I Bet You’ve Never Heard This … #2

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Welcome to the second installment of I Bet You’ve Never Heard This, where I recommend albums you actually may have heard, but you get the gist of what I’m saying. These “Never Heard” albums should be in all of our libraries, but for one reason or another we missed them upon original or rerelease.

After publishing the first article in this series, I received wonderful feedback and album submissions from the Audiophile Style community. What a terrific bunch of people, who absolutely love music! I encourage people to continue to contact me directly, with album submissions - [email protected].

The album featured in this article was submitted by @audiobomber. I can’t thank him enough for letting me know about this one.

The Album - Chico Freeman - Spirit Sensitive (1979)

First a note about Chico Freeman from Wikipedia. He is incredibly talented and took the road less traveled, compared to those who proceeded him playing jazz, and his contemporaries.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of jazz tenor saxophonist Von Freeman. His uncle George Freeman played the guitar, and his uncle Bruz Freeman played the drums. Freeman took piano lessons as a child and was introduced to the trumpet by his brother Everett, who found a trumpet in the family basement. Freeman began playing, inspired by artists such as Miles Davis and his Kind of Blue album. He went to Northwestern University in 1967 with a scholarship for mathematics and played the trumpet in the school, but did not begin playing the saxophone until his junior year. After practicing eight to ten hours per day and trying out for the saxophone section, Freeman quickly changed his major to music, and graduated in 1972. By that time he was proficient in saxophone, trumpet, and piano.

After graduation, Freeman taught at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians School of Music in Chicago, and started taking classes as a graduate student at Governors State University, earning a master's degree in composition and theory. Although most of Freeman's musical upbringing had been in jazz, at this time he began getting involved in blues music as well. He began playing at local Chicago clubs with artists such as Memphis Slim and Lucky Carmichael.

Spirit Sensitive, a ballads album full of jazz standards, was recorded  between October 1978 and January 1979 by engineer Bob Cummins at India Navigation Studio, in New York City. Bob used an Ampex 440 8-track at 15 ips and mixed it down on an Ampex ATR 102 at 30 ips. He used and  Electrovoice RE 20  microphone on the saxophone, and several AKG and Beyerdynamic ribbon microphones on the bass, piano, and drums.

Chico Freeman played both tenor and soprano saxophone, accompanied by Cecil McBee on bass, John Hicks on piano, and Billy Hart and Famoudou Don Moye on drums.

Spirit Sensitive is one of those albums with which I immediately fell in love. I don’t care that the New York Times called it "a lyrical, utterly traditional album of ballads and jazz standards." As if that’s a bad thing. From the opening notes of Autumn in New York to the closing of Duke Ellington’s Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, this album gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. It’s full of lush saxophone and stern standup bass, that both sound wonderful accompanied by piano and percussion.

Freeman’s saxophone on track two, Peace, is silky smooth. After the opening sequence, Freeman provides some space for Hicks on piano and McBee on bass to shine, before picking back up and finishing as a cohesive foursome.

It’s impossible to NOT fall in love with track three, A Child Is Born, immediately after pressing play. Cecil McBee’s bass in the center, Freeman’s saxophone panned a bit to the right, and the two play off each other beautifully for the first minute of this nearly eight minute masterpiece.

Track five, You Don’t Have To Say You’re Sorry, opens with a twist. I believe Cecil McBee plays his bass with a bow, before Freeman elegantly joins in on sax (I believe both tenor and soprano). This track is a masterclass in control, even when one has the ability to step on the gas.

Obtaining the Analogue Productions version of this album results in a double delight. It’s sonically superior, due to mastering by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab, with all tube electronics. And, this version contains the four bonus tracks, Lonnie’s Lament, You Don’t Have To Say You’re Sorry, Wise One, and Carnival.

The current Discogs prices for the Analogue Productions version on CD are ridiculous. I really hope that Acoustic Sounds re-issues this reissue, without changing a thing. I’ve seen images of other releases from Japan, and certainly a few on vinyl as well. Given that this series isn’t nearly as thorough as @Josh Mound's The Best Version Of…, I’ll leave it up to members of this community to help identify those worth pursuing.

Fortunately, Spirit Sensitive is available to stream from Tidal. While the Analogue Productions version is better, listeners will still be delighted by what the original release offers. This is definitely a new favorite album of mine, and it’s one that you can no longer say you’ve never heard.

Album Details

Artist: Chico Freeman

Album: Spirit Sensitive

Availability: Discogs (link), Tidal (link)

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