“There are four basic precepts you must observe if you wish to score with the world. One, use Wall St. Cologne–in this way you will score with women. Two, use Yardley’s Shaving Cream–in this way, clean-shaven, you will score with the general public. Three, change your socks daily–here you score with earthworms and all the good people who work underground. Four, always walk into the sun–now you score with the Sun People.”
If Bud Freeman was important, so was the first Chicago school of jazz, of which he was a part. It was made up of intense white kids from the west side who heard the jazz emigres from New Orleans–and exploded. They wanted to play that kind of music, too; a group of Austin High students decided which instruments they liked and met at Jimmy McPartland’s home to practice. “Bud Freeman was the only guy that had not had any training,” McPartland later recalled, and added that clarinetist Frank Teschemacher “used to get disgusted with him and say, ‘let’s throw that bum out.’” Freeman bought a C-melody sax from McPartland’s father, a music teacher; and McPartland, who took up the cornet, later recalled that the gang tried to copy, phrase by phrase, strain by strain, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings’ recordings. Freeman’s memory was slightly different. He recalled, “We played the so-called Chicago style, and that was started by the great Louis Armstrong. As young kids in school, when we first recorded our ideas, it was our impression of what we’d heard the great black musicians of that day play.”
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Freeman also had the ability to create songlike melody, a talent especially evident at slower tempos and in ballad moods. Apart from the 1938 Bud Freeman Trio date, in most of his swing-era recordings, with Dorsey, Condon, and others, he got to solo for only a chorus or less–but those solos were often small gems. Even after LPs replaced three-minute platters and long solos became commonplace, Freeman’s solos were only a few choruses long. But he had a rare capacity to make a complete statement within the available space: a single, complete, fulfilling line. One of his few currently available recordings is a near-masterpiece, The Bud Freeman All-Stars (Original Jazz Classics LP), which contrasts his melodic curves with Ellington trumpeter Shorty Baker’s tart, staccato playing. Whether he was inventing paraphrases of themes or creating wholly new melodies, Freeman’s improvising is lovely; only in the minor-key “March On, March On” does he present a nasty mood, with short, gruff phrases and a rough sound that reveal the fist beneath the velvet glove.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Lauren Deutsch.
