RRR003: “Here To Stay” // Freddie Hubbard

Blue Note kicked off its 2025 Classic Vinyl Reissue series this month with two titles, and I’m proud to say I own them both.

“Big spender!” you say.

“No,” I say.

More like, “Big seller.”

That’s right, I finally broke down and sold my original pressing of Soundgarden’s Superunknown. I vividly remember purchasing that record in a weird strip mall music store in Marquette, MI, circa 1994. According to Discogs, the median value of this pressing as of January 2025 is $215.04, and the good people at Dusty Groove gave me $120 in store credit. I found that offer more than attractive, particularly as I will never listen to Superunknown again and, in truth, have barely listened to it this century. I still hate to see it go, though. It gives me a slightly queasy feeling to sell something like that. It’s a very cool blue vinyl limited edition with a bonus track. It is, I think, Soundgarden’s best record.

Nonetheless, fare thee well, Superunknown. May you land in the collection of somebody whose grunge-lust knows no bounds.

Back at Dusty Groove, I nodded toward the sky, where I assume Chris Cornell resides, took my $120 credit, and scurried off to the jazz section. As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m all but powerless against the hype sticker that says “Mastered directly from the original session tapes by Kevin Gray.” That meant I was absolutely buying Like Someone In Love by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Here To Stay by Freddie Hubbard.

(God bless you and/or damn you, Blue Note.)

My overall take on Here To Stay is that it’s a damn fine (cup of coffee?) snapshot of what a Blue Note record meant in 1962, the year of this recording. Damn fine = not exactly great or even “essential,” but better than good enough to stay in the collection.

Here To Stay opens on “Philly Mignon,” a serious burner, almost exhaustingly so. When I first heard it, I thought, Oh no, I don’t know if I’m ready for 45 minutes of break-neck tempos, dizzying horn play, and Philly Joe solos.

I needn’t have worried. Turns out “Philly Mignon” is the only burner on the record (and, to be clear, it’s a good one). For some (including the gent who wrote the jacket notes), that’s a bit of a letdown. For me, good news, as I’m old and moody rather than young and thirsty for 180 beats per minute.

The next track is “Father and Son,” mellow and vibey, sinewy and snakey. And A3 is one of my all-time favorite takes on one of my all-time favorite songs, the classic ballad, “Body and Soul.”

(Weird thing worth noting: tracks 2 through 5 are all “and” titles. “Father and Son,” “Body and Soul,” “Nostrand and Fulton,” “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” Make of that what you will.)

A story about “Body and Soul,” also from the mid-90s, Marquette, MI. I graduated from that city’s Northern Michigan University in December 1995. I had no job and no real desire to have one, so I just sort of hung around and lived off the few dollars I had in the bank. (Come to think of it, I remember applying for jobs at a few gas stations, which maybe says something about how I felt about my degree in writing.) I lived in a house with three other guys, and that arrangement had lost its charm, so I stayed at my girlfriend’s house a lot of the time, even keeping my stereo there. After she went to bed, I’d sit on the hardwood floor of her living room and listen to jazz. I had just gotten a Coltrane CD boxset that was blowing my mind. It had a 24-minute live version of “My Favorite Things” and several tracks from Coltrane’s Sound, including “Body and Soul.” That song, in particular, resonated. During those endless months I stayed up later and later at night listening to Coltrane (and sleeping later and later in the morning). It snowed often, and the sky at night would have an orange-green tint, a combination of city lights and snow squall clouds blowing in from nearby Lake Superior, a vast inland ocean spanning time and space.

This story has no point, other than to say I have a special relationship with that song, particularly in the dark days of winter in the midwest. It has a warmth that keeps me company. Some call it a sentimental song, and I’m fine with that. What Coltrane (and Freddie and, for that matter, Billie Holiday) do with it feels elegant and profound and timeless.

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Every song on Here To Stay comes from a slightly different place. The Cal Massey songs—”Father and Son” and “Assunta”—are real nice, reminding me that Cal Massey is a composer I should check out. Both of those tunes rely on modes that are less obviously blues-based. As much as I appreciate blues-based structures, my interest is especially engaged when jazz from this era tries other approaches. “Assunta” features some intriguing interconnected lines shared by Hubbard and the great Wayne Shorter. This tune, in fact, has that cool introspection of a Shorter composition (though it is not). An extra shout-out to piano man Cedar Walton for his soloing on this one. He comes up with a figure around the 4:17 mark so striking that it may have spawned entire genres.

I’ve buried the lead, though, as this is a Freddie Hubbard record. I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of jazz trumpeters is weirdly limited. After Freddie, Miles, Clifford Brown, and Lee Morgan, I know little. Freddie is an athletic, strong player on this record. His tone, to my ears, is a little less brassy than that of Lee Morgan, who seems to me the closest comparison. Freddie’s sound is a bit more textured; in my listening notes I wrote “velvety?” with the question mark there because I felt foolish using that term to describe such a strong, bright tone. But I do hear some velvet in it, something soft and textured.

A final note on the sound of this record: it’s tremendous. I’ve recently been shocked and saddened to hear a few RVG records that are less than stellar sounding (Hank Mobley’s A Slice Of The Top is straight up hard to listen to), but this one? Perfect. Better, even, than grunge.