Flashback [14:05]
Ode to Tip [15:11]
By Many Names [12:35]
Timeless [23:31]
Fred Anderson (tenor sax)
Harrison Bankhead (bass)
Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, vocal)
Recorded at the Velvet Lounge, Chicago, July
12th and 13th, 2005
Fred Anderson’s name first
came to any degree of international prominence
as one of the founding members of the AACM
(Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians) in the Chicago of the 1960s. In
subsequent years he attracted a good deal
less attention than some of his fellow Chicagoans,
such as Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams,
Lester Bowie and Joseph Jarman. In part this
was because he stayed behind in Chicago when
others moved on to New York and beyond. In
part, I suspect, it was because his talent
was relatively slow to mature. On such early
recordings as I have heard his voice is altogether
less distinctive than it later became. Actually
Anderson’s career has been recorded in very
inconsistent and partial fashion, so it is
hard to be clear about the nature of his development.
It was only really in the 1990s that his work
was recorded with any regularity, and many
of these later recordings are on relatively
hard-to-find labels.
This new CD has the advantages
of good recording quality and of being on
the widely-distributed Delmark label.
To support himself and his
family, Anderson worked as a bar tender at
an establishment called Tip’s Lounge on Indiana
Avenue in Chicago. On the death of the owner
in 1982, Anderson took over the venue, renaming
it the Velvet Lounge and making it a small
but important setting for improvised music
– something of its importance is celebrated
in Gerald Majer’s book The Velvet Lounge:
On Late Chicago Jazz (Columbia University
Press, 2005).
This present CD was recorded
at the Velvet Lounge on two successive nights,
shortly before the club’s closure and demolition.
At the time of recording Anderson was 76,
but his playing has all the adventurousness,
inventiveness and stamina of youth. His tenor
sound belongs in the Chicago tradition of
such as Gene Ammons and Von Freeman, a large
fluid sound, soaked in the blues and with
an unsentimental lyricism on ballads. Though
one might think of him as a ‘free’ player,
his work is thoroughly grounded in quasi-traditional
ideas of melody and harmony and the listener
doesn’t have to be committed to the avant-garde
to be able to find a great deal to enjoy here.
Playing with two long-time associates, Anderson
is able to rely on the way they draw on both
intuition and experience to complement his
free-wheeling improvisations.
On four long tracks, Anderson
spins out some long lines, insistently reiterates
single notes against a changing rhythmic background,
plays tenderly and sensually, has moments
of hard-edged brusqueness, throws out hints
that are left undeveloped or pursues a motif
to its logical conclusion. The group interplay
is a joy in itself, with Bankhead’s double-bass
sounding at times guitar-like, at times minimalist
in its insistence on precise time-keeping,
at still other times weaving complex chordal
patterns. Drake is, quite simply, one of the
master-drummers of contemporary jazz, and
this is a chance to hear him at something
like his best in an intimate setting.
Outstanding, richly enjoyable.
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
DELMARK DE-568 [68:51] 
