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Legend Von Freeman Played with Bird, Pres & Hawk: NEW CD withJimmy Cobb July 13

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Saxophonist VON FREEMAN Honors Three Greats He Played With - Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young & Charlie Parker - on The Great Divide (July 13, 2004)

Third for Premonition Records Continues 81-year-old's Streak of Terrific CDs & Reunites Him After 30 Years with First Drummer He Recorded With, Jimmy Cobb

Debuts New CD at New Apartment Lounge, July 13


The saga of Von Freeman is an implausible story. An iconic Chicago saxophonist, Freeman has played with the greats including Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, each of whom he pays tribute on this new recording. Freeman was one of the black sailors in the government's “Great Lakes Experiment" to integrate the forces through music. He's played a regular Tuesday night gig at New Apartment Lounge in his beloved hometown of Chicago for almost 30 years. In his 80th decade, the City of Chicago bestowed a mayoral proclamation and city street sign (Von Freeman Way) upon him and the esteemed college up the road, Northwestern University, honored him with a doctorate.

While many might expect Freeman to be in post-retirement, he continues his unlikely story line by releasing The Great Divide (July 13, 2004), which matches him for the first time with a New York rhythm section and reunites him with the first drummer he recorded with, his contemporary Jimmy Cobb (whose resume includes work with Sarah Vaughan and the Miles Davis Quintet and Sextet of the 1950s, the groundbreaking band that recorded Kind Of Blue).

Born Earl Lavon Freeman on October 2, 1922, on the South Side of Chicago, Von (or “Vonski," to use his universally known nickname) grew up in a musical household with younger brothers George, a well-known Chicago guitarist, and drummer Bruz, who retired from music in the 1960s. As a toddler, Freeman heard Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller play in his own living room when they came to visit the family. To this day, Freeman will point at the beat up piano in his living room and say, “Fats Waller played that piano." At age 6, he broke the horn off his father's Victrola, pieced it together with a wooden mouthpiece and started wailing into his very first “saxophone." Soon his father relented and bought young Von a real instrument.

By age 12, Freeman was playing in a nightclub in Gary, Indiana, sporting a large hat to cover his youthful features. He turned down an offer from Earl “Fatha" Hines to stay in school at DuSable High, where he studied under the famed band director and educator Captain Walter Dyett, whose instruction and discipline Freeman credits to this day. In the early 1940s, he performed with Horace Henderson's Orchestra before heading off to the Navy, where he took part in the “Great Lakes Experience," the military's historic experiment in desegregating the armed services through music by preparing black bands to perform for white sailors.

Freeman moved to New York briefly in the mid 40s, but was soon lured back to Chicago, where he and his brothers played in the house band at the Pershing Ballroom, backing visiting jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Over the years, he got to play with Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins too. Eventually Freeman led his own groups, giving early exposure to rising stars Ahmad Jamal, Andrew Hill and Malachi Favors. He was also a founding member of the first “Arkestra" assembled by visionary Sun Ra in 1948 (although he never recorded with the band).

In the 50s, Freeman built an underground reputation as one of Chicago's most accomplished and unusual saxophonists, with a sound just as big as you'd expect from the Chicago “tenor school," but displaying a radically different sonority. He also built a reputation as one of the hardest-blowing tenor “battlers," locking horns on disc with Dexter Gordon, Buck Hill and Teddy Edwards. Remaining in Chicago to raise his family, Freeman played everything from strip clubs to southside blues bars to northside jazz clubs before establishing his ongoing Tuesday night jam session at the New Apartment Lounge, on a block of 75th Street renamed “Von Freeman Way" in 2002. These sessions have become a beacon for aspiring musicians like saxophonist Steve Coleman, multiple-GRAMMY-nominated vocalist Kurt Elling, and Von's own son, saxophonist Chico Freeman. In the last several years, Freeman has also enjoyed a deepening friendship with the acclaimed young pianist Jason Moran, who appears on his previous Premonition release, The Improvisor.

A 2001 DownBeat Magazine cover story on Freeman helped create renewed excitement about this ageless wonder's music. Recent events include 80th birthday concerts at Chicago

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