Making It Me Freddie Hubbard 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 trumpet 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 flugelhorn fronts the New Jazz Composers Octet through well-crafted David Weiss 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 piano 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 Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, and we played the solos that were transcribed in the books. That motivated me. Then I heard “Musings Of Miles,” with Philly Joe Jones, Oscar Pettiford 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 Slide Hampton 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. Eric Dolphy was in there blowing on his horns. I was in California with Sonny Rollins 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-Hank Mobley, 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.