Release Date: 01 November 2017
Label: Strata-east / Pure Pleasure Records
Packaging Type: Gate Fold Vinyl
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060149622636
Genres: Jazz
Description
180g audiophile vinyl reissue remastering by Ray Staff at Air Mastering, Lyndhurst Hall, London.
Most of the musicians who gathered to record this fantastic spiritual jazz record for the Strata-East label on May 24th, 1974 had crossed each other's paths in various musical pairings over the preceding few years. Husband and wife team Dee Dee Bridgewater (vocals) and Cecil Bridgewater (trumpet) had been working together on albums like Frank Foster's "Loud Minority", and Roy Ayers' "Coffy" and "Virgo Red".
Ten weeks before the "Freedom Of Speech" session, the couple had been joined in Tokyo by Cecil's brother Ronald Bridgewater (tenor saxaphone) to record Dee Dee's debut album, the beautiful "Afro Blue". Also in the studio on May 24th, 1974 was Donald Smith, (piano, vocals), fresh from recording on his older brother Lonnie Liston Smith's "Cosmic Funk" - on which Ronald Bridgewater had also played percussion. Cecil McBee (bass) was also there - just two weeks before, he'd completed his own Strata East date "Mutima", and in February he'd played on Mtume's "Rebirth Cycle" - with both albums also featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater on vocals. He'd also played on Lonnie Liston Smith's "Astral Travelling".
Press:
"Parker, a hard swinging and hard driving drummer, was little known outside the African American jazz community in New York in the mid 1970s and apart from Freedom Of Speech he is now all but lost to history...As recorded legacies go, Parker's is brief in the extreme. It is a matter of feeling the quality, not the width." - **** All About Jazz
Tracklisting
Nina Simone
Archie Shepp & Mal Waldron
The Descendants Of Mike & Phoebe
Lonnie Liston Smith
Nat King Cole
David Murray
John Stubblefield
The Piano Choir
Klaus Gesing, Ana Pilat, Latvian Radio Big Band,
Maik Krahl
Duke Ellington
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald
Kurt Elling
Anita Wardell
Anita Wardell
