I saw him at Bradley’s many times.
Listen to Hank Jones on Marian McPartland ‘s Piano Jazz with guest host Bill Charlap:
Freddie Hubbard 1938-2008
The great jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died yesterday in California. Peter Keepnews wrote an obituary at the New York Times.
Wikipedia has Freddie Hubbard’s discography.
Over the past 35 years, I was fortunate to see Freddie Hubbard perform many times. The first was in the early ’70s, when I took this photograph at a concert in San Francisco.
I was always partial to the trumpet, maybe because two of my friends, Bruce Baxley and Eugene Madsen, both played. I took lessons with a rental trumpet when I was a kid, but at Christmas, it came down to a trumpet or a bike, and the bike won.
When I moved to the mecca of jazz, New York City, the first thing I bought when I sold a photograph was a Yamaha Flugelhorn, a YFH-631 (now the 631G). My friend, Tim Luey (I think mistakenly), told me a fluegelhorn was easier to play than a trumpet. One year, while attending Comdex in Las Vegas, I bought a Bach Stradivarius at a pawn shop. Both of them are in the closet.
100 Essential Jazz Albums
David Remnick, at The New Yorker, compiled a list of 100 Essential Jazz Albums after doing a profile of jazz broadcaster Phil Schaap.
I used to listen to Phil Schaap and Bird Flight on WKCR, when I was up that early. I also always used to play Charlie Parker’s rendition of Just Friends on the juke box at Bradley’s, which closed in 1998, about the same time my life started going downhill.
Happy Birthday, Cedar Walton
It’s pianist’s Cedar Walton’s 74th birthday today.
all about jazz has his biography and an interview by Russ Musto.
Google has Cedar Walton’s discographies.
February 12-17, 2008, he’ll be at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and Oakland.
You can get his Underground Memoirs album somewhere.
Photo courtesy of Ramnath Bhat / Flickr
Oscar Peterson 1925-2007
The great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died today. You can read his obituary at the New York Times (free registration required) or the Los Angeles Times.
I only heard him live once, at El Matador on Broadway in San Francisco. Fortunately, we still have his music to remember him.