Career
Foreign other people with a similar name see Lawrence Friedman (disambiguation)
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.
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 United States Army during World World War II, and headed a United States 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.
In 1974, he moved to England where he made numerous recordings and performances, as he did also 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 Maine (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.