BLP 4158

Freddie Roach - Good Move

Released - April 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 29, 1963
Freddie Roach, organ; Eddie Wright, guitar; Clarence Johnston, drums.

tk.3 'T Ain't What You Do
tk.13 It Ain't Necessarily So
tk.22 Pastel
tk.34 I.Q. Blues

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 9, 1963
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Freddie Roach, organ; Eddie Wright, guitar; Clarence Johnston, drums.

tk.53 When Malindy Sings
tk.55 Wine, Wine, Wine
tk.62 On Our Way Up
tk.65 Lots Of Lovely Love

Session Photos

Freddie Roach

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
It Ain't Necessarily So	Gershwin	29 November 1963
When Malindy Sings	Brown, Dunbar	09 December 1963
Pastel	Erroll Garner	29 November 1963
Wine, Wine, Wine	Freddie Roach	09 December 1963
Side Two
On Our Way Up	Freddie Roach	09 December 1963
T Ain't What You Do	Oliver, Young	29 November 1963
Lots Of Lovely Love	Richard Rodgers	09 December 1963
I.Q. Blues	Freddie Roach	29 November 1963

Liner Notes

AS his two previous Blue Note albums (Down To Earth, 4113, and Mo' Greens Please, BLP4128) proved Freddie Roach is a distinctively incisive organist. Unlike too many of his colleagues on that potentially aggressive instrument, Roach plays with a sinewy clarity of line and a refreshingly pungent sound. As this album further demonstrates, Roach, moreover, is capable of expressing widely diverse moods and is also as astutely tasteful an accompanist as he is a soloist.

The presence of Blue Mitchell and Hank Mobley is in the nature of a musical reunion with Freddie Roach. Both Mobley and Roach grew up in New Jersey, and early in their careers, they worked together often. “I’ve always wanted to do a date with Hank,” says Freddie, “but this is the first tine it's happened. You know, Hank, because of his having been with Art Blakey and Miles Davis, is usually associated with advanced jazz, but I’ve always been aware of how deep Hank’s roots are. You listen, for example, to his solo on Wine, Wine. Wine and you can hear how far down he can go.”

This is also the first occasion on which Freddie has recorded with Blue Mitchell, the long-time front line stalwart with Horace Silver. “I’ve played a lot with Blue though.” Freddie points out. “He used to come by the Tuesday night session. at Club 83 in Newark, and we had some real swinging times. There are some musicians — and Blue is one of them - who show how capable they are as soon as they pick up their horns on a session. They always know what to do, in backgrounds as well as solos. Blue is just a natural born musician.”

Clarence’ Johnston. Freddie's regular drummer, has been on the two preceding Blue Note albums by Roach. His experience has included work with. among others, James Moody and Harry “Sweets” Edison. “Clarence,” Freddie emphasizes, “is one of the most solid drummers I know. When you’re playing organ. you need a cat like that — someone who can really lay it down and hold it there for you but who, at the same time, can listen to what’s going on, feed you, and not get in the way.

Guitarist Eddie Wright has been with Roach intermittently for the past decade. His virtues, Freddie observes, are “that he’s both a fine rhythm guitarist and a superior accompanist. He can add a lot of those little extra notes that I would play myself if I could get to them. The best way I can describe why we fit so well together is that if I were playing the piano, my left hand would sound like what he’s doing.”

Freddie chose the opening number, It Ain’t Necessarily So, because he had been attracted to it for a long time. “Jazz musicians,” he notes, “often shy away from that tune because of its unorthodox structure, but I always dug it, and I especially like the message of the song. It’s saying that in all aspects of life, you’ve got to look beneath appearances. You can’t take things for granted. It’s a spoof, hut it’s also telling something true.” On this, as on Pastel, T’aint What You Do and I. Q. Blues, Freddie is heard without the horns.

In his work on It Ain’t Necessarily So, Freddie demonstrates the characteristic freshness of his voicing, the resilience of his beat, and the singularity of his imagination. What also distinguishes him from most other jazz organists is that even at the most forceful tempos, there is a singing quality to his playing — a buoyant lyricism that also lead his rhythm section accompanists to move with more suppleness.

When Malindy Sings is a provocative Oscar Brown setting of a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Freddie heard performances of it by Oscar and also by Abbey Lincoln. At the time of the recording, the "freedom movement" was, as it has continued to do, swelling in numbers and fervor. “You can’t be aware of what’s going on in civil rights,” says Freddie, “without being affected by it. And so, I was drawn to this song by a Negro composer and a Negro poet — a song that tells of the pride one can take in being Negro.”

“I also like the way Oscar writes.” Freddie continues. "His lines are very simple, very direct and very bluesy. This particular song isn’t a blues in form but it’s blues in feeling.” Both Blue Mitchell and Hank Mobley solo with appropriate emotional directness and with a litheness of line that is exactly right for this tale of how persuasively Malindy sings.

Pastel is a composition from relatively early in Erroll Garner’s career. It has long been one of Fred(lie’s favorites among the Garner originals. “Yet,” he notes, “I somehow never got around to play it publicly. When we were going over ballads for this album, however, I remembered it. I think it’s as beautiful as Misty and perhaps even more attractive. What drew me to it were Erroll’s strong, simple lines and that spell of romanticism that’s so much a part of the tune.” Note, incidentally, the gently glowing solo by Eddie Wright.

Wine, Wine, Wine, an original by Freddie, is a number he often uses in clubs to focus an audience’s attention. “Since it begins,” he explains, “with the horns playing by themselves, a feeling of anticipation is set up. The audience wants to know what my answers are going to be, and invariably they participate in the experience. Basically, the form of Wine, Wine, Wine is church-rooted, and as you listen you can begin to hear a choir. It’s in the tradition of the old ‘shouts’ the answering back and forth and the complete abandonment afterward.” The title is meant to connote a feeling of joyfulness. “It means.” says Freddie, “something good, like good wine. Something so good that the title has three wines in it rather than only one.” The performance is one of the most infectious of all of Freddie’s recorded performances so far as all of the participants share in Freddìe’s ebullient spirits.

On Our Way Up, another composition by Freddie, was written on the day (August 28, 1963) of the March to Washington for Jobs and Freedom. "The title,” Freddie underlines, “means exactly what it says. We are on the way up. If you’ll notice, in the bridge, although the structure is quite simple, judged on a note-for-note basis, the voicings intensify the sounds to show that something really is happening in ‘the movement.’ “ In form, this is a jazz march, but it is a march which signifies the determination among increasing numbers of Negroes throughout the country that what A. Philip Randolph calls “the unfinished revolution” will be won. The firmness of this belief is reflected in the disciplined emotion which suffuses the solos of Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell, and the leader.

Freddie relates the mood of T’Ain't What You Do to the similar puckish irreverence of It Ain’t Necessarily So. ‘I felt that way myself, as I started to play it,” Freddie adds, “and that feeling was further heightened because, as you play, you inadvertently hear the lyrics inside your head and they affect what comes out.” The performance illustrates the playful side of Freddie’s musical temperament. A hard swinger on driving tunes and a romanticist on ballads. Freddie also possesses a resilient wit which fuses easefully with the lightness of touch and tartness of sound of which he is capable on the organ.

Lots of Lovely Love is from Richard Rodgers’ No Strings. “I wanted to include it.” Freddie recalls, “because it’s built in cycles and therefore, there are so many things you can do with it. The main changes I made were in the syncopations. I smoothed them out to give it more of a jazz feeling.” Obviously, Hank Mobley and Blur Mitchell also found the song congenial for spirited jazz improvising.

I.Q. Blues was written by Freddie for the late Ike Quebec, an old and close friend. "We were going to record it together,” says Freddie, “but somehow, although we rehearsed it, we never put it on record. It has a very personal feeling attached to it. I put it together slowly, and was very pleased that Ike liked it. It’s not in strict time form. At the beginning, for example, instead of playing a bass line, I play a vamp with the melody line going against it. The beginning is in 4/4, but we move into 3/4 in the bridge. Since we never recorded it together, I perform it now as a tribute to Ike.” The song is uniquely affecting, another indication that Freddie increasingly is finding his “own thing” in both composition and playing.

After we had talked about the date, I told Freddie again how welcome I found his approach to the organ by contrast with the muddiness and power hunger of many of his contemporaries. “Well,” Freddie observed, ‘the organ is a very easy instrument to he carried away on. If you get caught up mainly in getting the beat going, you tend to forget about the sound. I try to keep both elements in mind — the sound and the feeling. And there’s always more to learn about subtlety. I’ve been fooling around with other instruments, for example. and I’ve learned quite a lot about comping by having people comp for me.”

"The important thing is,” Freddie concluded, “to try to fill holes where you figure the soloists need support. But when the soloist is playing something sell-explanatory, leave the hole open. Similarly, you have to hold the power of the organ in reserve and pull out the stops only when you need a big sound. You have to learn to use harmonies and dynamics with taste so that you leave room for the other players. And when it’s your turn to solo, the only way you’re going to make yourself distinct from other organists is by showing how you can control power to express everything you want to say, no matter how fragile.”

As Good Move makes clear, Freddie is his own best pupil, and I can think of no more beneficial influence on today’s organists than the thoughtful, self-controlled but high-spirited Freddie Roach. 

—NAT HENTOFF