Hard bop pianist Freddie Redd’s excellent score for playwrite Jack Gelber’s controversial drug themed stage play/art house movie, The Connection (featuring an on-stage quartet fronted by Jackie McLean) may well have been Redd’s calling card, but it was the Blue Note album, Shades Of Redd, cut just six months later, which is this compilation’s jewel in the crown. Here, McLean is joined by his theatrical understudy, the great star-crossed tenor sax player Tina Brooks to form a truly formidable frontline. They work so well together that one could be excused for believing the pair were joined at the hip. Kicking off with ‘The Thespian’, each one of the seven Redd compositions that make up this remarkable collection are approached with gusto. The fact that McLean and Brooks are constantly spurred on by the team of Paul Chambers and Louis Hayes adds to the album’s overall success. Redd may well have been an above average composer and a far from shabby piano man but, without question, it’s the combined energy of his accompanying players that make the day. It’s our loss that, save for tracks on the Blue Note albums Street Singer and Redd’s Blues, McLean and Brooks didn’t record extensively as a team.