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November 2004:
Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard are two of the
preeminent trumpet players of the 1960s hard-bop Blue Note Records
classic jazz era. They
were in many ways rival instrumentalists (the same way tenor
saxophonists Sonny Rollins and John
Coltrane were in the late 1950s), both competing and being called for
work at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio. It was only a reason of availability
(not talent or ability) that one or the other would appear in one of
Alfred Lion’s sessions. The only other trumpet player of Lee and
Freddie’s very narrowly defined generation (which leaves out Clifford
Brown, Miles Davis, and Kenny Dorham) that carries similar significance
would be Donald Byrd.
One date of Freddie’s that you shouldn’t miss includes tenor man Wayne Shorter's track Devil’s Island. The eerie
sounding theme is performed with an addictive swing that seems to fade
in and out on a 360 degree stage in Bentham/Foucault’s panopticon. If
you want to travel through some unexplored territory with Lee, try
trombonist Grachan Moncur’s Blue Note album Evolution or his own Search for the New Land
(which is rivaled only by the Donald Byrd performance on Jackie Mclean’s
New Soil).
Classic Blue Note albums for Lee are The
Sidewinder and Cornbeard. My Gainesville, Florida saxophone teacher
David Sloane would perform the title track to The Sidewinder a lot
with his band ‘Dave’s Dilemma’ (which included Bruce Shepard and Mike
Summers on saxophones as well) at the Market Street Pub not to far from
the campus of the University of Florida. Cornbread includes a
wonderful, bluesy rendition of Ill Wind. The album ends with an
original piece titled Most Like Lee. This track features Jackie
Mclean really improvising well over the chord changes. Search for the
New Land is a more experimental side of Lee that has some great
playing by Grant Green.
One of Freddie’s first albums for Blue Note (along
with Ready for Freddie) was Open Sesame. The title track
is a minor blues with a structured bridge that fits the melody well. The
track Gypsy Blue reminds me of Caravan, except it has a
gentler melody that becomes more poignant with repetition. Although
Open
Sesame was a great album, Hubbard’s big success was with Hub
Tones (which was released a few years later).
You can hear Freddie as sideman on
saxophonists Ornette Coleman
and Wayne Shorter records. Lee was also a sideman for Wayne Shorter, as
well as for John Coltrane.
Hubbard, in interviews, has talked about his
relationship with Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Eric Dolphy. Freddie
would practice with Trane, then run a mile to Newk’s apartment and show
him what they were working on. After his practicing with Rollins,
Freddie would visit Coltrane a couple of days later and show him the ideas
that Sonny had been working on. He said that all that running back and
forth took off a year of his life! Concerning Eric Dolphy, who was
Freddie’s roommate, Hubbard said he would wake up in the morning to find the
multi-instrumentalist practicing flute out in their garden. Hubbard told a
Jazz Times interviewer that Eric was all into nature, etc.
Freddie now
lives in a Los Angeles suburb; Lee was tragically killed at the New York
City jazz club Slugs in the
1970s. |