Document text
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INPA.L.C. PROJECT EtittIle UNIT
Form --3
Acceusion no.
3663
Date received
10/10/40
Consignment no.
Shipped from
Wash. Officio
Label
Amount
Bp
iiaklor.e....Collection (or Type)
Titleamake, Chiugc sty1A0
...31409
Place of origin Chigaii,P., Illinois Date
Project worker gas Ross
Project editor
Remarks
FOLKLORE
FORM D
Extra Comment
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Sam Ross
ADDRESS 713 Rush Street
DATE March 30, 1939
SUBJECT Jazz music, Chicago style
NAME OF INFORMANT Arnold Freeman
None
CHICAGO
FORM B
Personal History of Informant
CHICLGO FOLKSTUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Sam Rosa
ADDRESS 713 Rush Street
DATE March 30, 1939
SUBJECT Jazz music, Chicago style
NAME OF INFORMANT Arnold Freeman
1. Ancestry
2. Place and date of birth
3. Family
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
7. Special skills and interests
Acting
8. Community and religious activities
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
No. Words
9. Description of informant..
Is about five feet seven, well built and miry, with an olive complexion
punctured with a thin black moustache. His hair is black.
10. Other Points gained in interview
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview jFOLKLORE
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Sam Rosa
ADDRESS 713 Rush Street
DATE March 30, 1939
SUBJECT Jazz music, Chicago style
1. Date and time of interview
March 16, 1939 in the afternoon
2. Place of interview
In a beer tavern on the corner of Balbo and Wabash.
3. Name and address of informant
Arnold Freeman, 1140 North La Salle Street
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
None
.5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
None
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
CHI CAGO-
No. Words
We vent out of the Blackstone theatre where the informant had been
rehearsing to a beer tavern on the corner. One part of the establishment
was a restaurant with sliok tables and new fixtures of a modernistic tone;
The other had a regular bar and hard wooden booths 'mbar* you could sit
and be served. It was no different than hundreds of other places with the
regular nickel slot viotrola and a bad selection of records.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number tb which the material refers.)
W3663
FQLKLORE
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
CHICAGO FOLKS TUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Sam Ross
ADDRESS 713 Rush Street
DATE March 30, 1939
SUBJECT Jazz music, Chicago style
NAME OF INFORMANT Arnold Freeman
CHICAGO
No. Words
(Note: I had obtained this interview before we had been
given instructions as to haw they should be obtained and
before these forms had been given out. Thts is not a
verbatim report, but it is rather in keeping with the
informants speech, and since I had taken copious notes,
it is not far off from a verbatim report. Some of the
questions, especially in form B. I could not fill in due
to my not knowing what the forms would ask for.)
Bud Freeman (informant's brother) was born April 13, 1906 in
Chicago. Be lived in Austin practically all his life. So did the
MacPartland brothers (Jimmy' and Richard), Jim Lannigan and Frank
Teschmaker. Bud played sax, Jimmy MacPertland cornet, Rich Mac
Partland banjo and later guitar, Lannigan piano, and Teschmaker hot
violin and later sax and clarinet. These are the men who became the
nucleus of the critic -termed Chicago style. Critic -termed because if
you tell them that they created a style in jazz music they will laugh
at you. They just played, that's all, and did not think of themselves
as having been revolutionaries in music and creating a style. Now,
perhaps, with various critiques being written about jazz and with the
greater conscious evaluation of jazz as a vital form of music a greater
mass of people being more interested in good hot jazz, they might accept
themselves as the originators of a style.
FORM C TEXT —1—
CHICAGO FOLKS TUFF
Going back, Bud used to hear Earl Fuller's Negro bank at Navy
Pier. That was his first influence. He was nine years old then.
There was a cornet player in the band who was his idol. Be pulled
a stunt of having his feet and body tied to a chair and he would
play his cornet so loud and powefful that it seemed like he blew
himself right out of those knots. That got Bud. Be was always
crazy about music.
At the time mother played piano and Bud played drums. Be was
pretty punk in school but he was nuts about music. His teacher in
sixth grade saw that and she gave him a ukelele and she encouraged
his musical talent.
He met Jimmy NacPartland at Austin high school, Bud didn't go
more than two years altogether. Now Jimmy's father was a music teacher
and Bud began taking lessins from him on a C melody sax. But he wouldn't
study. Played more his awn way, the may he felt like playing. It was
a hard way to play he found out later. He had this kind of a talent.
Two days after he got the horn he heard Paul Biese on a recording of
Rose and Bud played the whole piece, with his awn improvisations, right
back.
Tesohmaker also went to Austin high with Bud. Be was a serious
violinist, playing in the school orchestra. When the boys organised
their first band to play at the school dances on Friday afternoons in
the girls' am, Teach played hot fiddle. He probably played about the
first hot fiddle. But Teach got the idea that a fiddle was an Joky
FORM C TEXT 410..
CHICAGO FOLKS TUFF
instrument. Everybody else had that notion too about a fiddle then.
It was a very Joky instrument. So Tesch got an alto sax and played
along with Bud. None of the others knew much about their instruments.
They just played, and they played pretty good, too, but they were all
bad readers. Teach however had a firm instrumental knowledge due to
his violin studies. Be was about the only guy in the outfit who could
really read music on sight. Bud was a bad reader. p3, would have to
improvise from memory of a tune, sort of feel his may through. Maybe
that and his talent gave him a certain originality so that when he
finally learned how to read notes on sight he was really so good that
he is now called about the greatest white tenor sax man in the business
But Teach would improvise around the notes, give those banal tunes some-
thing. Be was a very frustrated guy, like Bix Beiderbecke, and you could
sometimes feel what a frustrated guy he was in his instrument. And it
wasn't sex frustration. Maybe it came because he knew so muoh more about
music than the others. Maybe he wanted to get at the impossible like Bix
and he went nuts trying.
Anyhow, by the time Bud quit school, Jimmy MacPartland was a Wedern
Union boy; Rich worked in a bank; Teach was still going to school. Teach
had a lot of trouble with his parents about his music. So did everybody
else except the MacPartland brothers. Maybe because everybody else came
from middle class families. When Tench brought home his horn his father
said that if Tesch didn't buckle 'down at school he'd throw the horn out
of the windowAnd Teach said he might as well be thrown out with it
FORM C TEXT -2-
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
because he'd jump out after it anyhow.
The way the setup was than, Rich got a banjo but later switched
to guitar. Lannigan played piano and he was pretty well grounded
musically, but he wasn't very hot, then later he switched to base
horn. So Dave North, a printer's apprentice, took Lannigan's place
at piano. Dave Tough somehow got together with the Austin gang,
although he lived in Oak Park. He was playing dance jobs when he
was still in knee pants. At night, going to work, Dave would put on
his long pants. This was the nucleus of the Chicago style. And they
called themselves the Blue Friars, which played about 1924. Later
Floyd O'Brien, a trombome player from the south side, who had been
playing on jobs when he met the kids, joined them. After that the
others who are indentified with Chicago style brought their influence
with them and had them sifted through the Blue Friars and the style
was developed and furthered.
At the time the original bunch was influenced by the records of
King Oliver, MoKenzie's Mound City Blue Blowers, Frankie Trambauer,
and the Wolverines with Bix Beiderbecke. They used to go to the Spoon
and Straw, a little ice cream parlor where most of the high school kids
would congregate, and listen to those records. That was their only way
then of knowing what good jas& was. The big white band at the time was
Dick Voynos's (piano) Wolverines. And in that band was Bix. He became
the greatest influence at the time.
FORM C TEXT
CHICAGO FOLKSTTJFF
Than they started to hit the night spots on the south side. There
was a club there then called the Apex. There the great Bessie Smith
sang; Joe Smith, who influenced Bix a lot, played trumpet) and don't
ask what boogie woogie is but they had a guitar player, Saint Cyr, who
played that way. He was terrific. They also vent to the Sunset club where they
heard Armstrong, Earl Hines, and Carol Dickerson.'
That was the beginning. The first one to get a job of any import-
ance was alley MacPertland. Be Probably had the most guts and the best
personality. Be was always sort of the leader of the band. Be took an
audition with the Bamboo Inn orchestra, which used to be located on
Madison and Kedsie, and he landed a job there. Later, the whole outfit,
including Jimmy went up to Lost Lake in Wisconsin and played there all
summer. All this times they were creating the so-called Chicago style.
Each guy was an individualist. They had a deep respect for each other,
which is necessary for good jazz playing, and when one of them took off
a solo improvisation he knew he couldn't get lost from that solid back-
ground. In fact he would be inspired to better playing, more origin..
Despite the mentioned influences, all they did was learn from the great
musicians of the day but they couldn't copy. That's why they drove Red
Nichols nuts later on when some of them played and recorded for him.
Because they thought Nichols was Joky, a copyist with no originality.
And Nichols was a big name in those days.
The first big break among the Austin gang was when Bix left the
Wolverines and Jimmy MacFartland replaced him. That's why you can see
FORK C TEXT
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
the close resemblance between Jimmy's playing and Bix's. The boys
in the Wolverines must have influenced Jimmy a lot and Bix had
influenced them. But Bix was great and nobody could have a better
inipence. Then the original outfit got together again playing for
Husk O'Hare on WET. After that they played at the White City ball-
room and there Milt Nessrow cane in on sax', They were all about
twenty one years old then. Beiderbecke had heard about a kid band
that was knocking them dead at White City and he cam in once from
Hudson Lake with Trambauer, where they were performing, to hear
them. He stood listening to these orasy kids blowing their beads
off with his eyes and mouth side open. The gang was thrilled
knowing that Bix came down specially to hear them.
After that they began to work for Thelma Terry at the Golden
Pumpkin which used to be located on Madison and Hamlin. Krupa came
in then on drums and Bud Jacobson on sax. After that they began to
separate, sometimes working, most times not. Eddie Condon came up
from a small town in southern Illinois and he got the guys together
to make recordings, which are now famous.