Billboard : 02/24/1958

Pianist Redd, long unheralded, shows indications of becoming a significant player and composer. His San Francisco Suite is a well designed, piece of impressionism; his playing, both on standard and original material, but for moments of rhetoric, is chordally styled, surging, creative and direct. The lyricism, most accessible in his ballad treatments, but infiltrating all he does, is refreshing and rare in this era of percussive jazz pianists.

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Cashbox : 04/26/1958

Freddie Redd displays a driving keyboard approach sometimes sounding like the great Bud Powell. The trio is completed by George Tucker on bass and drummer Al Dreares. The group gives a refreshing view of the three familiar items, and the four Redd originals bring out the pianists capable composing skills. The major piece, San Francisco Suite, is a commendable piece of composing with varied moods and changing tempos. The issue is a credit to jazz. Should sell well.

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Audio Magazine
Charles A. Robertson : May 1958

The five sections of his impressionistic suite describing various points in San Francisco are sufficient reason for the introduction of the talents of Freddie Redd, a young pianist who also composed three tunes for the session. A souvenir of a season spent playing in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, his remembrance of the city ranges from that structure to Chinatown, the Barbary Coast, an after-hours club, and finally to the city streets at dawn. He draws his pictures so effectively that the thirteen-and-a-half minutes required for their completion passes quickly, leaving a wish for more. This desire is partly requited by his Minor Interlude, and Blue Hour. Bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Dreares combine in his support.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : September 1958

Redd shows on this disc that he can play forceful, clean-lined piano that goes straight to the heart of jazz matters, but he has a weakness for pretentiousness that can be fatal. This weakness reduces his ambitious San Francisco Suite to little more than an expanded movie background stereotype, vitalized by spots of valid jazz. His real potential is made apparent on three original pieces, but he can find little to do with three ballads.

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Metronome
Jack Maher : September 1958

The discography of Powell-Monk pianists grows longer; Freddie Redd is just such an influenced pianist. Freddie does some very engaging things on this album; portions of the Suite, Blue Hour and Minor Interlude, are the outstanding examples. There’s a definite direction and continuity in his playing that shows control and variety. He is able in the Suite, for instance, to depict places and their moods with changes in tempo and musical content. He does, of course, fall back on standard procedures for Chinatown, but for the most part, there’s a semi-original idea behind his musical pictures. We especially like the move from the Barbary Coast to Jimbo’s. It’s a logical one that shows the difference between Honky Tonk and blues.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 03/16/1958

It has been a year almost to the day that Freddie Redd, a warm-hearted, introspective young pianist departed the Bay Area. He had been brought here in December of 1956 as a member of the Charles Mingus quintet but at the conclusion of their stay at the Blackhawk the great bassist fired Redd. Mingus had opined earlier that he “couldn’t get inside that piano player’s head.”

“It was a psychological thing,” Redd remarked at the time. “Mingus is a perfectionist. He wants to control everyone he’s with. It just didn’t go with me, so we parted.”

In the weeks that followed, Redd found a place to live in Sausalito. He also became a member of the house band at Bop City, the S.F. after-hours jazz club operated by Cousin Jimbo.

Redd loved music devotedly despite or perhaps because of -the fact he did not begin playing until he was 18. That was in 1946, a few months before he started a three-year Army hitch which included two years in Korea.

“I’d started listening to Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Bud Powell, and they just gassed me,” Redd reminisced one afternoon as we chatted between numbers at a Rudy Salvini band rehearsal. “After I got out of the Army I enrolled at the Greenwich House School of Music in New York. But three months later I had the offer of a job in Syracuse and was so anxious to start playing that I left school. About all I’d learned was a good knowledge of the chords.”

During the months that followed, Redd was helped immeasurably by a guitarist, Eugene Jones, “who told me the names of the progressions I’d been playing without knowing them, and things like that. I finally got to where I could read music.”

Redd’s first New York gig, late in 1949, was with Oscar Pettiford. The pianist worked subsequently with Coleman Hawkins, Cootie Williams, the Art Farmer-Gigi Gryce quintet, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, and Joe Roland. In 1956 he toured Sweden with the Rolf Erickson unit.

Then came the Bay Area sojourn during which Redd impressed most of those who heard him with his concepts, exciting touch, and feeling for the blues. I wrote then that he was one of the most promising pianists currently playing.

Following his return East, Redd formed a trio with bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Dreares with which he has been working since.

The results of their collaboration and echoes of Redd’s stay out west can be heard on San Francisco Suite (Riverside; 40m), the group’s first longplay album. The record takes its title from a 13-minute jazz tone poem that invokes the deep impressions made on Redd by the Bay Area. The six other numbers include three standards and as many originals. All evidence that Redd is a formidable pianist who is continuing to develop.

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Down Beat : 04/17/1958
Don Gold : 4.5 stars

Redd is more than a “promising” jazz pianist. He is an assertive, exhilarating jazzman. And this is one of the best “first” LPs I’ve heard in many months.

Redd, a 29-year-old New York-born pianist, is self-taught. He’s been playing piano since the age of 18, having disregarded the invitations of his piano-teacher-father until that time. In recent years, he has worked with Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, and others. Tucker and Dreares are members of Redd’s current trio.

Although Redd has been influenced by Bud Powell and by the abstractions of Monk, he has emerged as an individualist with great potential. He is a thoughtful, productive pianist, and his ideas rush forth here with impressive rapidity.

The title selection, a five-part suite inspired by an extended visit to San Francisco, is vividly descriptive, from the opening view of the Golden Gate bridge to the glimpses of Chinatown, the Barbary coast, an after-hours club, to the concluding soulful search through the awakening city. There are a few heavy-handed, awkward moments, but for the most part the work is a meaningful entity, rich with colorful insights and warmth.

Three other Redd originals, Hour, Interlude, and Nica, are characterized by his stimulating rhythmic sense and his effective two-handed approach to the instrument. Hour is a melodically attractive frolic. Interlude is a powerful rhythmic chart. Nica is a sprightly up-tempo race. Redd explores Arthur Schwartz’ By Myself with exciting vigor and 10-finger ferocity. River, so often manhandled, is treated with delightful freshness. Kurt Weill’s moving New is played as a ballad, moodily.

Redd manifests many virtues in this set. He has a solid rhythmic sense, a sense that is not limited. He creates melodically, without subordinating that rhythmic sense. Approaching the piano as a keyboard instrument fully and emerges with rich patterns of sound based on a strong ideational foundation.

Riverside deserves credit for having given Redd this opportunity. He should be heard often. If this is his first LP, and the implication in the liner notes is that it is, watch out for the second. Redd is ready.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

If the mid-1950s do not turn out to be noted in future histories of jazz as a “golden age” of piano creativity, it will be more than a little surprising to those of us who sit here these days and marvel at what would appear to be a never-ending flow of new and vastly promising jazz pianists. Almost invariably, and quite naturally, these young musicians are strongly marked by one or more of the established major figures of the era: whether it be the overall aura of Charlie Parker, or the more specific stylistic influence of pianists like Thelonious Monk or Bud Powell. But also almost invariably-and this is not so automatically ‘natural’ and is therefore a most encouraging sign-these young pianists seem to have a good deal of their own to offer. They indicate from the start that they have concepts, an approach, a sound, with which they can be expected to build something personal and valid. Some, at least, of these many newcomers will surely turn out to be jazz artists of quite considerable importance.

First appearances can, of course, be highly deceptive. It would be a very rash man—let’s even say a foolish one—who would dare to predict dogmatically just who will make the grade and who will fail to live up to early promise. But this sober thought has nothing to do with the necessity for recognizing young talent, and for insisting that the newer voices be heard.

Freddie Redd is one of these newer piano voices, a young man with an exciting touch and with a great many of the ingredients necessary for success. A comparatively late starter (he didn’t begin to learn to play piano until he was eighteen), he has come to know his instrument well; he has a background of experience working with some very solidly-schooled musicians; he has listened well to basic modern sources first and probably most deeply to Bud Powell, but also to Monk; he has a sure feeling for the blues; and there is a firmly ambitious flavor to his efforts that is, in itself, exciting and compelling.

This last point is very much in evidence in the opening selection here, the thirteen-and-a-half minute San Francisco Suite. This is best described as a jazz tone poem, a series of impressions of a city that seems to have a deep effect on most New Yorkers who visit it. Redd, who lived and worked there from the Fall of 1956 through the Spring of ’57, focusses first on the serene grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge, then on the bustle of Chinatown, the honky-tonk flavor of the Barbary Coast, the special atmosphere of an after-hours club (combining a blues with an up-tempo segment), and finally the particular haunting quality of near-empty city streets at dawn.

The other half-dozen numbers are split between standards and originals. Sturdy, unhackneyed tunes by three of the very best of songwriters (Kurt Weill, Jerome Kern, Arthur Schwartz) are given briskly-paced, imaginative workouts. Freddie’s own tunes are mostly on the mellow side, with Blue Hour an especially effective mood piece.

Redd was born in New York City in May, 1928, and -either in spite of or because of the fact that his father taught piano-resisted taking lessons as a child. Music caught him rather suddenly: he pins it down to some Charlie Parker records that he heard in 1946; and he then found it natural to turn to the piano. Entering military service very shortly after this (he spent two years on occupation duty in Korea), Freddie proceeded to teach himself to play. He worked with a small combo while still in the Army, and had come along far enough by 1949, when he left the Army, to plunge into full-fledged professional activity. His first New York gig, late in ’49, was with Oscar Pettiford; subsequently he worked with Coleman Hawkins, Cootie Williams, the Art Farmer-Gigi Gryce quintet, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, and others. All of this was pretty much a matter of on-the-job training, and in very demanding company; making the grade under those circumstances seems the best sort of recommendation and a clear indication that this is a young man with natural talents and, to say the least, quick aptitude. Early in 1956 he made a successful trip to Sweden, leading a trio that included Tommy Potter and drummer Bill Harris. Then came the San Francisco period. Following his return East, Freddie worked at several Manhattan and Brooklyn spots with the unit he heads on this LP.

One final item: the emphasis at the start of these notes on words like “promising” should not be allowed to mislead anyone. There’s never any sense in asking listeners to accept a young musician on the basis of what he will or might go on to accomplish. The fact is that Freddie Redd doesn’t have to be presented in terms of future potential only: regardless of whether he does or doesn’t continue to grow into a jazz figure of real significance, he is, right now, a wonderfully driving, inventive and highly listenable performer. That is hardly a commonplace or minor point!