freddie Redd provides the momentum for Blue Note’s moving album entitled The Connection.

Featuring Jackie McLean on alto, Michael Mattos on bass, and Larry Ritchle on drums, the album is based on a musical score in a controversial play about junkies. In fact, the disc has been dedicated to one Thelma Gadsden who succumbed to an overdose of “horse” in 1957 and “to all the other junkies dead and alive in the Women’s House of Detention.”

Redd’s piano work, a style which is embellished with flashing arpeggios, is up to its usual impressive standards. (Freddie is remembered here for his tremendous Riverside album San Francisco Suite.) The McLean horn, with penetratingly jagged phrasing, is indeed inspired. This is a fine album, and all junkies should feel honored at the reverent thing composed in their behalf.

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The Village Voice
Jerry Tallmer : 07/22/1959

Two weeks ago I wrote I could not dissent from the general dispraise of “The Cave at Machpelah,” the last production at the Living Theatre. Now there is a new production, and I dissent most vigorously from the renewed wave of dispraise for “The Connection,” which opened at the little 14th Street playhouse last Wednesday, in repertory with “Many Loves” (“Machpelah” meanwhile having been withdrawn from the schedule).

Justifies Its Title

To my mind, the Living Theatre has once again excitingly justified the adjective of its title. I pray that Mr. Beck and Miss Malina can keep the show alive until word-of-mouth overcomes the worst efforts of the (second-string, summertime) daily reviewers. If “The Connection” can’t make it in Greenwich Village, or wherever people care deeply about imaginative theatre, then nothing can. But I think it can—if its producers, for their part, can hang on.

“The Connection” is a “jazz play” about heroin and junkies. Its author is Jack Gelber. It is called a jazz play because there is a quartet on stage (piano, alto, drums, bass) which provides both lots of good jazz and lots of good acting, along with all other members of the cast without exception. This is the first production of any sort (not just theatre) in which I have seen (heard?) modern jazz used organically and dynamically to further the dramatic action rather than merely decorate or sabotage it; the music by Freddie Redd and his quartet (written by Mr. Redd) puts a highly charged contrapuntal beat under and against all the misery and stasis and permanent total crisis of “The Connection’s” roomful of assorted drug addicts. And director Judith Malina and her actors (and acting musicians) have used the jamming interludes brilliantly to further the slow line of the play (which in the end quite properly goes nowhere) with semi-improvisational episodes of degradation and masochistic (or brutalitarian) exposure.

Some Self-Conciousness

I do not pretend to know anything more than any other informed layman about hipsters or heroin, and some of my cooler friends have told me that to them “The Connection” seemed pretty square. Too much talk about The Stuff, I gathered; too much self- consciousness. There is a certain amount of self-consciousness and over-obviousness throughout Mr. Gelber’s work, particularly in its penultimate five minutes of editorializing (though the editorial, like the play, goes nowhere and seeks no answers) and in its intermittent efforts to bring the audience, and even the theatre in which it sits, the lobby to which it will wander during intermission, directly into the business on stage (but this, I suspect, may have been imposed on Mr. Gelber by the producers). On the other hand, what “The Connection” as a whole did for me as a layman was to flesh out, marvelously, my own layman’s image of the world of heroin, its tired knowing endless deep-freeze of detumescence and utter hopelessness – and all such evocation of images I should consider well within the province of living theatre, if not necessarily of enduring drama.

Yes, the Living Theatre is alive, and in its own beautifully disciplined slow-motion pacing, “The Connection” is extremely theatrical – all the more theatrical for the electrical ripples of tension and latent violence that lie just under the whole muffling fabric of the performance, and just under the crackling skin of anyone who watches, and cares, from the seats out front. Some years ago in these pages I remarked that I hoped to live long enough to see “Waiting for Godot” played as slowly and poignantly as I thought the play demanded; I am still waiting for that one, but now Miss Malina and her company have achieved much the same effect in another area for another purpose; this is what I call creative experimentalism, as opposed to any other sort – the Living Theatre itself has known other sorts – and I freely applaud all concerned. I also think it is high time that, everything else apart, reviewers everywhere finally started applauding Miss Malina and her colleague Mr. Beck for accomplishing in 1959 that which all the rest of the world just talks about – a repertory experimental theatre that is truly experimental and truly, actively, in repertory. If that’s not worth raving about to your readers, what is?

Waiting for Cowboy

“The Connection,” by the way, does have evident ties both to “Godot” and “The Iceman Cometh.” Its cast waits in agony throughout the whole first act for a pusher named Cowboy to arrive with the beatification of a new
dose of the drug; and when Cowboy finally shows up, he is a nervous white-clad Negro whose authority is exceeded only by his godlike compassion. To tell you the truth, Cowboy and his friends are a lot more interesting to me than Hickey and his. As one of the older addicts in “The Connection”. announces to the audience: “I’m the nineteenth century, and I’m creating the twentieth.” Well, the inmates of Harry Hope’s saloon have always been a bit too verbose and antique to effect any real response in your reporter, but the junkies of Mr. Gelber’s play, and the junk, is all around me as I write, and I’m not speaking only of the narcotics industry. The subject is still Illusion vs. Reality (Mr. Gelber, an enterprising young man, also borrows a leaf or two from Pirandello with an “author’s, author” and an onstage producer) and no better material for playwriting will ever be unearthed.

The Cast

I have said the entire cast is expert, and it is. Here are its members: Leonard Hicks as the producer; Ira Lewis as the “author’s author”; Warren Finnerty, Jerome Raphel, John McCurry, and Garry Goodrow as the four addicts (a half-homosexual, a middle-aged philosopher, a big Negro, a young psychopath); Louis McKenzie and Jamil Zakkai as cameramen filming the session for the benefit of the greatly unlikable producer; Henry Proach as a weird and wordless jazz-lover; Barbara Winchester as a little old Salvation Army lady who somehow finds herself up in this pad among all these poor nice boys; Carl Lee as Cowboy the pusher; and Freddie Redd, Jackie McLean, Clyde Harris, and Jimmy Corbett in the quartet. The sets and lighting (both excellent) are by Julian Beck and Nikola Cernowitch.

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Down Beat : 06/09/1960
Barbara J. Gardner : 4.5 stars

Beauty, excitement, quality—you must get “The Connection.” If all musical endeavors could but culminate in this kind of rich reward. Composition—meaningful and significant; arrangements—tight and unified; soloists—polished and creative; overall effect—shock exhilaration.

Freddie Redd has proved beyond a shadow of doubt that jazz can be organized and orderly, and yet retain all the spontaneity and creativity of the informal jam session.

Here within the confines of Redd’s compositions, McLean has exhibited more freedom of expression than has been consistently evident on any previous album he has made. He is swift and sure on Cock Robin and Jim Dunn; wistful and compelling on Wigglin’; strident and loping on Music Forever; soulful and lonely on Sister Salvation and incisive on O.D. Throughout these moods and changes, his horn is consistently lyrical and singing.

Had Redd done nothing more than pen these tunes, his contribution would have been tremendous. But add to his credits a thoroughly superior job of comping and two especially effective contrasting solos: the frenzied, busy-handed solo on Jim Dunn; and the compelling, pleading line of Sister Salvation, which tapers off into an almost audible sob.

A few things bother me, however. There are moments when Mattos sounds swamped. The first main theme and closing chorus of Sister Salvation are fairly bland and give no hint of the beauty sandwiched between in McLean’s and Redd’s solos.

Time To Smile is a bit of a letdown. The entire group mood relaxes into a musical stupor and here, McLean painfully reminds us of phrases that have been around for some time. But otherwise, this album is a ball.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

“The Connection” by Jack Gelber is a play about junkies but its implications do not stop in that particular circle. As Lionel Abel has stated in what is perhaps the most perceptive critique yet written about the play (Not Everyone Is In The Fix, Partisan Review, Winter 1960), “What adds to the play’s power is that the characters are so like other people, though in such a different situation from most people.”

The situation in which the four main protagonists find themselves is waiting for Cowboy (Carl Lee), the connection, to return with the heroin. These four, Solly (Jerome Raphel), Sam (John McCurry), Ernie (Garry Goodrow), and Leach (Warren Finnerty) are in attendance at the latter’s pad with the bass player. One by one, the three other musicians drift in. They are also anxiously awaiting Cowboy’s appearance. Also present, from time to time, in this play-within-a-play, are a fictitious playwright Jaybird (Ira Lewis), producer Jim Dunn (Leonard Hicks) and two photographers (Jamil Zakkai, Louis McKenzie), who are shooting an avant garde film of the play.

The musicians not only play their instruments during the course of the play but, as implied before, they also appear as actors. Some people have raised the question, “If they are actors, why are they using their real names?” Pianist-actor Freddie Redd, composer of the music heard in “The Connection” answers this simply by saying that he and the other musicians want recognition (and subsequent playing engagements) for what they are doing and that there would be no effective publicity if they were to appear as John Smith, Bill Brown, etc. Author Gelber concurs and says that having the musicians play themselves adds another element of stage reality.

When “The Connection” opened at The Living Theatre on July 15, 1959, it was immediately assaulted by the slings and arrows of outrageous reviewers, a group consisting, for the most part, of the summer-replacement critics on the local New York dailies. Although several of them had kind words to say about the jazz, none were explicit and one carper stated that the “cool jazz was cold” which showed his knowledge of jazz styles matched his perception as a drama critic.

A week later, the first favorable review appeared in The Village Voice. It was one of many that followed which helped save “The Connection” and cement its run. In it, Jerry Tallmer didn’t merely praise the jazz but in lauding Gelber as the first playwright to use modern jazz “organically and dynamically”, also pointed out that the music “puts a highly charged contrapuntal beat under and against all the misery and stasis and permanent crisis.”

This the music does. It electrically charges both actors and audience and while it is not programmatic in a graphic sense (it undoubtedly would have failed it if had tried to be) it does represent and heighten the emotional climates from which it springs at various times during the action. The idea to incorporate sections of jazz into “The Connection” was not an afterthought by Jack Gelber. It was an integral part of his entire conception before he even began the actual writing of the play. If Gelber did not know which specific musicians he wanted onstage, his original script (copyrighted in September 1957) shows that he knew what kind of music he wanted. In a note at the bottom of the first page it is stated, “The jazz played is in the tradition of Charlie Parker.” (“The Connection” is published by Grove Press Inc. as an Evergreen paperback book.)

Originally Gelber had felt the musicians could improvise on standards, blues, etc., just as they would in any informal session. When the play was being cast however, he met Freddie Redd through a mutual friend. Freddie, 31 years young, is a pianist who previously has been described by this writer as “one of the most promising talents of the ’50s” and “one of the warmer disciples of the Bud Powell school”. During the Fifties he played with a variety of groups including Oscar Pettiford, Art Blakey, Joe Roland and Art Farmer – Gigi Gryce, all of whom recognized his talent.

After he had gotten a quartet together at Gelber’s request, auditioned for him and was given the acting-playing role in “The Connection,” Freddie told Jack of his long frustrated wish to write the music for a theater presentation. Armed with a script and the author’s sanction, he went to work. In conjunction with Gelber, he decided exactly where the music was to occur. By familiarizing himself with the play’s action, he was able to accurately fashion the character and tempo of each number. What he achieved shows that his talent, both the obvious and the latent of the ’50s, has come to fruition. He has supplied Gelber with a parallel of the deep, dramatic impact that Kurt Weill gave to Brecht. His playing, too, has grown into a more personal, organic whole. Powell and Monk, to a lesser degree, are still present but Freddie is expressing himself in his own terms.

The hornman he chose to blow in front of the rhythm section and act in the drama, has done a remarkable job in both assignments. Jackie McLean is an altoman certainly within the Parker tradition but by 1959 one who had matured into a strongly individual player. His full, singing, confident sound and complete control of his instrument enable him to transmit his innermost musical self with an expansive ease that is joyous to hear. It is as obvious in his last Blue Note album (Swing, Swang, Swingin’ – BLP 4024) as it is here or on stage in “The Connection.” As an actor, Jackie was so impressive that his part has grown in size and importance since the play opened.

During the early part of the run, Redd’s mates in the rhythm section were in a state of flux until Michael Mattos and Larry Ritchie arrived on the scene. Mattos has worked with Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Max Roach and Lester Young among others. Ritchie came out of B. B. King’s band to play with Phineas Newborn and later, Sonny Rollins. Together they have given the group on stage a permanence; the fusion of many performances’ playing as a unit is evident here.

The first music heard in the play is introduced by a mute character named Harry (Henry Proach) who comes into Leach’s pad early in the first act with a small portable phonograph on which he plays Charlie Parker’s record of Buzzy. Everyone listens religiously. When the record is over, Harry closes the case, and leaves. With this, the musicians commence to play Buzzy (not heard here) but are interrupted by Jaybird who rushes up on stage exclaiming that his play is being ruined by the junkies’ lack of co-operation. After some argument, he leaves and the quartet begins to play again. This is Who Killed Cock Robin? The title was suggested by Warren Finnerty because the rhythmic figure of the melody sounds like that phrase which he, as Leach, screams in his delirium when he is close to death from an overdose later in the play. It is an up tempo number, yet extremely melodic as most of Freddie’s compositions are. In the composer’s words, “It is intended to plunge the music into the action of the play and to relieve the tension of the confusion which had begun to take place.”

McLean and Redd solo, urged on by the rhythm section which features Larry Ritchie’s dynamic drumming.

One of the devices employed by Gelber is having his main characters get up and solo like jazz musicians. Sam, a Negro vagabond junky goes on at length, promising to come out into the audience at intermission and tell some of his colorful stories if they will give him some money so that he can get high until he goes to work on a promised job. As he finishes, he lies down and asks the musicians to play. They respond with Wigglin’, a medium-tempo, minor-major blues which Redd explains, “accentuates Sam’s soulful plea to the audience. It is humorous and sad because we suspect that they know better.”

This is effective “funk” that is not self-conscious or contrived. Jackie and Freddie are heard in moving solos; Michael Mattos has a short but effective spot before the theme returns.

The last piece in Act I is detonated by Ernie’s psychopathic outburst. Ernie is a frustrated saxophonist whose horn is in pawn. He sits around bugging everyone by blowing on his mouthpiece from time to time. In his “confession” he digs at Leach. In turn, Leach ridicules his ability and laughs at him for deluding himself into thinking he is a musician. Music Forever calms the scene and in Freddie’s words, “expresses the fact that despite his delusions, Ernie is still dedicated to music.”

The attractive theme is stated in 2/4 by McLean while the rhythm section plays in 4/4. Jackie’s exhilarating solo at up tempo shows off his fine sense of time. He is as swift as the wind but never superficial. Freddie, whose comping is a strong spur, comes in Monkishly and then uses a fuller chordal attack to generate great excitement before going into some effective single line. The rhythm section drives with demonic fervor. This track captures all the urgency and immediacy that is communicated when you hear the group on stage. In fact, throughout the entire album the quartet has managed to capture the same intense feeling they display when they are playing the music as an integrated part of “The Connection.”

The mood of Act Il is galvanized immediately by the presence of Cowboy who has returned with the heroin. Jackie comes out of the bathroom after having had his “fix” and the musicians play as everyone, in their turn, is ushered in the bathroom by Cowboy. The group keeps playing even when they are temporarily a trio. In this album they are always a quartet. Since this is the happiest of moments for an addict, the name of the tune is appropriately Time To Smile. Freddie explains, “The relaxed tempo and simplicity of the melody were designed to have the audience share in the relaxing of tensions.”

The solos are in the same groove; unhurried, reflective and lyrical. In order to escape from a couple of inquisitive policemen, Cowboy had allied himself with an unwitting, aged Salvation Sister on the way back to Leach’s pad. While everyone is getting high, she is pacing around, wide-eyed and bird-like. Sister Salvation, (Barbara Winchester), believes Cowboy has brought her there to save souls. She sees some of them staggering and “nodding”, and upon discovering empty wine bottles in the bathroom thinks this is the reason. She launches into a sermon and Solly makes fun of her by going into a miniature history of her uniform. The music behind this is a march, heard here in Theme For Sister Salvation. When she tells them of her personal troubles, the junkies feel very bad about mocking her. This is underscored by Redd’s exposition of a sadly beautiful melody in ballad tempo. Here, in the recorded version, McLean plays this theme before Freddie’s solo. Then the march section is restated. The thematic material of this composition is particularly haunting. I’m told Leonard Bernstein left the theater humming it.

Jim Dunn is in a quandary. Jaybird and one of the photographers have rendered themselves useless by getting high. The chicks that Leach supposedly has invited have not appeared. Leach asks Freddie to play and the group responds with Jim Dunn’s Dilemma, a swiftly paced, minor-key theme. Redd especially captures the feeling of the disquietude in his two-handed solo.

From the time of the first fix, Leach has been intermittently griping that he is not high. Finally Cowboy gives him another packet as the quartet starts to play again. He doesn’t go into the bathroom but makes all the preparations at a table right onstage. The tune O.D., or overdose, is so named because this is what Leach self administers. Where in the play the music stops abruptly as he keels over, here the song is played to completion. McLean is again sharp, clear and declarative. Redd has another well developed solo with some fine single line improvisation.

I first saw the play the week it opened. My second viewing was in March 1960. To my amazement, I found myself injected into “The Connection.” As the musicians left the pad of the supposedly dying Leach, they reminded one another that “Ira Gitler is coming down to interview us for the notes.”

The above is just a small part of why “The Connection” helps The Living Theatre justify its name. Gelber’s dialogue, which still had the fresh feeling of improvisation on second hearing, is one of the big reasons. Another large one is Freddie Redd’s score. Effective as it is in the play, it is still powerful when heard out of context because primarily it is good music fully capable of standing on its own.