The jazz musician Freddie Hubbard, famous for his contribution to the early-sixties Blue Note sound, has died at the age of 70.
The trumpeter died yesterday at Sherman Oaks hospital, Los Angeles, after succumbing to complications from a heart attack he suffered last month.
Hubbard played on more than 300 recordings, and collaborated with jazz legends including Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane.
Born in Indianapolis, he moved to New York in 1958, where he met Coltrane at a jam session.
"I met Trane at a jam session at Count Basie's in Harlem in 1958," he said in an interview in 1995.
"He said, 'Why don't you come over and let's try and practice a little bit together.' I almost went crazy. I mean, here is a 20-year-old kid practicing with John Coltrane. He helped me out a lot, and we worked several jobs together."
In 1961 he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, but left in 1964 to lead his own group. .
But it was his recordings of the mid-1960s with Herbie Hancock that placed him among the foremost hard-bop trumpeters.
HardBop.com called his improvisations a combination of "imaginative melody with a glossy tone, rapid and clean technique, a brilliant high register, a subtle vibrato, and bluesy, squeezed half-valve notes."
Earlier this year, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said: "He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him ... We all listened to him."
Hubbard's last concert was in June in New York at a party celebrating the release of his final album.
He won a Grammy in 1972 for best jazz performance by a group for the album "First Light."
Hubbard continued playing in recent years despite suffering declining health in recent years and a debilitating split upper lip in the early 1990s.