Freddie Hubbard was already the undisputed heavyweight champion of jazz trumpet when he played the delightfully named Hamburg jazz club Onkel Pö’s, in 1978. By then, he had recorded a legacy of albums for Blue Note, Atlantic and CTI. He was mid-way through a Columbia recording contract when this gig was recorded. Now released for the first time, the album documents Hubbard’s technical precision, spiritual fire and confidence boosted by the raucous energy of a tight young band. The set opens with the slow burning, funk inflected ‘Love Connection’, follows a killer ‘Take it to the Ozone’ with a beautifully articulated ballad ‘Here’s That Rainy Day’ and ends with a riveting 25-minute ‘One of a Kind’. Add a delicate ‘Little Sunflower’ and a quote-laden ‘Blues for Wayne’ and you have a useful snapshot of the hard-bop meets funk and modal jazz Freddy Hubbard aesthetic. The trumpeter’s precise punchy attack, trademark trills and fluent mastery of advanced harmony are on song, as is his tonal control and delicate melodic invention. Hubbard is boosted by the focused and like-minded musicians accompanying him here. Billy Childs on keyboards, the best known, plays his socks off. Carl Burnett and Larry Klein, on drums and bass respectively, also put in a shift, but it’s the late saxophonist Hadley Caliman who’s the revelation. His gritty mix of West Coast R&B, hard-bop articulation and John Coltrane modality is delivered with the chops and invention to match the leader’s. He spent his last 20 years as a respected mainstay of Seattle jazz – he died in 2010, aged 78 – but his 1970s recordings on Mainstream and Catalyst confirm his reputation should have spread further.