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12/07/2006

Denny Freeman – guitarist in Dylan’s band, by Michael Gray

The fifth and final exclusive extract from Michael Gray’s important new book, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (Continuum, 2006).



Freeman, Denny [1944 - ]

Dennis Edward Freeman was born in Orange County, Florida on August 7, 1944 but spent his adolescence in Dallas, Texas where in the 1950s he thrilled to rock'n'roll and R&B and caught the live acts of many Chicago and Louisiana blues artists. By the late 1960s he had added Cream and JIMI HENDRIX to his list of special favourites and when he moved to Austin, Texas in 1970 after attending college, he began playing music in earnest himself. Though mainly a guitarist he has always played piano too, including on records by Jennifer Warnes, James Cotton and JIMMIE VAUGHAN, and was pianist on Vaughan's first solo tour. (He had first heard 16-year-old Vaughan play in Dallas, and later heard 17-year-old STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN in Austin, and fell in with them. 'We became friends, roommates, bandmates. Stevie still owes me $30 rent,' Freeman says on his website.)

Denny Freeman's first band was the Corals; around 1973 he was in the short-lived Southern Feeling and in 1976, with the Vaughans, the Cobras (who staged a reunion in 1982 and were back again by 2000, making a new album). For most of the 1970s and 1980s he was with the Vaughans in various combinations, including in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, which was the house band at Antones in Austin when it opened in 1975. Freeman had played with Freddie King as early as 1970 but now he was pitched in with many of the heroes of his youth - on one 1975 club night he was up there playing with the great Hubert Sumlin, JOHN LEE HOOKER, Walter Horton and others. In another houseband, in the 1980s, he played - sometimes guitar, sometimes piano - with Otis Rush, Junior Wells, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy and other blues big names.

In 1986 he made Blues Cruise, the first of five 'solo' albums, all largely instrumentals which, despite that first title, ranged across rock'n'roll, soul, jazz and R&B as well as the blues, and featured many musicians, among them the Texan singer-songwriter Angela Strehli, with whom he had often worked. The others were Out of the Blue (1987), Denny Freeman (1991), A Tone For My Sins (1997: this last title a pun that drew on his Catholic upbringing - something he mentions himself when, recalling that he and the Vaughans had been influenced by Dallas-based group the Nightcaps, he describes them as 'young Catholic boys playing blues. It was their version of "Thunderbird" that Stevie liked to play') and Twang Bang (2002). In 2000 he released the album Denny Freeman and the Cobras, and played in Japan and elsewhere in Taj Mahal's Phantom Blues Band.

Freeman had moved to LA in 1992, and remained there until late 2004, by which time he had also appeared on a Percy Sledge album for which he co-wrote one track, 'Love Come and Rescue Me'. He also co-wrote (with Debbie Harry and three others) the postsmodernist lounge jazz track 'Boom Boom in the Zoom Zoom Room', on her 1999 'Blondie comeback album' No Exit.

In 2005 he had something else to do: he joined Bob Dylan's Never-Ending Tour band, rehearsing in Seattle as from that March 1, and débuting in concert with Dylan on the first night of the 82-date spring US leg of the tour, which opened with three consecutive nights in Seattle, starting on March 7. Denny Freeman, these days balding and solid and tending to sport dark glasses (giving him 'a sort of Jack Nicholson look', according to one first-night fan's review), has remained in the band since, playing second guitar. By the end of 2005 he had played 113 Dylan concerts in all.

[Denny Freeman: Blues Cruise, nia, US, 1986; Out of the Blue, nia, US, 1987 (both CD-reissued on 1 CD, Blues Cruise/Out of the Blue, Amazing, nia, US, 1992); Denny Freeman, nia, US, 1991; A Tone For My Sins, Dallas Blues 8904, US, 1997; Twang Bang, V-8 V8-001, US, 2002. Denny Freeman & the Cobras: Denny Freeman & the Cobras, Crosscut 11028, US, 2000. Main sources www.dennyfreeman.com, Bill Pagel's Bob Links (incl. Dennis Lind's 'Nicholson look' quote) at http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/030705r.html (both seen online 07 Jan 2006), and e-mail from Denny Freeman to this writer, 21 Jan 2006.]




© Michael Gray 2006

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