As a teenager in pursuit of the avant garde, I took tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at age 81, as a hero upon first hearing him in 1966. It was at a Unitarian Church-run coffee house in downtown Evanston near Northwestern U., and attention clearly had to be paid to the long, fierce, unreeling, knotty improvisations Anderson delivered in an ever-more hunkered-down posture as the evening went on.
There was an unremitting sense of urgency, sincerity and humility to what he was saying on his horn, spelled by startling outbursts from his pained-looking trumpeter, Billy Brimfield, and support from some rhythmically free-flowing bass and drummer (I forget who). Â There was nothing showy about Fred, though he was a large man who wore a skullcap. He was old to me then — 36 or 37. I bought Song For, Joseph Jarman’s album brilliantly employing Anderson’s standing band as soon as Delmark released it that year, too. I heard him many times in the 15 years that followed, at various concerts produced by the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) of which he was a co-founder along with another of my musical heroes, Muhal Richard Abrams. Fred was never less than totally involved in what he was doing, which was forcing air through a bent tube to shake the earth we walked on and the culture we breathed. (Photo left by Jim Newberry, thanks to Thrill Jockey records.)