What comes out of Lester Young's saxophone sounds to some people like a snow shovel being dragged along a bare sidewalk. Peewee Russell's distinctive improvisations have been compared to those of a dying quail. But neither simile is apropos in the case of Bud Freeman. His playing is not as raucous as Young's nor as feeble as Russell's. It is subdued, vibratoed, and a little raspy like the sound of an electric shaver after it has been dropped a couple of times.

How he became the Gertrude Stein of his instrument is still a matter for conjecture. Historians tell us that he didn't become familiar with the saxophone until rather late in life, at seventeen to be exact, and perhaps as a result he never really became reconciled to it. Whatever the reason, as in the case of other commodities of a rank or distasteful appearance like Limburger cheese, pickled snails, or Italian grappa, his music has a strong and peculiar attraction for a certain select few who accept nothing else as a substitute.

In the first noteworthy chef d'oeuvre since his 'discharge, Mr. Freeman is featured with various other Town Hall concert artists on Keynote Album Number 127. His cohorts are a heterogeneous lot. Trumpeters Charley Shavers, the modernist; "Wild Bill" Davison, the archaie; clarinetist Ernic Caccies, the smooth and polished; and pianist Joe Sullivan, the heavy handed, are all in the melting pot. The residue is for the most part interesting, yet restful, and certainly not run of the mill.

On "Midnite at Eddie Condon's" and "Inside on the Outside" clarinetist Ed Hall pulling for the old timers and Charley Shavers for the new-have a seesaw tug of war over a weird New Orleans type of riff intricately decorated by Dave Tough's exotic drumming. Joe Sullivan's piano solo on the second chorus of "Honey Suckle Rose" is an imaginative recollection of Fats Waller and "Wild Bill" ploughs a safe and sane path through the final chorus of "Sentimental Baby." It almost sounds as if, God forbid, he was reading it off a score, there are so few sour notes.

The old Bud Freeman used to render his soles in the "hesitation" style, i.e., he would pause every three or four bars to think up a new idea, and this procedure made his work come out like a patchwork quilt. The new post-war model is smoother and more continuous. When not given to abandoned flights of the imagination and on tunes which are not so fast and gusty that they shake the instrumentalists out of all their ideas before the record is half through, Freeman's acrid, trembling tone and curious phrasing can, as in this case, produce tasteful and distinctive music.