Breaking Point (album)

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Breaking point
Freddie Hubbard's studio album

Publication
(s)

1964

Label (s) Blue Note Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

running time

46:45

occupation

production

Rudy Van Gelder / Alfred Lion

chronology
The Body and the Soul
1963 		Breaking point The Night of The Cookers
1965

Breaking Point is a jazz album by Freddie Hubbard , recorded on May 7, 1964 and released by Blue Note Records that same year .

The album

Breaking Point was Freddie Hubbard's first album with a permanent “working” band; a few months earlier he had left Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers , of which he had been a member for two and a half years. Most recently he was on his Blue Note album Free for All . He was also previously involved in projects by Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson and had recorded several albums with changing line-ups for Blue Note and Impulse . For the Breaking Point album he won his long-term partner, the alto saxophonist James Spaulding , with whom he had recorded the album Hub Tones in 1962 and had performed at various festivals. The other members of Hubbard's band were relatively unknown at the time; Added to this were the pianist Ronnie Mathews , who had previously played in Max Roach and Booker's Ervin's session , as well as the little-known bassist Eddie Khan and the then 22-year-old drummer Joe Chambers .

The programmatic title track “Breaking Point” has a brittle calypso character; the following “Far Away” reflects the modal playing style of his colleague Miles Davis in his composition Teo (1961). "Blue Frenzy" is a Blues Waltz; the title was - like the Joe Chambers ballad "Mirrors" - also recorded in a shorter version and released as a single. They are included on the CD as additional takes.

The music of the Freddie Hubbard Band from 1964, which musically responded to the current challenges posed by innovators such as Ornette Coleman , John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy , was - apart from the single takes - not commercial enough for the taste of the time, according to Bob Blumenthal in his retrospective 2003 in order to be able to exist in the longer term. Freddie Hubbard found hardly any chance to perform, eventually disbanded the band after the recording of The Night of the Cookers (Blue Note, 1965) and worked in Max Roach's band .

Reception of the album

Scott Yanow , who awarded the album the second highest rating in Allmusic , emphasizes in his review that Hubbard's music of this era is stylistically located between hard bop and avant-garde and expands the boundaries of modern jazz mainstream . “These exploratory excursions are much more interesting than what was to be produced three decades later,” says Yanow. He also broke here with his early game, which was still heavily influenced by Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan , and found a personal style.

The critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton , who also gave the album the second highest rating, see Breaking Point as Hubbard's most (positively) falling Blue Note album and particularly emphasize the role of James Spaulding.

The titles

Tracks 1 to 5 appeared on the Blue Note album BST 84172

  1. "Breaking Point" 10:18 (Hubbard)
  2. "Far Away" 10:58 (Hubbard)
  3. "Blue Frenzy" 6:23
  4. "D Minor Mint" 6:23 (Hubbard)
  5. "Mirrors" 6:05 (Joe Chambers)
  6. "Blue Frenzy" 3:15 (single release - Blue Note 45-1908)
  7. "Mirrors" 3:23 (single release)

Literature / sources

Web links