18. “Mr. Clean,” Freddie Hubbard, from Straight Life (1972)

In 1961, producer Creed Taylor launched Impulse records as a jazz imprint for ABC-Paramount. Though the label would eventually become the home of John Coltrane, Black liberation, and all things avant-garde, Taylor’s formative contributions mostly involved brand identity and quality control. With graphic designer Fran Attaway, he helped establish the signature orange-and-black logo and spine for the label’s expensive-looking, laminated gatefold records—all of which carried striking photos by frequent collaborators like Pete Turner.
 
Prior to Impulse, Taylor had created high-concept packages like Sing a Song of Basie (1958), an all-vocals-plus-rhythm-section studio experiment featuring heavily overdubbed treatments of Count Basie’s big band classics. His output during this time also included gimmicky effects-laden projects credited to the Creed Taylor Orchestra: Shock Music in Hi-Fi (1958), for example, featured Halloween-themed jazz peppered with the sounds of creaking doors, thumping heartbeats, and thunderclaps.
 
Taylor actually signed Coltrane to Impulse, but then abruptly left less than a year after launching his baby. After a stint at Verve records, where he attracted artists like Bill Evans, Stan Getz, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, in 1967, he founded his own label, CTI (Creed Taylor Incorporated), first as a subsidiary of A&M, then in 1970 as an independent. CTI would cement Taylor’s reputation for deluxe studio productions, but by the end of the ‘70s, the label would also be regarded as a major force in the ascendency of smooth jazz—thanks to a series of critically unloved albums with syrupy string arrangements, shortened track lengths, and R&B-meets-soft-rock bedroom appeal.
 
Yet in its early years, CTI released some bona fide fusion classics. Take, for example, Freddie Hubbard’s 1970 album, Red Clay—in which the trumpeter and a band featuring his frequent collaborators Herbie Hancock and Joe Henderson scrambled hard bop, soul jazz, and fusion. The album would be regarded as Hubbard’s finest moment and the emergence of his then-signature sound.
 
“Mr. Clean” comes from Hubbard’s more aggressive 1972 follow-up, Straight Life. The album might seem out-of-character for CTI, featuring no lush arrangements, hard-charging rhythms courtesy of drummer Jack DeJohnette, and two main tracks that clocked in at the radio-unfriendly lengths of around 15 minutes apiece.
 
Straight Life was as close as Hubbard would come to the Miles Davis funk-fusion sound of the early 1970s, and it underscores the differences between the two bandleaders: Whereas Miles was a supreme stylistic innovator and mood-setter—playing, as the truism goes, not what others couldn’t play, but what they wouldn’t—Hubbard typically came across as a trumpeter's trumpeter with a big, athletic sound. Hubbard’s output would soften markedly after this, reflecting the CTI house style, but for a brief moment he demonstrated unmatched power as a funk-fusion pugilist.