"More addictive than a goddam video game" - Balloon Juice

"One of my very favorite music blogs ever..." - Singer/Songwriter Emma Wallace

"Fascinating... really GREAT!!! You'll learn things about those tunes we all LOVE to play and blow on... SOD is required reading for my advanced students. It's fun, too!" - Nick Mondello of
AllAboutJazz.com

"I never let a day go by without checking it." - Bob Madison of Dinoship.com

"I had dinner the other night with some former WNEW staff members who spoke very highly of your work." - Joe Fay

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Freddie Hubbard 1938-2008

The world of jazz has lost one of its most celebrated trumpeters, with the passing of the great Freddie Hubbard last night due to complications from a heart attack suffered in November.

Hubbard represented the next evolution of jazz trumpeting after bop innovators like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. He played in bands with the likes of Quincy Jones, Art Blakey, Slide Hampton and Max Roach in the 1950s and '60s, before starting up some bands of his own in the 1970s and '80s. Non-jazz fans can even here is distinctive sound on Billy Joel's "Zanzibar" off the 1978 album 52nd Street.

An infection in his lips had curtailed his career in the early 1990s, but Hubbard was ironically on the rebound, finally returning to performing and recording last summer, mere months before the heart attack that claimed his life.

Rest in peace.

No comments:

Listen to The Jonathan Station