This may be Freddie Hubbard's finest moment as a leader, in that it embodies
and utilizes all of his strengths as a composer, soloist, and frontman.
On Red Clay, Hubbard combines hard bop's glorious blues-out past with
the soulful innovations of mainstream jazz in the 1960s, and reads them
through the chunky groove innovations of 1970s jazz fusion. This session
places the trumpeter in the company of giants such as tenor saxophonist
Joe Henderson, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer
Lenny White. Hubbard's five compositions all come from deep inside blues
territory; these shaded notions are grafted onto funky hard bop melodies
worthy of Horace Silver's finest tunes, and are layered inside the smoothed-over
cadences of shimmering, steaming soul. The 12-minute-plus title track
features a 4/4 modal opening and a spare electric piano solo woven through
the twin horns of Hubbard and Henderson. It is a fine example of snaky
groove music. Henderson even takes his solo outside a bit without ever
moving out of the rhythmnatist's pocket. "Delightful" begins
as a ballad with slow, clipped trumpet lines against a major key background,
and opens onto a mid-tempo groover, then winds back into the dark, steamy
heart of bluesy melodicism. The hands-down favorite here, though, is "The
Intrepid Fox," with its Miles-like opening of knotty changes and
shifting modes, that are all rooted in bop's muscular architecture. It's
White and Hancock who shift the track from underneath with large sevenths
and triple-timed drums that land deeply inside the clamoring, ever-present
riff. Where Hubbard and Henderson are playing against, as well as with
one another, the rhythm section, lifted buoyantly by Carter's bridge-building
bassline, carries the melody over until Hancock plays an uncharacteristically
angular solo before splitting the groove in two and doubling back with
a series of striking arpeggiatics. This is a classic, hands down.
(by Thom Jurek, All
Music Guide)
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