Stan Free was a keyboard player whose career cut across several genres and idioms, from jazz in the big-and era to novelty tunes of the 1970s. Born Stanley Free in Brooklyn, NY in 1922, he was a quadruple-threat performer, composer, conductor, and arranger. He was educated as a classical musician, including study at the Juilliard School of Music. He was drawn to jazz, however, and in his teens organized his first band, which was good enough to get work in the Catskills. After serving in the Pacific in the Second World War, he returned to New York, and his work -- in addition to performing as part of the Stan Free Trio -- soon took him into the new medium of television, as music director for #Cafe De Paris, an early talk/variety show hosted by Sylvie St. Clair for the Dumont Network. The trio (later a sextet) kept him busy playing jazz a lot of the rest of the time, and amid the hi-fi and stereo booms of the '50s, he also recorded for various labels, including King and Old Town. He was also very busy as a pianist/arranger during the '50s for numerous jazz artists, including Chris Connor. During the '60s and early '70s, he worked with Laura Nyro, the Monkees, the Association, John Denver, and Arlo Guthrie. His work with the Monkees, in particular, reflected Free's fascination with the rapidly developing field of electronic music, especially the work of Robert Moog. He ended up joining Gershon Kingsley, the pioneering synthesizer virtuoso, in the First Moog Quartet, touring and recording as part of that renowned, groundbreaking ensemble. It was Kingsley who came up with the tune that Free would transform -- using the alias Hot Butter -- into the hit Popcorn. The latter, and the resulting Hot Butter album, would become the biggest selling records of Free's career in the early '70s. He remained a busy musician for the next two decades, and passed away in 1995. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi