Freddie Hubbard: Ready For Freddie (Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

Part of the Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series, this 180g stereo reissue is pressed in Germany. Scott Yanow named Ready for Freddie one of the 17 essential hard bop recordings in his AllMusic essay on the style.

This edition

• Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series
• 180g vinyl
• Stereo
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

The title is a pun, but the band is no joke. On August 21, 1961, the 23-year-old trumpeter walked in with Wayne Shorter on tenor, plus McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, who were busy that year as two-thirds of John Coltrane's quartet. Art Davis played bass, and Bernard McKinney brought a euphonium, an instrument that hardly ever turns up on a hard bop date and sounds glorious here.

Hubbard wrote three of the five tunes. "Arietis" opens with a bright, tumbling melody, "Birdlike" is a fast, tricky blues built for blowing, and "Crisis" closes the album with a brooding minor theme that gives Jones room to roar. Shorter's "Marie Antoinette" is a sly, elegant waltz, and the standard "Weaver of Dreams" shows off Hubbard's warm, round ballad tone. Tyner and Jones push the soloists hard, just as they did for Coltrane, and McKinney's mellow brass fills out the ensemble passages beautifully.

It was Hubbard's calling card as a bandleader, a young trumpeter's statement of intent with a lineup most veterans would envy. We've been ready for Freddie since the day the shop opened, and frankly the pun hasn't got old yet.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 3596791), a reissue of the 1962 album.