By Patricia Brody

UNDER REASONABLE pressure, “Freebo” is still the only name he volunteers, but no prodding at all is needed to get Bonnie Raitt’s bass player to respond to questions about the world he mysteriously describes as “between the vocals and the guitar.” That, actually, is a gross oversimplification of this musician’s role in Raitt’s band. Besides his active session work with Buddy Guy, Maria Muldaur, Martin Mull, and his stint during the late Sixties with the Edison Electric Band, he has been with Bonnie since her earliest emergence in 1970 as a performing blues vocalist/guitarist. He has as well appeared on all of her albums including the latest, Sweet Forgiveness.

    His artistic development follows a jagged line geographically and culturally; his playing has obviously been influenced by a substantial amount of travel around this continent and others, as well as by his movement through a variety of fast-changing musical currents. Freebo’s ability to connect loosely related or seemingly contradictory forces in his work, with satisfying clarity and precision, doubtless adds to his value as constant performing and recording companion to a woman whose music is in its own process of continual change.

    The erratic history begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Freebo was born (“before the dawn of rock and roll,” he offers enigmatically). He moved 100 miles away to a small coal town where he spent his first eighteen years becoming versed in a rather astounding array of instruments, from baritone horn to ukulele, but especially tuba. The path then jumps to a German-American theology school near Stuttgart, Germany, where he had come from struggles in pre-med calculus and chemistry at Swarthmore College (in Pennsylvania) to evade the draft. In Germany Freebo found himself rooming with English guitarist Jerry Donahue (see GP, Feb. ’76) and forming a small rock band in which he played his first bass—a $12.00 Framus through someone else’s white piggyback amp. Freebo returned to the States for another shot at higher education, this time at the University of Pennsylvania, where fate intervened on music’s behalf in the form of Mark Jordan (now in Jackson Browne’s band), an aspiring guitarist who convinced Freebo to take out a loan, buy himself a decent bass and amp, and join Mark’s band. Freebo’s heart really didn’t thump to the sound of the stethoscope (though he claims he would have been a great doctor), and thus was formed the Edison Electric Band. The group, though conceived at the height of the psychedelic rock era, shifted its focus over its five-year collaboration enough so that by the time Freebo was spotted by Bonnie Raitt and her manager Dick Waterman, Edison Electric (about to disband) was playing funky blues-oriented rock. Which almost brings us full circle since that, maintains Freebo, “is exactly what Bonnie plays.” Raitt, who had just gotten her Warner Bros, contract, asked Freebo to play bass with her. They worked out a few tunes together and tested them in a guest set with John Hammond at a club outside of Boston. “That was the beginning of a thing that looked like it was going to work,” Freebo observes. “I’ve been with her ever since.”

*   *   *   *

    How did your bass playing career actually begin?
    It all started early in my life—I was no more than three or four—with the music I was listening to.

    You mean you were exposed to music in your home?
    Yes. My father didn’t play anything, but he liked classical music, and he turned me on to the French horn solos in two tone-poems by Richard Strauss, Till Eulenspiegel and Don Juan. The single most important influence in my life, though, was “Tubby The Tuba,” a record I listened to hundreds of times as a child. Tubby—the story of a tuba who was very unhappy because he never got to play the melody—and the French horns in Strauss’ tone-poems had a tremendous pull for me. They made me love listening to other parts of the music, rather than the melody.

    Do you read music?
    Not very well; I play mostly by ear. I was given piano lessons for about six years, but all the time I would hear the harmony part, not the lead, the loudest. This eventually led to bass, which is what the harmony parts are all founded on. Bass supports the music. Everybody in the whole world wants to sing the melody or play the lead, so I got interested in the other parts of the music which to me were more interesting.

    You never wanted to play lead?
    Never. I wanted just the opposite; I wanted to harmonize with it or do something against it. This whole concept of harmony was heavily reinforced in one more place, a capella choir in grade school. There you had four parts happening. I loved choir—everyone in their purple and gold robes singing Christmas carols. I couldn’t wait till my voice changed so I could sing bass. And lo and behold, my wish came true.

    Do you remember the first time you played a stringed instrument?
    At one point my father brought home a cheap old ukulele and taught me a few chords: maybe a C, D. and an E7. That gave me my first concept of a fretted instrument, so when I picked up a guitar in high school all I had to do was add the bottom two strings to what I’d learned on the ukulele, and that was easy. They were bass strings, and even though I had a guitar in my hands, it was bass in my head.

    You played guitar in high school?
    Well, I played tuba in the band and sang in the choir, but the main thing in my life was football. Music was a hobby, not important like machismo. If I’d had my way, my fantasy was to play football with the team, then at half-time mess around with the band. After half-time put the tuba down and go back to the game. But this was a heavy Pennsylvania coal town, and you didn’t dare suggest a thing or they’d throw you off the team immediately; so it remained a fantasy.

    What influenced you the most during your Edison Electric years?
    Probably drugs. I’m not advocating them for everybody, but I certainly understood more of what Jimi Hendrix was trying to say after I had dropped acid. It opened me up, made me question my boundaries, and took away inhibitions.

    The music you’ve been playing with Bonnie Raitt certainly doesn’t sound acid-influenced.
    That’s both true and not true. At the point Dick Waterman heard us [Edison Electric], he had only been into blues. We were the first rock and roll band that turned him on. The music we were playing was definitely stuff I had opened up to during that period of tremendous growth. Dick asked me if I would play bass with Buddy Guy. I told him that I was very flattered but had made a pretty serious commitment to this band.

    What kind of material were you playing?
    Bluesy stuff. We did some early Taj Mahal things, his version of “Leaving Trunk,” “Statesboro Blues,” and “Dust My Broom,” [Taj Mahal, Columbia. CS-9579] and Jimi Hendrix’ ”Red House” [on Hendrix’ Smash Hits. Reprise. 2025]. We played funky rock.

    How did your collaboration with Bonnie start?
    First she and Dick came to the Electric Factory in Philadelphia where we were the opening act for Procol Harum. That’s what we did—open up at the local psychedelic dungeon for a lot of heavy rock acts like Big Brother when Janis Joplin was with them, Grateful Dead, and Van Morrison. Bonnie really flipped out for the band, apparently. She asked Dick to introduce us and a few days later we sat down and jammed together. I went to Bonnie’s first gig. I knew her for about a year before she started playing. A long time passed, and I didn’t see her, until one night in January or February of 1971 I happened to be watching The David Frost Show. After George McGovern was on, just near the end of the show, Frost said, “We’ll have a word from our sponsor, and then we’ll be right back with Bonnie Raitt.” Sure enough there was Bonnie and she did just one tune, a Fred McDowell slide number, and it came off great. Three or four months later I got a call from her. “I hear your band is breaking up,” she said. That’s how it all began.

    Your playing must have changed radically from Edison Electric to Bonnie Raitt.
    For a long time, about two and a half years, it was just the two of us. That was a different concept for me for two main reasons. First of all—no drums. The bass player and the drummer are probably the two closest people in a band; the bass being a kind of bridge between rhythm and chords. You can play a different bass note and completely change the chord around. You take care of the foundation of the harmony, and with the drummer, the foundation of the rhythm. There were no other instruments except one guitar, and all of a sudden my function was to accompany a vocalist who also played guitar.

    How did you adjust to that?
    I tried to put the bass part somewhere between the vocal, the guitar, and an imaginary drum part. I couldn’t get too deeply into the drums, but I wanted to subtley introduce some rhythm. Sometimes I would even imagine myself as a French horn to define my part. See how it all relates?

    What were you playing at that time?
    A Fender Precision fretless bass, which was especially interesting with slide guitar. That was the other whole new thing—I’d never played with slide guitar before.

    How did your style emerge during your early days with Bonnie?
    Even though I didn’t feel like an integral part of things as I had with a rock band, I started learning an awful lot. I jammed with and got to experience firsthand the music of some of the original blues bands, like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Arthur Crudup, and Muddy Waters. This was important, not just for the thrill of it, but to get the feel of some of the subtleties in the blues. They weren’t playing straight 4-bar, four beats to a measure or 12-bar blues all night; as a matter of fact they played 11 1/2- or sometimes 12 1/2-bar blues. I had to learn to flow along with it by listening to the vocal.

    This helped you in vour role as accompanist?
    Definitely. These guys would play the guitar part behind the vocal, and if the vocal decided it didn’t want to wait the full four bars it was supposed to—maybe it only waited for three and a half bars—you could learn to anticipate that by hearing the voice part. You’d learn exactly when the guitar was going to come in.

    And you applied this to bass?
    That’s my instrument. I support but also try to integrate my part with the guitar part—especially if there are only two people. Sometimes I’ll answer a lick, sometimes I’ll play harmony with it, sometimes I’ll support it. In order to really be able to do that you have to know what the lick is; you have to learn to feel it. That comes about by being right there when it’s being played, and I was. When I first heard those blues cats, not only could I not play like that, I thought they were playing wrong! I thought, my God, what are those guys doing; that’s not what I learned as blues!

    How would you basically describe your interaction with Bonnie’s vocals?
    I listen very carefully and try hard not to get in the way of her voice, but to reflect the musical and lyrical content of her part. From Bonnie and the blues cats I learned to play according to where a song is at, which is very different from just jamming with somebody. Everything changes when you throw words into it; something I have never been so aware of as I am now.

    Do you listen to other bass players?
    When I first started to play I had all kinds of influences. The Youngbloods, Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, who plays like a guitarist more than a bass player. I always liked walking-type bass players like Ray Brown. More recently, I love the stuff Chuck Rainey does, Stanley Clarke is a killer, and Jaco Pastorius is my favorite.

    Do you stick pretty much to your fretless bass?
    Recently I started playing a Music Man fretted one. It’s essentially the new Fender bass designed by Leo Fender and Tommy Walker who were making them fifteen or twenty years ago. Now my two main axes are the Fender fretless and this new Music Man fretted.

    How do you interchange them?
    The fretless is a little more lyrical; the fretted is more percussive. I tend to use the fretted on funkier tunes. I don’t have to worry about intonation quite as much on it. There are times, though, when the frets get in the way. Every once in a while I’ll be playing the fretted, and Bonnie or someone will say, “Let’s see what the fretless sounds like.” I’m still getting my chops together on both of them, though I’m more at home on the one I’ve been playing for so long, the fretless.

    Which one did you play on Sweet Forgiveness ?
    I used the fretless on all but one cut. I had to play my old original Fender Precision [fretless] on half of the last LP (Home Plate)—for some reason they couldn’t get a good sound from the fretless. I wasn’t real happy about it.

    Do you have any other instruments?
    An Ernie Ball Earthwood Bass [large acoustic bass guitar] which I enjoy very much. On tour if there’s a part of the show where Bonnie plays acoustic guitar, I’d like to play the Earthwood. It has a real nice wooden sound. I used it on ‘Sweet & Shiny Eyes” (on Raitt’s Home Plate), and I play it at home a lot, especially if someone comes over and plays acoustic guitar. I also have a Martin D-28 guitar and a tuba I recently bought. I feel very strongly about rock tuba; I know there’s a place for it.

    What about the rest of your equipment?
    I just started using the new Music Man Stingray bass amp, which is equipped with a preamp. Until recently I had an Ampeg SVT, but I wasn’t satisfied with the bottom. Sometimes I fool around with an equalizer, sometimes a simple little phaser, both by MXR. I’m not into any heavy modifications.

    Have you had any modifications on your basses?
    On my fretless I had one additional pickup installed, one of them a jazz pickup near the bridge. On the Music Man I had them put their special pickups in—a real strong, ballsy pickup.

    Do you go anywhere special to have work done on your instruments?
    Westwood Music [1737 Westgate Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90025] and a wonderful little place called Expert Audio Repair [3991 1/2 Sawtellc Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066].

    What kind of strings do you use?
    Ernie Ball makes real good flat-wound strings, and Rotosounds are great for sustain and harmonics. Right now I have Ernie Balls on my fretted bass and Rotosounds on my fretless. I don’t change them often. There’s something about old strings that’s real nice because they decay rapidly; it’s almost like self-muting strings. They don’t sustain for long when they’re decayed, and when you play funky you don’t want the sustain.

    Do you make special adjustments for different hall sizes?
    You’ve got to remember not to use too much bass; the more you use the muddier it gets and the notes get lost. So you have to try and find some kind of combination between having quite a bit of treble and high midrange to get the attack and not too much bass obscuring the clarity. At the same time you don’t want to take all the punch out of it—you don’t want it to sound like a guitar—so you try to split the difference. Usually the more echo there is in the hall the less bass you’d use. My settings vary from place to place. On the Music Man I set the bass on about a half, maybe slightly more, and have the volume and the treble almost all the way up. The preamp really changes the effect. In the Fender I just open everything up all the way.

    Can you describe your technique of playing—any special picking attack for instance?
    I flounder a lot. When I first picked up the bass I actually played with my thumb. Then I saw an R&B player picking with his fingers. I said, ” That’s great, that’s for me.” Recently I’ve gotten into this slapping style which has evolved—using the thumb and really plucking the upper strings with the fingers. This allows me to play very differently than I have been. I use a bit of upright approach, where the place you hit the bass is important. The funkier you want to get the closer to the bridge you play; the more lyrical, the further away from the bridge you go. One place gives more attack, the other more sustain.

    Has anyone recently influenced your technique?
    Jaco Pastorius with his work in harmonics on the fretless bass, and Larry Graham [now with Graham Central Station]—the first player I can think of who started using those octaves in his playing, which are really coming from old boogie woogie and tuba-type lines. We did that on Bonnie’s first album (Bonnie Raitt) where I played tuba and was answered by a trombone. That was six years ago.

    Do you feel you’re expanding stylistically as you continue to play with Bonnie?
    Sure, because her music keeps expanding. I’d like to think that my musical development affects hers positively and that hers does the same to mine. As long as the relationship is fruitful and we both continue to grow, I think we’ll be working together. ■

A Selected Freebo Discography
With Bonnie Raitt: All of Bonnie Raitt’s LPs; see Raitt discography. With others: Various artists, Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, 1972, Atlantic, SD 2-502; Maria Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Reprise, 2148; The Waitress In The Donut Shop, Reprise, MS4-2194: Buddy Guy, Buddy Guy And Junior Wells, Atco, SD 3-364.