Freddie Hubbard: Breaking Point (Blue Note Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet edition is mastered from the original analogue tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl and housed in a gatefold. AllMusic's Michael G. Nastos called it far ahead of mid-'60s post-bop and an essential item for listeners of incendiary progressive jazz.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet series
• Mastered from the original analogue tapes
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

By 1964 Freddie Hubbard had already played with Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and he was ready to lead a band that sounded like nobody else's. He cut Breaking Point on May 7, 1964, with James Spaulding on alto and flute, Ronnie Mathews on piano, Eddie Khan on bass and a young Joe Chambers making his recording debut on drums. It marked a turn away from his Jazz Messengers sound toward something freer.

The title track lurches between free-ish blowing and a jaunty calypso, "Far Away" stretches out over nearly 11 minutes of modal searching, and "Blue Frenzy" and "D Minor Mint" are hard bop with sharp elbows. Chambers' own "Mirrors" closes things on a haunting, lyrical note, after four Hubbard originals. Alfred Lion produced.

The Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century called it a crackling mixture of free atonality, beautiful melody and blues feeling. Which is a very scholarly way of saying the trumpet goes everywhere and somehow always gets home in time for supper.

Also at Kops: more Freddie Hubbard on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# B0033315-01), a reissue of the 1964 album.