FREDDIE DEWAYNE HUBBARD

Frederick Dewayne Hubbard (April 7, 1938 – December 29, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter. He played bebophard bop, and post-bop styles from the early 1960s onwards. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop. 

Hubbard started playing the mellophone and trumpet in his school band at Arsenal Technical High School in IndianapolisIndiana. Trumpeter Lee Katzman, former sideman with Stan Kenton, recommended that he begin taking trumpet lessons at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music (now the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University) with Max Woodbury, principal trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

In 1958, at the age of 20, he moved to New York and began playing with some of the best jazz players of the era, including Philly Joe JonesSonny RollinsSlide HamptonEric DolphyJ. J. Johnson, and Quincy Jones.   On June 19, 1960, Hubbard made his first record as a leader, Open Sesame, at the beginning of his contract with Blue Note Records.  In December 1960, Hubbard was invited to play on Ornette Coleman‘s Free Jazz, after Coleman heard him performing with Don Cherry.  In May 1961, Hubbard played on Olé ColtraneJohn Coltrane‘s final session for Atlantic Records

In August 1961, Hubbard recorded Ready for Freddie (Blue Note), which was also his first collaboration with saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Hubbard became Shorter’s bandmate when he replaced Lee Morgan in Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers later in 1961. He played on more than 10 live and studio recordings with Blakey. In all, during the 1960s, he recorded eight studio albums as a bandleader for Blue Note, and more than two dozen as a sideman. 

Hubbard remained with Blakey until 1966, leaving to form the first of several small groups of his own.  It was during this time that he began to develop his own sound, distancing himself from the early influences of Clifford Brown and Morgan, and won the DownBeat jazz magazine “New Star” award on trumpet.  

Throughout the ’60s, Hubbard played as a sideman on some of the most important albums from that era, including Oliver Nelson‘s The Blues and the Abstract TruthEric Dolphy‘s Out to Lunch!Herbie Hancock‘s Maiden Voyage, and Wayne Shorter‘s Speak No Evil.  Hubbard was described as “the most brilliant trumpeter of a generation of musicians who stand with one foot in ‘tonal’ jazz and the other in the atonal camp”. Though he never fully embraced the free jazz of the 1960s, he appeared on two of its landmark albums: Coleman’s Free Jazz and Coltrane’s Ascension, as well as on Sonny Rollins’ “new thing” track, “East Broadway Run Down” (on the 1966 album of the same name), with Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison.

Although his early 1970s jazz albums Red ClayFirst LightStraight Life, and Sky Dive were particularly well received and considered among his best work, the albums he recorded later in the decade were attacked by critics for their commercialism. First Light won a 1972 Grammy Award and included pianists Herbie Hancock and Richard Wyands, guitarists Eric Gale and George Benson, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and percussionist Airto Moreira.  

Hubbard’s trumpet playing was featured on the track “Zanzibar” from the 1978 Billy Joel album 52nd Street (the 1979 Grammy Award Winner for Best Album). The track ends with a fade during Hubbard’s performance. An unfaded version was released on the 2004 Billy Joel boxed set My Lives.

In the 1980s Hubbard was again leading his own jazz group and played at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1980 and in 1989 (with Bobby Hutcherson). He and Woody Shaw recorded two albums as co-leaders for Blue Note and played live concerts together from 1985 to 1987. 

In 1988, he again teamed up with Blakey at an engagement in the Netherlands, from which came Feel the Wind. In 1988, Hubbard played with Elton John, contributing trumpet and flugelhorn and trumpet solos on the track “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Part Two)” for John’s Reg Strikes Back album. 

Following a long setback of health problems and a serious lip injury in 1992 when he subsequently developed an infection, Hubbard was again playing and recording occasionally, even if not at the level he set for himself during his earlier career. His best records ranked with the finest in his field.

In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts accorded Hubbard its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award. 

Hubbard had close ties to the Jazz Foundation of America in his later years. The Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund took care of him during times of illness. He is quoted as saying, “When I had congestive heart failure and couldn’t work, the Jazz Foundation paid my mortgage for several months and saved my home! Thank God for those people.”  After his death, Hubbard’s estate requested that tax-deductible donations be made in his name to the Jazz Foundation.