In music, nothing is quite so poignant, nor so difficult to achieve, as a comeback.
The musician who once was a star faces the toughest fight of his life trying to reclaim the reputation, the fees and the audiences of old. For a player who has fallen on hard times, no matter what the reasons, it’s a brutal, uphill battle every inch of the way.
Right now, two of the most accomplished instrumentalists in jazz are waging precisely that fight. One, veteran alto saxophonist Richie Cole, is on the verge of triumph; the other, star trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, just has joined the battle in earnest.
In his heyday, Cole was an internationally respected musician whose band, Alto Madness, barely could keep up with its bookings. Jazz clubs, music festivals, concert halls, college auditoriums and other venues around the world pursued Cole’s hard-charging ensemble, thanks mostly to the improvisational fury and fervor of its leader.
That Cole also had collaborated early on with alto giant Phil Woods and vocalese pioneer Eddie Jefferson only added to his allure and his appeal, so far as audiences, agents and critics were concerned.
By the late ’80s, however, Cole’s career and personal life had taken a nosedive, for reasons that Cole discusses openly today. So three years ago, after his marriage fell apart, Cole packed his bags and left his longtime home base, the Russian River area of California, about 80 miles north of San Francisco.
His goal was to “cool out” in Milwaukee, where one of his grown daughters lives, and to plot his comeback.
“For starters, I’m an alcoholic, though I’ve been doing good for about four years now,” says Cole, 47, in explaining how a top-flight player lost his footing. “It was vodka. At my peak, I was drinking about a quart a day.
“What happened was that I was working 40 weeks out of the year, which helped to contribute to my problems, because there’s a positive and a negative thing about traveling.
“You play the gig, and everybody loves you for two hours, then all of a sudden you have 22 hours of sitting around by yourself, staring at hotel room walls and hanging out in airports. It takes its toll.
“Also, every time you walk on stage, you’re supposed to be a genius. And sometimes all you want to do is sit home and watch `Geraldo.’ The last thing you want to do that night is play the saxophone.”
Back in the groove
Judging by recent developments, Cole’s decision to flee the West Coast-“to cool out here, in the Midwest, and get away from a lot of bad influences”-was a good one.
Last month, Cole played a five-night engagement at the Jazz Buffet, on West Diversey Avenue, and sounded sensational. All the manic energy and drive of old were back, but there was something more in his playing, as well.
Cole was whimsically quoting pop tunes, TV jingles and what-not during every solo, shifting from one melodic idea to the next with speed and cunning. The spirit and enthusiasm of his playing proved irresistible.
That sense of joy also courses through his newest recording, “Kush: The Music of Dizzy Gillespie,” to be released next month on the Heads Up label. The ebullience of Cole’s playing and the ripeness of his tone ignite every track on this CD.
“I think what you’re hearing now is a guy who, over the last year, has had a kind of rebirth,” says Cole. “My brain is clear and I’m thinking about what I’m playing and not doing the same old things over and over.
“I feel like a newcomer, like I’m 21 years old again. The reason is that it turned out to be such a relief to get off the tour grind and find some other things in my life that I really can’t take care of in a Motel 6. I have a family (Cole is remarried), I have children, I have my doggies, I have my birds that I feed every day.
“And all of that stuff, strangely enough, put me in the mood to work, and I’ve been writing music like crazy. It’s probably bad reasoning on my part,” Cole adds, “but I feel I’m playing the way I am now because of what I went through. If I hadn’t gone through all this stuff, I wouldn’t be sounding the way I do.
“It wasn’t easy. It’s still not easy. I’m an alcoholic, man. Every day I’ve got to be fighting, telling myself, `No, no, no, no.’
“But for some strange reason, it (the struggle) puts something special into your music-though I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Hubbard is still trying
Coincidentally, Cole’s engagement at the Jazz Buffet was to have teamed him with Hubbard, who has been fighting his own demons in recent years. Indeed, Hubbard failed to show up for Cole’s gig, though he did play his own run at the Buffet the following week.
A few months earlier, Hubbard, 56, also had appeared at the club and proved unable to control his instrument. Considering that he was one of the reigning jazz trumpet virtuosos of the ’60s and ’70s, the performance was startling.
“The problem was-and is-that part of my lip was blown about a year ago,” Hubbard says. “I played too much in Philly, then I hit the Blue Note for a week, and I hit hard, I overblew, and my lip just popped open.
“Then I went to Europe and played again, when I should have taken off. So I injured the lip worse, and it got infected.
“So when I played, people started to wonder, `Is Freddie going to be all right?’ They started to say, `Freddie must be getting high,’ which isn’t true.”
Still, in recent years Hubbard’s reputation has suffered. The instrumental whiz who had established himself as a star in drummer Art Blakey’s band in the ’60s, the trumpet innovator who had helped forge new and daring languages in landmark recordings by Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock, had lost his place in the spotlight by the ’80s.
Having done his best work on other musicians’ recordings, having bounced unpredictably among jazz, pop, fusion and rock styles, having never found a musical idiom that was uniquely his, Hubbard eventually-and inevitably-was upstaged by a new generation of trumpeters.
A whole new world
“The business really changed,” says Hubbard, with some bitterness. “It’s not based on talent, like it used to be. You used to have to put in time and travel. Now, you make one record and you can become a hit, if the company pushes you.
“But all these young cats, they haven’t played nothing. It’s just that the record industry is pushing the youth, but they haven’t learned to play standards, they haven’t learned how it’s done.
“I was responsible for a lot of the creation of that new sound in the ’60s. When Ornette called me to make that record (the album `Free Jazz’), I was totally surprised, because I wasn’t into that free-form stuff. But he said, `I want you to scream, play that high stuff,’ so I was surprised, but I did it.
“That was my best period.
“Now, if I could get the performance rights (royalties) to that stuff, I wouldn’t have to work at all. But I only get performance rights on my own stuff.
“So I have to keep playing, even when I blow my lip.”
But surely, after all the years in the business, Hubbard must have accumulated enough money to allow him a few months’ medical leave.
“The problem is that I bought a big house in California, took big vacations and just overspent,” he says. “So I was making money, but I’ve been living on such a high level.
“So now I’m thinking my (music) publisher can tide me over for a while, because I’ve got to take that time off, I’ve got to take the summer off and heal up.”
Beset by financial trouble
For Hubbard, whose innovations have influenced countless young players, these difficulties come as painful and unexpected developments at this late date in his career. Short on money, long on debts, yet unable to play at the level of old, he has been struggling to make ends meet.
In the old days, when he was winning Down Beat critics polls, a Grammy Award and every other honor imaginable, he surely never envisioned the hard times ahead.
“I never had an injury like this in my life, I’ve never had this kind of problem,” Hubbard says. “When I was young and playing with Blakey, I wouldn’t have to warm up at all. I could just hit it cold. Well, those days are over.
“At my age, to go through this hurts. It made me realize how old I am.”
Still, there’s hope, for Hubbard recently completed a recording for MusicMasters that he’s calling “MMTC,” for “Monk, Miles, Trane and Cannonball” (that is, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley). The recording, which Hubbard says he’s proud of, will be out in September, and by that time Hubbard hopes he will be able to perform regularly.
Even so, he acknowledges that competing with his own recorded legacy will not be easy.
“I’ve covered a whole spectrum of music in my career, but I can’t play all that stuff now-nobody can do all their old stuff,” Hubbard says. “So I’ve got to pick my best stuff and choose carefully what I can play, what I should play.
“But I really think I’m getting better now. I think now it’s more a psychological problem than a chops thing.”
The advice: Keep trying
During these past few difficult years, no one has been working more passionately to try to get Hubbard back on track than Winford Elliott, the trumpeter’s Chicago-based road manager and friend.
“First of all, there’s no question that Freddie still has the wind you need to play trumpet,” Elliott says.
“So I just keep telling him, `If your chops are not what they were 20 years ago, that’s OK, don’t try to play like it was 20 years ago. Just be yourself, play what you can play, and people will appreciate that.’
“A lot of people still remember Freddie Hubbard and want to see him.”
Adds Richie Cole: “I know exactly what Freddie’s going through, because I’ve been there.
“I just hope he knows that it’s possible to make it back-if you want it badly enough.”
