SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2021
VOLUME TEN NUMBER THREE
NANCY WILSON
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
NANCY WILSON DONALD HARRISON
(October 2-8)
CHICO FREEMAN
(October 9-15)
BEN WILLIAMS
(October 16-22)
MISSY ELLIOTT
(October 23-29)
SHEMEKIA COPELAND
(October 30-November 5)
VON FREEMAN
(November 6-12)
DAVID BAKER
(November 13-19)
RUTHIE FOSTER
(November 20-26)
VICTORIA SPIVEY
(November 27-December 3)
ANTONIO HART
(December 4-10)
GEORGE ‘HARMONICA’ SMITH
(December 11-17)
JAMISON ROSS
(December 18-24)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/von-freeman-mn0000182113/biography
Von Freeman
(1923-2012)
Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
Not nearly as famous as his son Chico Freeman (also a tenor saxophonist), Von Freeman was nevertheless an equally -- if not more so -- accomplished jazz musician. While not a free jazz player per se, Von exhibited traits commonly associated with the avant-garde: a roughly hewn, vocalic tone; a flexible, somewhat imprecise approach to rhythm, and a fanciful harmonic concept. The son of a ragtime-loving policeman and guitar-playing housewife, Freeman himself began playing music around the age of two, beginning on the family piano. He was surrounded by music from a young age; his maternal grandfather and uncle were guitarists, and his brothers George and Bruz also became jazz musicians (on guitar and drums, respectively). At the age of seven, Freeman made a primitive saxophone by removing the horn from his parents' Victrola and boring holes in it. Shortly thereafter he began playing clarinet, then C-melody saxophone. Louis Armstrong was an early influence.
Freeman attended Chicago's DuSable High School, where his band director was the famed educator Captain Walter Dyett. He also learned harmony from the school's chorus director, Mrs. Bryant Jones. Freeman worked for about a year with Horace Henderson's Orchestra (1940-1941). He played in a Navy band while in the military (1941-1945). Following that, he played in the house band at Chicago's Pershing Ballroom (1946-1950), and for a time with Sun Ra (1948-1949). While at the Pershing, he played with many of the top jazz musicians who passed through town, including Charlie Parker. Freeman developed an underground reputation among Chicago-area musicians, and purportedly influenced members of the city's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Freeman seldom left Chicago and recorded infrequently, therefore never achieving a great measure of fame.
Freeman recorded with Milt Trenier for Cadet in the mid-'60s; Rahsaan Roland Kirk produced a Freeman session for Atlantic in 1972. In the late '70s (as his son Chico became well-known) Von was discovered by a somewhat wider audience. In 1982, Chico and Von shared a Columbia LP with pianist Ellis Marsalis and his sons Wynton and Branford (Fathers & Sons). In the '90s Freeman recorded for the Steeplechase and Southport labels. Freeman was one of the great individualists of the tenor saxophone, and remained creatively vital through the end of the millennium. Freeman died of heart failure in 2012.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/von-freeman
Von Freeman
Earl Lavon Freeman jazz tenor saxophonist, originally became known for his work with the Horace Henderson Group during the Late 1940s, and Sun Ra's band in the early '50s. During that period, he also played with his musical brothers, drummer Bruz (Eldrige) Freeman and guitarist George Freeman, (with pianists including Ahmad Jamal, Andrew Hill, and Muhal Richard Abrams). Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich says, “...For technical brilliance, musical intellect, harmonic sophistication and improvisatory freedom, Von Freeman has few bebop-era peers.”
The Chicago Reader's Monica Kendrick adds “He changes everything he touches, mostly for the better, with his swaggering tenor tenderness.”
Along with his contemporaries Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, and Clifford — the founder of the “Chicago School” of tenor players which adapted the work of Lester Young and Ben Webster, and influenced a number of players including Johnny Griffin & Clifford Jordan. To round out the musical family, the saxophonist's son Chico Freeman is also a well-known jazzman.
In the early 1960s, Freeman toured with Milt Trenier and, despite reasonably regular appearances in New York and Europe, the 75-year-old Freeman has remained to this day in Chicago, where you can see him almost weekly at clubs like Andy's, and has been the host of legendary jam sessions, like his Tuesday events at the New Apartment Lounge. You can catch him with the likes of John Young, Jodie Christian, Mike Raynor, Bettye Reynolds, Kurt Elling, and the rest of his musical family. His 75th birthday was celebrated with a headlining slot at the 1997 Chicago Jazz Festival. He joined one of the city's youngest tenor stars, Frank Catalano, in an afternoon set at the 1999 Fest.
A Fireside Chat With Von Freeman
"It's like apples...Each one tastes differently when you taste it. You get different flavors, which is beautiful. The more you got in you, the more you widen your scope."--Von Freeman
All About Jazz: Let's start from the beginning.
Von Freeman:
Oh, I was very young. I'm back from the victrola. You might be too
young to remember that, Fred, the victrola. But a lot of homes had that
where you played these old-fashioned, round records, the really kind of
heavy ones and my father had a whole bunch of them. I used to be the
winder. You see, Fred, you had to wind them up for each record and I
remember that. I must have been about three years old and I'd climb up
on the stool and get up there and wind it up. I listened to all these
records and that is when I first became very interested in playing
music. I listened to this music and I found out it was the saxophone and
I asked my father because he had no idea that one day I'd be playing
the saxophone. That's when I really started. It was just before I came
out of grade school, like sixth grade. I really started playing on back
porches and beating on garbage cans and that type of thing and just
making sounds. But the neighborhood I was in, there was a bunch of those
kinds of bands. We were always being run off somebody's back porch. My
father had a lot of Louis Armstrong. He had quite a few Louis Armstrong
records. Louis had just started recording when I was very young and he
played them all the time. He had three or four people that he played all
the time and I would be doing the spinning and that caught my
attention. Of course, it could have been my father was so crazy about
jazz music. Actually, he liked all type of music. Literally, I took the
needle on the victrola, it is shaped almost just like a saxophone. It
really is. Of course, my father loved this piece of furniture. It really
was at that time. When he went to work, I would take the head off and
make a mouthpiece out of tissue paper and I was running around the house
playing that thing and when he did come home one day and catch me with
that thing, I thought he was going to go off because my mother had
warned me that he might throw me out the window or something if he
discovered this thing (laughing). It was very disruptive. That is how it
really started out and that is a true story. I actually put some holes
in the head of this victrola that held the needle and was running around
the house blowing on it. My father said that we better get him a horn.
AAJ: You are self-taught.
VF:
You know, Fred, it was really a mistake that I started that way, but a
lot of kids over in the ghetto started like that. You know, I started
out without any lessons of any kind. I remember once, a fella gave me a
piece of paper that had the fingerings to the saxophone to it and that
is how I actually figured out the fingering. But I more or less started
that way. I was just one of the many kids in the neighborhood that did
that on different instruments. We all had something we were beating on
without instructions, which of course is not that good to do. That's the
way most of the kids in the neighborhood that I was running with, we
all were heavily into music and most of us made instruments. It is very
interesting how they made bass. They used to take a tub and a 2 X 4 and
string and everybody knew how to make that one.
AAJ: Was a Chicago sound evident?
VF:
Yeah, I guess if there is one, on the saxophone especially, it is a
collaboration of Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins I would say. Those two
were very popular in Chicago. I remember as a young kid, I used to go
see Lester Young with Count Basie and Hawk would come through town and
play with different trios with different clubs. In fact, he was a very
good friend of my father's. I actually first met him. One day, my father
told me about Hawkins working somewhere. It was near the house,
actually, about two or three blocks from where we lived. My father was
on duty and he used to go over. You see, Fred, he was a Chicago
policeman. Sometimes he would make extra money by being a bouncer at a
nigh club. That was very popular in that era. I had actually met Coleman
Hawkins when I was very, very young. Of course, later on, I got to know
him and even played with him a couple times.
AAJ: Rather than leave for New York, you remained in Chicago.
VF:
It was just happenstance really. But you know, speaking of that, there
is a bunch of musicians around here that probably would be better known
and might have become stars had they gone on to New York. New York had a
lot of the record companies, most of the record companies, especially
main record companies and they would push their clients and that made
all the difference in the world. So a lot of guys went on to New York
and made big names and perhaps I could have done that also, but it was
just happenstance that I stayed around Chicago.
AAJ: Regrets?
VF:
No, not really. I've become very popular in the last couple of years
(laughing). I guess it all evens out, if you look at it that way. Now
that I am eighty, I can look back and I've been through many trials and
tribulations that the average musicians go through. For instance, both
Fred Anderson and I, I think what caused us to survive was both of us
have been what they call outside players. Fred is much more than myself.
I just think everything sort of evens itself out. Like I said, if you
happen to stay around long enough. Of course, even if you don't, the
people that like you will come. I think for years and years and years, a
lot of New York stars were pushed more harder than Chicago people. And
then a lot of people from here went to New York. So we lost a lot of
people. New York is still the leading capital of jazz music.
AAJ: The Apartment Lounge, where a portion of the new record was recorded live, has been a regular night.
VF:
Well, this time, I've been at The Apartment three or four times, but
this time, in 1982, I started there. I was just going in there because
the lady who booked me, she was booking The Apartment at the time,
different little combos, duets and things. She asked me if I would come
because one of her stars couldn't make it and I went in and I went in on
a Tuesday and I played on Tuesday and she said if I could come back
next week and I went back and it has been about twenty-one years.
AAJ: The Improvisor, befitting title.
VF: Well, it is so kind of you to say. I've done it all my life really.
AAJ: Jason Moran plays piano on a couple of tunes and a guitarist is featured on another handful.
VF:
Actually, I went into The Apartment about twenty-one years ago with a
piano group, piano, bass and drums. I had piano for maybe fifteen years
and I lost a lot of piano players. I lost about seven during that tenure
and I said that maybe I should try going in a different direction
because I never could get a real piano, not that an electric piano is
not real, but I'm speaking of an acoustic piano. I always did miss that
and finally, I said that maybe I will just go with an electric guitar
because it was so hard to find somebody for the kind of money I was
playing to bring their own piano. The guitar is a little easier to carry
than an electric piano and it sounded OK to me and so that is the way I
ended up. I finally found a good one in Michael Allemana and a very
good bassist named Jack Zara and a very good drummer named Michael
Raynor (all on the album). They have all been with me for quite a while
now.
AAJ: You play solo on the opening "If I Should Lose You."
VF:
Well, playing solo, I will tell you, Fred, because on this latest
recording, I did this tune and most of the things to me happen very,
very weirdly. Most of the time when I play solo and I've done that on a
few of my recordings, it is done accidently. I remember one record I did
that and the pianist didn't come back in time. He went somewhere, I
guess out to eat or something and I started playing and it was recorded
(laughing). On this last recording, the way that happened was Jason
Moran and I were playing a duet. I didn't even know that we were going
to do this because I never play duets. I featured him and I went to the
mike and said that it is time to introduce this wonderful pianist from
New York and I said that I am going to take the walk and Jason played
and the moment he got done playing, he said that he was going to feature
this wonderful saxophonist and he was going to take a walk and he was
gone and left me standing out on the stage, me and this saxophone. He
was walking off the stage (laughing) and I just told the crowd that I
would do the best that I could do and that's when I played this tune
that happens to be on this recording. It was just happenstance and I was
so fortunate that it turned out OK because you play by yourself, you
are really taking a big risk because you may lose track of the melody
and there is really no time, so you may start faltering with the time
and you may forget some of the chords. You have to have it all yourself.
AAJ: Turned out to be the best tune on the album.
VF: Well, I was very fortunate. Thank you very much.
AAJ: Rahsaan Roland Kirk produced your first album.
VF:
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, oh, that was sort of interesting because I was
traveling. I have done a little traveling, but it was always mostly
overnight or on the weekends and then I would be right back home. I
happen to go to Toledo if I remember it and I know it was somewhere in
Ohio, where he is from I think. His dad or somebody, uncle or some grown
up brought him to see me and he was a little guy. He must have been
eleven or twelve, but he was already great because somebody had taken me
around to see him (laughing) that I had to see this little genius and
he was with some band that was jamming and he was playing two or three
horns at once and doing circular breathing and all that stuff at his age
and he really had it together. Later on, he looked me up. He heard I
had been by to see him and he said that his uncle brought him by and he
listened to me and where was I from. I told him Chicago and he asked me
my name and he said that he had been taken to see most of the great horn
players, but he had never heard of me and he made the staunchest
statement that one day he was going to be famous and he was going to
look me up and see that I got recorded. Well, he was rather precocious
of course, but I said, "Oh, sure," and everybody in the band laughed a
little bit. But you know, that guy, years later, looked me up right here
in Chicago and actually asked me if I remembered him. He was a big star
at that time and he had this big hit record, Three for the Festival,
where he is on there playing three instruments, four, five instruments
at once and he was like a whole band up there. He said he wanted to take
me on to New York because he was leaving and do you know that he asked
me who I wanted and I told him a couple of guys and he said that he had
to have two from New York and so I told him and I had a pianist, John
Young. We worked on and off for fifty years or so. We went off to New
York because he called me the next morning and he fulfilled what he said
and I went to New York and that is where I made this recording. Of
course, it didn't do anything, but they tell me now that it is doing
very well.
AAJ: KOCH reissued Doin' It Right Now.
VF: Yeah, that's right.
AAJ: You did a live record with your son, Chico at the Blue Note in New York (Half Note Records).
VF:
Yeah, it is always a pleasure and thrill to work with my son. We made
one or two other things for different labels. He was a very smart kid
and he had moved onto college as a mathematician. He won a scholarship
for it to Northwestern, here in Chicago, which is a big time school. I
thought surely, although he was playing trumpet, I didn't think he was
really serious. I thought maybe he would put it down. I used to play
trumpet for years and he went down in the basement and found one of my
old trumpets. The thing was all beat up and battered, but he actually
got it in the band there at school and changed his curriculum around. It
was mathematics and now he was playing the trumpet, but I had another
surprise coming because after he had been in the band for about two
months, which I was very surprised that he made that band. He was fourth
trumpet, but still he made the band. The next thing I know, he came
home with a big case and I asked him that that wasn't a saxophone and he
said, "Oh, yeah, daddy. I think this is where I really belong." I just
looked at him and the next thing I know, the band went to Brazil and
they won honors and he won honors as the best soloist. He went onto New
York and that is where he has been ever since. That was 1971. I just
kind of tipped my hat to him and said, "Go ahead Chico."
AAJ: Do you get many age references being equated with your playing?
VF:
Oh, sure, I run into it all the time. The only thing is, I have been
really blessed and really, just really, really lucky that my health is
as well as it is. A lot of young guys are stunned I blow like this and I
say, "I think I blow harder." It also has to do with I think I play
more instead of just blowing now, along with the knowledge of how to
conserve your energy. It is much easier to play now than at one time.
For one thing, I didn't know much about mouthpieces or reeds or horns or
anything and as you get older, Fred, you learn a lot of things that
makes the playing much, much easier. So I can blow pretty strong and
long and loud and I can still dance if I want to and I can still move
around. I think a lot of people come to see if I'm going to faint or
something (laughing).
AAJ: Your latest sounds better than your first.
VF: (Laughing) Well, thank you very much, Fred.
AAJ: And in the end?
VF:
Well, truthfully, that I tried to be a nice guy and I tried to help the
younger guys and gals. I do it all the time, but it is by osmosis
really because I don't claim to have taught anybody anything. I came up
with great saxophone players and nobody ever told me anything. If you
respect what they are doing, you do pick up things. A lot of kids come
around me now and if I know the answer, I tell them. When they ask how
they are going to sound like me, I tell them I could sound like them if I
tried. I am just telling them the truth. It is a singular music, jazz
music is. You must find yourself. That is the only way you are really
playing jazz. You want to enlighten the world with the touch that you
have.
AAJ: And Von Freeman has done his part.
VF: Oh, thank you. And tell your audience, I love them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Freeman
Von Freeman
Earle Lavon "Von" Freeman Sr. (October 3, 1923 – August 11, 2012) was an American hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist
Biography
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Freeman as a young child was exposed to jazz. His father, George, a city policeman,[1] was a close friend of Louis Armstrong with Armstrong living at the Freeman house when he first arrived in Chicago.[2]
Freeman's father taught him to play piano and bought him his first saxophone when he was seven. His musical education was furthered at DuSable High School, where his band director was Walter Dyett. Freeman began his professional career at the age of 16 in Horace Henderson's Orchestra.
Freeman enlisted into the Navy during World War II and was trained at Camp Robert Smalls in Chicago. "All the great musicians ended up at Great Lakes", he recalled. "It was an incubator for the best and the brightest lights in the jazz world at that time, and the musical jam sessions were simply phenomenal." After training, he was sent to Hawaii as part of the Hellcats[3] stationed at Barbers Point Naval Air Station in a band that starred Harry "Pee Wee" Jackson, the trumpeter from Cleveland whose nickname was Gabriel.[4] The Hellcats were frequent winners of the islands' competitive Battle of the Bands competitions and included musicians who had formerly played in bands fronted by Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Lucky Millinder, Les Hite, Count Basie, Fats Waller, and Tiny Bradshaw.[5]
After his return to Chicago, where he remained for the duration of his career, Freeman played with his brothers George on guitar and Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman on drums at the Pershing Hotel Ballroom. Various leading jazzmen such as Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie played there with the Freemans as the backing band. In the early 1950s, Von played in Sun Ra's band.[6]
Von Freeman's first venture into the recording studio took place in 1954, backing a vocal group called The Maples for Al Benson's Blue Lake label. He appeared on Andrew Hill's second single on the Ping label in 1956, followed by some recording for Vee-Jay with Jimmy Witherspoon and Albert B. Smith in the late 1950s, and a recorded appearance at a Charlie Parker tribute concert in 1970.
In 1972, Freeman first recorded under his own name, the album Doin' It Right Now with the support of Roland Kirk. His next effort was a marathon session in 1975 released over two albums by Nessa. After that he lived, regularly performed, and recorded in Chicago. His recordings included three albums with his son, the tenorist Chico Freeman, and You Talkin' To Me with 22-year-old saxophonist Frank Catalano, following their successful appearance at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1999. Four live albums for SteepleChase Records, "Inside Chicago" documented his partnership with trumpeter Brad Goode.
One of Freeman's contributions was his mentoring of countless younger musicians such as Corey Wilkes and Ben Paterson as well as his steadfast support of what he liked to call "hardcore jazz" (as he still did in a 2001 article in DownBeat.)[7] Freeman's quartet played Monday nights throughout the 1970s and the mid-1980s at The Enterprise Lounge which closed when he toured Japan, and then Tuesdays at The New Apartment Lounge with his longtime trio of sidemen composed of drummer Michael Raynor, guitarist Mike Allemana and bassist Matt Ferguson. The quartet played a long set first, the vehicle that showcased Freeman's range from sensitively unwound ballads to intense improvisations that utilized his sometimes rough timbre and indefinite pitch to create a unique avant garde style of his own. His performances were also impressive verbal ones, as he served as an important figure that both helped African-American culture thrive on the South Side as well as invited the participation of European Americans and others into the warmth of the community he and the rest of the Enterprise and Apartment created.[8]
Freeman was considered a founder of the "Chicago School" of jazz tenorists along with Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin and Clifford Jordan. His music has been described as "wonderfully swinging and dramatic" featuring a "large rich sound".[9] "Vonski", as he was known by his jazz fans, was selected to receive the nation's highest jazz honor, the NEA Jazz Masters award.[10] Freeman died of heart failure on August 11, 2012, in his home town, at the age of 88.[11]
Freeman was the father of jazz saxophonist Chico Freeman.[11][12]
Discography
As leader
- 1972: Doin' It Right Now (Atlantic)
- 1975: Have No Fear (Nessa)
- 1975: Serenade and Blues (Nessa)
- 1977: Young and Foolish (Daybreak/Challenge)
- 1981: Freeman & Freeman with Chico Freeman (India Navigation)
- 1989: Walkin' Tuff (Southport)
- 1992: Never Let Me Go (Steeplechase)
- 1993: Lester Leaps In (Steeplechase)
- 1994: Dedicated to You (Steeplechase)
- 1996: Fire (Southport)
- 1999: Von & Ed with Ed Petersen (Delmark)
- 1999: Live at the Blue Note (Half Note)
- 2000: You Talkin' to Me? with Frank Catalano (Delmark)
- 2001: Live at the Dakota (Premonition)
- 2002: The Improvisor (Premonition)
- 2004: The Great Divide (Premonition)
- 2006: Good Forever (Premonition)
- 2009: Vonski Speaks (Nessa)[13]
As sideman
With Brad Goode
- 2001 Inside Chicago, Volume 1 with Von Freeman (SteepleChase)
- 2001 Inside Chicago, Volume 2 with Von Freeman (SteepleChase)
- 2002 Inside Chicago, Volume 3 with Von Freeman (SteepleChase)
- 2002 Inside Chicago, Volume 4 with Von Freeman (SteepleChase)
With April Aloisio
- 1994 Brazilian Heart
- 1996 Footprints
- 1998 Easy to Love
With Francesco Crosara
- 1999 Colors (Southport)
- 2003 Emotions (TCB)
With Kurt Elling
- 1995 Close Your Eyes
- 2000 Live in Chicago
With Chico Freeman
- 1988 You'll Know When You Get There
- 2010 Lord Riff and Me
With George Freeman
- 1969 Birth Sign (Delmark)
- 1973 New Improved Funk (Groove Merchant)
- 1977 All in the Game
- 1995 Rebellion
- 1999 George Burns
- 2001 At Long Last George
With Joanie Pallatto
- 1995 Passing Tones
- 2000 The King and I
With others
- 1978 Lockin' Horns, Willis Jackson
- 1981 Hyde Park After Dark, Clifford Jordan (Bee Hive, 1981)
- 1982 Fathers and Sons, Wynton Marsalis
- 1991 Rhythm in Mind, Steve Coleman (Novus)
- 1992 No One Ever Tells You, Eden Atwood
- 1994 Silvering, Louis Smith
- 1999 Some Cats Know, Connie Evingson
- 1999 Spaces, Doug Hammond
- 2000 Come Walk with Me, Martha Lorin
- 2003 Emotions, Lilian Terry
- 2006 Solitaire Miles, Solitaire Miles[14]
External links
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/arts/music/von-freeman-fiery-tenor-saxophonist-dies-at-88.html
Von Freeman, Fiery Tenor Saxophonist, Dies at 88
Von Freeman, who was considered one of the finest tenor saxophonists in jazz but attained wide fame only late in life, died on Aug. 11 in Chicago. He was 88.
The cause was heart failure, his son Mark said.
Though his work won him ardent admirers, Mr. Freeman, familiarly known as Vonski, was for decades largely unknown outside Chicago, where he was born and reared and spent most of his life.
As The Chicago Tribune wrote in 1998, his playing “represents a standard by which other tenor saxophonists must be judged.”
Last year, Mr. Freeman was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor in the field.
Not until the 1980s did he begin performing more often on famous out-of-town stages, including Alice Tully Hall and the Village Vanguard in New York. Earlier in his career Mr. Freeman had made much of his living, as he told The Tribune, playing for “strip joints, taxi dances, vaudeville shows, comedians, jugglers, weddings, bar mitzvahs, jazz clubs, dives, Polish dances, Jewish dances, every nationality.”
If he never got his big break as a young player, Mr. Freeman said, then that was because he never especially sought one.
“I’m not trying to brag or nothing, but I always knew I could play, 50, 60 years ago,” he told The Tribune in 2002. “I really don’t play any different than the way I played then. And I never let it worry me that I didn’t get anywhere famewise, or I didn’t make hit records.”
What he preferred to chasing fame, he said, was playing jazz as he felt it demanded to be played. The result, critics agreed, was music — often dazzling, occasionally bewildering — that sounded like no one else’s.
Mr. Freeman’s playing was characterized by emotional fire (he was so intense he once bit his mouthpiece clean off); a huge sound (this, he said, took root in strip clubs where the band played from behind a curtain); and singular musical ideas.
His work had a daring elasticity, with deliberately off-kilter phrasing that made it sound like speech. He cherished roughness and imperfection, although, as critics observed, he could play a ballad with the best of them.
Where some listeners faulted him for playing out of tune, others praised him for exploiting a chromatic range far greater than the paltry 12 notes the Western musical scale offers.
“Don’t tune up too much, baby,” Mr. Freeman once told a colleague. “You’ll lose your soul.”
His masterly tonal control let him summon unlovely sounds whenever he chose to, and he chose to often. His timbre has been called wheezing, honking, rasping and, in the words of Robert Palmer of The New York Times in 1982, a “billy goat tone” — a description that, as context makes clear, was not uncomplimentary.
Earl LaVon Freeman was born in Chicago on Oct. 3, 1923. (His given name was occasionally spelled Earle.)
His father was a city policeman — a highly unusual job for a black man then — whose beat included the Grand Terrace Ballroom, a storied nightclub. There, Von soaked up the music of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Earl Hines and other titans of the age.
Young Von pined for a horn, and as luck would have it there was one in the house. The fact that it was attached to his father’s Victrola did not deter him, and one day when he was about 7, he pried it off, drilled holes in it and began to blow.
Deplorable sounds ensued, and his father overheard. “He picked me up, just kind of shook me, then hardly spoke to me for about a year,” Mr. Freeman later told Down Beat magazine. But if only as a deterrent, his father bought him a saxophone.
By 12, Von was playing professionally in Chicago nightclubs, reporting for work armed with a note from his mother. It read, “Don’t let him drink, don’t let him smoke, don’t let him consort with those women, and make him stay in that dressing room.”
He graduated from DuSable High School, a public school famous for its jazz program (other alumni include Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington), and entered the Navy, playing in its jazz band.
After his discharge, Mr. Freeman resumed his career, sitting in with some of the finest musicians to appear in Chicago, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.
He was often invited to join them on the road, but he turned most offers down. He was disinclined to leave home: besides his wife and four children, he had his mother to look after. She had been widowed since Von was a young man, when his father was shot and killed in the line of duty.
In later years, Mr. Freeman played at jazz festivals throughout the United States and Europe. But despite his newfound fame, till nearly the end of his life held court each Tuesday night at the New Apartment Lounge, a small Chicago club where he had performed since the early 1980s. “Vonski’s Night School,” musicians called his sessions there, and young players came from around the world for the chance to sit in with him.
Mr. Freeman’s marriage to Ruby Hayes ended in divorce. Besides his son Mark, he is survived by another son, Chico, a prominent tenor saxophonist, and a brother, George, a jazz guitarist. Two daughters, Denise Jarrett and Brenda Jackson, died before him, as did another brother, Eldridge (known as Bruz), a drummer.
His recordings include “Doin’ It Right Now,” (1972), “Young and Foolish” (1977), “The Great Divide” (2004), “Vonski Speaks” (2009) and, with Chico, “Freeman & Freeman” (1981).
Though Mr. Freeman had not looked for it, renown, when it came, was a vindication.
“A lot of people who didn’t pay a lot of attention to me or to my music started coming around when I was heading to my 80th birthday,” he told The Tribune in 2002. “Now they were saying, ‘Well, Vonski, you’re all right after all.’ ”
Remembering my 1973 introduction to Von Freeman
Over the past 30 years, Von Freeman has become one of a handful of jazz musicians internationally known as Chicago icons. He’s not only linked in the public mind with the Chicago jazz scene—alongside Fred Anderson, Patricia Barber, Kurt Elling, and Ken Vandermark—but indisputably admired by his peers on that rarefied list. This summer the National Endowment for the Arts selected him for its last class of Jazz Masters, placing him in the company of about 100 other artists who’ve been so honored since the program began in 1982. Well into his 80s, Freeman continues to play with a power and vigor that mystify his long-term listeners and challenge his younger sidemen.
The luminary of today stands a world apart from the man I encountered when I first wrote about “Vonskis” in 1973. (The nickname derives from his lifelong habit, inspired by bebop slang, of adding the syllable “-ski” or “-skis” to the end of pretty much every acquaintance’s name; I’ve been “Neilski” since the day we met.) The phrase “when I first wrote about” should be read in its most restrictive possible sense: by coincidence or luck, I was in the right place to publish the very first interview with Freeman—in fact, the first major article of any kind about him.
At the time, Freeman was a knockabout south-side Chicago saxist with an iconoclastic style and a resumé that included some pretty impressive credits—he’d made a lo-fi jam-session recording with Charlie Parker in the early 50s, for example, and played with Sun Ra’s band later that decade. Nonetheless, north of Madison only hard-core listeners had ever heard him (or even heard of him). But other musicians certainly knew him. And in 1972 one of them—wild saxophone prophet Rahsaan Roland Kirk—produced Freeman’s first album, Doin’ It Right Now.
For the 1972-’73 school year, I was a senior at Northwestern and hosting a weekly jazz program for the campus radio station, WNUR (89.3 FM). But I might never have bothered with Freeman’s LP when it arrived in the station’s music library, thanks to its self-consciously funky cover photo of Vonskis in a wifebeater, holding his horn in some dilapidated cellar. I had no idea at the time just how ridiculous that image was—even though he turned 88 this month, Freeman always appears in public dressed with dapper distinction.
Fortunately Freeman’s son Chico—then a trumpet player, later to become a saxophonist and an important jazz artist in the 80s and 90s—shared a music-theory class I was taking at Northwestern. He knew I had an interest in jazz, and one day he said to me, “You know, my father plays saxophone.” (I now consider this akin to saying, “You know, Everest is a mountain.”) Chico suggested I bring his father onto my radio show for an interview, and I first met Vonskis on a Sunday night in the spring of ’73, when he drove from the south side to Evanston to be questioned by a very green white boy.
From then on, Freeman would introduce me as “this fellow who owns a radio station in Evanston.” He knew better, but I think he had fun watching me squirm when he said it.
Judging by that interview, I figured Freeman would make a pretty good story for the Reader, the fledgling weekly for which I’d begun writing the previous year. (It turned out to be my first cover feature.) I spent some more time with Vonskis in front of a cassette recorder, and then went down to beard the genial lion in his south-side den—Betty Lou’s at 87th and Vincennes, where Freeman hosted a weekly set that even then included lots of sitting in by proteges and wannabes. I was the only white person in the room and, at 21, one of the youngest. But I still felt comfortable walking in and finding a spot at the bar—right up until Freeman greeted me and offhandedly offered a friendly warning: I’d be “safe as a bug in a rug,” he said, as long as I stuck by him.
Fast-forward to the 90s, by which time Freeman had moved his weekly sessions to Tuesdays at the New Apartment Lounge on 75th Street, where in 2002 the block in front of the club was renamed Von Freeman Way. The room brimmed with people, white and black in almost equal numbers, many of them tourists from Europe or Japan. The kids bringing their horns and hoping to sit in were usually predominantly white, trekking in from area colleges to pay some dues and grab a little of Freeman’s reflected spotlight. (The club recently reopened after renovations that lasted most of 2011, but whether Freeman will return to his weekly gig remains to be seen.)
In the 90s and 00s, Freeman placed his career in the hands of two Chicago record labels. Southport Records got things started with some loosey-goosey projects that put him on the discographical map; then Premonition Records’ Mike Friedman oversaw several more sessions, better planned out and more carefully controlled, that resulted in the albums that will likely endure as the saxophonist’s legacy.
Freeman owes both labels a great deal of gratitude for helping to bring his utterly unique, devastatingly authentic talent to the world’s attention. He had rarely traveled outside Chicago when he began recording semiregularly in the 1980s; in this century, he’s performed frequently in New York and Europe. Covered widely in jazz journals, chronicled in the Chicago Tribune, reviewed in the New York Times, Freeman as a senior citizen enjoyed a career boost that would have dazzled a jazz musician half his age. Nonetheless, throughout the 80s and 90s, he often referred to me as “that young man who made me famous” and mentioned the Reader cover story from decades earlier. This “young man” turned 60 last month, and I still think that it was really more the other way around.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Neil Tesser, author of The Playboy Guide to Jazz, began covering jazz for the Reader in 1972 and most recently contributed a 2008 feature about Sonny Rollins‘s time in Chicago.
https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/life-changing-albums-von-freeman-s-doin-it-right-now
Life-changing albums: Von Freeman's 'Doin' It Right Now'
Monday, January 7, 2019
Saxophonist Steve Coleman talks about the album that changed his life, 'Doin’ It Right Now', by Von Freeman.
Interview by Brian Glasser
For me, it’s not really about records so much as live gigs. There was a guy called Von Freeman – not everyone’s heard of him! – in Chicago where I grew up. He didn’t formally give me lessons, but he was kind of like a mentor. Watching him year after year definitely changed my life. I would make private recordings and listen to them. I started off with stereo reel-to-reel, later on cassettes. I’d be in the audience, these were nightclubs so it wasn’t so much of a stage. I’d just be there recording, because I was trying to learn the music. I was 18, 19 – that’s when I started learning what the music was about.
When I played them back later, there was so much to get: the rhythm, the way it flowed, melody, harmony, saxophone stuff like fingering and breathing – there’s so much that you’re getting all at once when you see somebody live. The earliest album I heard of his was Doin’ It Right Now, but it’s different on record. I listened to records of course, but for me the much more important thing was seeing people live.
With the tapes, I had to work it all out myself – I didn’t understand anything at the beginning. These guys were older professionals in my father’s generation and they wouldn’t tell you anything – it wasn’t like a school situation where they’re telling you what the chords are and so on. They learned the same way – so I figured if they could do it, so could I. For me, it’s way better than going to jazz school – it’s not even close. Actually, it’s not even a matter of ‘better’ – it’s not the same thing. It’s a whole different kind of learning.
I’ve never taken one improvisation lesson in my life. I won’t say that I didn’t try to study with Von – but he said, ‘No – I don’t teach’. I asked another guy in Chicago for lessons – Bunky Green. And he told me ‘No’ too! They were my two favourite saxophone players in Chicago at the time; so, I thought, if these guys aren’t going to teach me, then forget it – I’ll just get it like they got it.
Primarily, what I did was this: there were people like Charlie Parker who I’d found out about; and I wanted to know how they learned how to play; and I wanted to copy it. Not mimicking what they were playing but how they learned how to play – their process. I knew that that process produced great musicians, so I wanted to know what it was. That’s what they’d done in their time – they didn’t go to schools like Berklee. I thought: ‘These guys didn’t learn to play in school – so I’m not going to learn how to play in school’. To me, that was kind of obvious.
Initially, I went to a particular concert to see Sonny Stitt, because he sounded like Bird to me, so I had that sound in my head. Von Freeman, who I didn’t know at the time, was the other saxophonist on the concert. But Sonny Stitt didn’t live in Chicago; whereas Von did. When I talked to Von afterwards he said, ‘I have these sessions that happen every week on the South Side’; and gave me the address. It wasn’t far from where I lived, so I started going. That’s how I hooked up with him. It wasn’t because I thought he was amazing – I couldn’t hear that in the beginning. I only heard that later, after I started hanging around. Even that took a while, because my ears weren’t developed.
I was always aware of death – I knew everyone wasn’t going to be around for ever; so I tried to get as much as I could from people while they were still around. Whether it was Thad Jones, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson – I tried to see them as much as I could. If you want to be a master shoemaker, you hang around master shoemakers! It’s osmosis.
Having said that, when I listened back to the tapes of Von when I was young, I did try and emulate him – I tried to play the notes and transcribe them. You have to do that to know what they’re doing – you have to get into the detail. I listened to Von from 1975 – when I was 18 – till when he died. I only played professionally on a gig with him two or three times, and I made a couple of recordings with him. Usually he was playing with his group and I was playing with mine.
The learning part never stops – I’m still trying to figure out what people are doing! For me, ‘doing my own thing’ and ‘learning’ is the same thing, it’s not separate – learning is my own thing …
https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/von-freeman-have-no-fear-1975-nessa/
Von Freeman: Have No Fear (1975)
Nessa Records
Selection: Polka Dots and Moonbeams (Van Heusen / Burke) 320 kbps MP3
Audio Player
Artists
David Shipp (bass), Wilbur Campbell (drums), John Young (piano), Von Freeman (tenor saxophone) Recorded June 11, 1975, engineer Stu Black
Music
Finding myself owner of this record, but knowing nothing about the artist, the label, or the genre of Chicago jazz, I first fact-checked the usual suspects, just in case I put my foot firmly in my mouth. The results were encouraging:
Dusty Groove say:
One of the best studio albums ever from the legendary Von Freeman – and a date that really captures some of the careful essence of his live performances in Chicago. … This easy-going Nessa session really lets him open up and take off – blowing tunes that are straight ahead, but always with that offbeat style that turns the songs inside out – making them rich exploratory fields for inventive and creative solos.
Amazon reviewer says:
This is one of the best tenor sax players of his day, hopefully with his passing his legacy will come to light. The playing on this is crisp and swinging. … Not a household name outside of Chicago but for many years he held court in the windy city. I would rate this five stars, straight ahead jazz at it’s finest.
Wiki add:
Freeman was considered a founder of the Chicago School of jazz tenorists along with Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin and Clifford Jordan. His music has been described as “wonderfully swinging and dramatic” featuring a “large rich sound”.
“Vonski,” as he was known by his jazz fans, was selected to receive the nation’s highest jazz honor, the NEA Jazz Masters award. He died of heart failure at the age of 88. on August 11, 2012.
LJC says:
Both Nessa and Von Freeman were new to me, drawn to my attention by LJC poster Andy C – hat tip. I’m not proud, I can learn. An unfamiliar artist but you feel immediately at home with the music. A little homework indicated that Von Freeman was a heavyweight.
During the golden years of the ’50s and ’60s he worked only as a sideman but with some big names, making his first recording as leader as late as 1972. Over the following four decades he released a string of albums in the genre he liked to call “hardcore jazz” but remained a stalwart of the Chicago jazz scene.
Perhaps it made sense to stay home in Chicago. By the early ’70s many jazz greats were prematurely deceased, had fled New York for Europe or followed the money to LA scoring for film/TV. Worse, some had donned gold lame pants and embraced the funky chicken, or even worse, the “F” word, Fusion.
Freeman’s commitment to the mainstream jazz tradition is worthy of exploration. Mounting Have No Fear on the turntable, I pretty soon found myself wondering where the last twenty minutes had gone. It may not be ground-breaking or boundary-pushing, but it is thoroughly enjoyable jazz.
Vinyl: Nessa N-6 Stereo
Great feisty sounding record – gutsy tenor, strong piano, firm bass and punchy drums. Solid pressing. The build- quality of the cover is another matter Makes you appreciate those thick card laminated Blue Note and Impulse all the more.
Collector’s Corner
Source:
Rarely frequented vintage vinyl shop off tourist mecca Portobello Road West London.
LJC poster Andy C pointed me at Nessa, a Chicago based specialist small jazz label founded by one Chuck Nessa, a name I keep coming across on the Groovisimo forum (frequented by some of the usual suspects here, you know who you are).
Andy recommended the tenor player on the Nessa label, Von Freeman . I knew I had seen the name Von Freeman on an album somewhere, but for the life of me couldn’t remember where or when. It’s a strange thing, that. While looking through hundreds may be thousands of records a month, you can actually remember seeing one record title and artist name for a split second, and you can remember the name and vaguely a cover, despite giving it no thought, passing on it. However you can’t remember anything important, like the date of your wedding anniversary.
A month later, for no better reason than looking for a birthday card from a shop I knew that had nice cards, I found myself in Notting Hill. Notting Hill resident Prime Minister David Cameron was busy issuing flood warnings, Julia Roberts was on answerphone and Hugh Grant’s line was engaged: so much for blending in with the locals. The card shop had closed down, what else but take a rare browse through a local record store that rarely has anything, and what should pop up in hand? Von Freeman, on Nessa. Spooky.
Heaven knows what this record’s ownership history was, adorned by a gold sticker from an Amsterdam record store, The Jazz Inn. I wonder if they are still around. Sounds like my sort of place.
Hi LJC, another genever? Had this great record come in. Von Freeman…You don’t know him? He’s great.
And so he is.
https://tedpanken.wordpress.com/tag/von-freeman/
For Von Freeman’s 97th Birth Anniversary, a 1991 WKCR Interview with Von and pianist John
Von Freeman and John Young
November 20, 1991, WKCR
copyright © 1991, 1999, Ted Panken
Q: Von Freeman and John Young were both born in 1922, and both went to DuSable High School. When did the two of you first meet?
VF: Well, I remember John from a long time ago. Let’s just put it that way. For a long time.
Q: Was it in school?
VF: Oh, I don’t know. I . . .
Q: Was it in a musical situation?
VF: Well, I knew about him long before I really knew him. I always admired his playing, way-way-way back.
JY: I remember, Von, when we first played together, when was it, 1971, at . . . What was the name of that place?
VF: The New Apartment Lounge?
JY: At the New Apartment Lounge, yes. The other piano player, Jodie Christian, couldn’t make it. So Von called me to work with him, and we’ve been working with each other on and off ever since that time.
Q: But you had known each other back in high school undoubtedly.
JY: Well, I knew him, but our paths didn’t cross. He had his family band, his brother on drums and another brother playing guitar, and he played tenor saxophone, and I think he had Chris [Anderson?] . . . Anyway, he was using other piano players at the time. I was working with a dude named Dick Davis.
Q: So this was in the 1940’s, after the War.
VF: After the War, uh-huh.
JY: Or the 1950’s, I think it was.
Q: Both of you studied under Walter Dyett, and I believe John Young was in one of the first classes at DuSable High School as well. Didn’t it open around that year?
JY: Well, I was in the second year. What happened was, in ’34 they attempted to extend the old Wendell Phillips High School. It was called the new Wendell Phillips High School. But then they decided not to tear down old Wendell Phillips; they decided to keep it, and changed the name to DuSable. So it started off in 1934 as the new Wendell Phillips High School. They had to go into that stone and change the name to DuSable.
Q: There were a number of very talented young piano players in your class at that time.
JY: Well, I was in there with Dorothy Donegan and a fellow named Dempsey Travis, who wrote that book (he was playing the piano then, at that time), and Marbetha Davis. Nat Cole had just graduated not too long before that. Nat Cole and somebody else, I can’t think of him. Those were the piano players. We used to do what they called the Hi-Jinx at DuSable High School.
Q: The Hi-Jinx was a show band type . . .
JY: Yeah, it was a show to raise money. It was a fundraiser. And I was in the Hi-Jinx with these dudes, as a matter of fact, Redd Foxx was in one of those Hi-Jinx, a tramp band. But that was one of our fundraisers.
Q: So there was really tremendous musical talent all concentrated in this one high school, and there continued to be for many, many years.
JY: That’s right. Captain Dyett was at the root of it all. He’d cuss us out and make us do better than we did the previous time. He’d throw us out of the band, and if we came back the next day and didn’t make that same mistake, he’d pretend like he didn’t notice that we came back. He’d let us stay. [Von laughs]
Q: John Young, how long had you been playing piano at the time you entered high school? Had you already developed your musicality?
JY: Yes. I had my first lesson when I was about eight, I think it was. I had a private teacher for about ten years. Two, because I had one lady for five and then a gentleman for the other five. The lady didn’t want me to play jazz; she said, “That old devil jazz.” She wanted me to be a classical artiste. But I’d been listening to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Basie, and I said, “Well, that’s me.”
Q: You could be an artiste of another sort. But this was all music that was really part of the Chicago scene when you were a youngster coming up.
JY: Yes, that’s right.
Q: I don’t know how much first-hand exposure you were able to get as a teen and pre-teen. But give us a little flavor of what things were like in Chicago when your consciousness about music was starting to emerge.
JY: Well, if you want to know what things were like in Chicago, I’d better let Von . . .
Q: Von Freeman, I’ve been neglecting you.
VF: No, it’s fine. John is doing fine. [John laughs] But I really don’t remember.
Q: You don’t remember?
VF: No, man. Listen . . .
JY: It’s just like “Stardust,” huh?
VF: Yeah, listen.
JY: “Oh, but that was long ago . . . “
VF: See, because things were so groovy then that you had a tendency not to even realize how good it was. For instance, John was talking about Art Tatum before; of course, anybody with any musical sense at all loved that man’s piano playing. And I was lucky to have the fellow who first told me about him playing in a group of mine. His name was Prentice McCarey. Prentice was just like John. He loved him. He was a great piano player himself. Every time Coleman Hawkins would come through town . . . And this was way back, before I went to the War, so it was in the ’30s. See, I lived over Prentice McCarey. I used to listen to him practice on the piano. He was playing a place called the Golden Lily on 55th Street with one of my idols, which of course was Coleman Hawkins. And later on, I happened to have acquired a job at this same club on 55th Street on the south side of Chicago, upstairs. And it was funny . . . We were playing there, and Prentice said to me, “Man, guess who I’m gonna bring by your club tonight?” Well, I couldn’t guess. I thought he meant Prez, because he knew I loved Lester — Lester Young. But it was Art Tatum.
I’ll never forget that night, because when we got through playing, he went somewhere and picked up Art, and brought Art back. Let’s see, we got off at about one; it must have been about 2 o’clock in the morning. And Art played for about four or five hours just on the piano. And the piano wasn’t that great; a couple of keys were broken. He just missed them all night long. And that’s one of the high evenings of my lifetime. I had just gotten married, I think I was 23 years old or something like that. I didn’t realize how great that was.
The reason why I brought that up is that’s the way Chicago was. It was so good and there were so many big people in town . . . Like 63rd Street was full of musicians, full of clubs. 64th Street, the great Pershing Lounge up there. They would bring everybody in . . .
Q: But in the ’30s, when you were a teenager . . .
VF: Oh, that’s when it started. That’s when all that got started, and it really lasted until just about to the end of the ’40s . It started really dying out around 1950.
Q: For instance, as teenagers, were you able to go, say, to the Grand Terrace and hear Earl Hines, or was that off-limits to you?
VF: No, I never went. I was too young for that.
JY: Well, they broadcast from there, so we . . .
VF: But we heard that, though.
JY: We heard it on the radio.
Q: And was this what you were trying to come in under? Was Earl Hines the band that you admired? Von, when you were a young saxophonist, who were some of your models?
VF: Well, one of the persons is still living. What’s his name, John? He plays at Andy’s a lot now. On Mondays. He plays clarinet and tenor . . . Sort of a red looking fellow. He was on there with Budd Johnson. Oh, his name is Franz Jackson.
But see, during that era, Earl was just one of the many bands. Like, Count Basie was out here and all those big bands. Because that was the big band era. And of course, Earl had one of the better bands, and it just happened that he was based in Chicago. But then when Earl left, King Kolax brought a band in (do you remember that, John?) for a while.
JY: Yeah.
VF: He was a great trumpet player around town. And of course, he had Bennie Green with him, Gene Ammons . . . In fact, Billy Eckstine took some guys out of his band. Gene Ammons was in the Kolax band.
It was so good, and there were so many different personalities coming in from around the country. Now when you look back, when there’s nobody coming in on the south side, hardly, you think about how good it really was. That’s the reason why it’s hard to remember, because you should have been writing down all that stuff, really, but you didn’t. You had a tendency to think to think it was going to last forever, and of course it didn’t.
[MUSIC: Von and Chico Freeman, “Mercy, Mercy Me”; Gene Ammons, “My Way”]
Q: John Young joined Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy as a pianist in the early 1940’s.
JY: That’s right.
Q: What was your progression from high school to the point where Andy Kirk was calling you to join his band?
JY: Andy Kirk was on the road and needed a piano player, so he called the Harry Gray, the President of the Musicians Union, to send him a piano player, and he recommended me for the gig. Harry Gray was the type of fellow that has a big voice and talks loud; he was one of those kind of guys that believes in talking loud on the phone to get his point over. He calls me up on the telephone, and he says: “Mister Young!” He scared me half to death because I was young; I was only 19 or 20 years old. “Young! We have a job for you. It’s with Andy Kirk. Can you make it?” Hey-hey! I didn’t know what to say, you know what I mean. I said, “Uh-unh-uh-unh . . . ” He said, “Well, I’ll call you back.” So he called me back . . . I had to talk about it with my mother because I wasn’t 21 years old yet, see. So I had to tell my mother about it, and beg her to let me go. So anyway, he called me back, and I said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Gray. I’ll make it.” So he said, “Yes, well, okay then, I’ll call Andy.” So that’s how I got with Andy Kirk.
Q: Were you familiar with the band from records before that?
JY: No. All this was completely new. Mary Lou Williams had left the band, and the piano player who replaced her had just recorded “The Boogie-Woogie Cocktail.” “The Boogie-Woogie Cocktail” was getting over. So I had to take the record home and learn it off the record. [sings theme] So I took it home and laid my ear on it, and got back and played it as close as I could to the way the record sounded.
Q: Were you working in Chicago after high school?
JY: Yes!
Q: What were you doing in the interim? Tell us a little about your activities, John Young.
JY: Well, after I left high school, a fellow called me up and he took me to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I worked with him. I forget his name. But my earliest recollection of working in Chicago was some striptease joints. So I enjoyed that.
VF: [laughs] Look out, John!
Q: Was it solo piano?
JY: No-no . . .
Q: Did they have a little band?
JY: No, no, they had a group. It was a striptease joint downtown on . . . I think it’s called Clark Street — at a striptease joint down there. And then I worked in a place called Calumet City. What they would do . . .
Q: The notorious Calumet City. [Von: loud laugh]
JY: They would hang some drapes, some see-through drapes in front of the band, because they didn’t want the customers to think that the musicians were too familiar with the striptease artists, you know what I mean? So we played . . . Some of these striptease artists had some very difficult music while they was out there taking clothes off. And you’d be mad, because they got you there, and you’re back there sweating, and all they’re doing is just walking, traipsing around and taking a piece off here and there. And you’re back there sweating, trying to play the “Rhapsody In Blue” while they’d be walking around. But that’s what they liked. That’s what the striptease person wanted. And they’d want you to play that music. So I did . . . [sings ‘Rhapsody In Blue’] . . . and they’d just walk around, taking a little piece off here and there.
So that was my first gig before I really made a living. You know, you always make gigs here and there. But the first gigs that I remember where I really made a living was them striptease joints.
Q: Were you playing a lot of blues then, too?
JY: Oh, yeah. Well, you had to play that.
Q: Just talk about the piano styles in Chicago that you’d have to be going through.
JY: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. You had to play a little boogie here and there, and a little . . . Anyway, you had to know a little bit about most styles. Play a little of what they called stride, and you had to play a little boogie, and you had to play a little oom-pah, oom-chunk, oom-chunk-chunk — “boom-chink,” you would call it. You had to do a little bit of everything in order to try to make a living at it — which is the same thing I’m doing now. In order to make a living, you’ve got know a little bit about all of this.
Q: Well, subsequently (and we’ll talk about this later), you played with quite a few singers.
JY: Yes.
Q: Von, what were your earliest gigs after high school? Or were you also working during high school, outside?
VF: Well, you know, it was just about the same.
Q: You worked in the same strip joints.
VF: Oh, yes! [John laughs] And in fact, one of the first groups that I worked with, I can’t quite remember this man’s name now, but he was the drummer. The only thing I can really remember about him was he sat so low. He sat like in a regular chair, and it made him look real low down on the drums. I said, “I wonder why this guy sits so low.” You could hardly see him behind his cymbals. And we were playing a taxi dance. Now, you’re probably too young to know what those were.
Q: Well, I’m certainly too young to have experienced them first-hand.
VF: Oh! Well, see, what you did was, you played two choruses of a song, and it was ten cents a dance. And I mean, two choruses of the melody.
Q: No more, no less!
VF: And the melody. And man, when I look back, I used to think that was a drag, but that helped me immensely. Because you had to learn these songs, and nobody wanted nothing but the melody. I don’t care how fast or how slow this tune was. You played the melody, two choruses, and of course that was the end of that particular dance. Now, that should really come back, because that would train a whole lot of musicians how to play the melody. And I was very young then, man. I was about 12 years old.
Q: Were you playing tenor then?
VF: Oh, C-melody.
Q: C-melody was your first instrument.
VF: Yeah, my first one. And that really went somewhere else, see, because that’s in the same key as the piano. But it was essential. And of course, I worked Calumet City for years, and I learned a lot out there! Like John said, you played a lot of hard music, and you essentially played the melody out there. You had to learn the melody to tunes.
And so right today, I try never to forget the melody. Because I’ve found out that the people don’t forget the melody. So no matter how carried away I get, I try to remember the melody. All this stuff that you learned early in your career, you come to find out most of the things . . . Like, I wasn’t that crazy about Walter Dyett’s teaching. He was . . .
Q: Too authoritarian?
VF: . . . a disciplinarian and whatnot. But see, as you go along, and especially when you start getting in those 60s and closer to 70, see, you learn . . . One lesson is that most of the people who patted you on the back all the time and said, “Blow!” didn’t really mean it. The folks that you really think about are the ones that said, “Hey, man, that doesn’t sound good” or “Hey, that’s wrong.” They don’t really mean that it’s wrong. It’s incorrect; let’s put it that way. But you learn and you look back, you say, “Hey, they were trying to help me.”
Q: Von, let me get back to your career. When did you graduate from C-melody to the tenor?
VF: Well, I was playing dances. See, there was a famous lady named Sadie Bruce, and she gave me my first job. I must have been about . . . My first local job on the south side of Chicago was in her dance room. Because see, I used to tap dance.
JY: Yeah?
VF: Yes. So she asked me one day, “Somebody told me that you play an instrument.” I said, “Well, yes, Mrs. Bruce, I do.” She said, “Well, have you got a little old band? Because I’m planning to start some socials in my basement.” I said, “Well, I don’t know whether we’re good enough to play for that.” She said, “Well, I heard you on one of these back porches; you sound pretty good to me.” We used to do a lot of back porch clowning and playing.
But the interesting thing about that was that I had James Craig with me. Now, you may have never heard of James Craig, but he’s the piano player on Gene Ammons’ “Red Top” that did that little thing that’s kind of got . . . When you play “Red Top,” you have to play that little thing that he put in that song. He was a very good pianist. I had a vibe player named Norris from out of DuSable, and then I had Marvin Cates on drums. And that was my little group. I guess I was about 15. And it was the first job I played on the south side of Chicago, although I had been working in Gary and working downtown in the strip places.
So you know, my history is similar to John’s and almost everybody around Chicago. Because most of the jobbing was done in strip places in Calumet City and Hammond . . .
Q: Did those gigs get set up through the union?
VF: No-no-no. In fact, the union didn’t know anything about it.
Q: So those were things to avoid . . .
VF: Well, you worked eight hours for ten dollars. The union would have had a fit.
JY: Yeah, they were strict about that.
VF: It was like . . . the mines, we used to call them. But you could earn a living.
JY: That’s right.
Q: And learn a lot of music.
VF: Oh, listen! Now, when I look back, what you learned was invaluable. Because you learned discipline. You’d sit there playing the melody of the songs all night long . . .
Q: And I guess ten dollars went a long way in 1937.
VF: Oh, man, you dig? And it helped my lung power a whole lot, too.
Q: Smoke-filled rooms and all.
VF: Listen, you learned how to put that air in that horn there. Piano players learned how to really get a touch.
Q: I know that later Captain Dyett would form bands of his students and join them in the union, and they’d play gigs around that town? Was he doing that when you were there?
VF: Well, that was the one band that he called . . . See, we were all out of school, our high school called DuSable, and he called his band the DuSableites. He kept it for a while. He started it about two years before I went into the service, and then I came out of the service, then went back into it and stayed until about ’46 — about two more years. So he had that group from about 1941 until maybe ’47 or ’48.
Q: The years after World War II, from 1945 and ’46, were thriving years musically in Chicago. Von Freeman, you and your brothers — George, the great guitar player, and Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman, a drummer — had the house band at one of the most prestigious rooms in Chicago, the Pershing Ballroom. What were the circumstances behind that? And talk a bit about the geography of the Jazz scene in Chicago in that particular time and around that area.
VF: Oh, man, that’s when it was buzzing. From 31st Street all the way on up to let’s say 64th Street — well, 66th — Chicago was the place to be. John Young was at the Q Lounge, Dick Davis — everybody was in town and had a gig. It was right after the War, and the town was booming . . . They had a great promoter around town named McKie Fitzhugh. This guy came out of DuSable, and he was promoting. And he called me one day and he said, “Would you be interested in maybe getting your two brothers . . . ” See, because my brother George was very popular around that time.
Q: Had he been in Chicago during the war?
VF: Yes. You see, he didn’t go to the war; he was too young. He stayed around Chicago, man, and his name was buzzing. So he said, “Hey, why don’t you get together with your two brothers and get a piano player and a bass player? I’ve got an idea; I want to book a lot of names into the Pershing.”
Q: He likes to pick with a silver dollar, your brother.
VF: Right. That’s what he does now, yeah. So I said, “Okay, that will be fine.” So there was a fellow named Chris Anderson, a little blind pianist, and I had Leroy Jackson on bass (Leroy has since passed), and Alfred . . . What was Alfred’s last name, John? Do you remember Alfred?
JY: White.
VF: Alfred White. I was using two bassists at the time, concurrently, you know. So we went in, man, and that’s where I met Diz and Bird, Billie Holiday — everybody came down there.
Q: What sort of room was that? That was part of a complex of clubs . . .
VF: Oh, that was the ballroom itself. See, but the Pershing Lounge was beautiful, too. I played that later on. But at that time I was playing the ballroom.
Q: How was it set up? The national musicians would come in, and there would be dances?
VF: Yeah, dances. Dances Fridays and Saturdays.
Q: So people would be dancing to Bird, dancing to Diz . . .
VF: That’s right.
Q: Dancing to the people who would come in with you.
VF: Well, around that time things had changed a lot. They would stand around the bandstand, and there wasn’t that much dancing going on any more. And we used to play, man. I used to have a ball just playing with the stars, listening to them or whatever. I’m very lucky to have gotten chosen for that particular job.
Q: So who came through? We’re talking about the major stars in music at that time?
VF: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge — you name them. He brought everybody to Chicago, man. And he was paying so nice for those times. What he’d do is, he’d bring them in, and they would come in with no music, no nothing, and you were expected to know the tunes. And I had this little genius at the piano who knew everybody’s tunes. So we were very fortunate. We were able to play behind them.
Q: You’re referring to Chris Anderson.
VF: Yes.
Q: Von said that you, John Young, were working at the Q Lounge during this time.
JY: The Quality Lounge.
Q: The Quality Lounge. A high-quality joint, was it?
JY: Ah-ha-ha . . .
Q: I see.
JY: I was only in two shootings.
VF: At least! [laughs]
Q: Where was it? Which street was it on?
JY: The Quality Lounge was on 43rd Street. So if you know anything about 43rd Street, you know it wasn’t on the uppity-uppity-uppity-up. The Quality Lounge, I was in there with a fellow named Dick Davis who played tenor saxophone. I was the piano player, the drummer’s name was Buddy Smith, Eddie Calhoun was on bass. And I was singing . . .
Q: Singing, too.
JY: But at that time I had laryngitis. When (?) asked me to sing, I suddenly developed a case of laryngitis. All three of them called it “lyingitis” — because it was a gitis that never left. But the Q was cool . . . Like I say, it was a relaxed joint. You could come in there with tennis shoes on if you wanted to. It wasn’t nothin’ uppity, you know. And it was on 43rd Street. We had a good time in there for a number of years, the Quality Lounge on 43rd Street. I lost my point . . .
Q: Oh, I was talking to you about working in Chicago in the late 1940’s and late ’50s. When did you start working with a lot of singers?
JY: Well, a piano player always has a hundred singers around, you know.
Q: But you later became an accompanist for some major singers.
JY: Well, I was with Nancy Wilson for a hot minute in the ’60s. See, John Levy, the booking agent, he was a bass player around Chicago, so he just about knew everybody that he thought would fit with this or that person. So he thought that I would be a perfect fit for Nancy Wilson. He didn’t know that I was really into jazz, and that I wanted to be a jazz piano player. I wanted to be out front. You know what I mean? I won’t say out front, but I wanted to receive some of the same recognition that soloists receive rather than accompanists. But anyway, he hooked me up with Nancy Wilson, and I stayed with Nancy for a short spell.
And I had to write him a letter to explain to him why I didn’t stay. He thought that I should have stayed with her, because he gone to the trouble of booking me with Nancy Wilson, he felt that we were a perfect match, some kind of match anyway — and Nancy had struggled with me to try to get me to play here things like she liked them. So he thought I was going to be with Nancy Wilson for life. And I explained to him that, no, that ain’t what I had in mind.
When the piano player is a singer’s right arm, as they say, there are certain limitations to what he can do and what he . . . I’ve seen piano players be accompanists for life with certain singers or performers, and they stay in a rut for a long time. There’s only so much you can do as an accompanist. When you get thrown out there where you have to play the melody or have to carry the load, you’re lost.
Q: Well, we can get back to that in a minute. But I’d like to return to someone Von was talking about: Chris Anderson, who had a great impact really on the piano players in Chicago.
VF: Oh, man, he’s unsung. When I first met him, I met him in a big arena that we used to play on the south side, on 63rd Street and King Drive. I forget who I had on piano this time, but whoever he was, wasn’t making it. Chris happened to be sitting there, and he walked up and whispered in my ear, “I think I could play that.” I kind of looked at him, because I’d had people at different times to do that, say things like “Hey, man, I think I can do it a little better than what so-and-so is doing; I think I’ll feed you a little more” and blah-blah-blah. I generally don’t even listen. But for some reason or another, I said, “Oh, really?” Because this cat didn’t know the tune. I had asked him if he knew it, and he said, “Yeah,” and then when I got to playing the tune, he didn’t really know the tune.
So meanwhile, I guess the piano player heard Chris, and he said, “Hey, man, if you can play it, play it.” So he played it. And I said, “Hey, man, what’s your name?” And I noticed he was a little short fellow, you know . . . I said, “Hey, man, you stay there. I’ll pay both of you.” I told the other guy, “I’ll pay you, man, not to play.” So that’s how we began.
Chris heard a lot of things, just naturally, that I was trying to hear. And he was a very nice person about his knowledge. So I’d ask him, “Chris, where did you go there?” And he’d say so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. So I learned a lot from him. At the time, I had been using Ahmad Jamal. And then Ahmad . . . He had a guitar player, I forget where this fellow was from, I think from Pittsburgh, where Ahmad was from. [Ray Crawford] So Ahmad had told me that he was giving me a two-week notice, that he was going to form his own trio. He’d stayed with me, I think, about two years, and then he formed his own trio. And then he started hanging with Chris, too. And I really noticed a big difference in his playing after he had been around Chris. Almost anybody who had been around him, it kind of opened them up a little bit — because he was very advanced for those times. In fact, I still think he is.
Q: So do a lot of other musicians around New York.
VF: Mmm-hmm.
Q: But his influence seems to go through a couple of generations in Chicago.
VF: Yeah, well, I think . . .
Q: Was Andrew Hill checking out Chris? Herbie Hancock?
VF: Well, Andrew worked with me a long time, too, you know. But Andrew was more or less into bebop at that time. But Chris to me wasn’t a bebop player, he wasn’t a swing player, he didn’t play like Art Tatum. To me, he was . . .
JY: He had his own thing.
VF: Yeah, he had his own thing. He was a conglomeration of all of that. And he didn’t flaunt his knowledge or anything. Maybe being blind helped him a lot, I don’t know. But he could hear a lot of things that I had always heard, and that I think everybody eventually wanted to hear. He was advanced for that time. See, now I’m speaking about 40 years ago.
Q: I’d like to ask you about a couple of the other great musicians who were working around Chicago a lot at that time? I’d like to ask you both about Ike Day, and if you both came into contact with him, played with him?
VF: Well, we used to go around playing tenor and drum ensembles together. He was a great drummer. And he was one of the first guys I had heard with all that polyrhythm type of playing; you know, sock cymbal doing one thing, bass drum another, snare drum another. He was very even-handed. Like the things Elvin does a lot of? Well, Ike did those way back in the ’40s and the late ’30s.
Q: Did you know Ike well enough for him to tell you about the drummers he was paying attention to as a young drummer?
VF: I know he liked Chick Webb. He never really mentioned anyone to me other than Chick Webb. And he liked Bird’s drummer . . . .
Q: Oh, Max Roach.
VF: Yeah.
Q: And I know Max Roach liked Ike Day, because he’s said so publicly on a number of occasions.
VF: Right.
Q: He was also a very versatile drummer, is what I gather. He would play big- band, piano trio combos. He was a totally versatile drummer, with great ears, a great listening drummer and so forth. Does that jibe with your recollection?
VF: I never heard him play with a big band. But I know he played in the combos. He was with Jug a long time. There was another tenor player around Chicago named Tom Archia, and they were in a club for a long time — and he was the drummer.
Ike to me was well-rounded. He swung. And the triplets you hear people playing, that’s really part of Ike Day’s style. He did it all the time.
Q: It’s very valuable to know this, because there is only one recording of Ike Day I think that exists at all, and the drums are almost buried . . .
VF: Oh, with Gene Ammons?
Q: With Gene Ammons, a Chess date.
VF: Oh yeah, that’s the same band.
Q: John Young, what are your memories of Ike Day? Did you play with Ike Day? Did you work with him?
JY: I might have played one or two tunes with Ike, but I don’t remember playing very much with Ike. I liked his work.
Q: Who were the drummers you mostly used on your gigs in Chicago at that time?
JY: Well, a fellow named Phil Thomas. I used him more than I did anybody else. And I started off with a drummer named Larry Jackson. Larry Jackson, Phil Thomas, Vernell Fournier. Phil is the one I used most. Strong drummer. Oh, I’m sorry! I’m about to forget the one that I’m using now, and that’s George Hughes. George has worked around New York and a number of places with Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie uses him. George Hughes is his name. He’s the last drummer that I’ve used to any extent, more than once. Some drummers you use on certain gigs, just for that one time — there’s a number of those. But the ones that I’ve used over a period of time have to be George Hughes, Phil Thomas, and somebody else and somebody else . . .
Q: Von, I’d like to ask you about Gene Ammons, who I know you were friends with. He came several years after you at DuSable High School.
VF: Oh, well, Jug, man . . . Of course, I called him Ams. But it’s really interesting. His mother taught me my first chorus. He had a beautiful mother. And she was like a classical pianist. There’s very few people who know that. And I used to go to Jug’s house, and we’d practice together, and things like that. He was always one of my favorites. In fact, my brother was in the band that . . . See, George played with Jug. Probably the last nine years of his life Jug formed a group, and George was in the group. One of Jug’s last hits was called “The Black Cat,” which my brother George wrote.
So Jug and I had . . . We were very close. During my formative years, when I came out of the service, Jug used to hire me in his place, because he was getting so popular. So when he’d work a club, and he’d have to go out of town, he’d always get me to take his place. And a lot of people say I play like Jug. Which I wish I did! But I don’t know, he’s just one of my favorites.
[MUSIC: “Lost In A Fog” and “No. 7”; John Young departs]
Q: On the last segment, Von, I was asking you about some of the great figures who were active in Chicago in the post-World War II era. I know you used to work with Sun Ra’s rehearsal bands and had some contact with Sun Ra in the late 1940s and 1950s.
VF: Oh yes!
Q: What was he into at that point? What was his music sounding like and what was he doing around Chicago at that time?
VF: Oh, his music was sounding beautiful. But you know, one of the things that’s really different about him, he had two different concepts altogether. See, he was playing all this new-sounding music and different-sounding music with his own group — and of course I was a part of that. And then, he was over at a famous club on the south side of Chicago, the Club De Lisa, and he was writing show music for that band, which was Red Saunders’ band.
Q: Tell us a little about that band, too. It was a major band at a major venue.
VF: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s the band that Sonny Cohn came out of. And of course, for those who don’t know Sonny Cohn, he was with Count Basie for years and years and years. A trumpeter, a great young trumpeter. And of course, Red Saunders was a premier drummer around Chicago for show bands, all . . .
Q: And he had that band for about 17-18 years.
VF: Well, actually I think it was about 27. And he was right there at the Club DeLisa. And all the younger drummers used to go around to see Red to learn how to play shows. Because that’s another art of drumming. You know, show drumming: how to catch the performers and catch the singers. Every time they move, the drummer does something. And he did it so tastefully.
Q: Of course, there’s a tradition of that in Chicago that really goes back to the silent movie days in the 1920s.
VF: It certainly does.
Q: The great black orchestras that performed at the different big movie theatres.
VF: That’s right.
Q: There was Erskine Tate and Doc Cooke and a couple of others.
VF: That’s right.
Q: A lot of great musicians got their real polish in those show bands.
VF: That’s very, very true.
Q: Do you remember hearing those bands as a little boy?
VF: Oh, surely. And then I ended up playing at the Regal Theatre in the pit for different things.
Q: Oh, when was that?
VF: Oh, that was way back. I was in high school.
Q: The Regal was perhaps the equivalent in Chicago to the Apollo in some ways. Is that accurate?
VF: Yes, it was. Of course, no place would be like the Apollo, naturally. But the Regal was Chicago’s Apollo, let’s put it that way.
Q: We’re juggling a number of different things at once. So let’s get back to what Sun Ra was doing.
VF: Well, Sun Ra . . .
Q: He was writing show music for Red Saunders at the Club De Lisa.
VF: And I found it very interesting that he could write this show music, which was essentially this do, du, do-du, do-du-do, and then his thing, where he had all these different voices going and his music was very complicated at the time. But it swung — in Sun Ra’s unique way. Because he had two great saxophone players with him. He had, of course, Pat Patrick, who is sort of ill these days around Chicago. And of course, he had John Gilmore. He kept great players in his group. And of course, I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot by being in his band.
Q: Now, when exactly were you in his band?
VF: I was in his band during let’s say ’48, ’49 . . .
Q: Was that a working band or a rehearsal band?
VF: Oh, yeah. He played.
Q: What type of gigs would he do?
VF: He played dances. He really did, yeah. And he had like his own ballroom. I can’t think of the name of the ballroom. It was on the east side of 63rd Street, and we played at this ballroom. And Sun Ra was never into whether there was anybody in the ballroom or not. He simply tried to play what he felt.
Q: Would that music be recognizable to people who know Sun Ra today? Did it . . . ?
VF: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Now, he went back in recent years, and was playing some of Fletcher Henderson’s type of music and whatnot. But he’s still playing with that unique Sun Ra thing.
Q: Well, he covers the whole spectrum, really.
VF: Yes, he does.
Q: He plays different things for different occasions.
VF: Yes, he does.
Q: Didn’t Red Holloway also work briefly with Sun Ra? Is that true or not?
VF: I know that Red took a band into the Club De Lisa for six months when Red Saunders took off. Because I was in that band, playing alto, and I know that Sun Ra was writing the show music at the time. But whether or not he ever played in one of Sun Ra’s original bands, I do not know. You’d have to ask Red.
Q: Who were some of the other people in that Sun Ra band from the late 1940’s?
VF: Well, Julian Priester for one.
Q: That early, in the late 1940’s?
VF: No, Julian came along later. But in the ’40s . . . I’m trying to think. Oh, man . . . See, he had different people, and I really can’t remember who was in those bands..
Q: Tell us a little bit about the Club De Lisa. They were famous for their breakfast dances . . .
VF: Yes.
Q: We played a selection before by your son dedicated to Andrew Hill, who was 15 years old when he made his first record with you.
VF: Oh, yes, Andrew is a beautiful pianist. Of course, his style has evolved. At that time he was more or less playing bebop, and as he got younger he went on into free-form and whatnot. But he did it honestly. He feels it. And I like what he’s doing.
Q: Von, we’re going to hear now something from a Groove Holmes’ 1967-’68 record The Groover, featuring your brother George on his composition, “The Walrus,” some variations on “Sweet Georgia Brown” . . .
VF: Well, I think that’s what that is. I’ll have to hear it. But that sounds right to me.
Q: We’ll make no commitments.
VF: Well, back during that era we all used to take standard tunes and then write little originals and whatnot.
[MUSIC: “The Walrus,” “How Deep Is The Ocean” (Von solo)]
Q: Von, you had said to me that “How Deep Is The Ocean” is one you particularly wanted to have presented on this show, that you were very proud of it.
VF: Oh, man, to me that’s one of my greatest moments. In fact, that is the greatest moment I have enjoyed recording. It just happened. The lady who has the label said, “Hey, why don’t you play something slow?” I said, “Oh, I don’t feel like.” But she’s so beautiful, she asked again, and she said, “Well, please play something.” So how can you refuse a lady? So just off the top of my head, she said, “We’re rolling,” and I didn’t even have any idea what I wanted to play — I just went into that tune. And that’s the way it happened. And to me it’s the greatest thing I have ever done on record. I really felt that I did the tune justice; you know, for the way I was feeling. As a rule, I don’t care much for my recordings.
Q: Do you do that during your performances, Von? Are you going to be doing any a cappella this week at Condon’s?
VF: Oh, you know, last night I played several tunes. Of course, I didn’t do it like I did on the album, but I have a tendency . . .
Q: You always do long cadenzas . . .
VF: Yeah. And I have a tendency sometimes just to cut the band and play for a chorus or two. I’ve always done that, though.
Q: Von, you’ve stated in print that Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were really your two primary influences in terms of how to approach the saxophone, and you see your style as a melding of the two.
VF: That’s true.
Q: You mentioned hearing Coleman Hawkins in the 1930’s in Chicago. Did you study his records in the 1930’s? Did you study Prez’s records?
VF: Well, actually, yes. See, Hawk was a good friend of my father’s.
Q: How was that? Your father was a musician?
VF: No, not really. Actually he was a Chicago policeman. But he loved music, and he loved to hang around the guys, you know. So my Dad, he always kept a record collection from as far back as I can remember. So naturally, I had an affinity for music from right him, actually.
But Lester Young, see, used to come to the Regal Theatre all the time with Count Basie’s band, and all us little guys loved Lester, and we used to go and sit down in the front, you know, and try to play his solos. I had some of his earliest records, like “Every Tub” and all those, and I used to practice those. In fact, I got so I could play those note for note. And I could play Hawk’s “Body and Soul” note for note. So those two . . . Well, just like probably all the rest of the Chicago saxophone players. We were a conglomeration of Hawk and Prez.
Q: Gene Ammons, certainly.
VF: Oh yeah. Well, of course. And Dex and me — almost all of them.
Q: What was your first reaction to Charlie Parker when you heard his music the first time?
VF: Now, that takes me back. Because my Dad gave me the first music I ever heard of Charlie Parker. He gave me “The Hootie Blues.” He brought it, and he said, “Hi, hot-shot, you think you’re so hot because you got Lester Young down.” He says, “Try out this guy.” I said, “Oh, what’s this, Pop. Who did you bring . . . ?” Man, he put that thing on, and it knocked me out. Because see, to me Bird was playing Prez on alto — to me. And it was just more advanced. It’s like when I first heard Trane; I heard Prez and Bird. And I guess whoever follows, whoever the next saxophone player will be, it will be, you know, Prez and Bird and Trane and Getz and Zoot. All the good saxophone players have a tendency to be on the same line. Like just some of them followed; they play more Hawkins than Prez. But I hear lately most people are getting the two together. Because that makes what you’d almost call the perfect saxophone player. Because Hawk had so many things . . . He had all that power and drive, and Prez could float and just sail along. I would say Hawk just played straight up and down, and Prez played sideways. So if you get them, you’ve got the whole thing together.
And I think it didn’t take saxophone players too long to learn this, especially tenor saxophone players. I think I was with you on the program a few years back, and I was telling you about that tenor. That tenor presents a different type of problem for the simple reason that the ladies like the sound of the saxophone. And ladies are very dominant in your crowd. So you’ve got to learn how to play sweet, and for the men you got to learn how to holler — you can’t just sit up and play ballads all night. So there’s so much to get together on that tenor. And I like to always think of a trombone . . .
Q: In your playing?
VF: Yeah, man. Because a trombone sounds . . . Like, I call great trombone players like tenor saxophone players. You’ve got two of them here. Curtis Fuller, who did all those records with the Jazz Messengers, he just sounded like one of the real good tenor players. And the other cat who’s the Indian, what’s his name, who plays shells . . . ?
Q: You’re talking about Steve Turre.
VF: Yeah, Turre! Man, to me, man, those two cats when I hear them, I say, “Oh, man, if I could get a sound like that!” Because see, the tenor and the trombone, with Dickie Wells, remember him . . . ? All these cats had that haunting quality that saxophone players get. And as strange as it may sound, to me Miles sounds something like a tenor player. Although I always think that the trumpet is the dominant instrument, because who can do it better than a great trumpet player? Because you’ve got everything coming right out of the bell of that horn. When I hear Wynton play I think of a saxophone player. Now, that’s coming at it from a saxophone player’s view, of course.
[MUSIC: Coleman Hawkins: “The Man I Love,” “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams”; Lester Young, “These Foolish Things,” “I Got Rhythm”]
Q: “I Got Rhythm” is one of the basic bedrock tunes in all of Jazz.
VF: Man, listen. I can play a job playing “I Got Rhythm”! I’m telling you. Give me a few blues tunes and “I Got Rhythm” and I can make the gig. I’m telling you. Beautiful, man.
Q: “These Foolish Things” I can remember from my time living in Chicago as the most popular ballad in that town.
VF: Right.
Q: That may or may not be true . . .
VF: It still is!
Q: People in Chicago have long memories about the music.
VF: Well, see, just about all the tenor players made their name around there. You know, whether they were from Chicago or not, during the late ’30s and the ’40s and the early ’50s, all the great saxophonists were around Chicago playing. So you’d sort of feel like they’re from Chicago, although of course they’re not.
I talk on shows, dropping names here, dropping names there, but I’d just like to go on the record saying how much I’ve gotten from some of the current cats, cats who are still living. Like Benny Golson, man. Benny Golson wouldn’t even remember me. I was working at the Pershing Ballroom, or actually I’d moved up to the lounge, and Benny came by and jammed with me all morning, all morning at the Pershing Lounge — and I just fell in love with Benny Golson. Now, this is back in ’53 or ’54.
Q: He would have been on the road with one of the rhythm-and-nlues bands.
VF: I forget when he came to town, but it was just shortly before. . . Bird passed in ’55. It was about ’53 or ’54 or something like that.
Well, Benny Golson, and I remember the first time I heard Wayne Shorter. And then [John] Stubblefield used to be around Chicago; he used to come around to me a lot. And of course, Joe Lovano, I’ve been listening to him lately. Of course, Junior Cook wouldn’t remember the first time I played with him, down in Miami. I was traveling with the Al Smith Band, and ran into Junior Cook down in Miami, and he knocked me out. And of course Jimmy Heath I’ve always loved. Because Jimmy, man . . . Who plays more horn than Jimmy Heath? He’s beautiful. And Clifford Jordan has been around with me at different times. In fact, I came up here once and worked a gig with Clifford Jordan . . .
Q: That was at the Irving Plaza on 15th Street, with Chris Anderson and Victor Sproles on that date.
VF: Right! Surely! Yeah! And then of course, Sonny Rollins. I’ve always loved Sonny. And I ran into him once, I had a group I think in Holland or something, and he was on the concert, and they gave him a birthday party — and we hung out and talked for hours. Of course, Dewey Redman. I’ve always loved Dewey Redman, because he’s a beautiful cat. And young Branford Marsalis. I remember when we first cut this concept album, he was beautiful. And of course, Mike Brecker. I ran into him once at the Montreux Festival over in Europe, in Switzerland. And of course, Illinois Jacquet, I saw him recently at I think it was . . . Well, he had this big band at this thing in Holland.
So man, it’s . . . Of course, when you name names you always leave out some names. But these are some of the cats I’ve always probably copied a lot of things that they’ve done. And I’m glad to see that all these cats are still living.
Q: Von, one thing that has always impressed me and many people who have heard you is your proclivity for going inside and outside, but always remaining within the framework of the piece — the freedom of your playing in some ways.
VF: Well, it comes from my hobby, I guess. See, my hobby is music, and of course, I sit up all day and all night long sometimes, studying progressions. It’s just something that I like to do. I’m not trying to prove anything by it. I don’t even know whether it helps my playing or hurts it. But it gives me an outlet to experiment with things that I like, that I’m hearing inside. And I practice so much, even today I practice a couple of hours, three to four hours a day . . . In fact, I run my Mom, who I fortunately still have with me, I run her nuts sometimes. She says, “Man, put that horn down.” And I’m just trying to hear things. It’s just an inside thing, which I’m trying to hear things that please me.
And of course sometimes I do get carried away. I admit that. Sometimes I say, “Hey, come back!” Because I’m running sometimes progressions that I’ve been practicing and hearing, and sometimes I lose track of where the melody is and everything because I’m so extended out there. So it works both ways. And sometimes I’m rather pleased with what I do. But as a rule, I say, “Ah, let me discard that.”
So it’s just something to keep me interested in what I’m doing. And it’s more or less a personal thing.
[MUSIC: Von Freeman-Sam Jones, “Sweet and Lovely,” Von, “I Remember You.”]
Q: I know Sonny Stitt is someone you were close to and had tremendous respect for, along with Gene Ammons.
VF: Oh, I loved him, yeah. We played a lot together.
Q: One of the amazing saxophonists, maybe a little under-appreciated in New York more so than in the Midwest and the South.
VF: Well, I’ll tell you what had to happen with Sonny Stitt, man. You had to get on the bandstand and play with him to really appreciate him. See, Sonny Stitt was mean, man. Sonny Stitt could play so many different things. And he was just as mean on tenor as he was on alto. In fact, he had another style altogether on tenor. And he played baritone! He played it proficiently. The man was a great saxophone player.
Q: And a much more creative player than I think people commonly gave him credit for.
VF: Oh, man. The man could just play anything he wanted to play. Sonny to me was amazing. I loved him. And we used to play a lot around in Gary and Evanston and things like that when he’d come in town. Because he loved to battle, you know, and he loved to get you up on that stage and wear you out. And if you wasn’t together, brother, he would wear you out! But he was a beautiful cat.
Q: Well, Chicago is famous for the tenor battles . . .
VF: Oh, man! You got to have plenty of wind back in those days, I’m telling you.
Q: Your son started out as a trumpet player.
VF: Yes. Well, see, I played trumpet for about 25 years.
Q: You played it on gigs, too?
VF: Yeah. But I had retired the trumpet, and Chico went down to the basement and found it when he was very young. And I thought he was going to be a trumpet player. Well, I had an alto that I had retired down in the basement, too. See, in the era I came up, you played everything you could get your hands on, whether it was the harmonica, I don’t care what it was — you tried to play it. And I had a number of these strange instruments down in the basement. And they went down there and found them. Chico was about 10 and my other son, Markm about 9. And one day I heard all this noise coming out of the basement, and I said, “What is that?” And they were down there playing. Out of the two, I really felt Mark would be the one who could play. But Chico has got one thing that is very important. He has durability! — and stick-to- itiveness. So he stuck with it.
But he actually began playing trumpet, and went to school playing trumpet. In fact, he went to Northwestern playing trumpet. But he ended up on saxophone. And every time I hear him, he’s trying to grow.
Q: We’ll hear “Lord Riff and Me.”
VF: Well, that’s the moniker I was given back in high school . . .
Q: By Captain Dyett.
VF: Yes.
Q: It sounds like a compliment.
VF: Well, actually, see, the way my career began, I used to riff all the time. [sings a riff] I could play any riff you ever heard on a horn. I was good at riffing, see. I didn’t know too much about progressions or harmonics, but I could riff. And that’s where that came from.
You know, Chico did some real strange . . . Like, I’ve always played at the piano. And at the end of one of those albums he has me playing the piano.
Q: Would you like us to end with that?
VF: Yes. Because a lot of people don’t know that actually I play the piano. I like to say play at the piano.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/dailyplanet/von-freeman/3519764
Von Freeman
The man they call "Vonski" is a monster..& we mean that in the nicest way. A much-loved, hometown hero, VON FREEMAN - Chicago's titan of the tenor sax - would be enormously better known had he ever moved to New York. His every note shows how utterly singular, enormously capable, highly lyrical, very imaginative & enormously energetic he is. But there's one thing a blindfolded listener's ears would never sugggest: that Vonski was seventy-nine years old when he recorded his new, "Live" CD, "THE IMPROVISOR". Happy 80th birthday, Vonski! (a milestone he'll celebrate tomorrow, October 3rd, 2002).
Arguably, for the last three decades or so, Von Freeman has been jazz's most under-recognised living tenor sax genius. On most of his new CD he leads his regular quartet (with guitarist Mike Allemana, bassist Jack Zara & drummer Michael Raynor). It also includes a stunning example of the art of absolutely solo tenor saxophone balladry, a different quartet's version of Von's original blues-salute to Billie Holiday & an extraordinary duet version of a little-known Ellington composition which Von had never heard before. Young pianist Jason Moran - perhaps jazz piano's most interesting, rising star - introduced Duke's "I Like The Sunrise" to Von by playing it to him over the phone. They later recorded it in a single take, with no rehearsal.
https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/von-freeman
Von Freeman
Photo by Jimmy Katz
Bio
"I consider the music I play/create as "hard core modern jazz." However, jazz is an exact science. The more you study, the more you uncover to express yourself. The more technical knowledge you have, the more prepared you are. With more preparation, the more you dream. Your ability opens your dreams and if you ever get over into the creating part of it you join a handful of artists. As such I feel so very humbled and honored to receive such a prestigious award in recognition of my life's work."
Although not as well-known outside the Windy City as he should have been, Earle Lavon "Von" Freeman, Sr. was considered a founder of the "Chicago School" of jazz tenorists, a distinction shared with Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, and Clifford Jordan. With his individual sound, at once husky and melodic, he made every song his own. As the Chicago Tribune had written of him, "For technical brilliance, musical intellect, harmonic sophistication, and improvisatory freedom, Von Freeman has few bebop-era peers."
Freeman was surrounded by music in his childhood: his mother sang in the church choir, his father played jazz albums on an early Victrola - on which Freeman first heard the tenor sax - and his maternal grandfather and uncle were guitarists. Initially self-taught, he played saxophone at DuSable High School, landing his first gig with Horace Henderson's Orchestra at the age of 16. Drafted during WWII, he performed with a Navy band while in service. Once back in Chicago, he played with his brothers George (guitar) and Eldridge "Bruz" (drums) in the house band at the Pershing Hotel Ballroom, where jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie would stop and sit in when passing through.
In the 1950s, Freeman associated himself with various artists, mostly in the Chicago region, including Sun Ra, Andrew Hill, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Al Smith. In the 1960s, he played with Milt Trenier. But it wasn't until 1972 that Freeman recorded an album under his own name, Doin' It Right Now, produced by jazz great Roland Kirk.
Freeman continued to record, occasionally alongside Chicago artists such as saxophonist Frank Catalano, as well as with his own son Chico, who has himself achieved acclaim as a jazz musician. In 1982, he and Chico teamed up to record the Columbia album, Fathers and Sons, with pianist Ellis Marsalis and his sons Wynton and Branford. Later recordings, such as The Great Divide and Good Forever, featured drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist Richard Wyands, and bassist John Webber. Freeman had a regular Tuesday night set and jam session at the New Apartment Lounge on Chicago's South Side, and could be heard on select weekends at Andy's Jazz Club. During his later years, Freeman received acclaim in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands.
In June 2010, the University of Chicago awarded Freeman the Rosenberger Medal to "recognize achievement through research, in authorship, in invention, for discovery, for unusual public service or for anything deemed to be on great benefit to humanity."
Selected Discography:
Doin' It Right Now, Koch, 1972
Live at the Blue Note: 75th Birthday Celebration, Half Note Records, 1998
Von Freeman/Frank Catalano, You Talkin' To Me?!, Delmark, 1999
Vonski Speaks, Nessa, 2002
The Great Divide, Premonition, 2003
https://www.arts.gov/stories/jazz-moments/von-freeman-staying-chicago#audio-file
Von Freeman on staying in Chicago
NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT…
MUSIC: Sweet and Lovely (Von Freeman)
CD: Doin It Right Now
Rhino Entertainment 2006/1972
NEA JAZZ MASTER VON FREEMAN IS REGARDED AS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE “CHICAGO SCHOOL” OF TENOR SAXOPHONISTS. BORN AND BRED IN THE WINDY CITY, HE CHOSE NEVER TO LEAVE – UNLIKE MANY OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES, WHO FLOCKED TO NEW YORK CITY.
Von Freeman: A lot of my friends, they were seeking fame. And I just never have sought it I guess, I don’t know. And then too I was kind of spoiled cause when I came up NY and Chicago were about even as bein centers. Cause when I came up man Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were in Chicago more than they were anywhere. That’s where I got all that inspiration from when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. You know, these cats were at the Regal Theater and the Savoy Theater all the time. And they would take up residence at certain clubs. But this is when Chicago had all these clubs, which ended in the late 40s, more or less. And then when Bird died, Chicago died with it.
MUSIC: punctuation
THIS JAZZ MOMENT WITH TENOR SAXOPHONIST VON FREEMAN WAS CREATED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS.
https://www.arts.gov/stories/jazz-moments/von-freeman-staying-competitive#audio-file
NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT…
MUSIC: Never Fear Jazz Is Hear (Von Freeman)
CD: The Great Divide
KOCH Records 2004
Von Freeman: The future looks great, it really does. Cause it was lookin bleak about 20 years ago. I was wonderin should I go get me a day job, but I was too old to work during the day!
NEA JAZZ MASTER VON FREEMAN…
Von Freeman: If you’re still playin you still got to cut it. You know, you can’t rest. Well there’s too many great young guys out here now. And not even the young guys can rest cause they got guys younger than young! Lot of em comin around me, man, they outa sight. You sure better know your music and know your horn and not slip too much cause they will blow you right off that bandstand.
MUSIC: post for punctuation
https://www.arts.gov/stories/jazz-moments/von-freeman-being-jamster#audio-file
NOW, A JAZZ MOMENT…
MUSIC: Doin It Right Now (Von Freeman)
CD: Doin It Right Now
Rhino Entertainment 2006/1972
Von Freeman: In this music, I don’t think there’s a best or better or worse or good, excellent. I think it’s according to how inspired you are. If you’re highly inspired, good things happen.
…THEY DO SEEM TO HAPPEN FOR NEA JAZZ MASTER VON FREEMAN, WHO PLAYFULLY CALLS HIMSELF A ‘JAMSTER’…
Von Freeman: Actually I’ve been jamming just about my whole career. Almost every job I’ve been on turned into a jam session, sooner or later. If I stayed at it everybody say, hey man, let me have some of this. I think it’s, well I have a friendly nature on the bandstand, for one thing, I guess that’s what brings it on. Then I like to hear other guys play.
MUSIC: punctuation
https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/von-freeman
NEA Jazz Masters: Von Freeman (2012)
https://www.popmatters.com/freemanvon-improvisor-2495904900.html
Von Freeman: The Improvisor
It’s become one of the truisms of jazz that Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman is under-recorded. Some would also say underrated, but only in the sense that there are many, many jazz fans who have never heard Freeman. No one who has heard his bluesy, muscular improvisations and complete mastery of his instrument would underrate him for a moment. The reasons for Vonski’s relative obscurity are probably deceptively simple: he has chosen to remain in Chicago where he has provided immeasurable inspiration to the city’s younger musicians and has helped shape Chicago’s jazz scene since first recording as a leader in 1972. In addition, he has primarily recorded for a number of small, independent labels, most notably Chicago’s Southport label. Finally, Freeman is much more interested in the perpetual process of learning to play the music and listening to everyone whose paths he crosses. Like his fellow Chicagoan Fred Anderson, Freeman is the quintessential jazzman, a breed that continues to capture the imagination of fans and fellow musicians alike despite its apparent nearness to extinction.
Freeman has been leading his regular group through stellar sets at the New Apartment Lounge on Chicago’s 75th Street for some 20 years now, but he was on the scene way before that. He knew everyone, played with them all: Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, everyone. He was playing before there was bebop, but he has so thoroughly absorbed the lessons of bop as well as most of what came after that you’d never know it unless you listen very closely. Then you’ll hear the pure pleasure in playing with and behind the beat a la Lester Young, the sheer beauty of Coleman Hawkins. Freeman, though, has something completely unique, completely his own. His sound isn’t like that of his Texas tenor cohorts. There’s something harder edged, squawky and rich with the blues that defines the sound of this city, and Von Freeman is the fountainhead. Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Eddie Harris; they all have it too, and they spread that Chicago sound far and wide in their travels, while Freeman kept the home fires burning. Many young musicians have cut their teeth at New Apartment Lounge jam sessions with Freeman, not least of all Kurt Elling and Von’s own son, Chico Freeman.
Freeman turned 80 on October 3, 2002. His birthday was celebrated at the Chicago Jazz Festival and at a concert at Orchestra Hall on October 4. That concert, billed as “Von Freeman’s 80th Birthday Celebration” features Chico Freeman, Sam Rivers, Ron Blake, Brad Goode, George Freeman, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mulgrew Miller, Jason Moran, Avery Sharpe, Dennis Carroll, Winard Harper, Michael Raynor, and Kurt Elling. That’s a stunning array of talent brought together to honor one man. But there’s no one more deserving of such a tribute than Vonski. He’s so at ease with his horn and with the changes of any song he chooses to play that the title of his latest CD, The Improvisor, couldn’t be more apt.
The Improvisor opens with a solo rendition of “If I Should Lose You” that is breathtaking in its beauty and romanticism. This is Von the timeless interpreter of classic ballads. Certainly there are echoes of Coleman Hawkins in there, but there is also the sound of Sonny Rollins playing on the George Washington Bridge at midnight. The ability to play captivatingly, to hold a conversation with oneself without accompaniment is a test of raw skill and musicianship. It also requires incredible focus, for there is no timekeeper, no bass outlining the chord structure nor a pianist or guitarist to make the link between one chord and another. It’s all down to the one person-melody, harmony, rhythm, tone, technique, the whole enchilada. And here is where Von Freeman is almost without peer in today’s jazz world. This performance was recorded at the Chicago Cultural Center and it is a gift that it’s been captured on this disc.
The next four tracks are performances recorded by Freeman and his usual group (Mike Allemana, guitar, Michael Raynor, drums, Jack Zara, bass) in their natural habitat at the New Apartment Lounge. The Freeman original “Ski-wee” is up first, a straightforward bop number that demonstrates not only its leader’s strengths but those of the group as a whole. Raynor and Zara form a formidable backbone, locked tightly into the beat, always pushing, always kicking, but never faltering or getting ahead of the beat. Freeman takes a couple of choruses before Allemana kicks in, and when he does it is as though a window is opened in a hot room. Zara takes a chorus, then Allemana, both riding the same focused beat laid down so well by Raynor. Freeman comes in and trades choruses with Allemana before the group takes the whole thing out. Before you can say “Charlie Parker” the group has launched into a breakneck version of “What Is This Thing Called Love?” Allemana takes the first solo and lays down the gauntlet, performing wondrous runs and nice chordal work before turning it over to Freeman, who sounds like he barely breaks a sweat laying down a solo so perfectly constructed you have to wonder how anyone could think that fast. Ah, there’s the secret: Vonski’s got no need to think about what he’s going to do, he knows the changes so well, has internalized them so far, he just breathes his solo into the horn. That may sound like it diminishes the skill involved in playing at this level, but it actually points at the hours, days and months that add up to years and decades of practice, careful listening, late night jam sessions, and other moments in the life of a jazz musician that all come down to this moment so that Freeman doesn’t have to think about it. He’s just perfectly in the moment.
And so it goes, through wonderful renditions of “Darn That Dream” and “Blue Bossa” that can’t be improved by my poor attempts to describe them. Suffice it to say that no matter how many times you’ve heard these standards, you haven’t really heard anyone play them the way Von Freeman and his group do. You’ll be forced to really listen to them as though you’ve never heard them before.
The last two tracks were recorded at the North Side’s Green Mill. “Blues for Billie”, another Freeman original, is performed with pianist Jason Moran and his excellent group comprised of bassist Mark Helias and drummer Nasheet Waits. It’s a wonderfully relaxed performance; you’d think that Freeman and Moran had been playing together for some time, but in fact Moran had only spoken to Freeman a couple of times. “Von possesses one of those rare qualities that allows people to relax around him,” says Moran. The other performance here, the final one, is a Duke Ellington number, “I Like the Sunrise” performed as a duet by Moran and Freeman. Freeman didn’t know the number, so Moran played it to him over the phone and Von recorded it on a tape. “When it came time for us to play it, he told us verbally what we were supposed to do. That type of learning music is almost forgotten.”
Fortunately, Von Freeman has not forgotten, and he has passed on the lessons he’s learned, what he humbly refers to as “what little knowledge I have” to younger musicians like Moran and Elling who probably won’t forget, either. The musical world-no, the whole world-is richer for having someone like Von Freeman inhabit it for 80 years and counting. He may have been under recorded, but those recordings that are out there are absolutely killer. And there’s still Tuesday night at the New Apartment Lounge. In the meantime, if you like straight ahead, no nonsense jazz, the glorious sound of the tenor saxophone in the hands of someone who how to get the most out of the horn, then your jazz CD collection absolutely demands that you pick up a copy of The Improvisor.
Von Freeman-Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered
Song For My Father - Von Freeman
VON FREEMAN - 1983 New Year's Eve @ CHICAGO's Jazz ...
Von Freeman and Clifford Jordan Chicago Jazz Festival 1988
von freeman doin`it right now
Von Freeman Quartet - Never Let Me Go (Full Album)
VON FREEMAN Belgium 12th August,1992
Chico Freeman & Von Freeman - Undercurrent
