The Man with the Horn | Interview with Freddie Hubbard

"Money talks, Bebop walks” is a pretty good summation of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s career from 1975 (when he signed with Columbia), and, off and on, into the 1980s. Back then he described his outlook to DownBeat magazine: “When Columbia Records gave me the money, I moved to LA, bought my house, cars, a pool [but now] I ain’t makin’ enough money and I wanna live good. And the money’s out there and
I want it. I wanna live good!”

And his pursuit of $$$ was reflected in his recordings of the time – Liquid Love (jazz-rock), Windjammer, Bundle of Love, Love Connection (soul-funk) while the most commercial album of his career, Splash, described by DownBeat as a “pool full of chlorinated funk-jazz,” has vocals courtesy Jeanie Tracy, who was then with disco/R&B singer Sylvester.

But that’s not even half the story. Despite his ingestion of the day’s pop pablum and disco-funk during his Columbia period, his albums with VSOP between 1976-9 tell a different tale, as does Super Blue from 1978, as they number among his best work. Whatever commercial aspirations Freddie Hubbard may have harboured, and whatever contradictions emerged as his career unfolded, there was no getting away from the fact that in the right company and in the right mood, he was one of the finest trumpeters in jazz. Neon lights could not flash this more brightly than Hubbard’s previously unreleased tapes of a live date at the Blue Morocco in the Bronx from April 1967, now issued as On Fire: Live from the Blue Morocco, the latest Record Store Day release from Resonance Records.

Hubbard had come of age as a soloist in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, whom he joined in 1961 (his final album for the drummer was 1965’s forgettable Soul Finger) and where he managed to outshine his distinguished predecessor Lee Morgan with an ease, fluency and lyricism not heard since Clifford Brown’s death.

In parallel to his distinguished recordings with the drummer and ten superb Blue Note albums as a leader, Hubbard’s fast growing reputation as the go-to trumpet man on the New York jazz scene saw him featured on several recorded classics of the period, such as Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and The Abstract Truth, John Coltrane’s Olé Coltrane and Africa/Brass, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch!, Hank Mobley’s Roll Call, Sonny Rollins’ East Broadway Rundown, Quincy Jones’ Quintessence and Wayne Shorter’s
Speak No Evil.

When Hubbard finally handed in his notice to Art Blakey, it was to form his own band, with Bennie Maupin or James Spaulding on saxophone, Kenny Barron on piano, Herbie Lewis on bass and Freddie Waits on drums. It was with Maupin that this group of players were caught on tape at the Blue Morocco club on the Boston Road at 167th in the Bronx that produced the energised On Fire: Live from the Blue Morocco. That tape, recorded on 10 April 1967 and unheard in decades, yielded spectacular results. Playing a mixture of originals, some of which he had previously recorded with Art Blakey – ‘Up Jumped Spring’, ‘Crisis’ – or under his own name for Blue Note –‘Breaking Point’, ‘True Colors’ – or was about to record for Atlantic – ‘Echoes of Blue’ – and standards – ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘Summertime’ – this album is the logical continuation of the Blue Note albums he recorded under his own name during the 1960s, and is in some ways their superior.

Other than Ugetsu: Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers at Birdland (Riverside), Night of the Cookers with Lee Morgan (Blue Note), and the 2001 release of Fastball: Live at the Left Bank (Hyena Records) recorded at the Famous Ballroom Baltimore, Maryland, a fortnight after the Blue Morocco date on April 23, 1967 and duplicating just two Blue Morocco tracks (‘Echoes of Blue’ and ‘Crisis’); the Blue Morocco date is the only other live recording
by Hubbard from this period to date.

It is by far the best given the extended scrutiny of Hubbard’s playing it allows – the total playing time of the seven released tracks is almost two hours. Unaware he was being recorded, in the live situation he casts his more considered professional ‘studio’ persona, where he was "all business” according to Bennie Maupin, to the wind, and in its place we get an extended glimpse of the player Hubbard really was – delighting his audience with his go-for-broke vigour, consummate technical and lyrical skills and fortified by a band on the same wavelength as their leader.

With each of the six tracks (there are seven in all) enough to fill one side of a vinyl long playing record (‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ is almost 24 minutes, for example), no wonder Bennie Maupin, the tenor saxophonist on the date said, “To play with Freddie you had to play fast and long. That was Freddie’s thing… I don’t think I have played that fast with anyone before or since because he could definitely play fast and very, very articulate.”

Recorded at a time when Hubbard was dubbed 'the John Coltrane of the trumpet', in later years the sobriquet, based on his studio recordings of the time, for many seemed a bit of a reach. But here, Hubbard’s sustained invention on chorus after chorus was indeed “very, very articulate” [Maupin].

His technical command, subtle harmonic sleights of hand, energy, intensity and seemingly effortless ability to spin interconnecting idea after interconnecting idea with almost perfect rhythmic precision on improvisations substantially longer than the recorded norm, the Coltrane comparison does not seem out of place. Here is a valuable documentation of an artist seemingly on the threshold of greatness. Whether or not he achieved true greatness remains moot to this day – such were the contradictions in his career – but his status as a true jazz legend is not
in doubt.

At the age of 20, Hubbard moved to New York to further his career in 1958. His talent was such he immediately began turning heads. He had a Blue Note recording contract two years later, opening his account with Open Sesame with the shadowy, but now highly regarded tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks in June 1960, and shortly afterwards appearing as a sideman on Brooks’ True Blue, today a four-figure sought-after Blue Note classic. Dates with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Slide Hampton’s remarkable octet and Eric Dolphy followed.

When, in the late summer of 1961, he went down to Birdland to check out Lee Morgan, then playing with Art Blakey, “Art came up to me and said ‘Lee’s leaving to start his own band, here’s all the music,’ I went back to Brooklyn and didn’t stop smiling for a week,” Hubbard said later.

Hubbard was in the recording studio with Blakey soon after, on 2 October 1961, for the album Mosaic, and of the five released tracks two were originals by Hubbard, including ‘Crisis’ (which Hubbard performs on the Blue Morocco date) and ‘Down Under’.

Former Blakey trumpeter Valery Ponomarev said, “Freddie Hubbard took it to the next level. His rhythmic approach was so accurate, so precise, his precision was incredible – ridiculous.” This is apparent on his chorus on the title track ‘Mosaic,’ showcasing his pinpoint articulation and rhythmic meticulousness.

A year later, on the title track of Three Blind Mice (United Artists/Blue Note), he takes five choruses that are assured, self-confident and bristling with ideas, highlighting how his playing had already reached a high level before joining the Messengers. However, he credits his time with Blakey, like many before and after him, and Wayne Shorter, who was a fellow Messenger at the time, with rounding out his musical education.

After three albums on the Atlantic label, of which Backlash (1967), is widely considered the best, the way was open to his later successes for Creed Taylor’s CTI label, and in 1969 he participated in Sonny Lester’s Jazz Wave tour through Europe. Of their dates in the United Kingdom, tracks from the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Colston Hall in Bristol plus two tracks from Germany were released with little fanfare on Blue Note in 2009, Freddie Hubbard: Without A Song. Hubbard’s accompanists were Roland Hanna, Ron Carter and Louis Hayes – not his regular working band – and as the choice of five standards and two originals, ‘Hub-Tones’ and ‘Space Track,’ unfold the creative high that was on display at the Blue Morocco 24 months earlier.

David Weiss, who worked with Hubbard in his final years, says he displayed, “The most prodigious technique in the history of the jazz trumpet.” It’s all there as technique, lyricism, harmonic subtlety and precision hold centre stage.

In 1970 the airwaves were dominated by some of the greatest rock and pop acts of all time, funk was peaking with the likes of James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly and The Family Stone and the sounds of Philadelphia, Motown and Stax, while many in jazz mainstream were turning to the electronic tone colours and rhythms of rock music, Creed Taylor’s newly formed CTI label was ploughing its own furrow. Simultaneously of its time and ahead of its time, Taylor’s formula for success was bringing together a core of the finest younger musicians of the day and presenting jazz in a timeless, accessible, contemporary context. It worked, and the best of the CTI releases can still speak to us today across the decades.

Hubbard’s Red Clay (January 1970), Straight Life (November 1970) and First Light (1971) for the label were intended as a kind of loose trilogy and were more boogaloo rhythms than funk. Hubbard was in an inspired mood on these albums, helped on his way by an A-List of core accompanists, including Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, George Benson on guitar, Ron Carter on bass and either Lenny White or Jack DeJohnette on drums. Red Clay, featuring his original ‘Intrepid Fox’, was a hit; the excellence of his soloing on Straight Life has long been a favourite of both musicians and jazz educators, the 16-bar ‘Mr Clean’, based on just one chord, cited by American jazz educator Jerry Coker for its excellence; while First Light won a Grammy Award. Subsequent albums, such as Sky Dive, maintained the core jazz group augmented by brass and saxes arranged by Don Sebesky.

With his star in the ascendent, Hubbard was signed by Columbia records when Miles Davis dropped out of jazz for an extended furlough. However, Hubbard did not enjoy the creative freedom Davis enjoyed, later telling DownBeat: “I think Columbia relied on Bob James to produce jazz artists. He wasn’t really a jazz producer. He was trying to get me away from jazz, which he did. Bob would just come in and lay down the tracks. I had to fit in with what he laid out.”

Although the feeling at the time was that Hubbard had sold out, that was not entirely true. Super Blue (1978) numbers among his finest work, as does his work on the Columbia label with VSOP, a band that is now considered to have been influential in the post-bop revival of the 1980s and 90s, headed by Wynton Marsalis.

On 29 June 1976, promoter George Wein mounted ‘A Retrospective of the Music of Herbie Hancock’ at New York’s Town Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. A third of the concert was given over to a band comprising Hancock and his former colleagues from Miles Davis’ second great quintet with Wayne Shorter on saxes, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums and Freddie Hubbard in Davis’ stead. It proved to be the highlight of the concert (reissued in its complete form as Herbie Hancock VSOP), and the quintet agreed to tour and record, an arrangement that lasted from 1976-9 and produced five albums, of which Tempest in the Colosseum and Live Under the Sky showcase Hubbard well.

In 1978, while touring Europe with his quintet he appeared in Hamburg’s Onkel Pö’s Carnegie Hall, a small club with a big reputation, and Freddie Hubbard Quintet: At Onkel Pö’s Carnegie Hall together with McCoy Tyner/Freddie Hubbard Quartet Live at Fabrik, another Hamburg venue, from 1986, capture the trumpeter at his finest, with the Fabrik set one for the ages.

As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, Hubbard was plagued by a lip problem – his fulsome commitment to the trumpet to which he had given his all was finally exacting a price. The image of strength, self-assurance and the trumpeter-as-gladiator he had projected in the past was cruelly eroded during his final years as recordings that matched his reputation as a younger man became few.

While Hubbard may have died on 29 December 2008, with Live at the Blue Morocco his distinguished past finally caught up with him, a reminder of the true great he once was.

This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Jazzwise – Subscribe Today