Rob Adams salutes a genius who's taken jazz back to first principles.
Although there's been a pretty decent service over the past ten to 15 years, particularly with the establishment of various festivals, appearances by jazz musicians in Scotland can still be reminiscent of the bus syndrome - you wait around for one for ages then two come (almost) at once.
The latest example of this is saxophonist Chico Freeman, who makes his Scottish debut with the Roots Salutes the Saxophone revue at Dundee Jazz Festival on Friday, June 12, and returns with his own quartet to Glasgow International Jazz Festival less than a month later, playing the Old Fruitmarket on Sunday, July 5.
One of the most exciting players to emerge in the 1970s - one critic went as far as to dub him ''the most important horn since Coltrane'', Freeman made a major impact with his early albums such as Spirit Sensitive, whereon his playing, in its almost impatient searching, justified his ready acceptance on New York's experimental loft scene. (A three-day ''recce'' of the Big Apple in 1976 had turned into a permanent stay.) Alongside the desire to move the music on, however, early observers noticed a clear sense of jazz tradition
in his style, something that
was easily explained from his family background.
Freeman's father, saxophonist Von, is one of the great originals of the Chicago jazz scene and with his brothers George (guitar) and Bruz (drums) played in the family band, the Freeman Brothers, which became something of a Chicago institution. Before that, a 14-year-old uncle, George, had had the Baby Band with saxophonist Johnny Griffin.
The Freeman Brothers' interest in playing music had been encouraged by their mother, who played guitar and sang in church, their father, a pianist who went on to become the first black policeman in Chicago, and their lodger, one Louis Armstrong, who made the Freeman home his first base when he moved up from New Orleans.
It was almost inevitable, then, that Freeman should follow in his elders' footsteps, although his elevation to ''the most important horn since Coltrane'' was to come by a circuitous route. Initially he played piano, then one day he and his brother were rummaging around in their father's belongings in the basement and discovered a trumpet and an alto sax. Freeman started ''bleeping and blapping'' (to quote his father) on the trumpet.
''The saxophone is really my calling,'' he says. ''But I didn't know it then. The first record that made me want to play jazz was Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. I just loved his sound but it took me a while to realise that I couldn't be me if I sounded like him. Then one day at college I picked up a saxophone and blew it and I knew that I'd found my voice.''
Returning to Chicago from Northwestern University, he immersed himself in the local scene. He played in blues bands then joined pianist Muhal Richard Abrams' Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, which became as much a social force for change as it was musical. In New York, in short order he found work with Elvin Jones, Sam Rivers, Don Pullen, Jack DeJohnette and Sun Ra.
Then in 1991 he and journalist/producer Mike Hennessey were discussing how the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax, although much maligned in his lifetime, had been unwittingly responsible for a colossal amount of music.
''I wanted to put together something that celebrated the saxophone's contribution to jazz,'' he says. ''Even though I'm writing my own music, I still listen to the older stuff all the time - Charlie Parker and Lester Young especially, but I still listen to my father because he's been a big influence. So it had to be something that covered the generations, something that reached back as well as moving forward.''
Roots Salutes the Saxophone was the result. Initially comprising a four-sax frontline of Freeman, Arthur Blythe, Nathan Davis and Sam Rivers (whose place has subsequently been taken by Dewey Redman and, now, Benny Golson) plus rhythm section, it was seen as a ''long-running thing because there's such a lot of music to get through''.
The repertoire comprises tunes written by, made famous by or written in tribute to, famous saxophonists including Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.
An increasingly busy record producer (he has just finished Arthur Blythe's new album), film music composer and theatre producer, Freeman relishes his shrinking opportunities to get out and play, particularly with his quartet which features the brilliant pianist George Cables.
''I enjoy working with Roots, too, of course, but with the quartet I get a chance to really stretch out and since we play mostly original music, the quartet's music is the music I really feel close to.''
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