MUSIC

compilations since.

This success e ectively dissolved the Austin High Gang, insofar as they were still a coherent group—but only because the members separately started landing higher-profile gigs, mostly in New York City. Condon also went on to have an impressive career, and he’d often hire his old Chicago cohorts—Freeman wrote Condon’s hot 1934 single “The Eel,” for instance, and played a swinging and muchbeloved solo on the tune. In 1956, Condon closed another circle by recording the live album At Newport with Louis Armstrong.

On and o from the late 1920s till the late ’30s, Freeman and Tough’s wide-ranging careers would include gigs and recording sessions with big bands led by Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. During that era, Freeman and Coleman Hawkins could arguably be said to have represented the two main schools of tenor saxophone in jazz—and in 1957 they were paired on the Cootie Williams and Rex Stewart LP The Big Challenge.

Freeman returned to Chicago in 1981, where he wrote his autobiography and led beloved ensembles locally. McPartland also enjoyed a long and celebrated career, and Teschemacher (who died in a car crash in 1932) retains a reputation as a groundbreaking player.

When Freeman passed away in 1991, critic John Litweiler (who’d recently finished an 11year tenure as director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago) eulogized him for the Reader. He also nodded to the Austin High Gang, describing one of the ways their legacy extended beyond the musical. “In the heyday of the first Chicago school, Freeman and his friends were an important bridge between early jazz and the swing era,” he wrote. “Along with their slightly older friend, cornetist Beiderbecke, they were the source of many of their era’s romantic attitudes about jazz: jazz is liberation, jazz is honesty, jazz is social protest.”

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen.