Red Allen’s ‘Indiana’ is blasting into my right ear so this letter has a good start. Yes, I bought it, and it’s rather a let-down – not so much as Higginbotham Blues’, and perhaps more so than ‘House in Harlem’, because it has flashes, when Allen plays, of really terrific and significant jazz. I really feel inclined to say that Allen’s ‘finishing jazz’. If possible, hear it – or come over and hear it when you are on leave. ‘Indiana’, due to bloody studio set-up and shitty reproduction, sounds as if the thing is played by tpt, trmbn, clart and piano alone. Edmond Hall is the clarinet player and Higgie on trombone: the former is slick & slightly irritating: the latter rather out of place in a small band. Give me Higgie – and Allen, for that matter – in a band where they can play their loudest. Higgie’s solos are bull-roarers trying to fit in. Anyway, it’s Allen one listens for. He has a solo on ‘Indiana’ and also one on the other side, entitled ‘a Sheridan “Square”’. This is a blues, composed in the manner of 12 bar riff, 12 solo-Hall, 12 riff, 12 solo Allen, 12 solo Higgie, 12 piano, 12 riff to end. The riff is always the same. Allen’s ‘Indiana’ solo starts in his ordinary fast, compact way – vide ‘Algiers Stomp,’ ‘Margie’ &c - but gets into a hell of a mess owing to the fact that he seems inclined to get a fixation on a phrase and probe it to its logical conclusion. As its logical conclusion is somewhere near a fart, the solo is not classically constructed. On the other side he abandons all attempts at restraint and produces a blues solo to rank with Edison’s on ‘Sent for you Yesterday’. Harsh cries & moans issue through the bell of his trumpet in a really incredible manner – well, not so bad as that, but it’s Allen a few stages on - the 1941 Allen (this is a new record). He’s finishing what Armstrong began, in my opinion - playing stuff Louis wouldn’t have had the intelligence & sensibility to think of. But wait till you hear it. << less