THE BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY:: BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " FREDERICK DEWAYNE FREDDIE HUBBARD " WAS A JAZZ TRUMPTER AND WAS KNOWN FOR PLAYING IN THE BEBOP, HARD BOP AND POST BOP STYLES FROM THE EARLY 1960's AND ON : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard (April 7, 1938 – December 29, 2008)^[1] was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post-bop styles from the early 1960s and on. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop.^[2]

Career beginnings

Hubbard started playing the mellophone and trumpet in his school band at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. Trumpeter Lee Katzman, former sideman with Stan Kenton, recommended that he begin studying at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music (now the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University) with Max Woodbury, 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 20, 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.

1960s[

In December 1960, Hubbard was invited to play on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz after Coleman had heard him playing with Don Cherry.^[3]

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 joined 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.^[4]

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'sOut to Lunch, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, and Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil.^[5] He recorded extensively for Blue Note Records in the 1960s: eight albums as a bandleader, and twenty-eight as a sideman.^[6] 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".^[7] Though he never fully embraced the free jazz of the 1960s, he appeared on two of its landmark albums: Coleman's Free Jazz and Coltrane's Ascension, as well as on Sonny Rollins' 1966 "New Thing" track "East Broadway Run Down" with Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison.

1970s[edit]

Hubbard with Harry Abraham

Hubbard achieved his greatest popular success in the 1970s with a series of albums for Creed Taylor and his record label CTI Records, overshadowingStanley Turrentine, Hubert Laws, and George Benson.^[8] 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.^[9] In 1994, Hubbard, collaborating with Chicago jazz vocalist/co-writer Catherine Whitney, had lyrics set to the music of First Light.^[10]

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).^[2]

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.

Later life

Hubbard in a performance in 1978. (photo: Brian McMillen)

In the 1980s Hubbard was again leading his own jazz group – this time with Billy Childs and Larry Klein, among others, as members – attracting 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 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 the Netherlands, from which came Feel the Wind. In 1988, Hubbard played with Elton John, contributing trumpet and flugelhorn and trumpet solos on the track "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Part Two)" for John's Reg Strikes Backalbum. 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.^[2]

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.^[11] His best records ranked with the finest in his field.^[12]

Legacy and honors[edit]

In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts accorded Hubbard its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award.^[4]

On December 29, 2008, Hubbard died in Sherman Oaks, California from complications caused by a heart attack he suffered on November 26.^[13]

Freddie Hubbard had close ties to the Jazz Foundation of America in his later years. He is quoted as saying, "When I had congestive heart failure and couldn't work, The Jazz Foundation paid my mortgage for several months and saved my home! Thank God for those people."^[14] The Jazz Foundation of America's Musicians' Emergency Fund took care of him during times of illness. After his death, Hubbard's estate requested that tax-deductible donations be made in his name to the Jazz Foundation of America.^[14]

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
Jam Gems: Live at the Left Bank	2001	Label M
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	1979	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
Keystone Bop Vol. 2: Friday & Saturday	1996	Prestige
Keystone Bop: Sunday Night	1982	Prestige
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
At Jazz Jamboree Warszawa '91: A Tribute to Miles	2000	Starburst
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	2008	Times Square Records