Losing Mr. Anderson

Fred Anderson was a free jazz icon and neighborhood stalwart

06/30/2010 10:00 PM

Editorial

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Fred Anderson

Fred Anderson was a free jazz icon and neighborhood stalwart

It’s hard to overstate what a loss — to the jazz community, to the Near South Side, to Chicago in general — Fred Anderson’s death represents.

Anderson, 81, died last week. He leaves behind a rich legacy of recorded music and studio albums, live performances and, of course, the incomparable Velvet Lounge.

At Velvet Lounge jam sessions, young musicians and experimental players hone their craft and test themselves. The club provides a locus for cutting-edge jazz in the city. The testimonials Anderson’s contemporaries and protégés have offered to the club speak for themselves.

“That’s the crucible,” Anderson’s friend and fellow musician Douglas R. Ewart said Tuesday at an emotional but ultimately joyous wake on the South Side. “That’s the proving ground in this theater called Chicago.”

For the South Loop and Near South Side, the Velvet Lounge represented a bridge to the old neighborhood. It opened in 1982, before the shiny condo buildings shot up and the neighborhood’s character began to change.

Anderson operated and decorated the Velvet Lounge without regard to tourist sensibilities or whatever was trendy. The old location on the incongruously numbered 2128 ½ S. Indiana had the feel of a community center for experimental music that you were welcome to see and hear.

Today, Anderson’s club remains an authentic place in the neighborhood, a fascinating place to hear jazz that pushes the limits.

We encourage readers to both stop by for a show and consider making a donation to the fund the family has set up to keep the Velvet, as its aficionados and habitués lovingly call it, open and vital.

Donations should be endorsed to AIRMW with a memo noting the contribution is for the Velvet Lounge Fund and sent to Asian Improv aRts Midwest, c/o JASC 4427 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60640.

Keeping the Velvet open and experimental would be the ultimate tribute to a great man.


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