If you asked me to name one artist whose albums for Creed Taylor's CTI label hold up best today, I'd have to say Hubert Laws. Laws is jazz's finest flutist and is still with us, yet you barely hear or read much about him, sadly. In fact, if I had to sell off all of my CTI records, I'd keep Laws's nine leadership LPs and his many sideman records. [Photo above of Hubert Laws courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts]
Born in Houston, Texas, in 1939, Laws began playing flute in high school. and quickly became a virtuoso, playing jazz and classical. After winning a Juilliard scholarship, he studied classical and studied privately with Julius Baker. He then played with both the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as a member and with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1969 to 1972. Rolling forward, he was equally comfortable and marvelous playing both forms of music, at times weaving them together seamlessly.
Let's listen to tracks from Laws's nine leadership albums for CTI:
Here's Le Jean from Crying Song (1969)...
Here's Bach's Allegro From Concerto No. 3 in D from Afro-Classic (1970)...
Here's The Rite of Spring from the 1971 album of the same name...
Here's the title track from Morning Star (1972)...
Here's Windows from Carnegie Hall (1973)...
Here's Mean Lene from In the Beginning (1974)...
Here's the title track from The Chicago Theme (1975)...
Here's Feel Like Makin' Love from The San Francisco Concert (1975)...
And here's Django from Studio Trieste (1981), co-led by Laws, Chet Baker and Jim Hall...
Bonus: Here's Hubert Laws with the Claude Bolling Trio on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in October 1984...
