Face to Face

Baby Face Willette, despite his gangster-ish stage name, was a strongly gospel-rooted organ player who played piano with early R&B performers like Johnny Otis and Big Jay McNeely before switching to organ in the late 1950s. After album sessions for Lou Donaldson and Grant Green, he signed with Blue Note as a leader and made two albums, of which this is the first. He was a powerful player, adding gospel fervor and pumping rock ’n’ roll energy to the soul jazz formula, but he’s often overshadowed by his sidemen — if you’re listening to this record at all, it’s likely for Green, whose guitar solos have a sharklike bite. Tenor saxophonist Fred Jackson is in an obstreperous mood, too, popping the horn’s valves and squalling in a mode that’s clearly derived from the raucous jump blues of Illinois Jacquet et al., but can also be heard as a kind of early free jazz, if you want to think about it that way. Drummer Ben Dixon gives the music a trashy looseness, making Face To Face an album that deserves to be played loud, through cheap speakers.