Customer Reviews

Night of the Cookers 1 & 2

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want to hear some really hot, exiting music played by some of the greatest players of that most productive period of the sixties, I'm sure you will like this. Sit down and relax, close your eyes and imagine you are in the audience of a jazz-club. This is no music for radio-playing, the sound quality isn't the very best, but everybody is really stretching out and taking chances. so this is music played for the fellow musicians and of course for a hip audience. Besides that, this is a rare occasion to hear two of the greatest trumpeters playing together. By the way, both Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan did many albums for the BlueNote-Label, and each of them had played with Art Blakey for a long period. The first tune "Pensative" starts with Lee Morgan using the harmon mute (one of the rare occasions where he uses it), while James Spaulding is playing flute, so it's a soft start with that kind of relaxed samba-feeling, but then thing turn out to be a "friendly trumpet-battle" between Hubbard and Morgan. "Walkin" is Morgan's feature and shows him really at the peak of his power. James Spaulding on alto is also exciting. Though he never got very much recognition, he really could play everything from bop to free, making really important contributions to many recording-sessions of the sixties. It is very interesting to compare the next tune "Breaking Point" with the studio version of the album with the same title, which sounds more like avantgarde with it's "free-sections", while the live-version here is more conventional with it's steady calypso-feeling. "Jodo" is my favourite tune on that album. It is Hubbard's feature and he really plays some fantastic trumpet , much faster than on the studio version of the same tune, done a few weeks earlier for Hubbard's album "Blue Spirits". Pianist Harold Mabern also plays beautiful piano solos on each tune, and just dig Pete La Roca and "Big Black"....they really have a lot of "percussion discussion" running on that exiting live gig.

After a brief absence in the Blue Note catalog, Freddie Hubbard's "Night of the Cookers" has been reissued via the RVG series. Though I have to confess, as I stated in my recent review of Hub's "Breaking Point," it would have been nicer so see rarer OOP titles like "Here to Stay" or "Blue Spirits" back in print instead. These live volumes, originally released as two LPs back in the day, capture a rare pairing of Blue Note's greatest trumpeters, Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, live in performance at Brooklyn's Club La Marchal. These April 9 & 10, 1965 concerts also feature James Spaulding on alto sax & flute, Harold Mabern on piano, Larry Ridley on bass, Pete LaRoca on drums and Big Black on congas. The four songs presented on this 2CD set are lengthy improvisations on material quite familiar to Hub fans -- "Pensativa" from Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers' "Free For All," the classic standard "Walkin'," "Jodo" (one of the tunes from Hub's previous album, "Blue Spirits") and "Breaking Point." However, these extended, groove-laden jams bear little resemblance to their aforementioned counterparts. This is not entirely a bad thing if you're looking for a great soul-jazz album, but I personally think Hubbard was at his Blue Note best on his own "Ready for Freddie" (see my review), in the company of Blakey, or on classic albums like Herbie Hancock's "Empyrean Isles," Bobby Hutcherson's "Dialogue," or Eric Dolphy's "Out to Lunch." It is blatantly obvious that with this effort, the trumpeter was trying to take his music to a larger audience, particularly with the inclusion of Morgan who had attained that desired fame with "The Sidewinder." But as is evidenced by album's like "Backlash" (again, see my review) and his later CTI recordings, when Hub was looking for more commercial success, it often came at the cost of artistic success. Others may disagree, but it is my opinion that Hub cooked best in a more modern setting, and that he only simmers on "Night of the Cookers."

The "youngsters of the digital generation" always give themselves away. If they detect the slightest real life--LIVE!--ambience, they immediately critique the audio as being lousy. Then you have the holy hip reviewers who just don't get what this date is about, because they were projecting what THEY thought the date should be. There's a lot of burnin' energy happening on these tracks, and many contrasting playing styles to enjoy: from James Spaulding's somewhat out-there, powerful alto, to Lee and Freddie's fat, firey, spankin' trumpets--captured up close by Orville O'Brien's microphones, as are the you-are-there acoustics of Club La Marchal. Quite intense! An added pleasure is the solos of congero Big Black. Lots of Pete LaRoca's drums too.

All too often, you'll see reviews here of live performances wherein the reviewers are too quick to snub the audio. They have no idea of the prevailing circumstances--and engineering challenges--on the date of the recording. For instance on this recording's "Pensativa", a RESPONSIBLE reviewer would've listened more closely and would've heard Freddie sometimes moving about the bandstand, to and away from the microphone, the spontaneity of which the engineer has no control over. Thus it is unfair and just ignorant to call this date an "amateurishly recorded production."

As a long time die hard Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard fan, I have bought this Night session with great enthusiasm. I tought that four tunes (twenty minutes each) really strechted out could be a great ground for a trumpet battle with two gints of the instrument. But I have to admit that the first disc of these Cookers here, it has a little disappointed me. The audio is really not the best. For example Lee's solos on Pensativa is really difficult to hear (I know he did choose to play the muted horn on this tune, but I'm saying that he's not loud enough to be heard clearly). Then musically as a jam session it is a little bit chaotic. I mean that often the guys are all playing as hard as they can stepping on each other's ideas. The result is a music too full and disorganized at least in some points. Pensativa is probably the tune that has disappointed me the most, too energetic, almost chaotic. The blues Walking is a little bit better but we have to wait the second disc of this set to start to hear some good blowing. The fast, modal-free Jodo is still a little bit confused in some points but it has its good moments. The twenty minutes pass by finally leaving me happy, apart maybe for the drums and congas solo parts. The last tune is again a Freddie Hubbard's original, the spanish-calypso flavoured "Breaking point". In the end I'd say that it is an album which is not essential. Surely there are some good moments here and there, but nothing that you can't find in other minor releases from these two giants. Each player has many stronger albums than this one in their careers. For example Lee Morgan has the fantastic three cds set "Live at the Lighthouse" (which has Harold Mabern at the piano too). You can hear marvellous things from Hubbard in Oliver Nelson's "The blues and the abstract truth". So you can probably skip this one. My rating is something over three stars .. but less than three stars and a half.

As a long-time digger of Freddie Hubbard who has had the thrill of performing with him (and who shares his Birthday, albeit 20 years hence), I simply offer that this wonderful recording of the then freshly minted twenty seven year old Hubbard is (a) live, (b) smokin', (c) replete with fantastic, largely non-redundant and often breathtaking interplay between the trumpetists (a few of these gems are pure magic and worth the price of admission alone!), and (d) about as commercial as twenty-minute plus, extended improvisation songs get (meaning: not). Hub & Lee were competitors and, being purveyors of trumpet, competed here as such and succeeded on this hit in doing just what Jazz musicians do best: get down.... Get it!

This is a true snapshot in time illustrating the 60's jazz scene. Hubbard and Morgan really let it all hang out. Of course the audio quality is not going to up to the present digital standards. This session was recorded live in the mid 60's probably at a moments notice. I remember my father playing this record and myself looking at the cover getting exposed to blue note artists Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. I'm just thankful that this precious spontaneous piece of jazz history was captured on tape.

I confess that I put this CD in my player without looking at the title, and my immediate reaction was WTF? The audio quality was mediocre, with muddy reproduction of the piano especially. The tunes' harmonies were limited and repetitious, with the pianist's role becoming mechanical on a head that evoked some of the misguided attempts of late '60s groups to attain greater "freedom." Only upon examining the title did I recall that I had ordered the CD out of curiosity to hear a session I previously had not known existed--one featuring both the "heir" to Clifford's throne and the putative heir to the heir's place.

There's intense blowing, with both trumpeters pulling out the stops in terms of dynamics and range. But I hear little precision, organization, or genuine inventiveness--partly because the heads and arrangements don't allow for it. I'm reminded of the far more satisfying sessions of almost ten years earlier with Diz taking on Stitt, Rollins, and Getz on the tricky changes and harmonic extensions of classic bebop tunes. Just as Diz (imo) has the last word on these dates, I recall a live "trumpet duel" between Hubbard and the unheralded journeyman Bill Hardman (anyone who knew better, wouldn't tangle with him on the bandstand) with the latter taking apart Hub with surgical precision. There's little opportunity for such revealing comparisons on this rather noisy and "showy" free-for-all, with both trumpeters displaying their extroverted, loud and flashy side (not without considerable sloppiness), but not much more. Perhaps I need to listen to the proceedings again--especially now that I know who the performers are--but there's little incentive (and less time) for doing so.

[I tried it again, but there's too much work without commensurate reward from the listener's standpoint. It's a very amateurishly recorded production, one that may have been exciting for those in attendance. Morgan sounds more "solid" than Hubbard, who too frequently goes to that strained high register (enough to make you cringe, especially with the benefit of hindsight and knowing what would happen to his chops later in his career). But Spaulding, who can't seem to decide whether he's involved in a hard bop or "free," completely "outside" session, makes both trumpeters look good by comparison. Give Mabern credit for hanging in for the distance. The big fella plays a chord, then repeats it, then repeats it (not much else for him to do when even a blues like "Walkin'" sounds like an each-man-for-himself late '60s noiseathon (who needs chord changes?]