More Freddie Hubbard
More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet
- You’ll find seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage Blue Note pressing
- Spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied (particularly on side one) – this copy was a solid step up over most others we played
- Another triumph for Rudy Van Gelder and his unerring skill at getting all the musical elements to work together
- 5 stars: “Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard really came into his own during this Blue Note session. . . Hubbard’s sidemen all play up to par and this memorable session is highly recommended; it’s one of the trumpeter’s most rewarding Blue Note albums.”
This Blue Note reissue pressing boasts wonderful music and sound. The reproduction of the trumpet on practically every track is nothing less than superb. It jumps out of the speakers front and center and forces you to listen to it. It’s surprisingly real and breathy, with just the right amount of bite.
The track “Crisis” on side two should particularly appeal to audiophiles — just check out the exceptionally well-recorded bass and all the cool little drum breaks.
What The Best Sides Of Ready for Freddie Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1962
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What We’re Listening For On Ready for Freddie
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight, full-bodied bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
The Players
- Freddie Hubbard – trumpet
- Bernard McKinney – euphonium
- Wayne Shorter – tenor saxophone
- McCoy Tyner – piano
- Art Davis – double bass
- Elvin Jones – drums
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.
Side One
- Arietis
- Weaver Of Dreams
- Marie Antoinette
Side Two
- Birdlike
- Crisis
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard really came into his own during this Blue Note session. He is matched with quite an all-star group (tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Art Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones in addition to Bernard McKinney on euphonium), introduces two of his finest compositions (“Birdlike” and “Crisis”), and is quite lyrical on his ballad feature, “Weaver of Dreams.” Hubbard’s sidemen all play up to par and this memorable session is highly recommended; it’s one of the trumpeter’s most rewarding Blue Note albums.