jazzandbluesnews

I guess it was really too much to hope for a miracle that jazz great Freddie Hubbard would manage to pull out of his coma and survive.  Still, with it being around Christmas you kind of hope for miracles and when the news is full of stories of a girl suddenly coming back to life after being taken off of machines and an “angel” appearing in her room, that hope burns a little brighter.  Sadly for those of us still here on earth, Freddie passed away at the age of 70 on Monday December 29.

From the Associated Press story by John Rogers, “Freddie Hubbard, the Grammy-winning jazz musician whose style influenced a generation of trumpet players and who collaborated with such greats as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, died Monday, a month after suffering a heart attack. He was 70.

Hubbard died at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his manager, fellow trumpeter David Weiss of the New Jazz Composers Octet. He had been hospitalized since suffering the heart attack a day before Thanksgiving.

A towering figure in jazz circles, Hubbard played on hundreds of recordings in a career dating to 1958, the year he arrived in New York from his hometown 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.”

The rest, as they say, is jazz history.  Freddie went on to become a jazz legend.  Wynton Marsalis has stated that Freddie went on to influence countless trumpeters and jazz musicians who came after him.

The one benefit we have is that Freddie was a legend and that means we have the music he recorded to remember him by.  It’s rather interesting when you are an artist, writer or musician and your work can live on long after you are gone.  That’s certainly true of Freddie who will likely continue to influence the young jazz musicians who will come after him.

From YouTube, here is another clip of Freddie Hubbard playing live.  RIP, Freddie.