What a nice surprise! After an absence of 30 years from the recording studios, here's the legendary Freddie Redd, now aged 86, with a relaxed album of standard tunes that only an icon would be allowed to record in the current climate, all of which, incidentally, as annotator Mark Gardner points out, were favourites of his biggest influence, the great, and too often overlooked, Bud Powell. The often-frenetic turbulence of his earlier work has been replaced by a more thoughtful approach with fewer notes, but equally emotional, blues-influenced impact. Apparently, he still hates the solo time-restrictions of recording, period, but stretches out creatively on 10-minute versions of ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘I'll Remember April’ and settling for introspective eight-minute workouts on ‘Perdido’ and ‘Lover Man’, both of which get highly personal readings. Sadly, there's only one original, considering what an impressive composer he's been earlier in his career – a relatively simple 12-bar, ‘Blues For You’. This writer has reservations about the recorded sound, which seems somewhat dated and whether Anderson was the ideal bass choice, but Billy Drummond fits in fine with good 4s and 8s. How about a follow-up, Mr Redd?