Hubbard in the hood

He lifted his trumpet to his lips and squashed a high G like it was a bug.

Freddie Hubbard hit the stage at the very last moment one could hit it and still be considered on time. He picked up his horn, turned to his assembled quintet and grunted ''Thermo,'' the title of one of his better compositions. ''We'll see what happens,'' he muttered, scowling fiercely.

And they were off.

The whole sick crew was up there: Carl Burnett, the fiery ex-Horace Silver drummer; John B. Williams, bassist from Arsenio Hall's posse; John Beasley, a bright young pianist about town; saxophonist Bob Shepherd, formerly with Miles Davis, and trombonist Phil Ranelin, the Indianapolis flash. Hubbard lifted his trumpet to his lips in his characteristic way, as though he were aiming a cue stick, and squashed a high G like it was a bug. The instrument cursed and snarled through 120 fast paced measures of his own complex work, and before you knew it, you were having fun. It's true some nubile young brassmen have wafted through town recently: Phil Harper and Marlon Jordan and Roy Hargrove were here, and so was Wynton Marsalis. But Hubbard need fear no evil.

Because he demonstrated once again that 1997 Thursday at Catalina's that he has something that comes straight from the guy who started it all on jazz trumpet, Louis Armstrong: A sublime confidence and a unique kind of bittersweet joy.

''Dear John'' was next, a piece Hubbard wrote for Coltrane, and on this one Williams and Burnett began to really jell as Hubbard played flugel, building in a flash the most intricate phrases out of the tiniest scraps. Again, he wrestled his solo to the ground, pounding it home with a string of one beat notes before Shepherd, on soprano, turned in a chorus that was a model of gentlemanly invention, succeeded by Beasley and Williams, who did the same. 

''To Her Ladyship'' was a Hubbard ballad with a Duke Ellington feel, where Shepherd waxed fluent on flute and Ranelin warm on trombone while Hubbard spread out his short flugel phrases into a fine, long arching structure.

For the finale, ''Without a Song,'' Billy Childs came up from ringside to take over the piano. Like Hubbard, Shepherd, and Beasley, Childs has a new album out, and Williams is preparing one. But these are the fast guys from the studios, and they're always prepared for a number like this: Full tilt, no holds barred, and make it work.

Thick with invention, it gave the young and stylish crowd a chance to see what happens at a Freddie Hubbard opening, all right: Jazz happens.

Then came a bittersweet birthday party...

The birthday boy in his suit and hat.

Freddie Hubbard slipped onstage midway through Hub in the Hood, a musical program in his honor, looking rather blithe in what he called his CIA suit. It was a gray chalk stripe double-breasted model that showed nary a bulge in his 60-year-old figure.

He sat down at the piano and laid in the changes for "Birdlike," his equally blithe composition. It was a fast-moving bit of bebop that challenged saxophonist George Harper Jr., not to mention Hubbard's old Indianapolis high school buddy, Phil Ranelin, the trombonist who was leading the band.

His blithe spirits were all the more remarkable considering what had happened to him: Freddie Hubbard lost his chops. It happened a couple of years ago after an operation to remove a growth that came from years of brilliant and hard driving trumpet playing with the heaviest of the jazz heavies, from Art Blakey and John Coltrane to Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter, not to mention his many first rank combos.

Now down in the hood, even the affluent Leimert Park neighborhood where this down home tribute was being held, they're liable to take away your cat papers if you ain't got your chops.

But where Freddie Hubbard is concerned, that would be unthinkable, as the audience that nearly filled the Vision Theater at 43rd and Crenshaw made clear with their numerous warm-hearted ovations, outpourings that pretty much amounted to a call for the return of the prodigal.

"We want to hook up Freddie Hubbard with people like Horace Tapscott, who stayed deep in the community and did a lot," said Dalili, the founder of Build Crenshaw Arts, the group that organized the program.

Local avant garde pianist Tapscott had brought his quintet of instrumentalists to accompany the 12 member Voices of Ugmaa, which stands for Under God Musicians and Artists in Ascension, a bright and mighty group he helped found.

"Why don't you listen," they chanted. "Listen, listen, listen!" Two trap drummers, Donald Dean and Bill Madison, provided rhythmic urgency as the singers, led by the electrifying vocalist Dwight Tribble, made their way through stirring Afro-centric material "written by those who lived in the neighborhood and died in the neighborhood," as the gaunt Tapscott put it.

"Prince of Africa, won't you stay with me," cried Tribble, in a keening Islamic warble.

Ranelin and his group stayed in this zone with their first number, an original composition Ranelin called "Tears in Elmina," a tribute to the newly enslaved Africans who were confined there hundreds of years ago. His trombone work was clear, sorrowful and beckoning.

California Rep. Maxine Waters had read the City Council's resolution designating him a cultural ambassador for the city of Los Angeles to the world audience and designating April 7, his birthday, as Freddie Hubbard Day. 

Hubbard seemed delighted by this as he was by numerous gifts bestowed on him by admirers from the neighborhood, including a large water color of him from John Outterbridge in Watts and a vivid jacket from revered local tailor John Farris.

The trumpeter, who has been woodshedding for more than a year and is slowly getting his chops back, ducked out of the CIA suit and donned the new jacket, which fit beautifully.

"I came here in 1961 with Sonny Rollins and played Marla's before it was Marla's," he said, as Marla Gibbs, who was in the audience, nodded at the reference to her club on Martin Luther King Drive. 

"I may not make as much money as I would in Hollywood or wherever," he added gruffly, "but I'm gonna come back and be with the people. Tonight will encourage me to come back in the neighborhood -- and bring some of the cats."

And with that, Ranelin launched into Hubbard's classic jazz waltz, "Up Jumped Spring," played by old Hubbard bandmates like Carl Burnett, drums, and Henry Franklin, bass, with perhaps a little more heart than usual.