A live Freddie Hubbard recording should
always really be something of a welcome prospect, which given their limited
number makes ‘The Night Of The Cookers’ even more disappointing. A double album
of two club night performances of long and extended pieces, we get four tracks
all around the twenty-minute mark showcasing a duelling match between trumpet
kings Hubbard and Lee Morgan, with support from a mixed band supplying sax and
flute, piano, bass, drums and congas. And with one of those players being the excellent
James Spaulding, this should have been a classic. Instead it comes nowhere
close.
First of all, the recording itself is
appalling, sounding badly miked, muddy and quite often nowhere near the
instruments. There are some otherwise good solos here that are ruined by the
fact that you can’t hear them because the rhythm section is so far in front,
that the soloist is completely distant and buried in the mix.
Second is that the long jams that make up
the bulk of the music are a chaotic and jangled mess. The full band is often
found playing as hard and as much as they can all at the same time, with little
in the way of space or breathing room. ‘Pensativa’ is almost a complete waste
of time for this very reason, with ‘Walking’ benefitting from a more blues-sounding
strut, but is still far from acceptable.
More confusingly and unexpectedly is that
the legendary Lee Morgan here sounds completely abysmal and lost, with Hubbard
clearly sounding in a different and stronger league. There are a lot of solos
on this gig, and most of them are far too stretched out, starting as they do
frequently with too little an idea - Morgan in particular is devastatingly uninspired
throughout.
‘Jodo’ picks up things with some strong
moments and a nice fast paced rhythm, which unfortunately gives way to some
appalling conga solos, and leaving it to Hubbard’s own ‘Breaking Point’ to
steal the small honour of easily being the best piece here. Melding Spanish-informed
music with a calypso feel, it sounds like the band has finally finished
rehearsal and is now stepping up to something approaching an A-game. It’s sad
then that the sound is still atrocious.
There are some good bits and pieces here
and there scattered throughout, but nothing that isn’t available in a much
better format, or sound quality, on other more solid releases, for either
trumpet stars here. Each also has better live efforts too; in Hubbards
excellent ‘Without A Song’ and Morgans definitive three album set ‘Live At The
Lighthouse’. Regardless of these though, nothing with this bad a sound
recording should ever be put out as an ‘official’ release, and for the price
and poor quality of the music in general, this one should without exception be
side-stepped and forgotten.
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