FREDDIE HUBBARD
Music Is Here: Live at Studio 104, Maison de La Radio (ORTF), Paris, 1973
Wewantsounds
In the early ’70s, Freddie Hubbard was paralleling Miles Davis in going electric and funky. Unlike Miles, though, Hubbard’s recordings were increasingly defined by his label, CTI, which immersed him in ever-larger ensembles and lush Don Sebesky string arrangements. It’s easy to get lost in the density and to miss how solid the material was—and how hot the soloists could burn on it.
Which makes Music Is Here, a 1973 live broadcast on French state radio, invaluable. The ensemble slims down to a brilliant quintet (Hubbard, tenor man Junior Cook, electric pianist George Cables, bassist Kent Brinkley, drummer Michael Carvin) that provides all the background and interaction the music needs. Better still is the sound. The room’s ambience is both direct (the intro pulse on the opening “Sky Dive,” played by Cables, Brinkley, and Carvin, can knock the listener back) and, well, roomy, giving each instrument space to resonate. Cook’s long, delicious solo in “Povo” carries audibly through the hall as if his bandmates were giving him a mile-wide berth. They’re with him at every step, but never obtrusive (with Hubbard even taking his obbligato off-mic).
Most important, this space also gives you, intrepid jazz fan, room to really hear it. The four long tunes are all Hubbard’s, and man, do they kill. “Sky Dive,” complex in structure while loaded with hooks, deserves to be a standard—which Hubbard and Cook can clarify without every instrument in the world behind them. Ditto “First Light,” with luminescent work from Cables that should have made him a huge star and bravura runs from Hubbard that show why he was one. The trumpeter/composer still had gold, and Music Is Here proves that it deserved to shine on its own.
—MICHAEL J. WEST
TROMBONE SHORTY
Lifted
Blue Note
Call it the feelgood jazz-ish release of the year. Lifted, the first album from New Orleans horn man and singer Trombone Shorty in half a decade, is a celebration of the musical influences and family roots that gave rise to a popular entertainer who played Jazz Fest in New Orleans with Bo Diddley at age four and led his own brass band at six. Three decades later, the musician born Troy Andrews sells out shows and headlines festivals around the world, and turns in recordings that neatly capture the joyous spirit of his concerts.
For Lifted, dedicated to Andrews’ late mother, Lois Nelson Andrews, he elicits solid performances from several guest artists. His raucous ’bone playing makes a suitable foil for the blistering, nervy guitar playing of Austin blues sensation Gary Clark Jr. on “I’m Standing Here,” which hints at Hendrix-esque rock. Singer Lauren Daigle, a fellow Louisianian, digs deep into “What It Takes,” a catchy gospel-tinged tune that benefits from a punchy horn section and the leader’s trumpet solo. And Andrews honors his musical beginnings with the funky, street-beating “Everybody in the World,” featuring the New Breed Brass Band; it incorporates hip-hop and nods to the sunny, multicolor soul of Sly and the Family Stone, as do other tracks here.
Like Shorty’s concerts, Lifted is something of an eager-to-please variety show, from the wah-wah guitar, heavy grooves and partly falsetto vocals of opener “Come Back” to the churning hard rock of the title track, the mid-tempo sentimental swagger of “Forgiveness,” the bouncy pop-rock of “Miss Beautiful,” and the zippy funk of “Might Not Make It Home.” Go ahead, try not to like this party platter. Dare ya.
—PHILIP BOOTH
MILES OKAZAKI
Thisness
Pi
Consistently confounding expectations but never in a capricious way, , the fourth recording by guitarist Miles Okazaki’s band Trickster, builds smartly on a unique ensemble language that salutes two of his key influences—Thelonious Monk and Steve Coleman—without dwelling in their shadow. (Okazaki was a member of Coleman’s band Five Elements from 2008-17; two bandmates, drummer Sean Rickman and bassist Anthony Tidd, join him in this ensemble, with keyboard wizard Matt Mitchell rounding out the lineup.) In the liner notes, he writes, “The album is a set of themes that are shuffled and connected in different ways to make four large movements.” The music moves confidently, building into beguiling
