L.A.-based jazz consultant Ricky Shultz (who directed one of this year’s most innovative label rollouts for Resonance Records) writes: “Freddie Hubbard suffered heart failure last Sunday and is in ICU. One of Freddie’s past bandmates spoke with his wife yesterday a.m. He is being worked on to revive certain organs’ function. I’m told there were some encouraging signs but his condition remains critical. Share some love with all that great Freddie music and keep him in your thoughts.”
Trumpeter Hubbard has been a jazzman’s jazzman and a jazz listener’s, too, bringing bravura chops and visceral feeling to acts of creative daring as a form of popular entertainment (and sometimes art) for 50 years. What follows is my feature article on Freddie Hubbard in “authorized” form, slightly different than the version published as the cover story in Down Beat last June:
On the second of four nights at Freddie Hubbard’s record date with the New Jazz Composers Octet in December 2007, the star trumpeter didn’t commit a note. He improvised poses, faces and witticisms, but no lines on his horn. He didn’t even venture into the isolation booth Tony Bennett’s sound engineer had prepared for him…