Back in 2000 when I was working on my Oxford American story, What Happened to Ronnie Free?, I remember being so disappointed to lose a story about Tommy Gill from the eventual published article.

What happened is Ron Free and his trio including Tommy and Ben Tucker on bass landed some nice gigs in Bogota, Colombia. When they arrived and went to their first rehearsal the venue had some kind of plastic electric keyboard for Tommy to play. It was like a kid’s first keyboard or something. Tommy took one look at it and said, “I’m not playing that @&%*ing thing.”

So with the first gig scheduled for later that evening the trio set out to find a real piano in downtown Bogota. Miraculously, they found a Baldwin or Steinway baby grand covered in dust and cobwebs nearby. It hadn’t been played in years. Tommy, who is an expert piano repairman, somehow got hold of some tools and supplies and by night fall he had a functional piano and they somehow moved it a few blocks into the venue. The gig went off without a hitch.

Finally, Tommy Gill has DAT recordings of many sets of Ron’s trio in Charleston from that period. They sound a little like the Corea trio of “Now He Sings Now He Sobs.” Ron told me that many of those gigs were in restaurants with people dining, so the trio mastered the art of taking the music to a complex, fulfilling limit without being too loud and bombastic. Those tapes are worth releasing.