Quote:
Originally posted by mone peterson
Who's Anderson?
There you go.
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Here you go Mone. Btw today is Anderson's 74th birthday. Happy many more!:
Despite being an "old school" musician in terms of grounding and
early influences, Fred Anderson was a founding member of the
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
(AACM) and headed several AACM groups in the '60s.
Anderson had formally studied music theory and was strongly
influenced by Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Gene
Ammons. He reflected that training throughout his career, always
having a full, huge tone and being a capable blues and ballad
stylist. But he also absorbed the new ideas pioneered by Ornette
Coleman and other free theorists; it was this ability to merge old
and new that made Anderson a seminal figure among Chicago
musicians in the '60s.
In the late '70s, Anderson ran his first club, The Birdhouse,
named for Charlie Parker, whose music had a huge influence on the early development of the
saxophonist. The '70s were also when he began collaborating with percussionist Hamid Drake;
Dark Day: Live in Verona (Okka Disk, 2001) is a good documentation of their early work
together, and includes trumpeter Billy Brimfield, a frequent collaborator of Anderson's since before
AACM's birth, and the musician with whom Anderson first traveled to Europe in 1977 (Anderson
returned to Europe the following year with a group that included George Lewis). While two
recordings from 1980 came out on CD almost 20 years later, no other available recordings
document Anderson's work from 1981-1993. Despite the lack of recordings, however, Anderson
was busy making music throughout this time. 1982 found him taking over Velvet Lounge after the
death of the previous owner who was a friend of his. It wasn't long before the Sunday jam sessions
started happening (this schedule highlight was still going on at the Velvet as of 2001). When the
Chicago label Okka Disk started up in the mid-'90s, the first thing it did was issue a
previously-unreleased 1980 duo recording of Anderson and drummer Steve McCall. Not too long
after, came the first Fred Anderson recording made in years: Birdhouse, recorded in 1994 and
1995. Since then the under-documentation of this artist who so helped nurture creative jazz in
Chicago was remedied with a steady supply of new recordings released on Okka Disk, Asian
Improv, and other labels. --(amg)
Steve, you can make your own polls now. Ain't that the bomb! Unfortunately I think the options may be limited at 10.
Linear Mode
