Freddie Hubbard - The Night of the Cookers (Blue Note)

Nobody carried the hard bop banner better than trumpeters Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. Long after hard bop’s innovators had become bored with the genre’s limitations and moved into newer territory, Morgan and Hubbard were still there, grinding out album after album for Blue Note from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. For the most part, there isn’t much to distinguish between the Sidewinders and Rumprollers, the Goin’ Ups and Here to Stays. All were played competently and passionately, doggedly sticking to the same forms, techniques, and materials that had brought both musicians their fame.

I find something admirable in this sort of artistic consistency, when it is done well. Too often, I think, we tend to focus on whether a piece of music is “challenging” in a conceptual sense, or whether or not it “explores new territory.” As a value in itself, exploring new territory is problematic: sometimes it works, sometimes you end up making New Grass.

The Night of the Cookers might be the last great album of the hard bop era. From Morgan’s brilliant muted solo on “Pensativa” through Big Black’s conga assault on “Breaking Point”, the music bristles with energy and life. The recording takes place at Club La Marchal, which provides a more boisterous atmosphere than Blue Note’s usual haunts at Birdland and the Café Bohemia. Morgan and Hubbard seem to feed off the crowd’s energy, and off each other throughout the two discs, and the rhythm section of Harold Mabern, Larry Ridley and Pete La Roca provide excellent support.

If that sounds formulaic, well, it is. In the years after this recording, both Hubbard and Morgan would drop the hard bop banner; Hubbard to chase the fusion pot of gold, and Morgan to die at the hands of a jilted lover at Slugs on February 19, 1972. This live recording, made seven years earlier, captures both of these hard bop giants at their very best, and is not to be missed by fans of the genre.

David Jones