Stories of Standards: Little Sunflower by Freddie Hubbard

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song presented by Rodney Franks all week long starting Monday, January 7!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp - If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

“Little Sunflower” by Freddie Hubbard (1966) was first recorded on “Backlash”, Freddie Hubbard’s first album under the Atlantic label. He had been recording on the Blue Note label from 1960 to 1966. Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008) had initially played mellophone and trumpet at his high school before going to the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music, where he trained with Max Woodbury, the principal trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1958 he moved to New York, where he played with some of the outstanding jazz players of the time, including Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy (roommate) and Quincy Jones; he became well-known playing with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers from 1961 to 1964. In 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Hubbard its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was best known for bebop, hard bop and post-bop starting in the early 1960s.

In 2008 he died of complications from a heart attack which had occurred a month previously. In his later years he was closely associated with the Jazz Foundation of America and was quoted as saying, “When I had congestive heart failure and couldn’t work, The Jazz Foundation paid my mortgage for several months and saved my home! Thank God for those people.” The Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund took care of him during times of illness. After his death, Hubbard’s estate requested that tax-deductible donations be made in his name to the Jazz Foundation of America.