Bud Freeman
b. Lawrence Freeman, 1 April 1906, Chicago, Illinois, USA; d. 15 March 1991. Freeman's early career found him in company with Jimmy McPartland, Frank Teschemacher and other members of the Austin High School Gang. Having set out playing the C melody saxophone, Freeman switched to tenor in 1925 and quickly established a reputation on that instrument as one of the few genuine rivals to Coleman Hawkins. Through the late '20s and early '30s he worked in numerous bands, recording extensively and consolidating his reputation. He gravitated into big bands, playing with Joe Haymes, Ray Noble, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and others, but he preferred a different kind of jazz and in 1939 formed his own Summa Cum Laude Orchestra which delighted audiences in New York during its brief life. From 1940 Freeman played in various bands, led his own short-lived big band, and by the middle of the decade had settled into leading a small group at Eddie Condon's New York club. For the rest of his career Freeman played as a freelance, sometimes leading, sometimes as sideman, touring the USA and Europe. A confirmed Anglophile, he lived in London in the '70s and even managed to ‘look’ British. In 1980 Freeman returned to live in his native Chicago but by the end of the decade his health had failed. In mid-1990 he was almost blind, hospitalized and frail, and he died early in 1991. Freeman's masterly solo on his 1933 recording of The Eel displayed his qualities to the full. In later years some detractors remarked that he spent the rest of his career repeating that solo. While it is true that his playing style did not subsequently alter very much, such adverse criticism failed to recognize that like his great but very different contemporary, Coleman Hawkins, Freeman had achieved such a pinnacle of excellence that wholesale change was pointless. In fact, Freeman's later recordings show him to have an inventive mind which, allied to a fluent delivery, make all his work a delight to the ear. The titles of two memoirs give an indication of his wry humour: YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE A MUSICIANand IF YOU KNOW OF A BETTER LIFE, PLEASE TELL ME.