2 Songs by The FREE SPIRITS (1966) Jazz Psych w Larry Coryell set to NYC Photos c '66

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1) I'M GONNA BE FREE
2) EARLY MORNIN' FEAR

From the album OUT OF SIGHT AND SOUND

While the passing of forty years has dimmed recollection of the exact dates and circumstances, it's likely the Free Spirits formed around spring of 1966 in New York, where most of the band was living in a dilapidated building on the Lower East Side. Guitarist Larry Coryell had just moved to the city from Seattle to try and make it in the jazz scene, while drummer Bob Moses, tenor saxophonist Jim Pepper, and bassist Chris Hills all came from jazz backgrounds. Only rhythm guitarist Columbus "Chip" Baker, who'd played in folk coffeehouses, was coming from outside the jazz world, though Coryell had also played some rock and R&B back in the Northwest. But it was a time when rock and pop were becoming overwhelmingly popular among America's youth, particularly with the rise of the Beatles and the British Invasion. So it was that although none of them were hardcore rockers, the Free Spirits determined to play rock music by fusing it with their own roots, much as there were no real rockers among the Byrds when they had formed and made their own fusion with folk-rock.

While the Free Spirits might not have been around long enough to play many gigs, they certainly did some interesting ones. Gehrke remembers them opening for the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and the Velvet Underground; Hills even recalls hopping onto Moses's drum kit, uninvited, to play along with the Velvets at one show, "playing free around what they were doing. Actually the drummer [Maureen Tucker], she seemed to enjoy it." Baker remembers how actor Lou Gossett Jr. "used to get off his gig on Broadway and come sing standards with us," as well as playing at Lincoln Center ("we were on right after Mayor [John] Lindsay"), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque. Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals sat in with them, and Baker feels that trumpeter Randy Brecker, in "his structuring [of the] Blood, Sweat & Tears concept, came up with many of his ideas from the nights that he spent with us onstage at the Scene. And god knows, he gave me more ideas than I ever gave him!"