The Brash Brass Player

Have moved on from a week or two’s heavy rotation with Lee Morgan to the gent who replaced him in the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers band, Freddie Hubbard.  Playing now in the background with Hank Mobley, Paul Chambers, McCoy Tyner and the astounding Philly Joe Jones, on the 1961 release, “Going Up”, his second release, he sounds brash and confident.  Reacquainting and discovering album after album of his now for the last few days.

Listening to Freddie Hubbard interviewed once back on the air in Boston in 1997 or so, it must have been on WGBH, I can’t recall the DJ, Hubbard certainly seemed to fulfill the stereotype of the brash brass player.  The DJ asked him innocently enough, who among the younger trumpet players of the day, he most appreciated.  Hubbard didn’t pause and suggested something like: “there ain’t one of them doing anything I haven’t already done.”  The DJ was incredulous but Hubbard held his ground.

There are a lot of recorded ‘cutting contests’ out there.  I'll never grow tired of hearing Dickie and Duane trade leads on the early Allman's albums or savoring that one moment we get to consider John, Paul and George each trading leads at the end of Abbey Road.  Perhaps every jazz solo to ever follow another is a cutting contest of sorts.  Freddie Hubbard though, on his live set “Night of the Cookers” playing with Lee Morgan on "Pensitiva" may just be the most ferocious duel of two soloists on the same instrument I've ever listened to.  Both at the height of their power, man, they go at each other and neither one wants to give any ground whatsoever and the audience is delighted by the jousting. 

The other quote I remember of Freddie Hubbard illustrated a more tender and less competitive side.  Learning a few years back about Tina Brooks, the gifted tenor player who lost his creative capacity to heroin before he reached thirty, I read something Hubbard said about his sideman that always stuck with me.  "I loved Tina . . . He had a nice feeling.... He would write shit out on the spot and it would be beautiful. He wrote 'Gypsy Blue' for me on the first record, and I loved it. I just loved it. Tina made my first record date wonderful. He wrote and played beautifully. What a soulful, inspiring cat."  

I just dug up “Gypsy Blue” from that first date of Hubbard’s in 1961 “Open Sesame” and at once I can remember this majestic head and listen more closely than I ever have before to the graceful way Hubbard and Brooks lace the melody together.  You can almost hear how happy they are to play this way. 

Friday, 02/08/19