FREDDIE HUBBARD

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FREDDIE HUBBARD


Rochester, New York, 1976
Background information
Birth name Frederick Dewayne Hubbard
Born April 7, 1938(1938-04-07)
Origin Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Died December 29, 2008 (aged 70), Sherman Oaks, California
Genre(s) Jazz
Bebop
Hard bop
Post bop
Occupation(s) Musician
Bandleader
Composer
Instrument(s) Trumpet & Flugelhorn
Years active 1958 – 2008
Label(s) Atlantic, Columbia, CTI, Blue Note


Frederick Dewayne Hubbard (7 April 1938 – 29 December 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 60s and on. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop.





Biography

Early career
Hubbard started playing the mellophone and trumpet in his school band, studying at the Jordan Conservatory with the principal trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. In his teens Hubbard worked locally with brothers Wes and Monk Montgomery and worked with bassist Larry Ridley and saxophonist James Spaulding. In 1958, at the age of 22, he moved to New York, and began playing with some of the best jazz players of the era, including Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Slide Hampton, Eric Dolphy, J. J. Johnson, and Quincy Jones. In June 1960 Hubbard made his first record as a leader, Open Sesame, with saxophonist Tina Brooks, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Clifford Jarvis.

In December 1960 Hubbard was invited to play on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz after Coleman had heard him playing with Don Cherry.

Then in May 1961, Hubbard played on Olé Coltrane, John Coltrane's final recording session with Atlantic Records. Together with Eric Dolphy, Hubbard was the only 'session' musician who appeared on both Olé and Africa/Brass, Coltrane's first album with ABC/Impulse! Later, in August 1961, Hubbard made one of his most famous records, Ready for Freddie, which was also his first collaboration with saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Hubbard would join Shorter later in 1961 when he replaced Lee Morgan in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He played on several Blakey recordings, including Caravan, Ugetsu, Mosaic, and Free For All. Hubbard remained with Blakey until 1966, leaving to form the first of several small groups of his own, which featured, among others, pianist Kenny Barron and drummer Louis Hayes.

It was during this time that he began to develop his own sound, distancing himself from the early influences of Clifford Brown and Morgan, and won the Downbeat jazz magazine "New Star" award on trumpet.

Throughout the 1960s Hubbard played as a sideman on some of the most important albums from that era, including, Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth, Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, and Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil. He recorded extensively for Blue Note Records in the 1960s: eight albums as a bandleader, and twenty-eight as a sideman. Hubbard was described as "the most brilliant trumpeter of a generation of musicians who stand with one foot in 'tonal' jazz and the other in the atonal camp". Though he never fully embraced the free jazz of the '60s, he appeared on two of its landmark albums: Coleman's Free Jazz and Coltrane's Ascension.


Later career

Hubbard with Harry AbrahamHubbard achieved his greatest popular success in the 1970s with a series of albums for Creed Taylor and his record label CTI Records, overshadowing Stanley Turrentine, Hubert Laws, and George Benson. Although his early 1970s jazz albums Red Clay, First Light, Straight Life, and Sky Dive were particularly well received and considered among his best work, the albums he recorded later in the decade were attacked by critics for their commercialism. First Light won a 1972 Grammy Award and included pianists Herbie Hancock and Richard Wyands, guitarists Eric Gale and George Benson, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and percussionist Airto Moreira. In 1994, Freddie, collaborating with Chicago jazz vocalist/co-writer Catherine Whitney, had lyrics set to the music of First Light.

In 1977 Hubbard joined with Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and Wayne Shorter, members of the mid-sixties Miles Davis Quintet, for a series of performances. Several live recordings of this group were released as VSOP, VSOP: The Quintet, VSOP: Tempest in the Colosseum (all 1977) and VSOP: Live Under the Sky (1979).

Hubbard's trumpet playing was featured on the track Zanzibar, on the 1978 Billy Joel album 52nd Street (the 1979 Grammy Award Winner for Best Album). The track ends with a fade during Hubbard's performance. An "unfaded" version was released on the 2004 Billy Joel box set My Lives.

In the 1980s Hubbard was again leading his own jazz group, attracting very favorable reviews, playing at concerts and festivals in the USA and Europe, often in the company of Joe Henderson, playing a repertory of Hard-bop and modal-jazz pieces. Hubbard played at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival in 1980 and in 1989 (with Bobby Hutcherson). He played with Woody Shaw, recording with him in 1985, and two years later recorded Stardust with Benny Golson. In 1988 he teamed up once more with Blakey at an engagement in Holland, from which came Feel the Wind. In 1990 he appeared in Japan headlining an American-Japanese concert package which also featured Elvin Jones, Sonny Fortune, pianists George Duke and Benny Green, bass players Ron Carter, and Rufus Reid, with jazz and vocalist Salena Jones. He also performed at the Warsaw Jazz Festival at which Live at the Warsaw Jazz Festival (Jazzmen 1992) was recorded.
[edit] Illness
Following a long setback of health problems and a serious lip injury in 1992 where he ruptured his upper lip and subsequently developed an infection, Hubbard was again playing and recording occasionally, even if not at the high level that he set for himself during his earlier career. His best records ranked with the finest in his field.

In 2006, The National Endowment for the Arts honored Hubbard with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award.

On December 29, 2008, Hubbard's hometown newspaper, The Indianapolis Star reported that Hubbard died from complications from a heart attack suffered on November 26 of the same year. Billboard magazine reported that Hubbard died in Sherman Oaks, California.


Discography
As leader

Title Year Label
Open Sesame 1960 Blue Note
Goin' Up 1960 Blue Note
Hub Cap 1961 Blue Note
Ready for Freddie 1961 Blue Note
The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard 1962 Impulse!
Hub-Tones 1962 Blue Note
Here to Stay 1962 Blue Note
The Body & the Soul 1963 Impulse!
Breaking Point 1964 Blue Note
Blue Spirits 1965 Blue Note
The Night of the Cookers 1965 Blue Note
Backlash 1966 Atlantic
High Blues Pressure 1968 Atlantic
A Soul Experiment 1969 Atlantic
The Black Angel 1970 Atlantic
The Hub of Hubbard 1970 MPS
Red Clay 1970 CTI
Straight Life 1970 CTI
Sing Me a Song of Songmy 1971 Atlantic
First Light 1971 CTI
Sky Dive 1973 CTI
Freddie Hubbard/Stanley Turrentine In Concert Volume One 1974 CTI
In Concert Volume Two 1974 CTI
Keep Your Soul Together 1974 CTI
Polar AC 1975 CTI
High Energy 1974 Columbia
Gleam 1975 Sony (Japan)
Liquid Love 1975 Columbia
Windjammer 1976 Columbia
Bundle of Joy 1977 Columbia
Super Blue 1978 Columbia
The Love Connection 1979 Columbia
Skagly 1980 Columbia
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival 1980 Pablo
Mistral with Art Pepper 1981 Liberty
Outpost 1981 Enja
Splash 1981 Fantasy
Rollin' 1982 MPS
Born to Be Blue 1982 Pablo
Ride Like the Wind 1982 Elektra/Asylum
Above & Beyond 1982 Metropolitan
Back to Birdland 1982 Real Time
Sweet Return 1983 Atlantic
The Rose Tattoo 1983 Baystate (Japan)
Double Take with Woody Shaw 1985 Blue Note
Life Flight 1987 Blue Note
The Eternal Triangle with Woody Shaw 1987 Blue Note
Feel the Wind with Art Blakey 1988 Timeless
Times are Changing 1989 Blue Note
Topsy - Standard Book 1989 Alpha/Compose
Bolivia 1991 Music Masters
Live at Fat Tuesday's 1992 Music Masters
Blues for Miles 1992 Evidence
MMTC: Monk, Miles, Trane & Cannon 1995 Music Masters
New Colors 2001 Hip Hop Essence
On The Real Side (70th Birthday Celebration) 2008 Times Square Records


As sideman
With Eric Dolphy

Outward Bound (1960)
Out to Lunch! (1964)
With John Coltrane

Olé Coltrane (1961)
Africa/Brass (1961)
Ascension (1965)
With Art Blakey

Mosaic (1961)
Buhaina's Delight (1961)
A Jazz Hour with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers: Blues March (1961)
Three Blind Mice (1962)
Caravan (1962)
Ugetsu (1963)
Free For All (1964)
Kyoto (1964)
With Herbie Hancock

Takin' Off (1962)
Empyrean Isles (1964)
Maiden Voyage (1965)
Blow-Up (Soundtrack) (1966)
VSOP (1977)
VSOP: The Quintet (1977)
VSOP: Tempest in the Colosseum (1977)
VSOP: Live Under the Sky (1979)
Round Midnight (Soundtrack) (1986)
With Joe Henderson

Big Band (1996)
With Others

Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960)
Tina Brooks - True Blue (1960)
Dexter Gordon - Doin Alright (1961)
Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961)
Bill Evans - Interplay (1962)
Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil (1964)
Bobby Hutcherson - Dialogue (1965)
Sonny Rollins - East Broadway Run Down (1966)
Wes Montgomery - Fingerpickin' (1958)
Wes Montgomery - Road Song (1968)
George Benson - The Other Side of Abbey Road (1969)
Quincy Jones - Walking in Space (1969)
Stanley Turrentine - Sugar (1970)
Kenny Burrell - God Bless the Child (1971)
Randy Weston - Blue Moses (1972)
Milt Jackson - Sunflower (1973)
Charles Earland - Leaving This Planet (1973)
Don Sebesky - Giant Box (1973)
McCoy Tyner - Together (1978)
Billy Joel - 52nd Street (1978)
McCoy Tyner - Quartets 4 X 4 (1980)
Oscar Peterson – Face to Face (1982)
Roberto Ávila & Sarava - Come to Brazil (1989)
Kirk Lightsey Trio - Temptation (1991)
Poncho Sanchez - Cambios (1991)

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Freddie Hubbard, the Grammy-winning jazz musician whose blazing virtuosity influenced a generation of trumpet players and who collaborated with such greats as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, died Monday, a month after suffering a heart attack. He was 70.

A towering figure in jazz circles, Hubbard played on hundreds of recordings in a career dating to 1958, the year he arrived in New York from his hometown Indianapolis, where he had studied at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music and with the Indianapolis Symphony.

Soon he had hooked up with such jazz legends as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane and the rest is history. RIP Freddie, you will not be forgotten.

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The title cut from Freddie Hubbard's first LP as a leader for Blue Note Records circa 1960 in the company of Messrs McCoy Tyner, Tina Brooks, Clifford Jarvis and Sam Jones.

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Blues - Freddie Hubbard, Phil Woods, Woodie Herman
What an incredible blues! Done by modern swing/bebop players. They play so down to earth, the effect is totally magic. Woodie Herman’s clarinet feels somewhere what Pee Wee Russell could have done. Phil Woods plays his great alto sax and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard seems to be going bazurk, but the emotion they create was absolutely wonderful and to me, that is what jazz is all about. Together with pianist Adam Makowicz, an accomplished jazz pianist as well as an traditional classical performer, famous drummer Louie Bellson and basswork by .Ray Drummond makes this a well deserved piece of jazz history.

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January 10, 2009 - New York, NY - Harlem Remembers Freddie Hubbard: Honoring a Master at Abyssinian Baptist Church , Freddie Hubbard passed away last month. Here Randy Weston and Alex Black perform "Black Moses"to honor the memory of Freddie Hubbard.