Chico Freeman

Featuring: Don Moye

condition (record/cover): EX / EX (in shrink)

Silver labels.

1979: Chico Freeman, son of Chicago tenor royalty and one of the brightest of the loft-era generation, turns unexpectedly inward - an album of ballads and standards, played with a tenderness that startled everyone who knew him only from the fire. With John Hicks, Cecil McBee and company laying down deep, patient support, Freeman proves what the elders always knew: the avant-garde credentials and the ballad art are the same discipline wearing different clothes, both resting on tone, breath and the nerve to be simple. "Autumn in New York" and its companions get readings of complete emotional honesty, the tenor huge and unhurried. India Navigation was the great documentarian of the loft scene, and this remains one of the most loved records in its catalog - famously the one that converts people, the disc loft skeptics get played first and surrender to.

Spiritual in the quietest sense, and completely convincing from first note to last. US pressing.