The big jazz event of 1970 was Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, which I wrote about here on 30 March. But Davis wasn’t the only trumpeter to come out of BeBop and release excellent albums in 1970: the other was Freddie Hubbard. The difference is that, while Davis consciously moved away from bop, Hubbard didn’t. That’s not to say he didn’t record some commercial material–jazzers often get snobby about it, but the hard truth is that even the best players can’t live on critical acclaim alone.
The chronology of Hubbard’s output from late 1969 to early 1971 is confused insofar as Wikipedia and Discogs giving subtly different timelines, but for the purposes of this post I want to mention:
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- A Soul Experiment
- The Black Angel
- The Hub of Hubbard
- Straight Life
- Red Clay
- Sing Me A Song of SongMy
A Soul Experiment was recorded in late 1968/early 1969 and released late in 1969. I mention it because it is obviously an attempt to earn some cash by playing short pieces geared towards radio airplay. It also predates Miles’ recording of In a Silent Way and the sessions for Bitches Brew. Hubbard does not embrace the electric directions of rock to the extent Miles did, but does, as the title indicates, take clues from soul music. But he uses sidemen drawn from jazz and is effortlessly creative on the most unlikely tunes: his take on Wichita Lineman features gorgeous double-tracked trumpets, and even the most commercial tracks such as Good Humour Man are shot through with musicianship.
The Black Angel is sometimes cited as following in the footsteps of Bitches Brew but was in fact recorded three months prior to it. Superficially, it opens with some weirdness and fusion-ish sounds, but this is hardcore post-bop jazz and I like it a lot. The only electric instrument on this is piano: there’s no guitar at all, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but these days is.
The Hub of Hubbard came was recorded and released in Germany in 1970. It’s fabulous, hard bop/swing, perhaps the last of his pure Bop recordings. This is just as inventive and exploratory as Davis, but somehow less well known.
Straight Life never strays from Hubbard’s bop background, but kicks into latin rythms on the title track, aided and abetted by Herbie Hancock and George Benson. Mr Clean brings funk to the fore when stating the theme, but the development is pure jazz.
Red Clay has Herbie Hancock but also pinches Ron Carter from Miles. Once again, there is nothing about this that you can really call ‘fusion’ unless you count the vein of soul and funk running through it. George Benson crops up again on one track with Stanley Turrentine and Billy Cobham.
Sing Me A Song of SongMy , recorded in mid 1970 but released in 1971, is the odd one out in that it was a collaborative effort with İlhan Mimaroğlu, a Turkish composer. As Wikipedia states:
The piece includes a chorus, strings, recitations of poems by Fazil Husnu Daglarca and other texts, organists and tape-based Musique concrète, as well as Hubbard’s jazz quintet: (tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Art Booth and drummer Louis Hayes…
Mimaroğlu used his influence as an executive producer for Atlantic Records to produce an unusually high-budget album of avant-garde music. The music is a fusion of post-bop jazz with musique concrete, salted with poetry and text fragments, and united by a generally anti-war message. The format is that of a montage, in which there are not always obvious breaks between one section, or one subsection and the next.
The album is routinely roasted by jazz critics, but it won’t surprise regular readers to learn that I like it a lot. Although it contains avant garde elements, it is more accessible than Bitches Brew and, in the track titles and overall theme, firmly places Hubbard within the civil rights concerns of the times.
I listened to all of these on Spotify, because the albums themselves aren’t easy to find at the kind of prices pensioners like me appreciate.
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