Freddie Hubbard: Let The Horns Blow

This week I would like to feature some of the jazz artists i have been feeling lately. I would like to start with Freddie Hubbard. Hubbard was a legendary jazz trumpeter with many recordings and albums under his belt. Hubbard's early career was decent, but I have really been into his works from the 70's. His 80's joints were very commercial and on the sell out tip. They tarnished his reputation, but he still is a legend. A lot of his songs have been sampled by many hip hop artists, such as Black Sheep, King Tee, UMC, Pete Rock and Cl Smooth, the Hiero fam, and many more.

Freddie Hubbard was born and raised in Indianapolis and his first recording and playing experiences were with fellow Indianapolis native Wes Montgomery. He then moved to New York in 1958 and started working with groups such as Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Slide Hampton, J.J Johnson, and Quincy Jones. He went to tour Europe with Quincy in 1960-1961. He also recorded with John Coltrane in 1960 on Orenette Coleman's, "Free Jazz". He also did work on Coltranes, "Ascension". In 1961 he went to join Art Blakley and the Messengers, but he then branched off to forum his own group in 1964 that featured excellent altoist, James Spaudling.

From 1966 Freddie basically worked with his own quintets and quartets. He recorded his finest albums in the early 70's, Red Clay and Straight Life, on CTI Records. He then followed up that with First Light. This was one of his best works to date. Hubbard then signed to Columbia and started to slip. He kept making dud after dud and slowly fell off. Windjammer and Splash are two of his worst works. In 1977 though he went on tour throughout the US with Herbie Hancocks acoustic quintet, V.S.O.P. In the early 80's he got back some of his steam with recordings on Blue Note, Pablo, and Atlantic. In the late 80's though he really hit the bottom. His personal problems and unreliability started to affect his gigs. He was missing gigs and his performances were getting terrible.

The songs that I have featured are from a few of his different albums throughout the 70's and 80's. The 70's is the decade of Freddie's prime, so if you dig look for albums from this era. He did many albums on CTI, Blue Note, Atlantic, and his Music Master sets. He is defiantly a legendary jazz trumpeter and a lot of his works are extremly good.


Povo ft. Wes Montgomery, and Ron Carter
Birdland
The Jeff Lorber Fusion - Country (listen to the Count Bass D sample in the intro)
edit: Sorry bout the confusion. I put up the Povo joint 2x's. I just put the jeff lorber joint up now.