WKCR’s Freddie Hubbard Memorial Broadcast (12/30/08-01/01/09)

WCKR radio in NYC will be running a 24hr+ tribute to Freddie Hubbard starting at noon today and running into the new year. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the new year while mourning the loss of a jazz great than by digging those many blazin’ Freddie solos.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/

Freddie Hubbard passes away…

Jazz musician Freddie Hubbard dies aged 70

• Adam Bell
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 00.01

American bebop, hard bop and post bop jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard at New Morning jazz club, in Paris on 28 April 1992. Photograph: Philippe Levy-Stab/Corbis

The jazz musician Freddie Hubbard, famous for his contribution to the early-sixties Blue Note sound, has died at the age of 70.

The trumpeter died yesterday at Sherman Oaks hospital, Los Angeles, after succumbing to complications from a heart attack he suffered last month.

Hubbard played on more than 300 recordings, and collaborated with jazz legends including Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane.

Born in Indianapolis, he moved to New York in 1958, where he met Coltrane at a jam session.

“I met Trane at a jam session at Count Basie’s in Harlem in 1958,” he said in an interview in 1995.

“He said, ‘Why don’t you come over and let’s try and practice a little bit together.’ I almost went crazy. I mean, here is a 20-year-old kid practicing with John Coltrane. He helped me out a lot, and we worked several jobs together.”

In 1961 he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, but left in 1964 to lead his own group. .

But it was his recordings of the mid-1960s with Herbie Hancock that placed him among the foremost hard-bop trumpeters.

HardBop.com called his improvisations a combination of “imaginative melody with a glossy tone, rapid and clean technique, a brilliant high register, a subtle vibrato, and bluesy, squeezed half-valve notes.”

Earlier this year, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said: “He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him … We all listened to him.”

Hubbard’s last concert was in June in New York at a party celebrating the release of his final album.

He won a Grammy in 1972 for best jazz performance by a group for the album “First Light.”

Hubbard continued playing in recent years despite suffering declining health in recent years and a debilitating split upper lip in the early 1990s.

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Herbie Nichols – All The Way (1957)

Herbie Nichols, piano; George Duvivier, bass; Danny Richmond, drums

From Love, Gloom, Cash, Love: long out-of-print on Bethlehem Records. With Herbie’s Complete Blue Note Sessions also set for deletion in 2009, all of Herbie Nichol’s music will be gone, unavailable for a new generation of jazz fans to discover. Nichols was a major artist on piano, the bridge between Thelonious Monk and Andrew Hill. He pushed the medium forward and was never recognized enough for it.

From what I understand, EMI contracted independent auditors to slash Blue Note’s catalog and they made their decisions independent of when the album was released/re-released or whether or not it was a document of historical importance. This why so much stuff is disappearing again. EMI is in deep trouble  financially and that was what forced this. However, when one only looks at the bottom line, careful consideration of history is ignored. When I wrote to the guys at Mosaic asking them what was going on, they said that even despite all warnings, they were surprised at the size of the list and what was on it. I wish there was a way to spare artists like Tina Brooks and Herbie Nichols from a further round of, perhaps permanent, neglect. But for now, the era of easily accessible re-issues is over. On CD for sure. We’ll see what happens digitally.

Jazz Review: Tina Brooks – Minor Move (1958)

Everything Happens To Me – Tina Brooks (1958)

Over in the Jazz Reviews section of the site, I’ve posted a review of Tina Brooks classic album Minor Move — one of many great recordings that Blue Note is soon deleting. What’s truly sad in the case of Tina Brooks is that so much of his music remained unreleased throughout his lifetime and for decades afterward. His was a case of supreme critical and commercial neglect and to see these recordings go out-of-print again so soon is just sad.

Upon rediscovery, here is what some important people in the jazz community had to say about Tina Brooks:

Michael Cuscuna, Mosaic Records:

“Far lesser talents have been far more celebrated, he was a unique, sensitive improviser who could weave beautiful and complex tapestries through his horn. His lyricism, unity of ideas and inner logic were astounding.”

Freddie Hubbard, trumpeter for Blue Note:

“I loved Tina. He had a nice feeling. He wrote and played beautifully. What a soulful, inspiring cat.”

Lawrence Kart, former jazz critic:

“The grace of his artistry remains as a benediction— upon him and upon us as well.”

Hank Mobley – Recado Bossa Nova (1965)

From Dippin’, a soon-to-be deleted title from Blue Note.

Mobley was the great “middleweight champion” of the tenor, a player lost in the shuffle of the hard bop era because he sounded less like Trane and more like Prez.

This track is funky as all-get-out, with great solos from Mobley and Morgan.

Personnel: Hank Mobley (ts), Lee Morgan (tp), Harold Mabern Jr.(p), Larry Ridley (b), Billy Higgins (ds)