Players - Downbeat

fusion days in the 1970s. (Hubbard also performed
on such landmark recordings as Oliver
Nelson’s The Blues And The Abstract Truth,
1961, Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, 1964,
Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, 1965, and
John Coltrane’s Ascension, 1965.)
“You hear stories about how Coltrane dedicated
himself to his craft, but Freddie was
always doing that, too,” Stafford said. “That’s
why he was such a genius, from genre to genre,
challenge to challenge. I loved his fire, articulation,
harmonic power, sound and approach. And
his compositions were incredible. I’m not taking
anything from Miles or Clifford Brown, but
Freddie made such a huge impact on the generation
behind him and in the colleges and workshops
today.”
When she was 17, Ingrid Jensen caught
Hubbard live two nights in a row at a club in her
native Vancouver, British Columbia. “I was
infatuated with Freddie’s trumpet playing, and I
had no concept of how he could play the instrument
the way he did,” Jensen said of the early-
’80s shows. “On the second night during the set
break, Freddie approached me at the bar and
said, ‘You’re a trumpet player, aren’t you?’ He
told me that if I came by his hotel the next day,
he’d give me a lesson.”
She calls this lesson one of the most important
days of her life. “When he heard me play, I
guess he thought that I was going for something,”
she said. “He had me play some exercises,
and he sent me home with some material to
practice. I kept practicing because I wanted to
play like Freddie, to get that consistency of a
vocal sound—those warm, round, long tones
that were like Coltrane. I wanted to get to a place
in my own playing where I could maintain that
beautiful sound throughout all the registers of
the horn.”
One of the younger players on the scene,
Christian Scott also bows down to Hubbard’s
sound. “The first time I heard him was when I
was a kid,” he said. “It was the most compelling
sound on the trumpet I had ever heard. It was
powerful and slick. When I heard Ugetsu with
Art Blakey, I lost my mind. I went out and
bought every album I could by Freddie, and
tried my best to transcribe.”
While Scott never met Hubbard, he was still
influenced by him, “in the context of being a
trumpeter—how he articulated and how he built
solos,” Scott said. “He and Lee Morgan were
heavy in my hard-bop/bebop playing. I think,
wow, I’m 25, but listen to what Freddie was
doing when he was 22.”
Hubbard also inspired an entire class of
young musicians who weren’t trumpeters. Javon
Jackson was immediately pulled into the trumpeter’s
playing the first time he heard him. “He
was such a strong performer and he could take
these great extended solos,” the saxophonist
said. “He was the bridge of so much information.
He came from the Clifford Brown style. He
absorbed Trane’s linear style and he embodied
Sonny Rollins’ rhythmic feel in his phrasing.”
28 DOWNBEAT April 2009
Jackson played in Hubbard’s band in the
early ’90s and became friends with him.
“Freddie was like a father to me,” he said. “He
treated me like a son. Just last October I went to
see Freddie at his house. We had dinner and then
we watched videos. It was like going home. It
was about the music but also real personal. He
left a lot to musicians. It’s a serious school of
higher learning. He’ll live through us artists who
continue to celebrate him.”
Christian McBride said that Hubbard was a
key to bringing Coltrane’s style of fluidity and
clarity on the saxophone to the trumpet scene.
He also weighed in on Hubbard’s output as a
composer. “Freddie may not have produced the
sheer volume as Wayne Shorter or Andrew Hill,
but his music was meaty,” the bassist said. “His
tunes had great melodies, lots of great chord
changes, sophisticated harmonies and tempo
changes, and were sheer fun to play. It’s like you
can feel the music in your blood. Just think of
the tune ‘Red Clay.’ It’s got juicy changes and is
funky—it is something to hold on to.”
Indy Roots
Hubbard was born and raised in Indianapolis,
where he grew up playing with the likes of the
Montgomery brothers, David Baker, James
Spaulding and Alonzo “Pookie” Johnson. One
of his first big gigs was with the band the Jazz
Contemporaries, where Baker recalled that
Hubbard’s trumpet voice was influenced heavily
by Clifford Brown. “Everyone back then loved
Clifford,” Baker said. “I have a bootleg of the
early years of that band, and I played it for
Freddie once. And he said, ‘I sure sounded like
Clifford.’”
However, Hubbard was on a mission to find
his own voice, which came quickly while still in
his hometown. “Freddie developed a voice that
was unlike anyone else,” said Baker, who currently
heads the jazz studies department at
Indiana University. “He had the skill, agility,
even the acrobatics. He could play like a virtuoso,
but he never sacrificed the sound. He was
young, impressionable, like a sponge when it
came to hearing music, and he was fearless. He
had the swagger and bravado. Plus, he had a
great sense of humor. That was the devil in
Freddie Hubbard. He was one of the most
melodic trumpeters of his time. Just think of the
melodies he wrote later like ‘Up Jumped
Spring,’ which is a masterpiece.”
Spaulding remembered those Indianapolis
days as “an exciting musical beginning.” The
alto saxophonist/flutist met Hubbard at a jam
session that led to the two of them rehearsing
Charlie Parker tunes together. He marveled at
how Hubbard developed. “Freddie was like
Coltrane,” he said. “After Freddie came along,
playing the trumpet would never be the same.
He had perfect pitch. He could hear a car horn
and tell you the key. Plus, he could really play
the piano. If he didn’t play the trumpet, he could
have done piano gigs.”
FRANCIS WOLFF/MOSAIC IMAGES
JAN PERSSON
CHARLES STEWART