Our friend Robert Baldock reports:
Sad news reached me last night as I learned that founding member of The Free Design, Chris Dedrick, has passed away.
Chris was one of my musical heroes, both for his vocal arrangements and also for his idiosyncratic approach to lyric-writing. One of Chris’ musical heroes was Gene Puerling of the Hi-Los (and later Singers Unlimited) whose vocal writing he hugely admired. I have to say I think Chris took vocal arranging to a whole new dimension.
I was lucky enough to speak to Chris on a number of occasions when I was putting my Enoch Light and Free Design websites together. He was always incredibly gracious and very generous with his time. He also provided me with lots of information and I wouldn’t have been able to build those sites without his help.
Chris had a long and illustrious career, latterly becoming a highly acclaimed soundtrack composer in his adopted homeland of Canada. But what pleases me most is knowing that he got to see the work he did with The Free Design acknowledged with a huge resurgence of interest in the band in the late 90s/early 00s.
Back in the late 60s/early 70s when The Free Design’s albums were originally recorded on Project 3, the label didn’t really have much in the way of distribution across the US so sadly only very few people got to hear The Free Design.
However, 30 years later, a renewed interest in the band led to the reissue of the band’s entire back-catalog (by Light in the Attic Records) and also finally a release of Chris’ “lost” solo album Be Free, which he recorded back in 1972.
This renewed level of interest also led to the band recording a whole new album (Cosmic Peekaboo) and contributing a new track to an album of Beach Boys covers (Caroline Now).
Since last September, Chris had been chronicling his battle with cancer on his blog. Yesterday, his wife Moira posted the sad news about his
passing here.
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