Ernie Freeman - Biography

Ernesto Aaron “Ernie” Freeman was an accomplished musician who had formed a swing band with his sister Evelyn and some schoolmates while they attended Cleveland Central Secondary School. During the Second World War in 1944, Mr. Freeman and his band members had joined the navy where they established a new band, the Gobs of Swing, which became the first all African American Navy Band. After Mr. Freeman was discharged, he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music from which he earned a bachelor’s degree.

When Mr. Freeman had relocated to Los Angeles in 1946, he played with various professional bands, such as Woody Herman and Earl Bostic. In 1957, Mr. Freeman had successfully popularized the Bill Justus tune “Raunchy” by means of the Imperial record label.

A few years later, Mr. Freeman was signed to the Dunhill record label by Lou Adler. By means of this Dunhill disc of 33.33 rpm, Mr. Freeman performs strumental renditions of popular songs, such as Everybody Loves Somebody and Send Me The Pillow (That You Dream On), which were popularized by Dino “Dean Martin” Crocetti, and other songs such as That’s Life and Strangers In The Night which were both prosperous vocal hits of Franco Sinatra.

This was the third and final Dunhill disc of 33.33 rpm of which the logo “Stereo 68; The Sound of Tomorrow” was indicated by means of the front jacket of the stereophonic rendition of this disc. Furthermore, this was the final Dunhill disc of 33.33 rpm thru which the front jacket had indicated both the ABC records logo directly under the Dunhill logo. The following LP disc (Dunhill D-50027) was the first of which the front jacket had indicated the ABC logo to the right of the Dunhill logo despite the fact that the a- and b-sides of these Dunhill vinyl discs still had indicated only the Dunhill logo.

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