Making It Me Maps Out His Road To Greatness

Ted Panken l Downbeat Magazine, October 2001

It took me about 10 years of hanging out with the people I hung out with, picking up certain ideas and putting it into my thing.

During his lengthy prime, Freddie Hubbard embodied excellence in playing. He had a big sound, dark and warm, almost operatic. His breathtaking facility allowed him to play long, melodic lines of saxophonistic complexity; depending on the situation, he’d cover all the changes or navigate lucid paths through soundscapes comprising the most abstract shapes and timbres. In every situation, Hubbard projected the persona of trumpeter-as-gladiator, an image of strength, force and self-assurance that told several generations of aspirants, “I’m Freddie Hubbard ... and you’re not.”

Hubbard blew out his upper lip in 1992, and has since lived through a hell-on-earth that might make Dante pause and reflect. The recent recording New Colors (Hip Bop) – Hubbard on fronts the New Composers Octet through well-crafted arrangements of seven choice Hubbard originals – makes the problem clear in the most poignant way. Hubbard’s ideas sparkle, but he plays tentatively, with a palpable lack of confidence, and has trouble sustaining his sound for any duration. At a conversation in the coffee shop of New York’s Mayflower Hotel in May, Hubbard gave a candid retrospection of his life and times:

My sister played trumpet, and I picked it up as a competitive thing. I followed her to Jordan Conservatory, and studied privately with Max Woodbury, who played first trumpet with the Indianapolis Symphony. I wanted to play like Rafael Mendez, triple-tongue and so on. My brother played just like Bud Powell. He had all the records, the Dial Charlie Parkers and so on, and he got me interested in this music. The record that really turned me around was Bird’s “Au Privave.”

Wes Montgomery lived two blocks from me, across the railroad tracks, and to get to the conservatory I had to pass by his house. I’d hear Wes and his brothers rehearsing, and one day I stopped and went in. Everything I knew was reading, and it amazed me how they were making up the music-intricate arrangements, not jam stuff-as they went along. After that, I was at his house every day, and then Wes started inviting me to a Saturday jam session in Speedway City. The Montgomery brothers didn’t care about keys. At home I was practicing in F or B-flat, but at the jam session they’d play in E and A-the funny keys.

Practicing in those keys opened me up, made me a little better than most of the cats.

My brother had the records by and , and we played the solos that were transcribed in the books. That motivated me. Then I heard “Musings Of Miles,” with Philly Joe Jones, and Red Garland. That record made me start skipping school. Miles’ style was melodic and simple, and I could hear it Then I started listening to Fat Girl (Fats Navarro) and Dizzy, which was quite a contrast Then Clifford Brown.

Indianapolis was a bebop town. It was a filler job for guys on their way to Chicago. Charlie Parker might come through, or James Moody or Kenny Dorham. I invited a lot of musicians to my house, had my mother wash their clothes and give them a good home-cooked meal. We had a nice house. My father worked hard in the foundries, and everybody was clothed and clean and had money.

While I was going to Jordan Conservatory, James Spaulding, Larry Ridley and I formed a group called the Jazz Contemporaries. Then, while I was on a date with this white girl-a nice girl, we were just friends-I got busted on suspicion of burglary. I’d been aiming to be a teacher, but I had to leave school. Hearing Clifford’s music kept me going. It made me say, “Forget it I can’t let this stop me. The music is forever.” Hubbard – pg2 A friend named Lenny Benjamin, who was from the Bronx and wrote for the Indianapolis Star, was going back to New York and offered me a ride and a place to stay. I’ll never forget coming into the Bronx. It was July, and it was hot. It was like The Blackboard Jungle. I’d never seen so many brothers and different people in the street. For the first five days I didn’t come out of the house, I was so scared. I just looked out the window.

I moved into a small pad had in back of the Apollo Theater. I used to follow everyone backstage-James Brown, Wilson Pickett, even Moms Mabley-and hang out. Slide was working with Maynard Ferguson. I would watch him write out arrangements without a piano; it helped my reading. Then he got enough money to buy a house on Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn, and I moved there with him. The house was like a conservatory. was in there blowing on his horns.

I was in California with when I first met Eric. He was working with Chico Hamilton. He sounded like Cannonball then; it surprised me in Brooklyn how much he changed his style. Maybe he wanted to play like that all the tune; in California he invited me to his house, and the music was so weird his mother made him practice in the garage! Eric could play some funk and get deep down and play some blues, but he didn’t want to. He really wanted to get into Ornette’s thing. He was a better musician than Ornette, but he didn’t have that swing that communicates. Some stuff he wrote sounded square, like kindergarten music. But the way he would play it! He was such a jubilant, happy guy. I liked his spirit. A lot of people wouldn’t give Eric gigs. They thought he was trying to be weird on purpose.

Sonny had heard me at Turbo Village, at Reed and Halsey in Bedford Stuyvesant, where I started playing four nights a week shortly after I came here. Philly Joe Jones lived in Brooklyn; he’d come by the club to play, and he started inviting everyone to come listen to me. One night he brought Bud Powell to sit in; the next thing I know, Sonny was coming by. I stayed there about a year and a half, I met all the other musicians-, Paul Chambers, Walter Davis. Those were the beboppers, and we hooked up.

Sonny called me right before he quit He didn’t have a piano, and he was still playing songs like “Ee-Yah” real fast; he played “April In Paris,” which sounds weird without a piano, and I had to learn the chords. I learned so much about being on my own, playing by myself. Sonny’s way of playing is rhythmic. He would practice by going over and over his ideas, and he taught me how to do that-make it stronger. He brought my chops up. Coltrane’s concept was more linear. I’d take the subway to Trane’s house every day he was in town. I had a headache when I left there because he was practicing so much.

I thought trumpet players weren’t able to express themselves as freely as saxophone players. Playing like a saxophone is harder on the chops, but it opens you up.

Philly Joe was the first one who hired me to work at Birdland. It was a Monday night session, and we were playing “Two Bass Hit” I had copied Miles’ solo note-for-note. When I opened my eyes, I saw [Miles] sitting down at the front of the stage. I almost had a heart attack! I knew he was thinking, “Who is this motherfucker playing my solo?” Anyway, he saw me make up my own ideas, and right there in Birdland he told Alfred Lion to give me a contract. The next day, Ike Quebec called me. I’m the only one from VSOP who wrote a song for Miles ”One Of Another Kind.” Miles was one of the strangest, most arrogant individuals, but so beautiful. He glowed. That’s the way his sound was to me. He wouldn’t speak to me for a while, but after he heard me with Sonny, we became tight. I’d go by his house, and sometimes he’d let me in and sometimes he wouldn’t. He liked me in a funny, uncanny way, yen though he started messing with me. Did you ever read that article in Down Beat, “Freddie Who?” When I asked him about it, he’d say, “Do you believe everything you read?” “He wanted to keep me at a distance, which I can understand. T & man’s been great so long, then along comes a young whippersnapper and all of a sudden he’s going to jump?

When Booker little came to New York, we started hanging out He was a nice, clean-cut cat with nothing bad to say about anyone. I’d met him at jam sessions in Chicago around 1957 when Spaulding and I would drive up from Indianapolis to sit in. After I heard him play, I said, “I’d better go in and practice before I mess with that” He was like a machine. He had a way of playing so fast. We ended up working together around town with Slide Hampton’s octet. Every night there was going to be a challenge. We’d try to kick each other’s behind, but we liked each other.

Same thing with Lee Morgan. Lee was ahead of both of us, because he had been with Dizzy, played with Coltrane and Clifford Brown. He had a bigger name, he was from Philadelphia and he was cocky. I could relate to Lee better than Booker, because we had more of a street thing. When you’re young and up-and-coming, people start comparing you, and there was a competitive thing between me, Booker and Lee at that time around New York. After a while I thought: Why am I beating my brains up trying to outdo Lee Morgan? Let me work on my thing. Hubbard – pg3 I’d go to Birdland every night to hear Lee and Wayne Shorter with . They were blowing so hard that when Art asked me to join, I wondered if I was ready. Art took a lot of younger trumpeters out; the harder you played, the harder he played. Art taught me about uniformity, that the group must be presented as a group. It was like old show business, and he made us all write something. He said, “Here’s what your message is.” We’d rehearse a piece, he’d listen and then come up with a drum feel hipper than what you can think of. He knew dynamics from playing in all those big bands. The difference between Art and other drummers is that he could go down and come up. A lot of people think Art was crazy. He had his periods, but almost everybody I know that worked with that man became a leader. I’m still a Messenger.

One of my dreams was to play with . My main influence was Clifford Brown; I carried the records he made with Max anywhere. I wanted to play like Clifford Brown played with him, stuff like “Gertrude’s Bounce,” but Max didn’t want to play no more of that. Max got me into a thing where I stopped liking white people. I’m basically a country cat, and I think everybody’s nice until they fuck with me. But going back to what had happened in Indiana, I was getting ready to explode! I was hanging out with the Muslims, and I almost joined the Nation. Being with Max-reading the books he suggested, meeting people like and Maya Angelou at Abbey and Max’s place-gave me a consciousness. Max enlightened me as far as life, but I couldn’t work with him because he was too intense.

I did a lot of avant-garde stuff with Archie Shepp, , Andrew Hill and guys like that. They were kind of militant, too, trying to voice their protest. There was a whole movement in the Village. I was a mainstream cat, trying to make some money and get famous. But when they talked to me, I went over to see what was going on. It was good musically, although I knew some of that stuff wouldn’t work-I don’t care how good they played it. There was no form. I had met and Don Cherry in California with Sonny Rollins, before they came to New York. I had no idea where they were going, but their music didn’t seem that avant-garde. I could hear melody and form. I went to Ornette’s house to practice. The first thing he did when I came in was play all of Bird’s licks. And he had that Bird sound.

I put two tunes on Breaking Point in the style of Ornette, and one funk tune that got radio play. I’d brought Spaulding and Larry Ridley to New York, and recruited Ronnie Matthews and Eddie Khan, and we practiced for about six months until we went out. We went to this club in Cincinnati, and the place was packed. Iike a dummy, I opened with a free thing. The people got up and started running, not even walking, toward the exit. I said, “Is there a fire in here?” I don’t think we got any money for the week. We kept that group together, but made the music more mainstream.

Atlantic was my funky period. That’s when a lot of people got confused with me. One minute I want to do one thing, then I want to jump over and do something else. Then Creed Taylor brought me to CTI. Creed got my recorded sound to my liking, made it stand out. I’ve had people who know nothing about jazz tell me how pretty and clear my sound is on Fist Light. Creed made me more popular to the masses, but I got a lot of flack from the musicians because I jumped out and started thinking about making some money.

I got even more flack when I started making records at CBS. A couple of them sold, Windjammer and that stuff. I was at the Roxy, and playing venues in New York that no jazz cats ever played. The money went way up. I was getting ready to divorce my first wife, and she was messing with me, coming to clubs. I decided to move to California. People said, “Man, Hubbard, don’t go out there. Ain’t no jazz out there. You’ll get fat and die.” It was a mistake. Ever since then, my playing went down. But I was doing movies, making record dates with , earning good money and living the way I wanted to live, up in Hollywood Hills with my new wife. We’re still together.

During the ’70s, Herbie, Tony, Wayne Shorter, and all moved to California. Everybody was trying to include pop and fusion. In California, everybody’s spread out. In New York, you’re close, you can go to somebody’s house. When I went to California, it was party time, and I got hung up in that. I wanted to hang, but it had nothing do with maintaining embouchure and playing good.

In the ‘SOs, I was a free agent, doing a lot of singles, making dates where I’d play 16 bars and get $3,500. I was making $10,000 a week just myself. I was so busy recording in the studio that I wasn’t practicing as much as I should, and I started playing licks, not trying to come up with new shit. I thought it was automatic, that I didn’t have to warm up, like when I was young. But I was still trying to play all the high stuff and play real hard. By the late ’80s, I was going to Europe and Japan every month by myself for some all-star group or clinic. I was doing too many different things. I was switching styles so much, one time I woke up and said, “What am I going to play today?” Keeping that schedule, plus going out to hang-it waxed me! Hubbard – pg4 I saw it coming, but I decided I’d continue and make as much money as I could. I should have stopped and got some rest, worked on some new ideas. But if you were getting $3,500 for an hour’s work two or three times a week, what would you do? I was playing so long and so hard that my chops got numb! They didn’t vibrate. It got so bad that I didn’t think I would ever play again. Now I’m beginning to get the vibe back to want to play. Whenever I pick it up, I’ve got to get over the feeling aspect of it. It gets progressively better.

If you want to play like Freddie Hubbard, I don’t know what to tell you. It took me about 10 years of hanging out with the people I hung out with, picking up certain ideas and putting it into my thing, to develop that style of playing. Young people will never get a chance to do that. They’re able to jump right in behind a certain style, but they weren’t here when the styles had to be developed. I used to have gigs with Maynard. I’d be trying to blow high notes, acting a fool, luck up and hit them! How would a young cat know what I know from hanging out with Maynard? You can’t fuck with Maynard! Clifford! Miles! Dizzy! They were so strong. , Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell were right here, too. went through it. He was so worried about me, he finally had to break down and say, “Fuck Freddie Hubbard; I’m going to go and do my thing.” I spent half my life trying to develop something to make it me. I

– Ted Panken