ENGLISH

You can count some pillars, you can notice some chameleons. Freddie Hubbard is one of the seconds. For every label he signed, he redefined his very own style. First Blue Note and the hard-bop, then the explora-fusions on Atlantic and then on CTI, where sweet tangs met the hardest groove. Kind of mixes that some would judge too quickly hazardous. This live recording belongs to that era, taken out of the nothingness and the legend by WeWantSounds for the Record Store Day. 2 discs and 4 tracks. It’s jazz, baby. You must extend pleasure to listen over and over again. 22’49” for ‘The Intrepide Fox’ in this Parisian version made in Maison de la Radio (ORTF). We hear Hubbard backed by a combo of young musicians with still soft but yet well-designed teeth. Yes, but above all we hear Hubbard remembering. Of what he played on Ornette Coleman’s ‘Free Jazz’, of the hard knocks mounted with Art Blakey’s Messengers, of the proto-Bop, of the quasi-groovy. And it is beautiful. It is even magnificent, this master of messy beauty. Not only because we can hear that jazz stylistics have no well-established limits, not only because we can finally hear what others experienced live in Paris one evening in the spring of 1973. But mostly because there is a musician there, alive in the bosom of his art, well-shaped on the promontory of his superb class. Not bad for that chameleon, isn’t it ?