BLP 4207

Freddie Hubbard - The Night Of The Cookers - Volume 1

Released - 1965

Recording and Session Information

"Club La Marchal", Brooklyn, NY, April 10, 1965
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet #1; James Spaulding, alto sax, flute; Harold Mabern, piano; Larry Ridley, bass; Pete La Roca, drums; Big Black, congas.

1599 Pensativa
1600 Walkin'

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Pensativa	Clare Fischer	April 10 1965
Side Two
Walkin'	R. Carpenter	April 10 1965

Liner Notes

To mention a few — Kenny Dorham, Jackie McLean and Jimmy Heath have all worked with "Jest Us", a group of young women devoted to the promotion of jazz. While their husbands (Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, Bobby Timmons, etc.) are star performers and mainstays in the jazz field, these women hove participated unselfishly in promoting this art form which is too often taken for granted. It is valid to soy tho “Jest Us” are as much to be thanked for this album as are the artists themselves.

Their latest affair was a live recording date at a club in Brooklyn called La Marchal, and if this album depended upon audience approval alone, then fine. But as free and relaxed as the audience was, so were the musicians in their performance. There was a mutual spontaneity between the two, and as you the listener will attest, a ball was had by all.

There is a dual responsibility involved in "live dates" such as this album...the artist — on acknowledgement and understanding of his audience; the audience — an appreciation blended with confidence in the performing artists. Unlike a concert stage, the closeness of a small club helps to create an audience involvement that immediately heightens the musician’s response. The audience itself is justified in the feeling that they have been allowed an intimate peek into the Soul of Jazz. Throughout this album you will become more and more aware of the total freedom, almost to the point where the artists and audience become one in their appreciation of each other.

You won’t feel slighted, it’s all here for you “live”. Everything is the some now, as it was then . . . only, you are there.

VOLUME 1

PENSATIVA
We have a Latin flavor with Lee Morgan giving us a touch of romanticism. Muted, he becomes more convincing, and swings easily. Later we — together — become involved as Morgan and Hubbard take us in, out, around, and betwixt Pensativa.”

WALKIN’
Lee Morgan escorts us comfortably and happily into our Walkin’ stage with a hard, funky, finger poppin’ rhythm, then lets us have the first dance with Jimmy Spaulding. A seemingly non-ending creativity at improvisation is displayed by Spaulding, giving the listener an in-depth ear into the basics of “hard bop.” Again we have Big Black’s “Afro-isms which lead us even further.

VOLUME 2

JODO
The fact that this is a “live date” should convince you that there is an abundance of freedom, and Freddie Hubbard’s opening of this imaginative tune brings it on home. Again, “hard bop” dominates. Spaulding gives himself to us, and we enjoy his mastery. La Roca drives us, eternally onward, until we are allowed to unwind again with Mobern’s intriguing piano. Big Black is “something else” here, and to be so close to his sensitivity is frightening. “Jodo” left me, as it will you, wanting to soy thank you.

BREAKING POINT
A bacchanalian piece, not in the Greek sense, but rather in the traditional West Indian meaning of Bacchanal that literally hangs you in there. “Breaking Point takes you there, happily, and escorts you back, remembering. Notice in particular the Afro-abstractions of Big Black which makes lovers of the conga lovers again. La Roca’s persistent influence adds color to the individual solos, until we are taken away from the “Breaking Point.”

All of the artists are members of Freddie Hubbard’s regular group with the exception of Lee Morgan and Big Black.

Harold Mabern Jr. — piano:
Mabern has worked with such musicians as Frank Strozier, Booker Little, and George Coleman, and his subtle, yet intriguing piano contributes greatly to the originality of this album, He has also worked with Miles, J.J. Johnson, Harry Edison, and Wes Montgomery.

Larry Ridley — bass:
Ridley’s intensive conservatory training has already distinguished him as one of the most proficient bassists on the current scene. His past performances with artists such as Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Max Roach and Red Garland illustrate a rare skill.

Pete La Roca — drums:
Pete exemplifies a touch I like to associate with drummers: “persistence” — in the sense that his being there is a consistent influence on everyone. With La Roca leading the rhythm section, he literally “gits with whatever the cots ore putt’n down”. Slide Hampton, Coltrane, Getz, Kenny Dorham, and Art Farmer are but a few who have enjoyed his work.

James Spaulding — alto sax:
Jimmy Spaulding began his musical studies before grade school; later, under the guidance of Ramsell Brown at Crispus Attucks, his technique developed. Further studies plus experience with jazz groups in the Chicago area helped to formulate his personal attitude toward jazz. His ample touches of hard bop can only bring admiration from jazz fans as he skillfully blends with the avant-garde element now on the current scene.

Big Black — conga:
Big Black is presently with the Randy Weston Sextet and is not only “something else”, but his stylings ore unheard of — until now. Yet, his sensitivity and response to jazz brings new dimensions to an already familiar instrument. Here, at a risk, I have attached the term “Afro-abstractions” to his work in this album. His artistry creates marks not easily erased, as many of the top jazz groups familiar with his work, both on records and club dates, will agree.

What can we say about Freddie Hubbard? What can we say about Lee Morgan? Nothing. It’s all been said. Anyone with the slightest interest in jazz has heard of these two stars, and the superlatives have justified their talent. Consequently, I will not attempt to “lay it on you’...let them do it.

— Alfred Davis

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE NIGHT OF THE COOKERS

Many jazz fans, even a large number of those who attend performances with regularity, form their notion of the jazz nightclub vibe from live recordings. To a large extent, the recordings in question were made at clubs in Manhattan’s midtown (Birdland) or downtown (Village Vanguard, Five Spot), and such West Coast counterparts as San Francisco’s Blackhawk or Hollywood’s Manne Hole. The vibe is a bit different, with a more vocal and intimate union between artists and audience, in clubs situated in communities of color. Blue Note Records was one of the few companies to document that atmosphere as well, predominantly in live sessions by Jimmy Smith at Wilmington, Delaware’s Club Baby Grand and Harlem’s Small’s Paradise, but also, in the present recordings, at Brooklyn’s Club La Marchal. The occasion was an appearance by Freddie Hubbard’s quintet with two special guests, and the atmosphere — to borrow a word from original annotator Alfred Davis — was bacchanalian indeed.

The rhythm section of Hubbard’s band had changed completely in the eleven months since it recorded Breaking Point. It was now comprised of bassist Larry Ridley, a teenage friend and band mate of both Hubbard and James Spaulding in Indianapolis; drummer Pete La Roca, who had worked with Hubbard earlier in the band of another Naptown native, Slide Hampton; and pianist Harold Mabern (who had yet to drop the Jr. from his name). Coincidentally, in subsequent years Mabern would become a mainstay in guest Lee Morgan’s working groups.

The presence of both Hubbard and Morgan, two of the leading trumpeters of the modern era, makes the music extra special. They had joined forces two years earlier, when Art Blakey expanded the Jazz Messengers to record the score from the Broadway musical Golden Boy for Colpix, and would unite again under Blakey’s leadership shortly after the present music was recorded for the Limelight album Soul Finger (even sharing composer credit on the title track); but neither of those dates provided the opportunity to lock horns that is heard on “Pensativa,” a Clare Fischer gem from the Messengers’ book that Hubbard had recorded with Blakey on the great Free For All session. Spaulding plays flute in the theme chorus but does not solo; Morgan uses a Harmon mute on his opening trumpet solo, giving way to an open-horned Hubbard who quickly ratchets up the intensity; and then, after Mabern’s interlude, Morgan removes his mute and begins a series of torrid exchanges. A Ridley chorus over the rhythm section cools things down before the theme returns.

Hubbard lays out on “Walkin’,” where Morgan is followed by one of James Spaulding’s most explosive alto sax solos on record. A long conversational stretch follows, first with exchanges of full choruses by Morgan, La Roca, Spaulding, and Big Black, then with just the two horns in cycles of diminishing duration. You can hear someone yell “four” when the portions drop from eight to four bars, as the music careens to a climax.

It is Morgan’s turn to sit out on “Jodo,” a modal Hubbard original first recorded by a septet including Spaulding and La Roca two months earlier for Hubbard’s Blue Spirits album. This is a hard-charging performance through La Roca’s drum solo, with Big Black then showing how to drop the volume without lessening the intensity. Big Black, a Georgia native whose given name was Danny Ray, had been schooled in African and Afro-Caribbean rhythms through years of work and woodshedding in the Bahamas.

The conga drummer is also prominently featured on “Breaking Point,” which drops the free-form interludes heard on the original studio recording and focuses on the Calypso release. Hubbard takes the first trumpet solo, with a mellow Morgan following Spaulding, and then the percussionits give another demonstration of passion without extreme dynamics.

The length of these performances required their release on two LPs, which gave Blue Note and its art director Reid Miles one of the final opportunities to employ the same cover/different color style that had been a mainstay of the label since the introduction of the twelve-inch record. There would be other multi-volume projects in Blue Note’s future, but after Ornette Coleman’s Golden Circle sets and the label’s sale to Liberty Records, Miles was replaced by other designers and the choices shifted to different graphics (Coleman’s New York Is Now! Vol. 1 was followed by Love Cry rather than a volume two) or double-pocket “twofers” (the Live at the Lighthouse sessions by Morgan and Elvin Jones). Visually if not musically then, The Night of the Cookers signaled the impending end of an era.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003