Freddie Hubbard (top) and Nolan Shaheed (above) were soul brothers on jazz stage.

One of the greats died in the waning days of 2008. Not a track legend but a music icon — jazz musician Freddie Hubbard. Since Nolan Shaheed, our multi-year Athlete of the Year, is a fellow jazz trumpeter, I asked him if he had known Freddie. Of course he had. Here’s how Nolan began a touching and funny remembrance: “I did know Freddie Hubbard, and I have played with him from time to time. But we both play the same instrument, so the times I’ve played with him have been at jam sessions and a couple of times when he invited me to play with him on his gig. He was without doubt the greatest jazz trumpet player who ever lived and his command of the horn is legendary. He used to come out and hear me play at a Los Angeles jazz club called The Baked Potato and just sit in the back and dig the scene. Freddie was fiercely competitive and was always challenging cats, but the funniest thing was that we all considered him to be the best anyway so his huge ego was for naught. He embarrassed me one time on stage in Cleveland in 1978 by inviting me to blow a very difficult, up-tempo tune with him.”

Nolan continued:

I had just finished playing a set with Basie and went to his gig to dig him and was standing in the wings when he peeped me. I had no intentions of blowing that tune because the changes were too hard to hear and it was Freddie’s own composition, so he knew no one knew the tune but him, so I declined by shaking my head.
Then he walked over to me and pulled me onto the stage and said into the mike: “Ladies and gentlemen, mister Nolan Smith” and left me out there to play that hard tune.
I stumbled and fumbled and sounded like a water buffalo farting in the wind and I could hear him chuckling behind me. I got so embarrassed I just walked off the stage. Ironically, he was playing in a club in Long Beach called Birdland West in the ’90s and his chops were pretty bad by then, but I still went to peep him and we talked in the dressing room before the second set.
He said he just left Europe where he was blowing high notes with Sandavol and Faddis and blew out his chops, but I told him that was a stupid thing to do because Artura and John were the top high note specialists in the world.
Anyway he asked me if I had my horn and if I would like to sit in and I REALLY wanted to blow because my chops were up, my horn was at the table with my lady and I wanted revenge for Cleveland. But I remembered how he was struggling on the first set and it wouldn’t be right to cut him when his chops were down, so I told him I didn’t bring my horn.
I was sad all day when I heard he had passed. And I’ve been listening to his music all day. RIP Freddie

What a yarn. The next time anyone calls masters athletes one-dimensional, I’ll bust them upside the chops. BTW, the current issue of Running Times magazine has this wonderful profile of Nolan.

In it, his “training philosophy” is given as thus:

I don’t eat until after my daily training at about 5 p.m. I do one speed workout a week and take a day of rest. Basically, my philosophy is, he who trains the hardest wins the most. Of course, it all depends on what ‘win’ means to you. I can come in last and still win.

Nolan turns 60 this July. Watch out, worlds!