Jazz Articles about Freddie Hubbard

About Freddie Hubbard

Jazz Raconteurs

Todd Barkan: Early days of Keystone Korner

by Todd Barkan
June 28, 2016

In the summer of 1972, at the age of 25, I was working by day as a Customs Broker for the venerable San Francisco firm of Hoyt, Shepston & Sciaroni, and by night as a jazz pianist and arranger for an Afro Cuban jazz band called Kwane and the Kwandito's, which played a lot of the repertoire of Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader, and Horace Silver five to six nights a week throughout the Bay Area. At the end ...

The Doorman's Diary

May 2014

by Jeff Winke
June 15, 2014

May 24 A slight chill in the air as I enter the jazz club. It is near empty, but the bartender is ready for anything. I straighten my vintage tie and count my wedge to make sure I have the starter amount for my doorman night. With the regular bassist back on stage, the quint is into a well-oiled groove. It is impossible for them to sound better. They're playing Freddie Hubbard “Little Sunflower" and the normally dour ...

Album Review

Freddie Hubbard: Outpost

by AAJ Italy Staff
August 20, 2012

Outpost (1981) segnò il definitivo ritorno di Hubbard al jazz acustico, preceduto dalla chiamata nel gruppo V.S.O.P. dove aveva trovato i membri del secondo quintetto acustico di Miles. La sua spiccata originalità, nella quale confluivano Gillespie e Brown al fianco di Coltrane, gli permise di affrontare il difficile paragone con Davis evitando imitazioni sterili. Si completava, in questo modo, l'abbandono definitivo della fase jazz-rock, da lui frequentato nei primi anni Settanta con ottimi risultati artistici, poi con minore integrità e ...

Album Review

Freddie Hubbard: Straight Life (40th Anniversary Edition)

Read "Straight Life (40th Anniversary Edition)" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
May 20, 2012

CTI Records reissued trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's November 1970 date, Straight Life, in 2011. As with some of the other reissues in this series (see John Kelman's in-depth discussion of some of the more important of these), its availability on compact disc has been spotty. Straight Life is a good--if not great--record, and it's good to have it back in circulation.The album is pretty simple. Two numbers--the relatively fast title track and Weldon Irvine's slower-grooving “Mr. Clean"--are long modal-funk ...

Album Review

Eric Dolphy: Out To Lunch

Read "Out To Lunch" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
January 11, 2012

Recorded just four months before his tragic demise, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch (Blue Note, 1964) represents a pinnacle moment in avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. Together with Andrew Hill's Point of Departure on the same label and from the same year, Out To Lunch is among the most challenging albums in the Blue Note catalog--one to approach with a very open mind. It is also the only full studio record that Dolphy completed for the label, and the only ...

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Album Review

Freddie Hubbard: Pinnacle

Read "Pinnacle" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 7, 2011

Blistering. That is almost the only way to describe a solo by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Even from the beginning with his early recordings of the late 1950s, Hubbard sported a tone and attack akin to a chemical burn. He always had the classic posture of the trumpet player. Not the misanthropic one adopted by Miles Davis, bent full over, blowing toward the ground. Hubbard leaned back to an almost impossible angle, tucked in his chin and folded his elbows in ...

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Album Review

Freddie Hubbard: Pinnacle

Read "Pinnacle" reviewed by Larry Taylor

by Larry Taylor
August 14, 2011

Trumpet great Freddie Hubbard, who died in 2008 at age 70, was at his peak in 1980 when Pinnacle was taped. He had recorded with greats, from Wes Montgomery and Art Blakey to John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Oscar Peterson, and led many groups of his own. In his prime, from the sixties through the early nineties, critics acknowledged that he could play faster. and with more chops, than most anyone. His best playing days ended in ...