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The man was an iconoclast and deeply profound tenor saxophonist who rarely left his hometown of Chicago. The passing of the guard continues:

Revered around the world but never a major star, worshiped by critics and connoisseurs but perpetually strapped for cash, the towering Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman practically went out of his way to avoid commercial success.

When trumpeter Miles Davis phoned Freeman, in the 1950s, looking for a replacement for John Coltrane, Freeman never returned the call.

When various bandleaders -- from Davis to Billy Eckstine to King Kolax -- tried to take him on the road, where his talents could be heard coast to coast, Freeman regularly turned them down.

His refusal to leave Chicago during most of his career, except for the briefest out-of-town engagements, cost him incalculable fame and fortune but also enabled him to create some of the most distinctive, innovative work ever played or recorded on a tenor saxophone.

And his devotion to the city where he was born, 88 years ago, made him a Chicago jazz icon honored with major tributes in Symphony Center and Grant Park, as well as standing-room-only crowds for his weekly gig at a remote bar on East 75th Street, the New Apartment Lounge. Earlier this year, he became one of the few Chicago-based musicians ever to receive a Jazz Masters Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Like all jazz musicians, he was first and foremost concerned with Freedom - both in his life and his music:

"They said I played out of tune, played a lot of wrong notes, a lot of weird ideas," Freeman told the Tribune, in 1992.

"But it didn't matter, because I didn't have to worry about the money -- I wasn't making [hardly] any. I didn't have to worry about fame -- I didn't have any.

"I was free."

And now he's reached the ultimate freedom...R.I.P. Von Freeman.

postscript: Margalit Fox, of the NY Times, came out with her own Obit today (8/19/12), and it's well researched and lively:

Not until the 1980s did he begin performing more often on famous out-of-town stages, including Alice Tully Hall and the Village Vanguard in New York. Earlier in his career Mr. Freeman had made much of his living, as he told The Tribune, playing for "strip joints, taxi dances, vaudeville shows, comedians, jugglers, weddings, bar mitzvahs, jazz clubs, dives, Polish dances, Jewish dances, every nationality."

And then there are these other, choice, quotes:

"I'm not trying to brag or nothing, but I always knew I could play, 50, 60 years ago," he told The Tribune in 2002. "I really don't play any different than the way I played then. And I never let it worry me that I didn't get anywhere famewise, or I didn't make hit records."

Or this one:

"Don't tune up too much, baby," Mr. Freeman once told a colleague. "You'll lose your soul."

Ahhhh...classic Vonski!

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