Bud Freeman

Emerging as a mature player, Bud Freeman presented the leading alternative tenor saxophone approach to Coleman Hawkins’s robust tone and thereby influenced Lester Young. Ranked among the foremost tenors of the 1930s, he was also among the few saxophonists—joined by the slightly later Eddie Miller—to find acceptance in Dixieland settings, where his angular yet steadily swinging lines strengthened countless hot sessions.

Stirred, like other members of Chicago’s Austin High School Gang, by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Freeman took up C-melody saxophone in 1923 and shifted to tenor two years later. Refining his technique took time; his still-developing style remained rudimentary when he recorded for the first time with the McKenzie-Condon Chicagoans in 1927. Later that year he moved to New York and performed with Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack, Joe Venuti, Gene Kardos, and additional leaders. He featured prominently on Eddie Condon’s notable 1933 recording “The Eel.”

After periods with Joe Haymes and Ray Noble, Freeman became a standout member of Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra and Clambake Seven from 1936 to 1938, before a brief and unsatisfying interval with Benny Goodman in 1938. He then led his short-lived yet acclaimed Summe Cum Laude Orchestra—an octet—in 1939–1940, served two years in the military, and from 1945 onward alternated between heading his own groups and joining Eddie Condon’s lively Chicago ensembles. Freeman toured internationally, issued numerous distinguished recordings, and adhered to the core style he had formed by the mid-1930s, unaltered by a brief period of study with Lennie Tristano.

He performed with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band from 1968 to 1971, lived in London during the late 1970s, and eventually returned to Chicago. Active well into his eighties, he left a strong selection of recordings still available on CD.