FREDDIE HUBBARD – ON FIRE: LIVE AT THE BLUE MOROCCO (Resonance Records) (2 x CD/ 3 x LP/ DL) RSD (2025)

Freddie Hubbard looks so young in the photograph at the start of this month’s JAZZWISE article on the legendary trumpeter. Hubbard played in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers between 1961 and 1965. He not only recorded ten albums for Blue Note as a band leader but also played on seminal jazz records like Eric Dolphy’s “Out to Lunch”, Oliver Nelson’s “The Blues and the Abstract Truth” and Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil”.

One of the pieces Hubbard performs on the Blue Morocco album is ‘Crisis’, one of two he contributed to Art Blakey’s “Mosaic” L.P. He was apparently unaware that his performance on 10th April, 1967 was going to be recorded and what emerges is a ‘brakes off’ (He felt particularly constrained during his time recording for Columbia), unfettered show of daring and technical prowess on a 17-minute expansion of ‘Up Jumped Spring’, also from Hubbard’s time with Art Blakey (The studio version of his “Three Blind Mice” album running in at under ten minutes), and a c. 24-minute version of ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird’. Other pieces played are ‘Breaking Point!’ (which he approaches but never reaches over nearly two hours!) from the 1964 album of the same name. ‘True Colours’ (from his Blue Note period), ‘Echoes of Blue’ which would later emerge on his 1976 Atlantic album of the same name, and another standard ‘Summertime’. Hubbard’s quintet is completed by Bennie Maupin - tenor saxophone; Kenny Barron - piano; Herbie Lewis - bass and Freddie Waits – drums, and it can be listened to on BANDCAMP.