Archive Dive: An Evening at the Velvet Lounge
Joel Appel-Kraut
I moved to Chicago in late 2022, more than 10 years after Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge closed its doors at 67 E. Cermak Road following the prolific saxophonist’s passing in 2010. Though The Lounge had already moved locations once from its original spot on the corner of 21st and Indiana, its permanent closing seemed to mark the end of an era of creative music on Chicago’s South Side. That being said, while The Lounge’s Sunday Jam Sessions wound down and eventually stopped, the alumni of those sessions went on to have remarkably successful and disparate careers in music ranging from International pop acts to community leaders in the Chicago creative music scene.
Tatsu Aoki, a longtime collaborator of Fred’s and the Executive Director of Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW), refused to let the Lounge’s doors close – he took the door out entirely (literally!) – bringing The Lounge’s original front door to serve as an entryway inside of AIRMW. With the help of Clarence Bright, the audio engineer at the Velvet Lounge, Tatsu also recorded much of his work with Fred at the lounge in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s, playing as the Fred Anderson Trio or Quartet with a rotating cast of percussionists, guitarists, and horn players. A little over a year ago, Tatsu and AIRMW brought these tapes to ESS for preservation, and the Creative Audio Archive has digitized and preserved a collection of more than 40 DATs, or Digital Audio Tapes, thus establishing the Tatsu Aoki Collection within CAA. These tapes are owned by AIRMW and have generously made available in their entirety for listening on ESS’s new website for all to enjoy. Well mic’d and monitored, these 65+ hours of recordings are remarkably high-quality, placing the listener inside The Velvet Lounge for a set of improvised music, or sometimes two or three.
Over the last few months, I’ve spent at least a few nights a week, in my own way, at The Velvet Lounge with Fred and Tatsu. Listening to Tatsu’s recordings can be like a time machine or a window into the past, but they can also feel like a nascent reflection of Chicago creative music today. Like sitting under the shade of a tree while witnessing it being planted and watered, in listening and engaging with Tatsu’s archive I found myself both indebted to, and a part of, Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge. Read and listen on to join me for an extended evening at The Lounge, stitched together across multiple years and groups of improvisers.
What follows in this Archive Dive covers 3 hours of recorded music which ESS has made accessible here on our website. For the intended experience, scroll to the bottom of this page to listen to each set of improvised music as you make your way through the Archive Dive.
Dive In
We probably took the bus to the corner of 21st and Indiana, where Fred is waiting at the door. By now it’s the late 90’s, and the original $4 cover has inflated a bit, but we’re happy to hand Fred a few bills and slip past him into the warmth of the building. The room is aglow – reds and golds and beiges bounce off of the patterned wallpaper in a hazy jumble, and microphones quietly feedback the rumbles of a growing crowd. It’s early in the evening, but the room is already buzzing with a quiet anticipation as improvisers tuck their instruments under tables and scan the room for familiar faces. Next to the stage, Clarence Bright, Fred’s recordist and friend, presses a button and slowly turns a fader on the soundboard. The DAT machine next to it whirs to life, and Bill Brimfield raises a trumpet to his mouth…
LISTEN TO: TA-015, Fred Anderson, Bill Brimfield, Chad Taylor, Tatsu Aoki
December 4th, 1998
Chad Taylor is, today, the Artistic Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. On December 4th, 1998, however, he was a 25-year-old behind the kit at the Velvet Lounge, just a few months off of releasing 12° of Freedom, the first of he and Rob Mazurek’s now celebrated series Chicago Underground. Brimfield is 35 years Taylor’s senior, Fred a few years older than him, but everyone seems comfortable in each other’s company, a testament to the Lounge’s role as a connecting point across generation and genre. At the end of the set, the performers laugh off the way they ended a tune, and Fred’s billowing laughter fills the recording over a chorus of chuckles from the audience. I love this moment, because everybody gets to be in on the joke – everybody, on stage or not is grateful and happy to be there. The sense of community is palpable, and the goal is not perfection but creation and learning, something that guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, who went on to become one of the most in-demand guitarists in music today, made clear to me when we spoke in January: “I was floored, and enamored, and so addicted to going to that place. I always wanted to go…There were some days it worked out and some days it didn’t work out, and there was no judgement. It was critique, but not any judgement. Because everybody’s still trying to figure this shit out. Fred Anderson was saying ‘I’m still trying to figure this shit out, after 40, 50 years!’”
LISTEN TO: TA-039A, Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Jeff Parker, Tatsu Aoki
March 22nd, 2002
It’s the evening of Fred Anderson’s 73rd birthday, and he’ll be spending it at the Velvet Lounge, no doubt. He and Tatsu are joined on stage by drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake, as well as guitarist Jeff Parker. By 2002, this group had played together in a number of settings as the Fred Anderson Quartet over a number of years, and they are well practiced together, though they do experience some technical difficulties towards the beginning of the set. Jeff shines on this recording, given room to explore harmonically and rhythmically both as a soloist and in support of others, and the group leverages dissonance to create moments of absolute beauty, where everything seems to come together in an instant. Fred does mention that it’s his birthday very quickly, but only to let us know that he’ll be “celebrating all week” and where we can see him play next. We grab a drink as Clarence pops in yet another DAT tape and resets the recording levels, as one final late set is about to begin.
LISTEN TO: TA-036, Fred Anderson, Tatsu Aoki, Jeff Parker, Avreeayl Ra
June 3rd, 2000
It is the last set of the night, but the only new performer to the stage is drummer Avreeayl Ra. Ra is a regular here, born and raised in Chicago, and a mentor to a number of the younger players in attendance. The band launches into a series of notes that the audience seems to recognize (you can actually hear it played and referenced across Fred and Tatsu’s archives). But it is the late set, and so everybody is willing to get a little bit loose, taking parts of their solos out of time and allowing themselves to explore. Tatsu and his double bass are especially clear on this set, and his solo starting around the 12-minute mark is one of my highlights of the whole night. He is a remarkably percussive player, something Tatsu says his mentors had commented on before: “I was introduced by Afifi to Fred initially, and you know, ‘Fifi said, “well, this kid plays bass like a drum, right?”
There are also quite a few moments in this set where listeners can clearly feel the influence of Chicago’s Blues scene on the group. When Tatsu and Jeff Parker connected for a conversation last year, they talked a bit about Chicago Blues and their relationship to it. Tatsu said, “one of the things that I always thought was, like the improviser, they all kind of have, like this blues, like, foundation when you were in Chicago. Like Fred’s horn has this really distinctive, bluesy thing happening. And you (Jeff Parker) also did too.” The group plays two tunes, a shorter set than most at the lounge, but it’s getting late, and the crowd has thinned out. After introducing the performers one more time, Fred steps to the mic and says “Thank you very much. I think that takes care of this set for the night. Thank you very much and thanks for staying, thanks for staying.”
Fred is spot on. Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge was, indeed, a place where music was taken care of each night by the loving hands of a community that cared deeply for it. Over time, the musicians on stage moved away or grew into new communities, and new improvisers came to take their place. New ideas altered the soundwaves in the room, new microphones changed the sound of the recordings, and eventually a new building entirely changed almost everything else about The Lounge. But the standard of care never wavered – the drive to participate in something communal remained the same. It was a pleasure to be a part of that community, if only through recording, for this evening.
“You can only contribute, and your reward is the fact that you can contribute.” – Fred Anderson
If you have questions or comments about this Archive Dive, or want to get in contact with the author, he can be reached at jappelkraut@gmail.com.