Russ Freeman
b. Russell Donald Freeman, 28 May 1926, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Emerging onto the west coast jazz scene in the late '40s, Freeman's piano style was typically bop-orientated. He played with many important west coast musicians during the next few years including Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne. He collaborated extensively with Manne during the second half of the '50s but also accompanied important figures from other areas of jazz, amongst them Benny Goodman. As a child Freeman had studied classical music and his range and technical accomplishment allowed him to work in diverse fields of music such as film and television. In common with a growing number of musicians he also formed his own music publishing company thus giving him greater control over his own compositions. Within the jazz world Freeman's bop credentials were overlaid with an ability to accommodate other concepts. His work outside jazz has somewhat overshadowed his reputation with the wider audience but his early recordings, especially those with Manne, reveal him to have been an important contributor to a particularly creative period in the modern jazz movement.