BUD FREEMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Where Have You Been? Video

Lawrence "Bud" Freeman (April 13, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois - March 15, 1991 in Chicago) was a U.S. jazz musician, bandleader, amd composer, known mainly for playing the tenor saxophone, but also able at the clarinet. He had a smooth and full tenor sax style with a heavy robust swing. He was one of the most influential and important jazz tenor saxophonists of the Big Band era. His major recordings were "The Eel", "Tillie's Downtown Now", "Crazeology", "The Buzzard", and "After Awhile", composed with Benny Goodman.One of the original members of the Austin High School Gang which began in 1922, Freeman played the C-melody saxophone alongside his other band members such as Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher before switching to tenor saxophone two years later. Influenced by artists like the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong from the South, they would begin to formulate their own style, becoming part of the emerging Chicago Style of jazz. In 1927, he moved to New York, where he worked as a session musician and band member with Red Nichols, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack, Joe Venuti, among others. One of his most notable performances was a solo on Eddie Condon's 1933 recording, The Eel, which then became Freeman's nickname (for his long snake-like improvisations). Freeman played with Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra (1936-1938) as well as for a short time Benny Goodman's band in 1938 before forming his own band, the Summa Cum Laude Orchestra (1939-1940). Freeman joined the US Army during World War II, and headed a US Army band in the Aleutian Islands. Following the war, Freeman returned to New York and led his own groups, yet still kept a close tie to the freewheeling bands of Eddie Condon as well as working in 'mainstream' groups with the likes of Buck Clayton, Ruby Braff, Vic Dickenson and Jo Jones. He wrote (along with Leon Pober) the ballad "Zen Is When", recorded by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on Jazz Impressions of Japan (1964). He was a member of the World's Greatest Jazz Band between 1969 and 1970, and occasionally thereafter. In 1974, he would move to England where he made numerous recordings and performances there and in Europe. Returning to Chicago in 1980, he continued to work into his eighties. He also released two memoirs You Don't Look Like a Musician (1974) and If You Know of a Better Life, Please Tell Me (1976), and wrote an autobiography with Robert Wolf, Crazeology (1989). In 1992, Bud Freeman was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. Tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman was a member of a group of young White Chicago Jazz musicians known as the Austin High School Gang. This group consisted of Jimmy McPartland and his brother Dick McPartland, Frank Teschemacher, Eddie Condon, Dave Tough, Jim Lanigan and Joe Sullivan. He recorded with McKenzie-Condon Chicagoans in 1927 and then moved to New York with Ben Pollack. In New York he proved to be a sought after session musician and recorded with Bix Beiderbecke and his Orchestra, Hoagy Carmichael and his Orchestra and Joe Venuti's Blue Four, as well as working with various bandleaders including Red Nichols, the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and with Zez Confrey. In 1936 he played with Tommy Dorsey and he joined the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1938, but left with in a year. During World War II he led a service band. After the war played regularly with Eddie Condon, as well as fronting his own bands and recording for the rest of his life.