Legendary jazz trumpet master Freddie Hubbard has passed away at age 70.
A towering figure in jazz circles, Mr. Hubbard played on hundreds of recordings in a career that began in 1958, the year he arrived in New York from his hometown of Indianapolis, where he had studied at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music and with the Indianapolis Symphony.
Soon he had hooked up with such jazz legends as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, and Coltrane.
“I met Trane at a jam session at Count Basie’s in Harlem in 1958,” he told the jazz magazine Down Beat in 1995. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come over and let’s try and practice a little bit together.’ I almost went crazy. I mean, here is a 20-year-old kid practicing with John Coltrane. He helped me out a lot, and we worked several jobs together.”
… within a couple of years he would develop a style all his own, one that would influence generations of musicians, including Wynton Marsalis.
“He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him,” Marsalis told The Associated Press earlier this year. “Certainly I listened to him a lot. . . . We all listened to him. He has a big sound and a great sense of rhythm and time, and really, the hallmark of his playing is an exuberance. His playing is exuberant.”
Here he is playing the song I Remember Clifford, a tribute to another amazing trumpet pioneer, the one and only Clifford Brown.