Russ Freeman, the West Coast pianist and composer profiled here, is a different musician from the guitarist of the same name who leads the Rippingtons; that Russ Freeman has his own profile as Russ Freeman (guitarist). Russell Donald Freeman was born in Chicago on May 28, 1926, and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1931, when he was five. He studied classical piano with an aunt from about the age of eight until twelve and then stopped playing. At fifteen he heard his high school dance band and decided he wanted to be part of it; he could not read music and knew nothing about chords or harmony, so from then on he taught himself. At sixteen he left school to go on the road with a touring big band, which fell apart when its leader vanished with the pay and left the musicians stranded in Quincy, Illinois. His mother came by train to take him home, and he finished high school.

When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie played Billy Berg's club in Hollywood in 1945, Freeman and his friends were stunned by what they heard. He joined a sextet organized by Dean Benedetti that also included his high school classmate, the trombonist Jimmy Knepper, and he later called it the first organized bebop band on the West Coast. He then worked with the trumpeter Howard McGhee, whose groups at the time featured the saxophonists Sonny Criss and Teddy Edwards, and when Parker came out of Camarillo State Hospital he joined that band as well. At 21 Freeman accompanied Parker in Los Angeles and played on the 1947 session known as Home Cooking, and he also worked with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A visit to New York in 1947 began about four years of heroin addiction, during which he often worked with other musicians in the same condition, notably the alto saxophonist Art Pepper. By 1951 or 1952 he had gotten clean. He played in Shorty Rogers and His Giants and with the Lighthouse All-Stars at Hermosa Beach, and he recorded with Pepper for Savoy in 1953.

By 1952 Freeman and the trumpeter Chet Baker were playing together whenever they could, often at Baker's home. When Richard Bock of Pacific Jazz decided to record Baker under his own name, apart from the quartet of Gerry Mulligan in which Baker had become famous, Freeman became in effect the new group's musical director. He chose and arranged the material, wrote much of it, explained the harmonies to a trumpeter who could not read chords, and handled business on the road, as Bock later recalled. The first quartet date with Freeman is listed as probably December 1952, and from late July 1953 the regular rhythm section was the bassist Carson Smith and the drummer Larry Bunker, with Bob Neel in the drum chair by 1954. Freeman's originals for the group included "Maid in Mexico," "Batter Up," "No Ties," "Bea's Flat" and "Happy Little Sunbeam," and the 10-inch LP Chet Baker Quartet Featuring Russ Freeman appeared in 1953. He is the pianist on Chet Baker Sings, recorded on February 15, 1954, and on the Columbia album Chet Baker & Strings from the same year, and in August and September 1954 he was in the band for Baker's Los Angeles sessions with Stan Getz and with the trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. The two worked together off and on until 1956, when they recorded Quartet: Russ Freeman/Chet Baker with the bassist Leroy Vinnegar and the drummer Shelly Manne on November 6. The historian Ted Gioia judged the Baker and Freeman recordings the most important legacy of Baker's 1950s.

In Shorty Rogers's band Freeman had struck up a partnership with Manne, and the two played duets with no bassist, sometimes soloing at the same time and listening closely to each other. Their 1954 duo recordings were issued as The Two and later paired with a Manne trio session featuring Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre as "The Three" & "The Two" (Contemporary, 1960). From 1955 Freeman was the pianist in Shelly Manne & His Men and stayed with the group until the mid-1960s. Their Contemporary albums include Swinging Sounds (1956), More Swinging Sounds (1957), Shelly Manne & His Men Play Peter Gunn (1959) and the double album Live! Shelly Manne & His Men at the Manne-Hole (1961), recorded at Manne's Hollywood club.

Freeman made few records under his own name. The Russ Freeman Trio (Pacific Jazz, 1954), with the bassist Joe Mondragon and Manne, came from sessions on October 27 and December 28, 1953, and its tracks were later shared on a 12-inch LP with the trio of the young pianist Richard Twardzik. Double Play! (Contemporary, 1957), recorded on April 30 and May 11, 1957, put him with André Previn on two pianos with Manne on drums, in a baseball-themed program of originals by both pianists. Elsewhere he recorded with the trumpeter Clifford Brown on Pacific Jazz sessions in Los Angeles in July and August 1954, traveled to Boston in 1954 to record with the baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff and the altoist Boots Mussulli, played on Pepper's The Return of Art Pepper (August 6, 1956), and appeared on records by Maynard Ferguson and the arranger Pete Rugolo. He also worked with the clarinetist Benny Goodman, including a European tour.

In 1962 Freeman formed the music publishing company Encore Music for his compositions, and after he left Manne's group his jazz recordings became rare. He worked as musical director for the singer and dancer Mitzi Gaynor and for the television show Tony Orlando and Dawn, wrote underscore for films and television, and directed shows in Las Vegas. He played on the soundtrack of The Subterraneans (1960) with Previn, rejoined Pepper for Among Friends (September 2, 1978), and made his last jazz recording, the duo album One on One with Manne, on June 10 and 12, 1982. He passed away at a hospice in Las Vegas on June 27, 2002, at the age of 76.

Freeman named Nat King Cole as his first influence, from records and the radio, and Bud Powell as the pianist who showed that a pianist could shape notes and phrases the way a horn player does. He was a self-taught bebop player with a spare, flexible technique and a strong sense of time, and with Chet Baker he supplied a firmer, more rhythmic line against the trumpeter's soft, vaporous sound. He described his approach to the piano as percussive, and Shelly Manne said Freeman had a way of stretching a long line and breaking it into rhythmic patterns without losing the melody; the pair's piano-and-drums duets, where they often took a solo at once, were the clearest expression of that. He was also a composer whose pieces suited Baker so well that he called the trumpeter the only player who could play them the way he heard them. His ballad "The Wind," with words by Jerry Gladstone, was recorded by Baker, Stan Getz, Chico Hamilton, Jim Hall and Ramsey Lewis, sung by June Christy on The Misty Miss Christy, played by Keith Jarrett in a 1988 solo concert in Paris that was released on Paris Concert, and given new lyrics by Mariah Carey for her 1991 album Emotions; Carmen McRae also recorded his songs. The Guardian's obituary called him a musician's musician who achieved his effects by understatement.