BLP 4085

Freddie Hubbard - Ready For Freddie

Released - April 1962

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 21, 1961
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Bernard McKinney, euphonium #1-3,5; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax #1-3,5; McCoy Tyner, piano; Art Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

tk.5 Arietis
tk.7 Marie Antoinette
tk.12 Crisis
tk.13 Weaver Of Dreams
tk.16 Birdlike

Session Photos

Rehearsal

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Arietis	Freddie Hubbard	21 January 1961
Weaver of Dreams	Jack Elliott, Victor Young	21 January 1961
Marie Antoinette	Wayne Shorter	21 January 1961
Side Two
Birdlike	Freddie Hubbard	21 January 1961
Crisis	Freddie Hubbard	21 January 1961

Liner Notes

THE careers of most young jazzmen grow - if they grow at all - through a series of plateaus. The newcomer generally settles into a predictable style after his first couple of albums and then only gradually indicates increased authority and individuality. Freddie Hubbard has been a marked exception. Both in live appearances and in his albums (his three as leader for Blue Note have been Open Sesame, Blue Note 4040; Goin’ Up, Blue Note 4056; and Hub Cap, Blue Note 4073), Hubbard has ascended swiftly. As LeRoi Jones said in Metronome of Goin’ Up: His swift, clean articulation of seemingly complex and sometimes highly imaginative ideas makes him one of the finest young trumpet players on the scene.”

In my own case, I became thoroughly converted through Freddie’s work on Hank Mobley’s Roll Call (Blue Note 4058) on which Freddie demonstrated much more than technical brilliance. His sweeping lines, authoritative beat, and crackling, brass-proud tone clearly heralded the arrival of a fresh, maturing soloist. It is in this new album, I feel, that Hubbard goes even farther than before in terms of fuller and more personal self-expression. He is convinced that it’s the best he’s made yet because the music on the date - and his choice of sidemen represent more strongly than ever before the directions he prefers to explore.

So far as I can put it into words,“ says Hubbard, "the way in which I’m most interested in going is Coltrane-like. I mean different ways of playing the changes so that you get a wider play of colors and of the emotions that those colors reveal.” Accordingly, Hubbard chose two men from Coltrane’s rhythm section and a third - Art Davis - who has played with Coltrane during the latter’s New York engagements. Drummer Elvin Jones has long been recognized by musicians as one of the most stimulating of all modern drummers. During the 1961 Monterey Jazz Festival, for example, musicians in the audience were concentrating as intently on Jones as they were on Coltrane; and for the rest of that night and into the next day, much of the talk at the festival was about Jones’ remarkable range of rhythmic imagination. ”Elvin,” Hubbard explains, ”doesn’t play straight time; his sock cymbal doesn’t hit on two all the time. He has such a loose feeling. His time is always flowing, and because he keeps changing rhythms so ingeniously over the basic meter, he keeps recharging the soloist. Also he always knows when to build behind you - and when not to.”

McCoy Tyner is Hubbard’s favorite among the younger pianists. “He’s continually trying different ways on the changes,” says Hubbard, ”and he really brings it off, getting different sounds than most of the others do. He does it better than anyone else I know, except maybe for Bill Evans.” Art Davis, to this annotator’s ear, is the most commandingly accomplished of all the newer bassists. In the tradition of George Duvivier, his technique is flawless, his tone is full and firm; and he lays down a sure pulsation that could support a couple of big hands playing simultaneously. After terms with Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie, Davis has been free-lancing in New York with ubiquitous success. As Freddie Hubbard points out in the kind of reverse Use of language that jazzmen adopt when they praise a colleague, ”Art is terrible! He should be heard by more and more people.” Certainly Art’s playing in this album will expand the number of listeners who recognize his extraordinary power and imagination.

Wayne Shorter has already demonstrated to a wide section of the jazz audience that he is in the foreground of bristlingly inventive young tenors. As complex and venturesome as his ideas become, he never loses the heated spontaneity and driving urgency that make him so emotionally direct a soloist. Bernard McKinney, originally from Detroit, has worked with Sonny Stitt, Slide Hampton, and James Moody, among others. He has become the master of a relatively rare instrument, the euphonium, which is generally listed as in the tuba family and resembles the baritone horn in pitch, shape, and range. Its larger bore, however, provides it with a mellower sound. Hubbard chose McKinney and his valved horn because he is beguiled by the sound McKinney gets from the instrument and also because the chordal requirements of the music for this date suggested the cleaner, swifter euphonium over the trombone.

The title of Freddie’s first original, Arietis, is meant by Freddie to signify the singular of the zodiac sign of Aries under which he was born (April 7, 1938). While not a fervent believer in astrology, Freddie does place some small credence in that fanciful science. ”If you’re born under that sign,” he says, "you’re supposed to be a pioneer although I don’t know yet if that applies to me. You’re also supposed to be changeable and curious.” The basic pattern is 34 bars, and Freddie has voiced the melody so that at first it sounds as if it’s in a different key from the tune’s basic changes. The theme is airily infectious and acts as a provocative jumping-off place for a deftly controlled, swift but balanced solo by Hubbard; an equally logical and yet unpredictable series of variations by Shorter; a demanding but unstrained statement by McKinney; and a resiliently lucid contribution by Tyner.

Freddie Hubbard first became intrigued by Weaver of Dreams a year ago when he worked a Jersey City job with Wild Bill Davis and heard a singer interpret it. ”I’ve been playing it ever since,“ he says, ”and always wanted to include it in an album.“ Unlike many young hornmen who are fleet at up tempos but stammer on a ballad, Freddie indicates here a superb feeling for a ballad line and a beautifully rounded and deep, open tone. When the tempo quickens, it isn’t lashed into a steaming rush that obliterates the lines of the tune but rather slides into an almost playful, still soft expansion of the song’s possibilities.

Wayne Shorter’s Marie Antoinette received its title because the line suggested to Shorter what might have been the light-hearted, leisure-time feeling of royalty before the ax fell. The occasion is a relaxed one for all and further emphasizes how well integrated this combo is stylistically since all the soloists complement each other with zest and ease. Note too the short but unmistakably individualized solo by Art Davis.

Freddie Hubbard called the opener on the second side Birdlike for reasons that will become immediately apparent. Aside from the Charlie Parker-like nature of the angular theme, the rhythmic feeling throughout is rooted in Bird’s language. Hubbard's flashing solo again underlines the clarity and sureness of his articulation and the way he keeps his improvised lines always moving forward without the need to fill conceptual gaps with technical stunt-flying. Wayne Shorter digs into this blues with characteristic warmth and daring, and constructs one of his most absorbing solos of the album. McKinney is burrily inventive; Tyner soars cleanly and cheerfully through the changes; Davis adds a brisk footnote; and the ensemble crisply concludes the tribute to Parker.

The final Crisis came from Freddie’s desire to express in music some of the spiraling tension of all our lives under the growing shadow of the bomb. It’s structured into two 16-bar units, an eight-bar bridge, and a final sixteen. ”For the first twelve of each sixteen,” Freddie adds, ”we play softly over a gentle chordal base, and then for the last four, we explode.” The solos are all undulatingly thoughtful with Hubbard’s being particularly evocative.

This album as a whole represents a further stage in the self-knowledge of this persistently searching young hornman who was born in Indianapolis, began to establish himself in New York in 1958, and has worked with an instructive variety of groups - Slide Hampton, J. J. Johnson, Charlie Persip, Quincy Jones, among others. He's now a regular member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers but continues to explore multiple directions, having recorded with Ornette Coleman and spending practicing time with Sonny Rollins. Freddie will surely continue to develop because he’s never satisfied with where he is; but he has already started to make a striking personal impact on the jazz scene, as this set confidently demonstrates.

- NAT HENTOFF

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
Wayne Shorter performs by courtesy of Vee Jay Records.

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT READY FOR FREDDIE

Freddie Hubbard's victory in what was then called the New Star category of the 1961 Down Beat Critics Poll was announced shortly before this album was recorded, and the music herein was the strongest imaginable confirmation of the trumpeter's status. Thanks to recording practices of the time, there was already substantial evidence to support the critical consensus, as Ready For Freddie was Hubbard's fourth Blue Note date as a leader in 16 months. Those sessions, plus notable sideman appearances with Tina Brooks, Hank Mobley, Kenny Drew, Jackie McLean and Dexter Gordon left no doubt as to the ability of the 23-year-old Hubbard to make good on the potential he had displayed from the start of his recording career.

While Ready For Freddie was by no means a radical break with the music Hubbard had recorded previously, it did make his intent to pursue what he describes as a "Coltrane-like" direction undeniable, most obviously in his choice of rhythm section. Art Davis, who was never documented as the sole bassist in the John Coltrane quartet, was frequently added to Coltrane's band when the saxophonist chose to work with two bass players, as he did on Ole Coltrane earlier in 1961, which also marked Hubbard's first studio with Coltrane. The trumpeter had also played an ensemble role on the first of two sessions that comprise Africa/Brass, and his affinity for Coltrane's ever-evolving approach was clear — as it would be four years later, when Hubbard and Davis, plus Coltrane regulars McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, appeared on Ascension.

Hubbard's relationship with Wayne Shorter also began around the time of this recording. The pair, plus trombonist Curtis Fuller, were the front line in the newly expanded sextet version of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, which had recorded live at the Village Gate four days earlier. (The only issued performances from that evening were included on Blakey's Blue Note CD Three Blind Mice Vol. 2.) As the present playing and writing demonstrate, Hubbard and Shorter were kindred spirits, with often audacious senses of construction and a willingness to think beyond harmonic and structural conventions in their writing. Their affinity continued to develop through the two-plus years they shared in Blakey's band, several studio projects under Shorter's name (including the immortal Speak No Evil), and the V.S.O.P. quintet where they partnered with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

Bernard McKinney, the sixth member of the sextet, comes from one of many distinguished Detroit-area jazz families, and had previously worked and recorded with Hubbard in Slide Hampton's Octet. Since shortly after this session, he has been known as Kiane Zawadi, under which name he again appeared with Hubbard on Blue Spirits (Blue Note, 1965) and High Blues Pressure (Atlantic, 1967-68). Given that McKinney/Zawadi spent much of his career in Broadway pit orchestras and the brass sections of various big bands (including those of Sun Ra, Frank Foster, Illinois Jacquet and Clifford Jordan), Ready For Freddie stands as his best recorded showcase as a soloist, and his warm sound does add a distinctive character to the ensemble passages.

This program is among the strongest Hubbard put together during the period, and it comes as something of a shock that "'Arietis" and "Marie Antoinette" did not become much-covered jazz standards. Then again, the asymmetries in each line may have put many musicians off. "Crisis," reprised six weeks later at a brisker tempo When Hubbard entered the Van Gelder studios with the Jazz Messengers for the first time to record the Mosaic album, fared better, with later versions by Willie Bobo and Woody Herman as well as the composer's own with-strings reading on the 1974 Columbia album High Energy. The most basic of the tunes here, the blues "Birdlike," turns out to be the most familiar, and was part of the aforementioned V.S.O.P. repertoire, although as early as 1979 (on the Contemporary album Cables' Vision, where Hubbard appears with pianist George Cables) it had been retitled "Byrdlike" in tribute to fellow trumpeter Donald Byrd.

Great imagination was also displayed in Hubbard's choice of "Weaver of Dreams" as a ballad feature, since this Victor Young gem had been neglected by most jazz players to that point. (Kenny Burrell did include "Weaver" on his 1956 Blue Note debut, and made it the title track of a vocal album he recorded for Columbia earlier in 1961.) Hubbard revisited the ballad 20 years later, on his Face To Face conclave with Oscar Peterson for Pablo. The two alternate takes were included on the album's initial CD reissue, and illustrate the musicians' consistency on the album's most challenging compositions.

While Hubbard was the first of these players to claim a Critics poll victory, he was soon followed by Shorter and Davis (both New Stars in 1962), Tyner (New Star 1963) and Jones (in the established drum category, 1963). The promise that suffuses these performances has been vindicated, many times over, in the ensuing decades.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003