Glory of Love introduces flautist Hubert Laws (b. 1939) to the CTI family. Studying classical flute while still in high school in Houston, Laws became interested in jazz at Texas Southern University. There, he helped form the Modern Jazz Sextet, the group that eventually evolved into the Jazz Crusaders (later known as The Crusaders). Laws won a scholarship to study at Julliard and later studied classical flute with the New York Philharmonic’s Julius Baker. In New York, Laws did journeyman work as a session player, and joined Mongo Santamaria’s group in 1963. He debuted as a solo artist in 1964 with The Laws of Jazz, the first of his four Atlantic albums through 1972. Although Hubert Laws appears on Kai Winding’s Penny Lane & Time (1967), along with Glory’s Ron Carter and Grady Tate, one of Creed Taylor’s last Verve projects, it was Atlantic labelmate Herbie Mann who brought Hubert Laws to Taylor’s attention during the Glory of Love sessions. Laws quickly became Taylor’s go-to man on flute – and tenor sax on several occasions – and ended up featuring prominently on an additional ten A&M/CTI projects (both Mann and Laws figured in as part of Trust In Me, the later Soul Flutes album). The flautist made his own CTI debut in 1970 with Crying Song, an album which was likely intended to be issued by A&M. Thereafter, Laws became a fixture of the CTI foundation, recording many sessions for the label, becoming one of the original CTI All-Stars and waxing seven more albums under his own name for CTI (two of which were nominated for Grammy awards). For these records, Taylor often indulged Laws’ taste for classical music – as it matched the producer’s taste as well – and even many of the titles suggest a jazz-classical fusion perfected by the flautist. “The classical feeling in my music,” explained Laws, “is more a result of personal taste than educational background.”[i] 1 While at CTI, Laws was also a member of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra (1968-73) and he served as an alternate with the New York Philharmonic (1971-74). But the guy could swing – especially nicely on funkier numbers too. Hubert Laws left CTI for Columbia, where his 1976 Bob James-produced and arranged debut, Romeo and Juliet, suggested the influence of CTI and became a prototype for James’ own Tappan Zee label. The flautist returned to CTI for the lovely Studio Trieste (1982), with Chet Baker and Jim Hall, and the label’s final release, the CTI Jazz All-Star Band’s Montreux Jazz Festival 2009. Additionally, the prolific Laws recorded several CTI-influenced albums of his own, including My Time Will Come (1993) and Moondance (2004).
Endnotes:
- Feather, Leonard and Ira Gitler: The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the 70s (New York: Da Capo, 1976), p. 221. ↩︎