Fred Anderson

[king ubu]

Thanks for the nice photos, Mark!

[sheldonm]

Thanks for the nice photos, Mark!

My pleasure! These were made in a room about 8'x12' in the back corner of the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago. Very close, very loud, very fun!

[king ubu]

... Very close, very loud, very fun!

so it looks! The new Golson photos are great, too, by the way!

[gdogus]

Some of you have mentioned Fred Anderson's duet recording with Hamid Drake, Back Together Again (Thrill Jockey, 2004), which I really dig, and recommend most highly. To go along with it, I'd also advise interested parties to pick up Fred's duet outing with drummer Robert Barry: Duets 2002: Live at the Empty Bottle (Thrill Jockey, 2002).

...

Edited December 15, 2004 by gdogus

[John L]

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I will put in a good work for this one - some of my favorite Fred, especially "Dark Day"

[Johnny E]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "Another Place" on the Moers label?

[EKE BBB]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "Another Place" on the Moers label?

Moers Music Online Recordshop

A bit pricey, but...

[ADR]

Don't forget Anderson's "Two Days in April" a double disc on the Eremite label.

In addition to some great playing by Anderson it also features Kidd Jordan, a great tenor saxophonist from New Orleans who is even more overlooked than Anderson.

The kicker is the rhythm section - William Parker and Hamid Drake. Need I say more.

[Д.Д.]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "Another Place" on the Moers label?

Moers Music Online Recordshop

...which does not work.

[Д.Д.]

Some of you have mentioned Fred Anderson's duet recording with Hamid Drake, Back Together Again (Thrill Jockey, 2004), which I really dig, and recommend most highly. To go along with it, I'd also advise interested parties to pick up Fred's duet outing with drummer Robert Barry: Duets 2002: Live at the Empty Bottle (Thrill Jockey, 2002).

The one with Steve McCall is the best Fred-drummer duo, IMO.

[JSngry]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "Another Place" on the Moers label?

Moers Music Online Recordshop

...which does not work.

Link works for me.

[Д.Д.]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "Another Place" on the Moers label?

Moers Music Online Recordshop

...which does not work.

Link works for me.

Link is the only thing that works in the Moers online shop.

[JSngry]

Prices are listed as follows:

CD: Euro 17,00

D'CD: Euro 24,00

LP: Euro 12,00

D'LP: Euro 17,00

+ Porto / Shipping Costs!

With a directive HERE to order by e-mail: info@moers-music.com

Are you saying that they don't respond? That's useful information if so. I asked here a few weeks ago if anybody had ordered from the site and got no affirmative response.

Edited December 15, 2004 by JSngry

[Steve Reynolds]

Fred is the last of the great blues tenor saxophonists

my guy

called me a cab once from the Velvet

love him to my soul, to my being

live one night a few years ago with Kidd, William & Hamid, they were dancing in the aisles - opened alone - the band joines, they wnet byond and back - will never forget it

one day I will see him again

one day in may

peace and blessings

[relyles]

Prices are listed as follows:

CD: Euro 17,00

D'CD: Euro 24,00

LP: Euro 12,00

D'LP: Euro 17,00

+ Porto / Shipping Costs!

With a directive HERE to order by e-mail: info@moers-music.com

Are you saying that they don't respond? That's useful information if so. I asked here a few weeks ago if anybody had ordered from the site and got no affirmative response.

No. You will never get a response. I have tried on many occassions to order various items from the Moers site with no luck. I eventually obtained a copy of Another Place on ebay for a reasonable price. To my knowledge it has never been reissued on CD.

[sal]

Being a resident of Chicago I have been blessed with the opportunity to see him perform many times.

Let me say this.....Fred is one of the greatest tenor saxophone players of all time, bar none. He has the ability to take those with open minds & ears to places that no other horn player can. I can recall so many times just closing my eyes during one of his 40+ chorus solos and feeling like I was having some sort of religious experience. His sound, his notes, his runs...just his musical presence is a humbling experience. You would never guess that the short old man serving drinks at that run down little bar could shake the earth like that. I hope that everyone on this board who has never seen him play before, gets the chance to at some point in their lives.

We are privileged to be alive at the same time as Fred Anderson. He is a treasure to Chicago, to music, and to the world. May he live many, many more years.

Cheers.

[minew]

Hear, hear!

Catching Fred at the Velvet is a moving experience. I caught the CD release party for "On the Run" there and haven't been the same since. It's our era's equivalent of hearing Webb at the Savoy or Jamal at the Pershing or Evans at the Vanguard. I usually stop in when I'm in Chicago even if I have no idea who's on the bill. Fred seems almost apologetic when he says "it's ten dollars tonight." I always feel like saying, "Are you kidding? It's worth ten times that."

[Enterprise Server]

Fred Anderson : The Rhythm Of Tradition

by Adam Hill

April 2004

There are two subjects tenor player Fred Anderson loves to talk about: Rhythm and tradition. Not coincidentally, these are two things a listener to Fred's records is also inclined to talk about. Like most musicians, Fred is uninterested in labels, and ignores the disputes and divides that critics and fans (like myself) tend to get distracted by. He's an improviser who, rather than rejecting or exploding traditional jazz forms, sees himself elaborating upon them, inventing from within them, and creating music that can be heard as both an assimilation and evolution of the sound.

Perhaps that is most evident on his newest release, a wonderful duet with longtime friend and associate, drummer Hamid Drake. It's called Back Together Again (Thrill Jockey), and it may be the best offering by either artist to date. Symbiotic, adventurous, alive to the African rhythms of jazz and blues, every cut on it comes across as both a translation of the venerable and a pursuit of the new.

This is readily apparent on the opening number, a stand-out called "Leap Forward" that has Hamid laying down three different rhythms on frame drums while Fred absorbs them and blows out plumes of his own melodic voice that tighten and slacken, run and stroll, dig in and dig out. (A bonus disc of video footage allows you to actually see this!) This is Fred's third recording of duets with drummers (others include an early one with Steve McCall and his first Thrill Jockey release with former Sun Ra drummer Robert Barry), and it's clearly a setting that comes very natural to him. "Each one is different," he said. "Each one required different approaches."

Though Fred's music has often been labeled free, he scoffs at the term. "What I do comes from a lot of listening, and practicing, and composing. I'm still learning, all the time, but it's a really serious process. You got your chords and scales and you just keep playing with 'em and finding new things. I do that every day. Every single day. Nothing free about that."

There's a book he's put together and recently copyrighted called Exercises for the Creative Musician, which contains transcriptions of some of his compositions and exercises for practice and exploration. In it, you can find out more about the Rhythmic Concept that he and Hamid have developed through their decades of playing together. "Part of [the concept] is thinking about melody in terms of rhythm, not restricted to any particular groove, and go with the suggestions that come from it. Like when I'm listening to Hamid, I might hear something in the syncopation, and I'll try to play a melodic phrase that might go against it or might go with it. I might play fast or slow. There's a lot there in the rhythm that I can find tones for."

If rhythm is their idiom, then tradition is their forum. Not a surprise then that one of the songs on the new record is called "Know Your Advantage (The Great Tradition)". These are two artists proud to contribute to the rich history of jazz music, two who continue to take inspiration from what's come before them. "Hamid just turned me on to the new Jimmy Lyons box, and it's great to hear. I'm used to hearing Jimmy with Cecil, you know, and when I was overseas I used to see them too, but hearing Jimmy as a leader is a totally different thing. It's wonderful."

In T.S. Eliot's famous essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", he writes that "the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence". A lot of artists like to obscure their sources, afraid that they'll be 'found out' and be considered less original. Well, there is no anxiety of influence in Fred, and no ego beyond trying to make music that matters. In my conversations with him, he spoke as much about Bird as about anyone. He is also apt to talk about Louie and Duke, Prez, Hawk, and Jug. Some of their pictures adorn the walls of his small Chicago club, The Velvet Lounge, which has become well known as a kind of workshop and showplace for younger musicians.

"There was this young guy the other day who was all excited about this Charlie Parker record I had on at the club. He was saying how he'd never heard this before, and I looked at him and laughed. 'You've heard this a hundred times, I play it all the time.' See, it was just that he was finally hearing in it what he needed. It took him awhile, but he found it, and it sounded totally new to him. That's what it does."

On the new record, one hears shades of Coltrane, especially in the themes Fred lays down, many having the immediacy of announcement before he takes off on them. In his playing, there is always, like Trane, a bittersweet tone, simultaneously mournful and life-affirming, bluesy and spiritual. And his interplay with Hamid has reached a new level of communication that, because it is conducted in rhythm, enters our bodies as well as our minds. On every song, Hamid creates a kind of stirring undertow from which Fred tows out the chords and makes melody.

The more you listen to the record, the more you understand more of their concept. It originates from their own lives but is steeped in the larger human story. Because as we know, since the earliest primitive societies, rhythm has been associated with the unconscious, the hypnotic, the visionary, and the corporeal. It embodies and it disembodies. It states and it suggests.

This also becomes tangible when you actually see Fred play live, see the barrel-bodied man in the leopard-skin kufi, dipping and stooping, attending to the sound of the drums and the sound of his horn with his whole body. And at 75, it doesn't appear that he will sit or slow down any time soon.

"One of the great things about practicing and playing all the time is realizing how much you don't know", Fred told me. And after all those years, decades really, when there were no Fred Anderson records in print, there are now sixteen available. Fred's take on that: "It's good to be in the game, but now I want to stay in the game. I got more to do."

[EKE BBB]

I´ve just read he´s been often called the "Lone Prophet on the Prairie".

http://www.ccchronicle.com/back/2000_spring/00may01/ae5.html

[EKE BBB]

Some more photos, from 30th Willisau Jazz Festival 2004 in Willisau, Switzerland on August 26 - 29, 2004 (Irene Schweizer, Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake)

[blake]

i've always been fond of this pic by herb nolan (http://homepage.interaccess.com/~ntwill/):

[EKE BBB]

Jazzmatazz lists two upcoming releases (no street date yet):

Fred Anderson - Neighbors (Atavistic Unheard Music Series)

Fred Anderson - Milwaukee Tapes, vol.2 (Atavistic Unheard Music Series)

[paul secor]

Thanks to everyone who posted pics and recommendations.

All of you in the Chicago are who have the opportunity to hear him play live regularly are truly lucky.

My favorite Fred Anderson recordings are Duets 2001 with Robert Barry (Thrill Jockey), Vintage Duets and Destiny (Okka) and The Missing Link (Nessa). There's a lot I haven't heard, so it's been good to read about other recordings.

Fred Anderson is one of the cats still doing it. He's a national treaure and we should try to support him while he is doing it.

[John B]

Great timing, as I just saw Fred live on Sunday night with William Parker and Hamid Drake.  It was a fantastic show.  Michael Ehlers was on tour with them and has been recording the shows, so, hopefully, one of them will be released eventually.

I just read over on JC that this is actually coming to pass. Eremite will be releasing a 2cd set, featuring the complete show I saw in December. Great, great news, as the show was one of the best I have seen in a long time.

[gslade]

Great timing, as I just saw Fred live on Sunday night with William Parker and Hamid Drake.  It was a fantastic show.  Michael Ehlers was on tour with them and has been recording the shows, so, hopefully, one of them will be released eventually.

I just read over on JC that this is actually coming to pass. Eremite will be releasing a 2cd set, featuring the complete show I saw in December. Great, great news, as the show was one of the best I have seen in a long time.

←

This is excellent news, will also look for the Atavistic releases