Jerome Richardson - Roamin' With Richardson

As good as the previous album was, this one is even more interesting to me. At least in part I'd attribute that to the fact that there is only 1 flute track and the rest of the record features Richardson's considerable talents on tenor and baritone saxophones. This one is a quartet date  so there is plenty of space for Jerome to display his talents along with strong performances from Richard Wyands, George Tucker and Charlie Persip. The connection between Wyands and Red Garland has never been more evident to me than on this date - were I doing a blindfold test, I would surely have guessed it was Red.

Having already a lot of exposure to Richardson as a flutist and tenor player, it is the 3 tracks featuring his baritone work here that are really eye opening. I'm surprised he wasn't more in demand as a soloist on the big horn because his nimble and expressive solos here put him in a class with the likes of Sahib Shihab, Leo Parker and Pepper Adams; just killer! Perhaps the only flaw that I'd point out in the album is that they probably could have used a couple extra takes of the George Tucker's opening composition "Friar Tuck". It just doesn't seem to quite jell and were this a Blue Note session, for example, I think they would have tried it a couple more times to get it right.

Once again this is from the out of catalog Japanese CD issue which sells for ridiculous $ these days.