Aus dem oben schon verlinkten, tollen Nachruf von Howard Reich:
Von Freeman always considered his relative obscurity — which lasted nearly until the final years of his career, when the world started to recognize his genius — a blessing. It enabled him to forge an extremely unusual but instantly recognizable sound, to pursue off-center musical ideas that were not likely to be welcomed in the commercial marketplace.
„They said I played out of tune, played a lot of wrong notes, a lot of weird ideas,“ Freeman told the Tribune in 1992. „But it didn’t matter, because I didn’t have to worry about the money — I wasn’t making (hardly) any. I didn’t have to worry about fame — I didn’t have any. I was free.“
Freeman used that freedom from commercial pressures to pursue a music that was as unorthodox as it was intellectually demanding, as idiosyncratic as it was deeply autobiographical. In this sense, he represented the quintessential jazz musician, forging a musical voice that was unique to him, an art that was influential but ultimately inimitable.
„You hear one note, you know that’s his sound,“ Fred Anderson, another iconic Chicago tenor saxophonist, once said of his colleague. „It’s a personal sound. You can tell he listened to all the guys — he listened to Lester Young and Charlie Parker; he took a lot from a whole lot of people and created Von Freeman.“
That sound seduced some listeners and puzzled others, but no one could mistake it for anything but that of the great Vonski, as he was affectionately called by friends and admirers. Sharply acidic in the top register of the instrument but full and throaty down below, whinnying and squealing in some passages, whispering tenderly in others, Freeman’s tenor work utterly defied categorization. Every sweet-sour note, every intricately etched phrase, it seemed, was crafted to sound as unexpected and as intensely expressive as possible.
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„I got all this music by osmosis,“ said Freeman in the Tribune interview.
„Louis Armstrong used to come by from the time I was about 3 years old, and he’d always say to me, ‚Hi Pops,‘.“ recalled Freeman, pointing to the era when Satchmo was enjoying his first blush of success as a Chicago bandleader and emerging recording artist. „Earl Hines came over, and Fats Waller played this (Starck) piano of mine.“
In effect, Freeman was a living, breathing link to the first generation of jazz stars that emerged in Roaring ’20s Chicago. With his father constantly playing jazz records at home and his mother entertaining him and his two brothers by playing guitar and singing, Freeman early on realized music was his calling.
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By the ’50s, trumpeter Davis was looking for someone to take Coltrane’s tenor chair, and Freeman again took a pass. „Actually, my mother got the phone call because I was in New York playing (a one-nighter) with a blues band,“ recalled Freeman.
„And she said, ‚Well, he has four kids, and he’s got a wife,‘ so Miles said he understood. That probably would have been my big break, but I missed it,“ said Freeman, who added that he never bothered calling Davis back.
Toll auch der Satz: „I just think you try to get famous within yourself.“
Mit Reichs Aussage, dass „The Improviser“ und „The Great Divide“ (die meinte ich gestern, nail, als jene die gemeinhin von den Premonitions als die beste gelte) seine besten Aufnahmen überhaupt sind, gehe ich gar nicht konform, jedenfalls nicht, was „The Improviser“ betrifft. Ich kenne keine Schlechte Aufnahme von ihm (Sterne-Thread), aber die besten bleiben die Nessas von 1975 und die Live-Aufnahme von 1977, gefolgt von „Vonski Speaks“ und „The Great Divide“ und dann wohl „Good Forever“, „Live at the Dakota“ und den drei Steeplechases.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #164: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv, 10.6., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba