JL 19.ii.11 Hank Mobley

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

El Senor Blues in ecstasy eh ....

but no Miles Complete Live at the Blackhawk:

For his part, Mobley had the shoes of two monster players to fill, and he does so elegantly with a ton of fire in his playing. But it is Kelly and Chambers who really set the pace for this band. Kelly fills space in the middle register with an amazingly percussive attack that is as rhythmic as it is harmonically inventive. Mobley steps away from the hard bop side of his trademark sound to go back to the Sonny Rollins book of bebop, and even Davis uses the method of attack and surprise that gained him a reputation with Charlie Parker
All Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Px57w2m3o0

don't want to detract from HM's own work on Blue Note, but here he is in absolutely stellar company not of his own choosing and meets the demands of the situation over the whole series of sessions .... brilliant, just brilliant ...

that said should be a great prog

[Ian Thumwood]

Calum

I was actually put in mind of your quote when the Miles' track was chosen as Mobley seemed to hark back to an earlier style of Modern jazz than the modal approach that the trumpeter was pursuing. Although I much prefer Coltrane's work in the 1960's, his music was all about fracturing the vocabulary of players such as Mobley even by the time he was recordings discs like "Giant Steps." To my ears, Hobley was clearly the wrong choice for Davis' group and , I would suggest, less successful than either George Coleman or Sam Rivers. The suggestion was that Mobley's work with Miles Davis was not his finest - the track chosen suggested a fish out of water.

A tenor playing friend of mine commented a few weeks to me that he has a book of Mobley transcriptions which are not only fun to play but he believes incorporate many really good and melodic ideas. This is coming from someone whose taste is usually for post-Coltrane / improvised music as opposed to Hard Bop which he would normally consider a bit old fashioned. I think that he is probably right. The control Mobley has over his instrument and his taste is impeccable. Dave Gelly was right to suggest similarities with Lester Young - not something that I had considered before. In his idiom, Mobley was a total master and you can easily appreciate why Alfred Lions was so keen to get him into the studio.

The problem for me with his playing is that it is extremely difficult not to find your attention wandering off with much of his work. True, Mobley achieved a degree of perfection in his recordings but I think he ploughed a very narrow furrow. Effectively, he made the same record over and over again even though they probably exemplified the kind of music that Blue Note were trying to create. I've got "Roll Call" and have always found Freddie Hubbard the most compelling soloist of this record (there is a track which very much resembles Peggy Lee's "Fever" which always struck me as odd) despite being put off by the out of tune piano that Wynton Kelly is made to endure. Mobley also recorded with other Blue Note artists such as Sonny Clark's "Dial S for Sonny" which was an early attempt at Hard Bop. Some of the discs he cut in the late 60's where he was made to play things like "The Theme from Midnight Cowboy" are truly wretched. As stated in the summary, the best records all seemed to come from a period of about four years.

I think most of us jazz fans love to lionise the Blue Note label and someone like Hank Mobley was pretty much it's most archetypal artist. The music he produced at his prime was very much of it's era. I can appreciate why so many people love his music and why many musicians are in awe of his playing. To my ears, though, this is pretty simple , almost "lowest common denominator" approach to Modern Jazz (you could also level this at Horace Silver) albeit done extremely well and especially polished. Given that the speed of jazz developed so quickly through the 1960's, Mobley's style owes more to the type of jazz that emerged 1945-60 as opposed to the kind of developments that the likes of Shorter, Dolphy, Rivers, etc were engaged in. For me, Mobley was something of a conservative. Interesting to contrast him with a similar kind of player from that generation like Booker Ervin who was far more enthusiastic about stretching the possibilies of the music without slavishly impersonating Coltrane.

[Tenor Freak]

Ian, I think you're being unfair on Hank. As Bluesnik says, not everyone who plays this music can stretch it as far as Trane, Hawk, Duke et al did. There has to be a "garde" for the "avant" to be effective. Players like Hank Mobley are the consolidators of the music, taking the ideas developed by the pioneers and working them over, whilst adding things of their own. Stand by for a more passionate defence of Hank from Bluesnik!

I thought the programme was OK, but I would have liked some discussion on points raised by Barry Witherden in his excellent Jazz Review article. Obviously a conscious decision had been taken by Alyn and Dave Gelly to concentrate on Hank's golden period, generally considered to be the four LPs Soul Station, Workout, Roll Call and No Room for Squares. But by doing so, we missed out on a discussion on how Hank's sound and ideas developed. There's a definite toughening of his sound in the later 1960s, I'm sure as a result of his two spells in chokey for drug offences. By 1967 he'd incorporated some ideas from Coltrane into his trademark sound - listen to the sextet on Hi Voltage which is an excellent LP thanks in no small part to Hank who wrote all the material and his brilliant sidemen, particularly Jackie McLean and John Hicks. So for the listeners' feedback programme I'd recommend something from one of his LPs from '67.

Still, it was great to hear his solo on "So What" from the Carnegie Hall concert which is a favourite of mine, and it was interesting to learn that Hank did not play very loudly and needed to be close to the mic on all those RVG-engineered sessions. It was also interesting to hear Gelly discuss Hank's mid-period approach to changes and the example given ("Hello Young Lovers") was a delight.

[Tenor Freak]

And another thing: no mention at all for his copious sideman work at Blue Note, other than with the Messengers and Horace Silver? What about (for example) Whistle Stop, A New Perspective, or Dial "S" for Sonny? Meh.

[burning dog]

The Billy Butterfield formulation

“ It is part and parcel of the whig interpretation of jazz that it studies the past with reference to the present"

Typical distortion

Assuming that jazz history was a march of progress whose inevitable outcome was post bop

"How little they know of Jazz who only Jazz know" - CLR ('Arry) James

[Ian Thumwood]

Tenor

I don't think I am being hard of Mobley at all and thought my assessment was pretty fair. The best track was from the album "No room for squares" which featured Adrew Hill. My assertion is that what he did, he did well, but that there is little variety in the context of the groups in which he worked. For a musician whose best work seems to be condencsed within a about 4-5 years, his reputation 50-odd years later speaks for itself but there were plenty of other musicians of that generation who were as good if now better than HM who do not get treated in quite the same hagiographical fashion. (Dexter Gordon, Booker Ervin, Stanley Turrentine, George Coleman, etc, etc. )

I agreed with the comment about there needing to be a "conservative" element in jazz against which to measure the more progressive players. My point was that HM does seem ill-suited to the direction where Miles Davis was heading and a bit incongruous in the context of the trumpet-player's group.

I will make it clear. I don't dislike Mobley's playing. There is nothing wrong with it, the style he played or indeed his writing. It just seems a bit unfair that he is lionised, for example, and someone like Tina Brooks isn't quite so feted. For me, the problem is that his adherents are so vehemently against any sort of criticism. A good player, in my opinion, but not exceptional enough to merit the purple prose in his favour.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...well i am not going to dispute about the mental state of hank in the Miles Davis group, but the Blackhawk is an amazing set ...and i was somewhat less taken with the Carnegie gig ... [both of which are worth having for Miles anyway]...

the prog made something clear which has puzzled me in a way, i don't have a lot of Art Blakey [that's a relative statement] in my collection; lord how much better the Philly Joe groups sounded ... No Room For Squares is a real stand out album .... Lee Morgan sounds in great form ..

when he was blowing on the Three Way Split and Workout tracks i wondered what he would sound like against a band like Basie's ...pretty stunning would be my guess; the HM All STar album is another little delight and reminds me of the Lucky Thompson Milt Jackson Savoy sides ...

the historical development was brought out very nicely, and the role of the drummer .... a really five star programme Messrs SHipton & Gelly did us proud ... the essence indeed...

and how about Lucky Thompson, Lockjaw Davis, and the neglected Don Byas for a JL someday?

[Tenor Freak]

Ian, I don't think Hank Mobley is documented in a hagiographical way; if you can find it, read the Witherden article (I can copy it for you if you wish) which is a fair assessment of Mobley's work. If anything, Hank is still underrated and this programme should go some way to restoring his reputation. That is not to say that other players of his generation should not also be reconsidered. George Coleman is a good example, along with Tina Brooks, Ike Quebec etc. They should all be celebrated. Dexter is, already - he's the one tenor player of that time whose music touches people who say they don't like jazz much. He's widely admired to this day (look on the Sax on the Web forum, for example).

Calum, I agree about Philly Joe Jones - he's still one of my favourite drummers. On Mobley's mid-late '60s LPs, Billy Higgins is the usual drummer, and he adds a similar spark to proceedings.

[Ian Thumwood]

Incidently, my friend Alain played drums in a band that supported Hank Mobley when he played in France. When we were discussing players he had worked for, Mobley's name came up in the conversation. I can't remeber any of the others except Nathan Davis - another name that seems totally forgotten these days. His comment about Mobley was that he didn't think he was a strong leader but it was probably not too reliable a reflection given that he doesn't speak much English. I will send him an e-mail and see if he has any other recollections of working with him.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Bruce O’ Tenor has beaten me to the punch…

Useful program but why no mention of the big "D" word that dogged so much of Hank’s career and led to imprisonment at what should have been peak periods. The bust after (re)working with Blakey and Hubbard etc. in ’58, the bust straight after Miles in ‘61, and a later bust in the mid ‘60s when he had hardened up his sound? The great "Slice off the Top" album (BNote) was written when Hank was in prison and is a really unusual expanded group setting with great and stretching playing.

I also think Gelly missed a major point about Mobley’s unique rhythmic sense and time displacement which to me is his finest quality. That ability to "dance on his heels" at any tempo, drag, then suddenly fill and advance, is wonderfully attractive. If you don’t listen very closely you miss a hell of a lot of subtly with Mobley. His solo on Kenny Drew’s very fast model "Undercurrent" (B/Note opening track) is a classic. His playing on Kenny Dorham’s "Whistle Stop" album is also a perfect foil to Kenny.

The Blackhawks are classics to me and if Hank was tense, well it was a VERY tense band! Don’t forget that it was Trane as he left, that suggested Mobley to Miles, so if Miles was so unhappy (Mobley ain’t Trane”), why did he keep him in the band for another c. 15 months? "Miles can be a real prick!" © John Coltrane.

Mobley’s end was very sad, a delusional belief that he could be a major voice in the New Wave by sounding like Shepp, lung collapse and destitution. Ronnie Scott had to drive out to Heathrow to collect a totally broke Hank at one point who had just landed without any warning with just his tenor and borrowed money for the call.

I didn’t see him a Ronnie’s but friends who did at that time said he was very variable, great some nights and totally disinterested on others. There some live recordings of him later in Denmark that are rated and a final album as a member of Cedar Walton’s quartet.

Value what we have. A UNIQUE and generous talent. And as Jean Toussaint has said, a big influence on early Wayne Shorter, along with Trane.

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"I learned Deep in a Dream off of (that) great record. I played it for Hank Mobley after nearly everyone had left the jam session that followed the Town Hall Blue Note concert of 1985. While I was playing he was egging me on with stuff like "yeah, come up this chord, now come down that scale." A precious memory. As most people in-the-know know Hank wasn't invited... At the end of the night he apparently lost his overcoat, had no money, so Kenny Washington and I cabbed him to Penn Station and gave him trainfare back to Philly." ~ MIchael Weiss, Organissimo web-site.


BN.

[burning dog]

What Hank Mobley would say about this thread

If he was a bit "old fashioned" for the Miles Davis group of the day so were these other guys.

[Tenor Freak]

Hank should have been a guest of honour at that Blue Note Town Hall concert.

[Tenor Freak]

Not had a chance to listen to the clip, but this looks interesting:

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/61431-ever-wonder-how-hank-sounded-at-one-of-his-final-known-gigs/

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

As John Litweiler wrote in his DownBeat article: "….. in the '50s …..drugs were a huge part of the bop and post-bop scene, a seemingly unavoidable fact of life, and in the latter part of the decade Hank was drawn into the heroin vortex. Once I played a particularly fine sextet record (of his) for him. His remark: " Oh, that thing. Five of the six of us were out to lunch. That's why they got Herbie Hancock; they always wanted one man in the band who was cool."


The jass life.

BN.