Thursday, January 1, 2009

Freddie Hubbard and Ann Savage: Dead and Dead

Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died from a heart attack on Sunday, Dec. 29th. He spent many years with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, appeared on such free jazz milestones as Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic), John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse) and Africa Brass (Impulse), and Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch (Blue Note) as well as many discs by Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Oliver Neslon, and dozens of fine Blue Note LP's. Miles Davis hated him, especially in the 1970's when he waxed many commercially successful, mainstream lite jazz albums . In the early 90's he blew out his lips and his playing never quite recovered. My favorite thing is this little spoken word tantrum, recorded onstage with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in Germany, 1963. And I quote...."Fuck you White Mother Fuckers, Kiss my black ass"! You can enjoy it here. Thanks to Eddie Gordetsky for providing the digital version, I only had it on cassette and none of my cassette decks work anymore. Ann Savage will always be best remembered as the screechy voiced succubus Vera in Edgar G. Ulmer's uber-noir Detour (1945) in which she stars along with the hapless Tom Neal ("life can point the finger at you or me....for no reason at all") whose life would later echo his character in that classic flick. Ann Savage was born Feb. 21, 1921 in Columbia, S.C. and made numerous memorable film appearances, many playing opposite Neal. She made a brief comeback in the 1986 movie Fire With Fire, which I've never seen. She died on Dec. 29th after a series of strokes, and I don't mean swimming.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When Freddie was good he was great.

Anonymous said...

Try and check out Ann Savage's belated return to acting in Winnipeg nutcase Guy Maddin's bizarro-world 'documentary' about his home town, My Winnipeg. Savage plays Maddin's mother with all the toxic venom she used in Detour still intact. I'm torn between being totally fucked off that she died when she was just about to make a return to our screens for real, and thankful to Maddin for talking her into giving it one last throw.

The Hound said...

When Freddie was good he was great.

JD: I assumed that the amount of great sides he appears on proves that without argument. I would say that the devil's pitchfork of Free Jazz/Ascension/NY Eye & Ear Control provided the poke that sent jazz into it's next (and final?) stage, and he's on two of the three. I used the rant instead of his music for illustrating purposes simply because there's plenty of his playing all over the blogs for download, and the rant is pretty rare and doesn't seem to be anywhere ele on the web.

Anonymous said...

"JD: I assumed that the amount of great sides he appears on proves that without argument..."

I wasn't arguing; just saying/agreeing.

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