George Freeman, Chicago jazz great who was set for upcoming Green Mill shows, dies at 97

Jazz and genes sustained George Freeman, who died Monday at age 97 — just a few days shy of gigs he was supposed to play at the Green Mill to celebrate his 98th birthday.

Mr. Freeman was a Chicago legend in the genre, and part of a family that constituted a bit of Chicago jazz royalty. His brothers were vaunted jazz saxophonist Von Freeman and drummer Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman. He also was the uncle of saxophonist Chico Freeman.

In recent years, as Mr. Freeman approached 100 and couldn't hold a guitar pick the way he did when he was playing with greats like Charlie Parker and Billie Holliday, he began using knobs from various kitchen cabinets to manipulate the strings on his guitar.

The April 11 and 12 shows he was slated to play at the Green Mill will go on as scheduled, but will now be a tribute to Mr. Freeman by his three bandmates.

Jazz guitarists traditionally favor a polite, reserved tone, but Mr. Freeman's sound was nastier and grungier, a raw and stinging attack that could bridge the gap between Chicago jazz and Chicago blues.

"He took all kinds of influences of the guitar and melded them together, for sure. That was definitely one of his goals," said Mike Allemana, who played with Mr. Freeman and directs the University of Chicago jazz ensemble.

Mr. Freeman was born in Chicago on April 10, 1927, to George T. Freeman Sr. and Earle Granberry Freeman. His father was a Chicago cop and his mother was a homemaker. He attended Du Sable High School and played in the band under famed musical director Captain Walter Dyett, but was booted from the group because he refused to play in the back with the rhythm section.

Mr. Freeman wanted the guitar to have the spotlight.

In the late 1930s, Mr. Freeman’s father would come home after a swing shift and crank up the family’s Majestic radio, its bass speaker booming the big band sounds of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.

“I was waiting for him to come home; I wanted to hear that music,” Mr. Freeman recalled in a Sun-Times story that was published in 2023.

Music saturated his childhood. His mother sang in a church choir. His father played the piano. Musicians poured into the Freeman house, including legendary pianist Fats Waller, whom Mr. Freeman’s father met while working the police beat outside the famous South Side jazz joint, the Grand Terrace.

It was T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian, a Black electric guitar pioneer, who drew Mr. Freeman to the six-stringed instrument.

“I would slip out of the house because I had to hear me some T-Bone Walker,” Mr. Freeman told the Sun-Times in that same 2023 interview. He revealed that he would peek into the window of Rhumboogie Café near Hyde Park to watch Walker. “He could sing the blues — pretty blues. He wasn’t gut-bucket blues. I watched him put that guitar behind his neck, and the women were going crazy.”

In his teens, Mr. Freeman played with a local swing band, then later fronted his own group, playing gigs at the Pershing Hotel at 64th and Cottage Grove in the mid- to late 1940s. He also played in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

“Charlie Parker completely fell in love with me,” Mr. Freeman said in 2023 the Sun-Times interview. “He wouldn’t go onto the bandstand without me. He’d say, ‘Where’s George?’”

Holiday was less flattering. Mr. Freeman was accompanying her at the Regal Theater when, at some point during the show, tears trickled down his face.

“I’d never heard anything so beautiful,” he said. At the end of the song, Holiday glared at him and said, “What the hell are you crying about, fool?” he recalled.

Mr. Freeman's father was killed in the line of duty in 1947. He and his two older brothers pledged to take care of their mother, who lived to 103.

Mr. Freeman spent the early 1970s touring with Gene Ammons, the Chicago tenor sax great. In 1971, Mr. Freeman’s name appeared on the cover of DownBeat magazine, a distinction that could have propelled him to national fame and a recording career with a major label, but that didn’t happen. His guitar solo meanderings were too jarring, too unorthodox, some have suggested.

Mr. Freeman called it “going outside,” or deliberately playing notes that clash with a tune’s key signature.

Mr. Freeman released more than a dozen albums under his own name, including his latest “The Good Life” (HighNote Records) in 2023. He played his last Chicago Jazz Festival the same year at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, where he appropriately offered up the guitar solo on his late brother Von Freeman's tune "Brother George" while dressed in tuxedo with a red rose in his breast pocket.

In recent years, Mr. Freeman, a longtime resident of the Grand Crossings neighborhood, finally began getting the recognition his admirers claimed he long deserved.

Chicago bluesman Billy Branch, who collaborated with Mr. Freeman, said he was "truly one of the last of the living jazz greats, and specifically Chicago jazz greats." He was also just a joy to be around, he said.

"We did a song we called, 'Where's the Cornbread?' and it got its name because we were on the phone and I was asking my wife, 'Where's the cornbread?' and I asked her several times. And for some reason that just cracked George up, and whenever I saw him he'd say 'Billy, where's the cornbread?' So we decided to make it a song," Branch said.

Services are being planned.