Freddie Hubbard

CD version. Red Clay was the first album Freddie Hubbard made for Creed Taylor's CTI label. It was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs on 27, 28 and 29 January 1970 and issued as CTI 6001. Hubbard kept the long, open solo forms of his acoustic hard bop work. Here he set them over electric piano, electric bass and a pulse that owed a lot to soul and funk. The record stands between post-bop and the fusion taking shape that year, and its title piece became the tune most closely tied to his name.

The quintet is Hubbard on trumpet, Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and flute, Herbie Hancock on electric piano and organ, Ron Carter on bass and Lenny White on drums. Taylor produced and Van Gelder engineered, and Hancock, then under contract elsewhere, appears by courtesy of Warner Bros. Records. Hubbard wrote all four pieces of the original LP. The title track runs for over twelve minutes, its theme stated over a repeated bass line before the solos open up. Delphia and Suite Sioux fill the middle of the programme, and The Intrepid Fox, at more than ten minutes, closes the original album. Cold Turkey, John Lennon's song, was taped at the same sessions but stayed unreleased until the CD era. The second bonus is an eighteen-minute concert version of Red Clay recorded in Los Angeles in July 1971, with Stanley Turrentine, George Benson and Billy Cobham in the band. The album entered the Billboard jazz chart in June 1970 and reached number 40 on the R&B albums chart. Writing in JazzTimes in 2010, Bill Milkowski noted that the title track would become Hubbard's signature tune throughout his career. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave the album four and a half stars in 2008, and Thom Jurek's AllMusic review awards it five. The original LP came in a gatefold sleeve with a cover photograph by Price Givens.

This Music On CD edition (MOCCD13981, 2020, with Sony Music) carries the four original tracks plus Cold Turkey and the long version of the title piece.