MUSIC PROFILE /

THE AMAZING VONSKI Von Freeman turns the horses loose at the New Apartment Lounge

BY JESSICA HERMAN / PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN KIRKMAN

On any given Tuesday night at the New Apartment Lounge, 82-year- Three days later, Raynor was recording with Freeman on the album old saxophonist Von “Vonski” Freeman follows his usual routine. He Walkin’ Tuff! For 16 years now, the two have been gigging together rolls into the club — on East 75th Street on ’s South Side — at least once a week at the New Apartment (as well as occasional at around 10 p.m., nods hello to the regulars, takes his spot beside nights at the Green Mill, Andy’s and a few other North Side taverns). the laser-disc jukebox and opens his pipes. Smiling young musicians Raynor says he still can’t predict Freeman’s moves. barely old enough to throw back a beer slide through the double doors with their instruments in tow. They’re greeted by Weezie, the “He sits in the very back of the bar in those dark sunglasses, and bartender of 24 years. (She started working all the young cats go back and say, ‘Hey Von, thanks,’” says there one year before Freeman initiated his Raynor. “But what they’re really saying is, ‘What can you tell me?’ weekly gig.) No matter how early you arrive, And he always gives them words of encouragement. He also does a man in a white fedora will be sitting in the this thing, and he’s been doing it more and more lately — he shakes corner, milking his merlot. And you can people’s hands and says, ‘Let me put that stuff on you.’ He’s liter- 82 always count on the stable of regulars — ally trying to put a good vibe onto someone.” those who hang on every note and those who Freeman grew up on the South Side, pounding tunes out of home- go about their business, unfazed by the per- made instruments with school chums on back porches. His father formance. was a policeman by day and musician by night, and he often invited For the final set, Freeman invites up all remain- his friends , Earl Hines and over to play ing musicians by calling out, “We’re about to turn the horses the Freeman family’s baby grand. After Freeman showed an interest loose.” He says the term originated 50 years ago when he was in music, his parents encouraged him to take up an instrument. playing a club on South 43rd Street, where the owner played cow- Soon he joined the school band as a saxophonist. Perhaps his boy films on a TV set during intermissions. One day, taken by what most formative years were in the band at DuSable High School he saw on the screen, Freeman rallied the other musicians by say- under the tutelage of Captain and vocal and theory ing, “Come on, you horses.” The welcoming call stuck. instructor Bryant Jones.

Both in life and in art, Freeman has become a mentor to countless Travis Jackson, an associate professor of American music at the performers. One of them is his 38-year-old drummer, Michael Raynor. University of Chicago, explains that Dyett’s exposing the students At the Charleston bar in Bucktown in summer 2005, Raynor talked to all kinds of music made him rare among musical instructors at about hearing Freeman for the first time on WBEZ (Chicago Public the time. During his time at DuSable, from 1935 to 1961, Dyett Radio). Raynor waited for the announcer, Larry Smith, to get back hosted everything from an ROTC marching band to a symphony on the air and attribute the tunes. ensemble and the Booster Band, a group that performed at school functions. Many of his students picked up gigs at the local “All right now, that was Chicago’s Von Freeman and his son, Chico, taverns, and some would become first-rate musicians, including from a record called Fathers and Sons,” Raynor says, mimicking , , Nat “King” Cole, , the announcer. “I assumed the really hip shit I heard must have Dinah Washington, Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis and Redd Foxx. been Chico, because it was so avant-garde.” But when Raynor bought the record and referred to the liner notes, he learned that “Back in the day, they didn’t have many schools that taught “the old guy” was the object of his affection. “Meeting Von became you music,” Freeman told me by phone. “You were thought of as a my destiny,” he says. novelty if you could play jazz so young.” Through his jazz instruction, Dyett also espoused the importance of discipline, which Freeman Three months later, Raynor wound up at the New Apartment Lounge. adopted wholeheartedly. The first person he saw was Brad Goode, whom he describes as “a white guy who looks about 10 and who’s sitting on the floor like When Freeman graduated from high school, World War II was under it’s his living room.” When the two got to talking, Goode called way, and the Roosevelt administration was pushing to integrate Freeman over and introduced Raynor as a hot young drummer. African-American men into the armed forces as entertainers. Many Freeman responded, “Well, hey, baby, you might as well go on up aspiring musicians saw it as a natural way to move up the ladder, and play.” “I had been nervous about getting there, and obviously I acquire marketable skills and hone their playing. Freeman’s experience was nervous about playing with this guy that sounded like the great- beyond his high school band was minimal, but a letter of recom- est thing I’d ever heard,” Raynor says. “But Von is so disarming.” mendation from Dyett sent him to the Great Lakes boot camp, where he would be handpicked along with two dozen other musicians to be stationed at a naval base in . There, Freeman became For decades, the major players of Chicago’s jazz scene, like Dave part of a band called the Hellcats, named after an American attack Jemillo (owner of the Green Mill in Uptown) and Lauren Deutsch squadron. The band raised the flag, played at lunchtime for soldiers (executive director of the Jazz Institute) have recognized Freeman and entertained officers at night, occasionally picking up gigs in the as a living legend. But it wasn’t until about five years ago that he nearby towns. Freeman’s feature song became “Body and Soul,” started to “bask in a little sunshine.” Freeman will tell you that he an all-time favorite he learned by listening to the recordings of owes his recent success to Michael Friedman, the president of the Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. “I was copying two of the Chicago label Premonition Records, who produced a few of greatest jazz sax players,” Freeman says. Freeman’s recent albums, including Live at the Dakota. Freeman

P83 Von Freeman at the New Apartment Lounge, Chicago October, 2005

After his service, Freeman returned to Chicago, where his brothers, has ranked among the top five or six tenor sax players on Down George (a guitarist) and Bruz (a drummer) had established themselves Beat magazine’s annual critics poll, received an honorary degree as musicians. Around that time, Freeman ran into a high school from Northwestern University, and in 2004, the block of East 75th acquaintance, by then a successful booker on the South Side, who where the New Apartment is located was officially renamed “Von recommended that the Freeman brothers form a band. The Freeman Freeman Way.” Brothers trio landed a weekly spot at the Pershing Hotel, where they accompanied big-name acts including , , Freeman’s 23 years of jam sessions at the New Apartment have and . been vital to the Chicago jazz community. The sessions also provide young musicians the opportunity to learn their trade. In this sense, Freeman continued a tradition of playing across musical genres in Freeman is akin to Dyett, staying on the home front, doing the hard joints all over town until the early ’80s; he performed in the house work to train amateur players who go out and spread the gospel. band and worked as an arranger for R&B label VeeJay Records, went on the road with Jimmy Reed and , and hit the strip-club “You find the musicians that play in the city fashion themselves scene in Calumet City. He didn’t make his first recording, an Atlantic after the weather,” Freeman says. “Chicago doesn’t care anything Records production entitled Doin’ It Right Now, until he was 49 years about losing. You have to be a winner to put up with this weather. old. Subsequently Freeman started recording with a mix of mostly I try to keep on pushing as I get younger. Try to keep your mind on local labels, touring about once a year. He released Fathers and today and tomorrow and yesterday. You can’t forget yesterday, the Sons in 1982, with his son Chico playing on the same record as people that were before you. That’s a great thing to build on.” Ellis Marsalis and his sons, Branford and Wynton. K