Porky Freeman

Infobox musical artist
Name = Porky Freeman


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Background = solo_singer
Birth_name = Quilla Hugh Freeman
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Born = birth date|1916|6|29|mf=y Vera Cruz Missouri, U.S.
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Instrument = Electric guitar
Genre = Western swing
Occupation = Musician, Songwriter, Bandleader
Years_active = 1940s-1950s
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Associated_acts = The Porky Freeman Trio
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Quilla Hugh "Porky" Freeman is a Western swing performer, bandleader, and songwriter from Missouri. He is also an electric guitar pioneer and inventor. [Doyle, "Echos and Reverb", p. 256: "Porky Freeman began adapting boogie bass patterns to the electric guitar in the mid-1940s, ..."]

In the 1940's he lead a popular Callifornia band, the "Porky Freeman Trio". One of his early hits, "Porky's Boogie Woogie on Strings", began Rock & Roll's evolution out of Western swing. [La Chapelle, "Proud to Be an Okie", p. 95: "Porky Freeman and Red Murrell, the session musicians on Jack Guthrie's 'Oakie Boogie,' even recorded a guitar instrumental, 'Porky's Boogie Woogie on Strings' which many enthusiast argued invoked Memphis barrelhouse music and anticipated rock and roll. Cut during the war, the independent release proved so popular that Freeman and Murrell released it, putting it on both side of the disc to keep jukebox listeners from wearing out the groove."] As a session artist he backed many of the popular musicians of the time.

His early expermentation with the electric guitar lead to several patents for the instrument. [U.S. Patent Office: Patent Nos. 3,035,472; 3,657,461; and 4,122,746.] One of the patents, "Single Pickup Frequency Control For String Instrument", lead to legal wrangling with Fender.

References

Bibliography

*Doyle, Peter. "Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900-1960". Wesleyan University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8195-6794-9
*La Chapelle, Peter. "Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California". University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 0-520-24888-0
* [http://www.uspto.gov/patft/ United States Patent Office] .