Max Roach

Scott Free is a single composition by trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, played by the Max Roach Quartet at a length of about forty minutes and divided into two parts of roughly twenty minutes each. It was recorded in Milan on May 31, 1984 and issued by Soul Note in 1985. The piece already had a history in Roach's band. His earlier quartet, with Bridgewater, tenor saxophonist Billy Harper and bassist Reggie Workman, had played Scott Free in two parts at Yubin Chokin Hall in Tokyo on January 21, 1977, a concert later issued by Denon as Live In Tokyo Vol. 2. Seven years on, the composition returned as a whole album with a new rhythm partner and a new saxophonist.

By 1984 the quartet was Bridgewater on trumpet and flugelhorn, Odean Pope on tenor saxophone, Tyrone Brown on electric bass and Roach on drums. It was the same group that in January 1985 joined the Uptown String Quartet in Brooklyn for Easy Winners, another Soul Note album. The session took place at Barigozzi Studio with Giancarlo Barigozzi as recording engineer and Giovanni Bonandrini as producer, and Lee Jeske wrote the liner notes. Bridgewater is credited with all the music. Scott Free: Part I runs 19:58 and Part II 20:17, so the whole record is one continuous idea. Long, extended pieces had been the habit of Roach's 1970s quartet with Harper and Workman, as Phil Freeman recalls in Burning Ambulance (2020). The cover photograph of Roach is by Chuck Stewart and the cover art by Niridan.

This is the Soul Note CD 121103-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released in 1985 as SN 1103, with the two parts kept as separate tracks.