Review: Chicago guitar legend George Freeman at 92 - Unstoppable

Is it possible for an artist to improve at age 92?

If you’re a Chicago jazz guitarist named George Freeman, the answer assuredly is yes.


For the show Freeman played Friday night at the Green Mill Jazz Club went beyond what he had achieved last year at this time, when he was still a young man of 91. The celebration of his April 10 birthday has become something of a civic rite in Chicago, the annual Green Mill soiree this time pointing to a musician increasingly nimble of thought and gesture.

Just before the music-making began, Green Mill club owner Dave Jemilo set the stage.

“We’re having a birthday party tonight!” he said to the crowd.

“We do this every year. Well, George has a lifetime contract, so we’ll be doing it forever.”

The way Freeman soon would be playing, it’s almost frightening to think of what he could be accomplishing by his 100th.

As always on these occasions, Freeman began with his battle cry: “Everybody say ‘yeah’!” he implored the audience.

A great roar from the house came right back at him.

“Everybody say ‘hell yeah!’” Freeman shouted, a great big smile on his face.

The room shook when everyone responded.

“Let’s get started,” said the guitarist, who immediately launched into a saucy, strutting blues of his called “Goin’ on 90.” Whether the title referred to an earlier birthday or simply the miles-per-hour he was aiming for, the tune showed the guitarist asserting himself in every way.

For starters, there was that big, piercing, wailing tone of his. With all that sound at his disposal, Freeman was able to sculpt tightly coiled lines, embellish them with occasional melodic flourishes, throw in some dramatic tremolo effects and otherwise conjure straight-up classic guitar blues playing. At climaxes, Freeman’s fingers slid chromatically up the scale, heightening dramatic tension with each ascending pitch.

It’s true that, like many artists of exalted age, Freeman overall subscribes to a less-is-more approach. Yet within that context Freeman was on fire, barely taking a pause between phrases. When he did, his younger colleague, Chicago guitarist Mike Allemana, filled in with flurries of notes and plenty of technical wizardry. More than anyone, Allemana has been key to Freeman’s late-in-life career resurgence, the two playing regularly together across the city.

As in previous Green Mill birthday extravaganzas, Freeman and Allemana were joined by Pete Benson on the Hammond B-3 organ and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie playing drums, the foursome soon cohering as a single rhythmic organism.

Freeman rode the band’s shuffling backbeats on his aptly named “Happy Fingers,” the guitarist’s phrases bounding from one offbeat to the next. Drummer Purdie’s sharp attacks, organist Benson’s fleet right-hand lines and guitarist Allemana’s running figurations made this quite a romp.


Freeman toned everything down with his ballad “Perfume,” a testament to the poetry he’s capable of. Beyond the lyric beauty of the song itself, Freeman caressed its four-note motifs as only a very seasoned musician could, the feathery quality of his tone matched by the tenderness of his phrasing.

An uninitiated listener might have suspected that the band was going to end its first set with the throbbing, funk-tinged, ever-thickening textures of “Shaft,” in Purdie’s pulsing arrangement. But the head of energy that Freeman and friends built up kept the guitarist playing.

He pushed ahead with “Home Grown Tomatoes,” from his newly released album, “George the Bomb!” and called singer and record producer Joanie Pallatto to the stage to join him. Then came the album’s title cut and “The Big Finish,” a signature Freeman closer yielding an avalanche of notes.

Which only whetted one’s appetite for his 93d birthday shows.

The George Freeman/Mike Allemana Quartet plays at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Green Mill Jazz Club, 4802 N. Broadway; $15; 773-878-5552 or

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

Twitter @howardreich