Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard is most often associated with bop and hard-bop. Hubbard’s website has his biography.
In the pantheon of jazz trumpeters, Freddie Hubbard stands as one of the boldest and most inventive artists of the bop, hard-bop and post-bop eras. Although influenced by titans like Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, Hubbard ultimately forged his own unique sound – a careful balance of bravado and subtlety that fueled more than fifty solo recordings and countless collaborations with some of the most prominent jazz artists of his era. Shortly after his death at the end of 2008, Down Beat called him “the most powerful and prolific trumpeter in jazz.” Embedded in his massive body of recorded work is a legacy that will continue to influence trumpeters and other jazz artists for generations to come.
He is not usually associated with ballads in waltz-time, like “Up Jumped Spring,” but the tune still became a standard, with both instrumental versions, and with the lyrics Abbey Lincoln created much later.
Here’s Hubbard’s original, written and first released in 1962, when he was playing with Art Blakey, and later released on his own LP, “Backlash,” in 1967.
Decades later, in 1991, jazz singer Abbey Lincoln would write lyrics to Hubbard’s tune and record it with Stan Getz.
I was out promenadin’
And high hopes was fadin’
That dreams never really come true
When up jumped Spring time
I got a look at youAll at once it was heady
A gaze long and steady
Made sounds of the patter grow dim
And up jumped Spring time
And love came on inNow my heart wants to cheer
Life’s sweet promise is here
And love is a lov-er-ly thingAnd we’re sweethearts together
Like bird and the feather
Our love is as free as the wind
Cause up jumped Spring time
So, hello my friend
Traveling back to the ‘60s, composer, arranger, and Duke Ellington alter-ego Billy Strayhorn would craft a lovely ode to flowers in 1961: “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing.”
From Strayhorn’s website:
If you are familiar with the jazz composition, “Take the A Train,” then you know something about not only Duke Ellington, but also Billy “Sweet Pea” Strayhorn, its composer. Strayhorn joined Ellington’s band in 1939, at the age of twenty four. Ellington liked what he saw in Billy and took this shy, talented pianist under his wings. Neither one was sure what Strayhorn’s function in the band would be, but their musical talents had attracted each other. By the end of the year Strayhorn had become essential to the Duke Ellington Band; arranging, composing, sitting-in at the piano. Billy made a rapid and almost complete assimilation of Ellington’s style and technique. It was difficult to discern where one’s style ended and the other’s began. The results of the Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration brought much joy to the jazz world.
Mike Zirpolo at Swing & Beyond details the genesis of Strayhorn’s tune, which he wrote and recorded in Paris.
One night at the Mars Club, Alan Douglas, a young American record producer, approached Strayhorn about making a recording of his own compositions. “He didn’t even think about it really. He just said ‘Why Not?’ I didn’t know if he was serious or he was drunk.” (5) The next day, Douglas firmed up the deal with Strayhorn by phone. Two days later, Strayhorn was at the Barclay recording studio in Paris with bassist Michel Gaudry and the Paris String quartet. He had prepared the music for the instrumentalists (and a chorus of singers who sang on some tracks wordlessly). After two extremely efficient three hour recording sessions on successive nights starting at midnight, Strayhorn had recorded enough music to fill an LP, which was called The Peaceful Side of Billy Strayhorn.
The leading expert on Strayhorn’s music, Walter van de Leur, has summarized the history of Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.” “Within months of joining Duke Ellington in New York in the winter of 1939, Strayhorn had written two ballads for Johnny Hodges, the Ellington orchestra’s star alto saxophonist: ‘Passion Flower,’ and ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.’ While there is evidence that ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing’ made it into the band book as early as February of 1941, it wasn’t until 1946 that the Johnny Hodges All-Stars waxed the piece for Capitol Transcriptions. There is a kinship between ‘Passion Flower’ and ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing’ that exceeds their botanic titles. Both pieces are built on similar musical ideas, such as very little harmonic movement, a technique found in other (Strayhorn) pieces as well. Throughout ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing,’ Strayhorn maintains a subdued and minor mood. As always, his writing is detailed and effectively expressive of the emotional content of this introspective composition.”
In this performance, Strayhorn is featured on piano, accompanied by a bass and a string quartet, for which he wrote the minimalist music. The objective in this recording was to celebrate one of Strayhorn’s most beautiful melodies. Consequently, his playing in the first chorus is melodic, with some embellishment here and there. In the second chorus, he improvises as a counterpoint to the melodic strings. His finale is puckishly humorous, but oddly fitting.
Ella Fitzgerald’s 1965 vocal rendition evokes the lyricism of Strayhorn’s tune.
A flower is a lovesome thing
A luscious living lovesome thing
A daffodil, a rose, no matter where it grows
is such a lovely lovesome thing
A flower is the heart of spring
that makes the rolling hillsides sing
the gentle winds that blow
blow gently for they know
a flower is a lovesome thing
Playing in the breeze
Swaying with the trees
In the silent night
Or in the morning light
such a miracle
Azaleas drinking pale moonbeams
Gardenias floating through daydreams
Wherever they may grow
No matter where you go
A flower is a lovesome thing
Jazz trumpeter Clifford “Brownie” Brown was only 25 when he died in a Pennsylvania car crash in June 1956 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, along with pianist Richie Powell and his wife Nancy. They were headed to a gig with Max Roach and killed instantly in one of the greatest tragedies in jazz.
In his brief, four-year recording history, Brown was already dubbed as one of the jazz world’s greatest trumpet players. From here, no jazz collection is complete without his “Joy Spring.”
According to Linda Hillshafer at KUVO’s Stories of Standards:
“Joy Spring” was written in 1954 by Clifford Brown in honor of his wife, Larue Anderson, whom he called his “joy spring”. She was a classical music student, whose thesis “Classics versus Jazz” was written to demonstrate the superiority of classical music over jazz. Her friend Max Roach introduced her to Clifford Brown, who took her aside and said, “Honey, the whole world is not built around tonic/dominant.” She subsequently became a jazz devotee.
Have a listen.
“Joy Spring” lives on in song. Greg Thomas at All That Jazz writes about vocalese master Jon Hendricks’ lyrics for “Joy Spring.”
Clifford Brown‘s “Joy Spring,” amended by Hendricks as “Sing Joy Spring” on Manhattan Transfer’s multi-Grammy award winning recording Vocalese (with all of the lyrics composed by Hendricks) is perhaps the ultimate vocalese masterpiece. The metaphorical and symbolic density Hendricks displays here is simply stunning. “To me, ‘Joy Spring’ meant two things. It could mean a spring from which instead of water, we ladled up joy for your spirit,” elucidates Hendricks. “Or we drank joy from the spring. Or we waded in the joy spring; we bathed in the joy spring. So I started to philosophize it. First, I had to define the text in the first part of the song. The first chorus had to be a definition of what this thing was. Then the solos had to be commentaries on that first chorus… different horns make different commentaries.”
Hendricks takes us on a magic carpet ride, in between reincarnations, then through the current incarnation, in which the key question remains: will you make your life meaningful by tapping into the spiritual joy within or will it signify nothing because you forgot the role of the soul in relation to its temporary dwelling place, the body? By the time Hendricks pens the vocalese commentary on Brown’s solo, we are on a metaphysical journey in which Ponce de Leon (who searched for the “fountain of youth”), the Brothers Grimm (Snow White), Buddha, Francis Bacon and Shakespeare all contribute to the realization that joy is the eternal spring of life and the soul.
From the album “Vocalese,” here’s Manhattan Transfer singing Jon Hendricks’ vision of Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”—titled “Sing Joy Spring.”
We sing a spring
(Sing joy spring)
A rare and most mysterious spring
(This most occult thing)
Is buried deep in the soul
(It’s story never has been told)
The joy spring, the fountain of pleasure
Is deep inside you whether you’re diggin’ it or not
Once you’re aware of this spring
You’ll know that it’s the greatest
Treasure you’ve got
And furthermore
The joy spring, the bounteous treasure
Cannot be bartered away and never
Can be sold
Nothing can take it from you
It’s yours and yours alone to have
And to hold
And something more:
It never is lost to fire or theft
It’s always around
When trouble is gone the pleasure
Is left I’ve always found
It’s burglar-proof same as the treasure
Man lays up in heaven worth a
Price no one can measure
That says a lot
So joy spring this fountain of pleasure
That’s deep inside you let me inform
You in all truth *(to Coda second time)
Ponce de Leon sought this
When he was searchin’ for the fountain of youth
RELATED STORY: Can the human voice replace an instrument? Inside the magic of vocalese jazz
After singing along with Manhattan Transfer and looking at my notes, I realized I had a long list of spring and floral tunes that I haven’t gotten to yet, and I’m all out of space for today’s story. So dear readers, join me in the comments for lots—LOTS—more, and be sure to post your favorite songs of spring as well!
Spring haz sprung!
