Hard bop pianist and composer Freddie Redd was born in Harlem, New York on May
29, 1928. He began playing piano at a young age and while a member of the
military service in Korea in the mid-‘40s, he discovered Charlie Parker and set
his sights on jazz music. After his discharge in the late 1940s, he played with
a variety of artists include Johnny Mills, Oscar Pettiford, Tiny Grimes, Art
Blakey, Cootie Williams, Ernestine Anderson, and others. He released a split
album with Hampton Hawes – Piano: East/West (1955) – with one side devoted to
Freddie Redd’s recordings. That same year...