When bassist Fred Hopkins moved to New York back in 1975, an early emigrant in the mass exodus of Chicago’s vibrant free-jazz community, he was propelled by an ambitious hunger that he hadn’t always possessed. He didn’t pick up his instrument until high school, after watching Pablo Casals on TV inspired him to play cello. The only stringed instrument DuSable High School offered was bass, so he studied that instead, under Walter Dyett, the man famous for instructing Chicago musicians, from Nat “King” Cole to Johnny Griffin.
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“When I finished high school I didn’t think I had what it took to make it,” admits Hopkins, and so for a time he stocked shelves in an A & P. But with prodding from his peers and mentors, particularly Dyett, he decided to pursue music full-time. He attacked his new career from three directions: He gigged in nightclubs playing standards, he experimented with free-jazz versions of Scott Joplin tunes for a theater piece with reedist-composer Henry Threadgill and drummer Steve McCall in a configuration that would eventually become the influential group Air, and he joined the Civic Orchestra after receiving the CSO’s Charles Clark Memorial Scholarship. Then, convinced by his wife that New York was the place to be, he headed east.
Since then Hopkins has performed and recorded with major figures like Murray, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Don Pullen, and Hamiet Bluiett, but his work with Threadgill in both Air and the Henry Threadgill Sextett remains his most significant contribution. In these groups Hopkins helped free the bass from its strict rhythmic and harmonic function and brought it up to a more prominent role both rhythmically and melodically. Both ensembles picked up Ornette Coleman’s notion that all instruments in a group are equals, and applied to it a more compositional approach. While Hopkins stopped working regularly with Threadgill in the late 80s, he continues to work with cellist Diedre Murray, also from the Sextett; the duo has made a beautiful pair of recordings that further expand the possibilities for stringed instruments.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Fred Hopkins photo by Nathan Mandell.
