FREDDIE HUBBARD — Red Clay (review)

FREDDIE HUBBARD — Red Clay album cover Album · 1970 · Hard Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Like many “standard” (everything relative, of course) jazzmen around the turn of the 60’s, Hubbard faced a choice to either adapt to electric jazz or JR/F) or face a possible loss of contract, since the usual jazz wasn’t selling much anymore. He signed to Creed Taylor’s new label CTI, a subsidiary to the A&M label - before CT stroke it out on its own and eventually falling into the CBS stable a decade later. Grabbing a hold of Hancock, Carter and White (all from the Miles crowd), adding Benson and Henderson and the formula paid: he hit pay-dirt almost right-away as Red Clay became his (then-) best selling album, but don’t think that this is steaming fusionic lava flow either.

Opening on the 12-mins title track, the album does take a flying leap-start, as outside Hancock’s Rhodes it sounds quite standardy (hard-boppy) enough still. Hubbard and Henderson’s horn tooting remains fairly traditional, even if the closing wails announce more adventurous things to come. The shorter bluesy Delphia and the very-boppy Suite Sioux feature Herbie on the organ (and the Rhodes), but it doesn’t change much to the traditional bop scheme.

On the flipside, the almost-11mins Intrepid Fox is indeed an intrepid electrified hard-bop piece, but again, we’re facing some fairly standard jazz runs, where only Herbie’s Rhodes gives it a non-50’s slant, because both Freddie and Joe remain within the bop frame. The closing Cold Turkey starts out quite a bit more adventurous, as it features a dissonant intro, before striking a slightly funky rhythm and hitting at some witchy beverage, and at times we’re not Miles away from the real thing. Definitely the album’s most interesting track, if you ask this fusionhead, despite some floating moments.

The early 00’s remaster also gives a bonus extended live version of the title track, with only Benson and Carter still in, but it’s definitely a more energetic and relatively fusionesque version, which in my case, adds much value to the original album; Soooo, if you’re hoping for steaming fusion album (well except for the closing Cold Turkey), you might want to wait until Hubbard’s following opus Straight Life.

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