By way of introduction, I must confess that I am a long-time superfan and champion of Freddie Hubbard’s woefully-derided 1976 album Windjammer. Hubbard, fronting a group of familiar-sounding studio cats, is at the top of his game here, blowing beautifully over Bob James’s electric charts. Everything clicks here, with the possible exception of the regrettable “Feelings.” To these ears, Windjammer is a jazz-funk classic.
But the nearly universally-loathed record has a really dreadful reputation. “Windjammer may prove to be Hubbard’s largest seller,” wrote DownBeat in its one-star review on November 18, 1976. “But it is already the most inappropriate record he’s ever made.” AllMusic’s Scott Yanow added, “This LP is probably trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s worst recording. … This is insincere music that was dated before it was even released.”
It probably didn’t help that Hubbard was pictured (weirdly) on the album’s cover trying to blow his trumpet through a veil of plastic. For critics and naysayers, the symbolism was just too apropos. Hubbard himself blamed the failure of his entire Columbia output – which stretched over eight albums, released between 1974 and 1980 – on Bob James…who only held sway over this one particular record.
Still, it should be noted that Windjammer – what Columbia Records, in its promotional material, called “The most Freddie Hubbard album ever” – was Hubbard’s singularly most successful record…ever. The album is one of only five Hubbard records to crack the Billboard 200, landing at number 85. The others (The Baddest Hubbard, Liquid Love, Bundle of Joy and Super Blue) didn’t even come close.
While there is no evidence that anything from Windjammer has ever been sampled (!), the album has, however, gained a sort of cult appeal in the intervening years, likely due to its 2009 CD release on the Wounded Bird label.
Entertainment journalist, author, liner-notes writer and one-time Billboard managing editor Eliot Tiegel (1936-2020) covered Windjammer in the September 4, 1976, issue of Billboard (p. 66). The assessment – in a column titled “Close Up” – is not a review, per se, but rather the type of overview that would have appeared in a previous decade as a note on the record’s sleeve.
(Liner notes had largely disappeared from jazz discs, especially crossover ones, at that time. The record companies probably figured, correctly, that the kids would not care.)
To be fair, Tiegel’s write-up is more of what we used to call a “puff piece,” a complimentary spin on a subject requiring promotion, than anything that contains actual musical analysis. But, here, Tiegel, in his own particularly astute way, gets to the heart of the music at hand in a more honest way than any other critical review of the record I have come across.
There is something close to real insight here: an acknowledgement that a record that strives towards commerciality isn’t always a bad thing. Indeed, he suggests, that such a thing could be better than you think. Indeed it is.
FREDDIE HUBBARD -Windjammer, Columbia 34166. Hubbard is among the jazzmen who have seen the light, heard the message and have become part of the school of sensibility.
He’s sensible in terms of playing a brand of music which has the greatest potential for returning to him the greatest rewards in terms of audience appeal and dollars in his pocket.
Under the knowledgeable aegis and sympathetic hand of Bob James, producer, arranger and keyboard expert, Hubbard’s soiree into the realm of crossover jazz is accomplished in first rate fashion.
Not only is his playing totally endemic to the music – two of the six cuts are previous pop hits, the others new, melodic meanderings – but the arrangements and inclusion of vocalists for the first time all lead the listener to a kind of neo-funky dance land where the spirits are free roaming.
This is the first James-Hubbard collaboration for Columbia, the two having worked steadily for CTI, and it is a natural teaming. The two musicians know each other and James knows where Columbia wants Hubbard to go: away from the pure, hardcore jazz field and into the more lucrative ersatz pop-jazz-soul-disco blender.
And that’s what come out, but with skill and taste and brimming with vitality and loaded with happy sounding music. The large orchestral setting behind Hubbard’s trumpet and flugelhorn is built around leading New York sidemen plus five voices. These voices are used selectively – rather than sparingly – on three cuts to more or less repeat titles or single phrases. They don’t complete any song.
There are 10 violins, two viola and two celli plus four additional backup trumpets and a rotating array of drummers and guitarists.
The problem with this kind of record is that in order to accommodate all the required ingredients – voices, electric keyboards, strings, brass choirs – the headliner doesn’t get as much time to blow; he loses improvisation time and this is what has happened here.
We hear less of Hubbard than we should, but the compensation is there in the form of exciting charts, excellent section work by the strings and brass, the chattering voices and key solos by Hubert Laws, Mike Brecker and Eric Gale, just to name three stellar contributors.
The opening cut, “Dream Weaver,” combines some softly caressing flugelhorn with punchy trumpet work to match a funky rhythmic feeling. “Feelings” has a mellow feel, accented by the flugelhorn and Eric Gale’s rich electric guitar infusion.
“Rock Me Arms” offers Laws riding on top of the five voices as Chris Parker lays out the accepted disco tempo on the open top hat. This is a definite disco crossover effort.
“Touch Me Baby,” written by James, is the second strongly slanted soul /pop crossover work, with Hubbard finally getting into some high register soaring with a conga beat adding a Latin pulse. Mike Brecker’s tenor comes through effectively.
“Neo Terra” (a Hubbard original), has plenty of percussive excitement riding in the background and the trumpeter’s fast fingering and flighty high notes.
“Windjammer,” the closing track by Hubbard, is the most adventureous [sic] song production-wise. There is ample room to stretch out for all the soloists; Hubbard marches understandingly along with the 4/4 brigade, George Gables’ [sic] Fender bass [note: Gary King is on bass here] walks along the melody line in an upfront position and Brecker’s tenor is filtered somehow to edge out the midrange tones and thereby create an oddball sound which actually strengthens the restless quality of the composition.
Hubbard has entered a more controlled, less free form environment and it works. ELIOT TIEGEL