Freddie Hubbard: Pinnacle

by Dan Bilawsky
August 8, 2011

Pinnacle is a testament to the trumpet prowess of the one and only Freddie Hubbard, but it's also a salute to the San Francisco-based jazz club that played host to Hubbard on numerous occasions. Todd Barkan's Keystone Korner was ground zero for some of the best live jazz on the West Coast during its eleven-year lifespan, and this set of music, along with Jaki Byard's Sunshine Of My Soul: Live At The Keystone Korner (HighNote, 2007), Mary Lou Williams Live ...

Freddie Hubbard: Pinnacle - Live and Unreleased from Keystone Korner

by Andrew J. Sammut
August 3, 2011

Freddie HubbardPinnacle: Live and Unreleased from Keystone KornerResonance Records2011 As album titles go, Pinnacle is closer to category than hyperbole. These seven previously unreleased tracks feature trumpeter and flugelhornist Freddie Hubbard at the apex of his abilities, recorded live at San Francisco's Keystone Korner. Some impressive West Coast talent joins the action, but Hubbard is the main attraction, and he never disappoints. The medium tempo “Blues for Duane" ...

Freddie Hubbard: Straight Life

by Dan Bilawsky
July 5, 2011

On the surface, Freddie Hubbard's Straight Life doesn't seem like a record that should have ever found much success on the CTI label. This record lacks any grandiose arrangements or classical-jazz crossovers, two of the three tracks are far too long to garner much airplay, and those same two tracks--"Straight Life" and “Mr. Clean"--are far rawer and more groove-oriented than standard CTI-issue material. That the programming is so odd--with a guitar and flugelhorn ballad following thirty minutes of soul-funk jamming--also ...

Freddie Hubbard: First Light

by Dan Bilawsky
May 5, 2011

It's fitting that the third wave of Sony Masterworks' CTI reissue campaign includes Freddie Hubbard's First Light, which was the third and final album in Hubbard's holy trinity on CTI. While the trumpet titan continued to record for Creed Taylor's imprint after this session, the work that followed First Light never fully measured up to his earlier successes for the label. Red Clay (CTI, 1970) was a bristling session with fulsome fusion meeting head-on with heady hard bop, ...

Eric Dolphy: Out To Lunch! - 45 rpm Reissue

by Matt Marshall
October 2, 2009

Eric Dolphy Out To Lunch! Blue Note / Music Matters 2009 (1964)

Few jazz fans still need an introduction to reed player Eric Dolphy's 1964 masterpiece, Out to Lunch!. It's an album people tend to come to fairly early on in their love affair with the music (assuming, that is, the affair started after the early 1960s), and serves as a meeting ground for a wide scope of fans, be they stalwarts of bop, ...

Dexter Gordon: Doin' Allright

by Matt Marshall
August 20, 2009

Dexter Gordon Doin' Allright Blue Note / Music Matters 2009 (1961)

From the first track of this record--in Blue Note's 45rpm double-disc reissue series--tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon certainly seems to be doing just fine. That opener, “I Was Doing All Right," lilts along with a nice 'n' easy, early 1960s treatment of an insistently positive George Gershwin melody. Gordon doesn't rush his solo, but allows it to intensify naturally from the surrounding breeze. He ...

Freddie Hubbard: Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969

by Greg Thomas
June 4, 2009

Do you listen to the music of great jazz artists differently once they pass away? This newly-issued live date, with bassist Ron Carter, drummer Louis Hayes and the late pianist Sir Roland Hanna, may elicit nostalgia and sadness mixed with a spirit of wonder and startled appreciation of the recently departed trumpet master Freddie Hubbard. On the title cut the quartet blazes into the 1929 melody, with Hubbard's trademark masculine sass peppering with staccato phrasing and long ...