Cedar Walton, Hank Mobley - Breakthrough!

[JSngry]

Yeah, the Left Bank stuff has a little bit of it, but the European stuff is FULL of it. Those whoops and hollers that he gives himself, that kind of thing, plus cursing at (maybe) the drummer right in the middle of solos. Pretty intense stuff...

Honestly, I still don't hear any significant "breath" issues. I do hear a potentially high level of drunkeness though, and I don't say that casually. There's a certain way that certain guys play when they get drunk, and have been getting drunk for a long time, if you know what I mean. And yeah, defintiely throw the Lee thing into the mix. That would've been enough to push even a social consumer into another zone for a little while. For somebody doing doctorate work...

Junk is probably out of the picture, yeah. But juice? I suspect yes. And it's not just a question of being "drunk", it's a question of being on the cusp between being "merely" a hard juicer and going on ahead giving your life over to the stuff to let it kill you in its own sweet way in its own sweet time. That's where Hank was at this time, I believe, and that's the quality that makes BREAKTHROUGH so damn intense for me. It's a story that was scary then, and now that we know that it was one with an unhappy ending...

I suspect that there might be a correlation between how much one will be drawn to or put off by this session and how deeply and darkly one has been plagued by one's own demons, how much one can personally identify with the place that Hank was at that point. I can't imagine that anybody who's been fortunate enough to have not experienced those dark battles would listen to this stuff and say, "Gee! Swell stuff!", ya' know?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Yeah, the Left Bank stuff has a little bit of it, but the European stuff is FULL of it. Those whoops and hollers that he gives himself, that kind of thing, plus cursing at (maybe) the drummer right in the middle of solos. Pretty intense stuff...

If it's that live date from Copenhagen, I have a tough time even hearing Mobley during some of those solos! I still think the guy who recorded that date was a big NHOP fan. He seems to have NHOP way up front in the mix and from the sounds of it, he was taking it off a soundboard so he could have done it differently.

Those grunts and moans in between notes also appeared in Jackie Macs solos around that time. I wonder if these effects weren't simply "in vogue" around then?

[andybleaden]

I thnk that is the one I have....not too cool with the sound quality I must admit

I alway rated both thinking at home and thrid season and a slice of the top as some of my favourite mobleys as they were more interesting although naturally I love the other stuff

Andy

[mikeweil]

Bertrand - that's a very interesting point about the proximity of the date of Lee's murder and the recording of this set. Never put that together. Cedar & Billy both, as well as Hank, seem to be really consumed by some demons that they're trying to exorcise. Cedar's comping, in particular, is in spots very unusual for him, dissonant and very percussive.

Any chanace that Lee was supposed to play that session?

[Dan Gould]

Well, I was motivated to pull this one out again, and I have a few observations:

First, no doubt that it is not top-flight Hank - an obvious reason why its not something I've listened to in quite a while.

Second, since Jim has made such a strong assertion about "Early Morning Stroll" I decided to A/B it with its original recording on The Flip, and no doubt, this is not the same jaunty morning constitutional. Not sure I'm ready to go so far with the "hard bop fuck you" description though.

As far as breath issues go, I definitely do not hear them. Listening closely to Hank's exclamations during his solo on "Summertime," those hollers come right after the phrase before. How does a guy who's running out of breath have the air in his lungs to exclaim something right as the reed comes out of his mouth?

Lastly, I have to say that I think that Hank's performance on "Summertime" is really quite good. Bertrand mentioned above that he thought that the cadenza at the start is just the opening to the "Thinking of Home" Suite, and after A/B-ing it, he is correct. Only I think its performance here is far superior. Not pretty, but certainly not ugly. And as far as breath issues goes, listen from 1:04 to 1:40. That is not a man with breath problems. Overall, I think its the best cut on the album.

[Cornelius]

JSngry,

My initial points were that this is a lousy album and that it would be unfortunate for someone not familiar with Mobley's better work to think that this album represents what he's all about, by which I mean that this album is a terribly poor example of Mobley's art.

As I understand, you believe that, while the album does not necessarily show Mobley at his artistic best, the album is what Mobley is, in a psychological sense, all about as an artist.

"I use the terms "passive" & "agressive" here in a non-clinical sense." [JSngry]

Fair enough, but as well as describing musical characteristics as passive aggressive, you contend that Mobley is passive-aggressive in a deep psychological way and that the passive-aggressive musical characteristics are the very artistic expression of the man's psychological passive-aggressiveness. This seems to me to be over-psychologizing - extrapolating from much too little information about the man as well as relying much too much on a quite tenuous analogy between musical characteristics and (supposed) psychological ones.

Mobley is one of at least a few jazz artists, even hard bop players, to create tensions through holding back and other contrasts (though, Mobley does have his own very personal and wonderful way of doing this). It's not required to explain those artistic preferences in terms of passive-aggressiveness, as well as a good explanation would have to show not just a coincidental correlation but a causal one.

I don't agree that "[...] the very nature of Hard Bop was aggressiveness of some form or fashion. It was an "in your face" music." Aside from 'hard bop' being in need of a good definition in jazz literature, so much of what does fall under the rubric of hard bop is not too aggressive, even at medium and fast tempo. Sometimes hard bop is even less aggressive than bebop. While I can see that one might think of this music as being "in your face," it usually doesn't feel that way to me, since it is to me warm, inviting, available, while assertive, often energetic and passionate, but not incursive. Granted, 'assertive' and 'aggressive' do overlap, so my point is not to nitpick about words, but rather to explain how my perception of the music is likely, in this respect, different from yours.

You mention stubbornness as indicative of passive-aggressiveness. But I suspect that compliance, not stubbornness, is more characteristic of such a personality, as one would comply but use that compliance and whatever its results as bases for a grudge (the old "I did what you asked me to do and look how it turned out. But fine, we'll keep doing it your way" shtick).

"Larry Kart's observation as to the importance of hearing every note with the Hank of this period plays to this too, imo. If you just listen "generally", you'll miss the finer details,."

I think Kart overstates his argument there. The delicious suggestion of tentativeness in Mobley's playing is a notable aspect of his style, but, for me, doesn't require an urgency to behold each point of note-decision very much more urgent than for just about any jazz improviser of that era.

"Agression delivered in a passive manner, if you will, or at least through a sound that blunted the initial impact of the agression. [...] and those details are where the agression is [...]"

Since I don't buy into Kart's argument (as I hope not to misstate it) that details are very much more important to observe in Mobley than most any other player of that era, I surely don't buy that the argument leads to characterizing Mobley's playing as passive-aggressive in a psychological sense.

"I do hear a potentially high level of drunkeness [...]"

Mobley does sound like he very well could be drunk on this session. That, to me, is a much simpler explanation for the poor playing than your psychological one, which seems pretty convoluted, as well as suffering the more fundamental problems I mentioned above. There are a lot of possible reasons for the session turning out the way it did. On a different day around the same time, perhaps Mobley would have sounded just fine. We just don't know. I find it much too great a stretch, from such thin biographical and circumstantial information, to extrapolate that the session is some kind of culmination-as-meltdown of artistic and personal impulses that were lurking within Mobley's very constitution. That's a lot of psychology and some quite tenuous connection-making to have to swallow just to explain a bad record date. (I don't deny, of course, that Mobley was in bad shape personally at that time; only that many artists - some whose work is loud and heavy and even violent and others whose work is soft and light - fall apart in all kinds of ways that aren't necessarily so very literally analogized in their work as you think of this album as analogizing.)

So, I find Mobley's playing to be lousy on this record (and the record suffers a lot other problems too). And the playing is not just lousy, but it does not even hint at the wonderful virtues of so many other recordings he made. And I think the passive-aggressive theory is quite a bit of reading into limited information, so that I think the album is not a good example of Mobley as an artist and is merely one artifact, not a summation, of the inner man.

"[...] it's not "just" a "oh well, shit happens" date."

I don't think it is. Some tracks seem to trail off, and some seem not to have gotten off the ground, but on some tracks I hear a lot of energy, passion, and earnestness from Mobley. Some of this might be the most passionate he's ever been recorded.

"[...] I listen to music first and foremost as a story being told, and as such, pondering the pshychology of that story is inevitable for me, figuring out the whats and whys of how this stroy is being told in this way. The musical and the psychological are inseparatible for me, at least when something involves me in its story as deeply as Hank Mobley's playing usually does. When I shift to a "purely musical" POV, it's either to study the music technically, or because the music has much to admire in terms of craft, but not as much in content."

I enjoy a lot of things when I listen, at different times - not necessarily in order of importance: 1) Just how good the music sounds. The lines, the shapes and colors of the notes, the rhythm, the groove, and all of that. 2) The musical performance as a story onto itself. The story told in a very general way - with a beginning, middle, and end, as an abstraction in sound and as conveying emotion and humor and the human experience. 3) The interplay of the musicians. 4) My own personal emotional and spiritual responses. 5) Visual imagery in my mind's eye. 6) Technical things like changes and form. 7) The musical pesonalities of the players. And I listen for the history of the music too.

Sometimes I do listen with reference to the personal biographies of the musicians, but not often. I don't often listen to Hank Mobley as I wonder about the personal details of his life, including whether he was high at the time of the recording or whether he was a passive-aggressive person. For example, I don't listen to Miles Davis while trying to explain his music in terms of his beating Cicely Tyson. Biography is important to an overall understanding of the art, but I usually abstract from the musician's life when I'm in a general listening mode.

In this regard, a challenge to your explanation of Breakthrough would be to invoke the "blindfold principle." What if you didn't know it was Mobley (suppose you couldn't detect his sound or, hypothetically, you hadn't heard him before)? Would you really hear the album as a remarkably deep statement? Or, perhaps you'd just remark that the guy seems to have a background in jazz, and is blowing with a lot of passion, but, for whatever reason, possibly drunkenness, he sounds like crap on this album.

NOTE: Based on one of your posts, I retract my suggestion that your theory on Breakthrough is perhaps a rationalization.

"You can, maybe, let your attention wander in spots of, say, SOUL STATION (why you would, is beyond me, but you could...). Something like DIPPIN', otoh, just grabs you by the nads and refuses to let go."

I find Soul Station much more compelling than Dippin', and, for the kind of album Dippin' is, I find A Caddy For Daddy much better in that vein.

"I find it hard to believe that anyone (as Cornelius does -- and, please, I'm not trying to start a fight here) could take "Breakthrough" as "downright ugly" (hard though it may be for some to take) and then more or less stop right there -- as though "downright ugly" meant "merely downright ugly" or some kind of accident or abberation -- like a record someone made while dead-drunk or gravely ill." [Larry Kart]

By downright ugly I mean that it's plain ugly without benefit of being an expressive effect as, say, Ben Webster sometimes plays with that extremely hoarse and overblown effect he developed for special occasions, or as, say, Archie Shepp, so often plays with a sound that is the opposite of what we usually think of as a beautiful tenor saxophone tone.

Anyway, Larry, you mention that you reject that the record could be an accident of drunkenness, but JSngry later posted that he does suspect that Mobley might have been drunk. So I don't see what is so outrageous in thinking that it might have been just a bad record date, with little to recommend it, rather than revering it (I think, reading into it) as a triumphant manifestation of an artist tormented with passive-aggressiveness.

"[...] my nomination for best (which in the end is no more than personal favourite, anyway) Mobley album is "Soul Station". I never really "got" "Roll Call" so far... don't ask why, I don't know... I'm a big Mobley fan!" [king ubu]

I don't really hold that there is one best Mobley album. But I do think Roll Call is great and one of a kind. I find Roll Call to be his most passionate album - other than Breakthrough. But Roll Call, unlike Breakthrough, has everything else going for it too.

Edited March 9, 2005 by Cornelius

[AllenLowe]

well, I just started to listen (first six cuts) - I find Mobley's playing to be some of the most heart-felt I have ever heard. As a matter of fact, the first thing that came to mind as a point of comparison was Charlie Parker's solo on Round Midnight on that session with Miles and Sonny Rollins - full of an incredible sense of striving, yet regret - gorgeous stuff, in my opinion. Certainly there are lapses, hesitations, gaps - but what comes in between these is (unlike, say, on some of Lester Young's more impaired recordings, or on Hawkins's last work) full of substance, care, intelligence - this is heavy stuff - an important mind at work, still trying to think ahead -

Edited March 11, 2005 by AllenLowe

[bertrand]

Your version has more than 6 tracks???

Bertrand.

[AllenLowe]

6.5 - you gotta know somebody -

Edited March 11, 2005 by AllenLowe

[sidewinder]

Hank Mobley In Europe 1968-70

"The circumstances of Hank Mobley's arival in Britain in the Spring of 1968 were far from dignified. Writer John Fordham has recounted how the saxophonist had telephoned the London club owner and fellow musician Ronnie Scott, one of Mobley's most ardent admirers, from Heathrow Airport in the small hours; 'Mobley was sick, broke and physically worn out' Fordham wrote 'and had come to London to seek help from people that he believed appreciated him and his work'. Shortly afterwayrds, in an interview with Val Wilmer, Mobley was accurately described as 'the daddy of the hard bop tenor' in recognition of the ubiquity of his influence upon many modern jazz saxophonists who had emerged since the mid-1950s. Praise for Hank's skills was not only forthcoming from fellow saxophonists, indeed trumpeter Donald Byrd, a partner of Mobley's in the original Jazz Messengers co-op venture, and subsequently a frequent collaborator, spoke for many when he summed up Mobley's importance thus - ' He for me, is just as much a personality as Sonny Rollins. I mean he has so definitely established his own sound and style.'

So how had a musician once widely regarded as 'the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone', reached a point where his talent was so under-valued that he was willing to risk everything on a whimsical flee from his home country to Europe?

Mobley's experiences in the mid 1960s, as was so often the case in Hank's life, tell a story which is an evryman example of the circumstances in which jazz musicians have to live and work. They also reveal the beginnings of a tragedy, which is as sickening as any of those within the music that are better known. Late in his life, Mobley said " It's hard for me to think of what could be and what should have been. I lived with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk. I walked with them up and down the street. I did not know what it meant to when I listened to them cry - until it happened to me."

The irony of this remark is that Powell and Parker, to pick just two of jazz's prematurely departed geniuses, died as they had lived: celebrated but isolated. Mobley's demise is all the more saddening when one realises that he had lived most of his life undervalued and un-appreciated; all but forgotten.

Ronnie Scott was actually a fairly safe bet as a potential source of help for Mobley. As a tenorist, Mobley figured high on Scott's list of favourites, even as early as the mid-1950s, when few outside the Stateside jazz cognoscenti knew of his work. Scott described Mobley as 'a very warm melodic player with a good conception' and also praised his 'perfect taste'. Unsurprisingly, Mobley had a direct influence on Scott's playing, never more so than in the two and a half years in which he partnered fellow tenorist Tubby Hayes in the Jazz Couriers. Hayes was another Mobley-ite, having first heard him on drummer Max Roach's recording of an unlikely jazz vehicle, 'Glow Worm' (on Roach's 10" LP, Debut DLP13). The Couriers recorded Mobley's composition 'Reunion' barely eight months after it's debut on a Mobley-led Blue Note session and Hank's work, especially with the Jazz Messengers, of which he was a founder member, did for a while resemble an eagerly awaited missive from which Scott and Hayes drew their inspiration.

Scott's punter-like enthusiasm for the individual talents that appeared at his club rode roughshod over their occasionally difficult or eccentric temperaments, and although Mobley could in no way be called temperamental, if anything he was too reserved and undemonstrative, he had already given Scott and his partner Pete King, cause to worry.

In October 1965, Mobley was due to open at the 'old place', Ronnie Scott's first home in Soho's Gerrard Street, but had misteriously failed to show up when the two Londoners had driven to Heathrow to pick him up. King told the Melody Maker at the time that Mobley 'had ilness in his family and then apparently had passport problems.' ('Melody Maker', Oct 30 1965) to which Scott added 'Our difficulty is that we didn't book him ourselves, but through a Dutch agency. It's the first time in six years that somebody has let us down.'

The less than enobling circumstance which necessitated Mobley's call to Scott three years later seemed enough to obviate any potential bad blood between the two men. In fact, Ronnie's response to Hank's plea for help was both practical and instananeous, as John Fordham recounted. Scott 'pulled on his clothes over his pyjamas, drove to the airport to pick up (Mobley) and made sure that the club took care of his accomodation and needs until he got back on his feet.'

Scott and King were, of course, in a unique position of being able to cater for Mobley's biggest and most immediate need, indeed the paramount concern of all jazz musicians, that of finding work, and they gave Mobley a month-long residency at Ronnie Scott's Club starting on April 22nd 1968. Besides this, King was also able to secure work for the saxophonist on the Continent, together with a less glamorous dash North ( B-) ) for a performance at Manchester's renowned 'Club 43' venue. (One mooted rumour about Mobley's grattitude for Scott's intervention in particular, is that he rewarded Ronnie with the gift of one of his Selmer saxophones).

Inevitably, Mobley encountered the local jazz talent, but particularly rewarding was his reunion with the drummer Philly Joe Jones, who too had arrived in London to little fanfare towards the end of 1967. Jones and Mobley went way back, even before both men's separate tenures with Miles Davis's band, and had appeared on each others' records, as well as those led by the likes of trumpeters Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan and pianist Elmo Hope, amongst others. Philly was sitting out the Musicians Union ban on his paid performance, a pre-requisite of an extended stay in those days of man-for-man deals and strict working permits, by teaching and authoring a drum tutor. (Most famously, he taught Keith Moon, of The Who, just one of the several well known rock drummers who became his students at this time, not to bother to do anything other than what he was already doing so long as he could make the same money). Despite this, he was sitting in with musicians as diverse as the cornetist Ruby Braff and local legend Tubby Hayes, with whom Phily did a truly memorable night at Ronnie's, anchoring Tubby's big band like no-one else could.

It was Tubby's then regular rhythmn section that accompanied Mobley on his stint at Scott's. Such was the ad-hoc nature of the gig, Mobley and pianist Mike Pyne, bassist Ron Mathewson and drummer Tony Levin, had not encountered one another before. Perhaps inevitably, the opening night's results were less than spectacular, as the Melody Maker's Bob Dawbarn noted in the paper's April 27 issue. 'If he didn't catch fire on opening night, there is no doubt that he will - and lovers of first class modern tenor playing should be there when he does.'

The Melody Maker's Val Wilmer interviewed Mobley at some length during his tenure at Ronnie's, and the resulting article, which appeared in the May 11 edition, under the already noted by line of 'The Daddy of the Hard Bop Tenor', was, incredibly, the first in depth interview with Hank that had been published in any music journal. Even the prestigious Down Beat magazine waited until the mid-1970s to cover Hank, then well into his years of bitter neglected abstraction.

Wilmer was especially interested in the evolution of Mobley's playing, which was readily discernible during his Scott's engagement. 'Mobley hesitates to compare what he is playing today with the music of yesteryear; "They (the tunes) are so different. I like to play anything that makes sense and that moves and is not restricted. You might say 'half-free', 'three-quarters free', something like that."

Indications of this growth towards a fresher and more daring mode of expression are peppered throughout the article. Mobley named altoist Jackie McLean and tenorist Archie Shepp as his two closest musical associates, both players who had moved beyond the realms of Hard Bop constriction. Of the younger generation of improvisers, Mobley commented: 'They have their direction to play, I have mine. I don't think theirs is complete and mine certainly isn't,' adding that if a musician took the rules of music and 'change them all around and try to reach the people also, that's like freedom with a little restriction.' Illustrating this further he cited both his former boss Miles Davis and his friend the late John Coltrane as successful examples of this outward bound sensibility: 'Trane had roots from bottom to top, he always had something to stem from.'

Mobley ended the interview with a debatable declaration, the protestation that 'I am, as you say, always a leader.' In fact he was the quintessential sideman, principally in the bands of Max Roach, Miles Davis, Horace Silver and Art Blakey (there were also other shorter and less celebrated stays with Duke Ellington, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk) as well as his being an ever present voice on recordings by virtually all the leading black Musicians in New York. But even as one of the finest Hard Bop musicians, and as one who almost subversively defined the style for legions of other tenorists, Mobley was nevertheless never destined to be a major star, much less 'a leader'. He was to suffer, as a consequence of his reputation as a 'musicians' musician', critical neglect and a lower profile than he deserved. His tone, which he had famously described as 'not a small sound, or a big sound, but a round sound,' and his penchant for labyrinthine lyrical improvisations were calling cards that, by the middle 1960s, he felt were necessary to change.

His undervalued status was made doubly galling by the fact that his artistic peak, around 1960-63, came in sync with those of some of the more declamatory tenor stylists. John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins's music during this period had a more overtly musical demeanor, and they seemed to demand you listen. Mobley's playing was more sidelong and seductive. It took time to get his message, and in the early 1960s, time in the jazz world was hurtling by, the music beginning to resort to some very hard and fast tactics to attract attention. Only the patient kept track of Mobley.

However, Hank himself was also keeping pace with current jazz developments and the influence of Coltrane, Rollins's and Davis's experiments during these years affected his outlook considerably. In simplistic times, Hard Bop had evolved to incorporate modal music, largely through Miles' and Coltrane's work at the close of the 1950s, and the two, taken together with the increasingly less peripheral influence of the Avante-Gargde caused the nature of the music to become spikier and harder. Mobley directly attributed the influence of Davis, with whom he had worked from 1960 to 1962, and Coltrane with the beginnings of the overall simplification of his playing: his response was a tougher one (albeit one that was still a great deal gentler than either Rollins's or Trane's) and an extremely apparent refinement of his rhythmic skills. He also began to concentrate upon composing, and his themes began to incorporate more experimental structures, both in terms of their length and in their harmonic and metric complexity.

The saxophonist's exclusive recording activities under his contract to Blue Note records made it possible for listeners to hear the changes taking place in Mobley's music as they unfolded. 1963's No Room For Squares (Blue Note BST 84149), with its hip modal and funk grooves, was the first real on-record indication of these alterations. The albums which Mobley recorded in the year, preceding his flight to Europe, reveal the full extent of his stylistic rejuvenation, as well as the dichotomy of pushing the music further whilst still trying to score a commercial bulls-eye. 1967's Third Season (Blue Note LT-1081) contains some of the saxophonist's most ambitious writing and performing on themes like the whole-tone based title track and was, perhaps as a result, destined to remain unissued until 1980. On this and the other albums recorded during this time, the base of Mobley's sidemen was broadening out from the largely Miles and Blakey-associated pool he'd long favoured. By 1968 he had recorded with McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, John Hicks, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, James Spaulding and Herbie Hancock, all musicians who had moved beyond the Hard Bop convention. The final album which Mobley recorded before his European self-exile, Reach Out ! (Blue Note BST 84288) is a contradictory one, in that it has authentic hard blowing vehicles utilising modes and structural variation nestling somewhat uncomfortably with the tenorist's covers of recent pop hits, such as 'Goin' Out Of My Head' and the title cut. The title of one of Mobley's own themes on the album, 'Lookin' East', suggests that he himself was already decided on a sojourn elsewhere.

Besides the Ronnie Scott gig, Mobley jammed around the capital with the local talents and Philly Joe Jones, and was featured all too briefly at the Melody Maker's All-Star Jazz concert at the Royal Festival Hall on a bill which also included the altoist Phil Woods. Reviewer Bob Dawbarn found Mobley's contribution 'slightly disappointing' and remarked that 'like Lester Young in his later days, he throws out the bones of an idea and seems to become bored halfway through its development and moves onto another fragment. The result is a sort of edited version of the Mobley one knows on record and I find it a little disconcerting' (The Melody Maker, May 25, 1968).

Listening to 'Reach Out!' with Dawbarn's assessment in mind it is easy to see how the Mobley of old was giving way to a newer maturity in Hank's playing. It is even easier to discern on the few recordings that Mobley made whilst on the Continent in 1969. Taped in Paris in July of that year, 'The Flip' (Blue Note BST 84329) has Mobley with fellow ex-patriots trombonist Slide Hampton and Philly Joe Jones, together with the Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece, fulfilling one of the leader's contracted dates. The resulting album is actually far better than its apparent 'lets throw some American jazz players in France together' rationale and it contains some of Mobley's best latter-day writing in 'Feelin' Folksy' and 'Snappin' Out', two indelibly catchy themes which should be more widely known. Mobley's playing too, in that 'edited' manner, is engaging throughout, as is that of his front-line partners, especially Reece. A notoriously patchy performer, the trumpeter is in fine form, returning the favour that Hank had given when he partnered Dizzy on his first US taped Blue Note album, 'Star Bright' in 1959 (Blue Note BST 84023)."

The following month, Mobley participated in the marathon recording sessions that Archie Shepp was taping for the BYG label in Paris and which pulled together a highly unlikely (and probably highly volatile) cast of ex-pat Americans then resident in the French capital. Two items featuring Mobley in a two-tenor front-line with Shepp were recorded; a brief version of Sonny Rollins's 'Oleo' and a longer exploration of trombonist Grachan Moncur III's 'Sonny's Back' (dedicated one suspects to Rollins (it was B-) SW). Both are indicative of Mobley's earlier statement that 'Me and Archie are good friends but play that way!'

The latter track (currently available on 'Yasmina - A Black Woman' on the Giants of Jazz imprint CD 55379) is the more revealing performance. Mobley, for all his good intentions, is actually taken apart by Shepp in an engrossing case of role reversal; whereas Hank sounds to all intents and purposes like he is starting off from where John Coltrane left off. Shepp plays his trump card by echoing Rollins in a beautifully integrated solo which effectively mixes Hard-Bop know-how with New-Thing radicalism. Throughout, Philly Joe Jones gives a noisy reminder that the US's loss was Europe's gain, and his rhythmn section partners, the bassist Malachi Favors (of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, then domiciled in France) and pianist Dave Burrell form the loosest of unions.

There was actualy to have been a third official release featuring Mobley recorded during this period in Europe. According to an interview with the British saxophonist Peter King which appeared in the Melody Maker on October 5, 1968, Mobley was to have appeared on the session taped at London's Trident Studio led by Philly Joe Jones and which featured local musicians such as King, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and Mike Pyne. Recorded by producer Alan Bates, the set eventually surfaced on his Black Lion label as 'Trailways Express' (Black Lion Select 2460 142) in 1971, a delay that suggests that the legal nicities of contracts and the like were a stumbling block in its issue. At any rate, the West Indian saxophonist and flautist Harold McNair subbed for Mobley, who, one can imagine, having failed to secure a release from Blue Note to make the date. (This session can now be heard on CD as 'Mo' Joe', Black Lion BCC 760 154).

Jones and Mobley made an effective double-act all over Europe as the decade drew to a close, working such venues as Paris's 'Le Chat Qui Peche', but Mobley had also hooked up with the large community of American jazz musicians living and working in Denmark, including his early stylistic mentor Dexter Gordon (who had dubbed Mobley 'Hankenstein'). Gordon was undoubtedly the most prominent of a wave of US players who had found a spiritual home (and a willing audience) at Copenhagen's soon-to-be-legandary Monmartre Club, an apparently natural home for warm sounding tenor saxophonists which had hosted lengthy residencies by Ben Webster, Brew Moore and Don Byas, besides Gordon. Part of the reason for the venue's success, and for the comfort of its playing guests, was the resident rhythmn section, which featured emigre's pianist Kenny Drew and drumer Albert 'Tootie' Heath, together with the phenomenally talented Danish bassist Niels Henning Orsted Pederson, then still a teenager, and a musician whose tender years had proven to be the only impasse preventing him joining Count Basie's band. Mobley and Drew were no strangers as the saxophonist had performed on two of the pianist's albums. Indeed, Drew was something of an ideal accompanist for Mobley, sharing as he did some of the tenorist's lyricism. Together with Tootie Heath and Pederson, he is present on a bootleg tape that has circulated among collectors of Mobley at the Monmartre, alegedly taped sometime in April 1968.

Of Mobley's European recordings these are by far the most revealing, not least as rare examples of Hank really stretching out. As on his engagement in London, he opted for playing mostly his own themes, each of which receives a lengthy exploration, sometimes three times as long as their audio originals. There is a revisit to 'Workout', initially heard on the eponymously titled album from 1961 (Blue Note BST 84080) and which was all but a feature number for Philly Joe Jones. The Monmartre version finds the less well regarded Heath in the prescribed role and carrying it off with aplomb. 'Third Time Around', with its unique stop-start melody, was first recorded in February 1965 (a version that went unreleased until 1986) but was ultimately included on Mobley's 1966 LP 'A Caddy For Daddy' (Blue Note BST 84230). There is also an attractive look at a then recent Mobley theme 'Up, Over and Out' from the 'Reach Out!' album.

The tapes, it has to be admitted, are fairly low-fi, but Mobley's committed playing shines through nevertheless, as do his intermittent verbal reproofs to his accompanists on 'Third Time Around', who seem tethered by the alternating rhythmns rather than inspired by them. Also heard are Mobley's covers of Kenny Dorham's 'Blue Bossa', Sonny Rollins 'Airegin', Monk's 'Rhythmn-a-Ning' and 'Blue Monk' and, as the solitary ballad, a gorgeous return to the standard 'Alone Together', which Mobley had described as one of his favourite themes when he recorded it on the Jazz Messengers Cafe Bohemia session in November 1955 (Blue Note BLP 1507). As the Monmartre had its own recording facilities (albums by Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and Don Byas are just some of those taped at the club during this period) one can imagine that somewhere better quality source tapes of these Mobley sets exist and that one day they will be remastered and issued. They are certainly worthy of issue, containing as they do prime examples of the new directions that Hank pursued late in his career.

Hank Mobley remained in Europe until early 1970, working in France, West Germany and Scandinavia, as well as in countries less likely to be encountered as jazz stop-overs like Poland and Yugoslavia. His final Blue Noterecording, made back in the USA in July of that year with a group featuring Woody Shaw and Cedar Walton, contains a three-part composition entitled 'Suite' which encapsulates musically Mobley's European experience. The third theme from this work, 'Home at Last', is one of Hank's most beguiling compositions, a bossa-ballad which, in part, reworks thematic and harmonic material which made up an earlier Mobley theme, 'Bossa For Baby' (recorded on Far Away Lands, Blue Note BST 84367), I believe ranks with his earlier work on the label. It displays a player totaly in command of a revised mode of expression and who should have gone on to much wider acclaim. The time was certainly right: Sonny Rollins was, once more, in self-imposed retirement from performing, and John Coltrane's death three years previously had robbed jazz of a single dominant saxophone voice. But fate again played Mobley a cruel hand when 'Thinking of Home' was destined to remain unheard until the late 1970s when it was initially released only in Japan, by which time any service it could have given Mobley would have been a case of too little too late (sidewinder note: also issued in the US in the LT 'rainbow' series).

Mobley's final recording came in February 1972 when the group he co-led with pianist and composer Cedar Walton - which worked under the rather pretentious umbrella title of Artistry In Music - made a single album for Don Schlitten's Cobblestone label, 'Breakthrough' (Cobblestone CST 9011 - now on CD as 32 Jazz 32148). Mobley is represented by two compositions, 'Early Morning Stroll' which debuted on 'The Flip' and the title cut, another ex-Blue Note tune recorded on 'Dippin'' (Blue Note BST 84209), and has an impassioned feature on 'Summertime', appended by an introduction that is actually Mobley's theme 'The Flight' from 'Thinking of Home'. Mobley plays with a commitment and brilliance that are suprising for a performer whose career was about to go into total eclipse. But, by the time the album was issued, Mobley was already into the decline which ended ultimately in his death.

The terrible events of Mobley's final years, from his respiratory problems to his dental problems, to his financial difficulties and his degrading period on the streets, have beem detailed elsewhere previously. One could ultimately talk of Mobley having paid the highest price for his involvement with the jazz life, or of his slow, painful erosion by the nefarious addictions that were often central to the music during his lifetime. At arms length, it is easy to coldly rationalize that Mobley brought about his own eventual decline and to cast him off with the countless other souls within jazz who self-destructed and burned themselves out after all too brief periods of brilliance. One can also view the flipside of this cynically tossed coin and ask, in Hank's own words, 'what should have been' if he had remained in Europe instead of returning to the country which brought about his destruction. Would he have eventually returned triumphant as did his friend Dexter Gordon in the late 1970s, emerging from an acoustic jazz limbo to claim his crown as a leader of a jazz renaisance? All this postulation, of course, serves no real purpose save that of diverting attention from Mobley's sickeningly premature death, at the age of 55, in 1986. At the time of writing, had he lived, hank would be 73 years younger, three years younger than Wayne Shorter (sidewinder note:-3 years older, I think it should be) and approximately the same age as Sonny Rollins, both of whom remain musically active.

Mobley's European episode began with his 'Lookin' East' and ended with his being 'Home At Last'. The jazz scene to which he returned was falling apart, divided into pieces by elements foreign to the lifeblood of the mainstream of the music, in much the same way as we now face an eclipse of the music by all manner of ephemeral performers. 'Sometimes I look on the worst side of things,' Mobley once said, and given his personal downfalls it is remarkable that he preferred music that, as one fellow saxophonist recently put it, so fully 'celebrated the joy of life.'

With that in mind, it strikes me that Mobley might be a perfect role model for anyone seeking to distill jazz to its essence. Surely that alone qualifies him, albeit posthumously, to the front rank of jazz players in his, or any other, era.

(Complete )

Edited March 29, 2005 by sidewinder

[Cornelius]

Thanks, sidewinder!

[Dan Gould]

Indeed!

Might I suggest, however, that for the next installment, or when you are finished with all of the typing, that we put this into one big post as the start of a new thread? I think a lot of people will want to read this article and it should properly accorded its own thread.

[brownie]

Indeed!

Might I suggest, however, that for the next installment, or when you are finished with all of the typing, that we put this into one big post as the start of a new thread? I think a lot of people will want to read this article and it should properly accorded its own thread.

Good idea!

And thanks Sidewinder for posting that article!

[sidewinder]

Not a problem, glad that all you folks are enjoying the article B-) . I'll create the new thread when it is complete.

A bit more to come later today, I'm on a roll. It's a biggie so it will take 4-5 instalments.

[sidewinder]

A bit more added - Sunday evening.

[Tony Pusey]

Nothing to add except to say what an amazingly intelligent and engrossing thread, thanks one and all!

[sidewinder]

More added - Monday morning.

[Dan Gould]

Thanks, SW.

Have to take exception to this statement by the author:

On this and the other albums recorded during this time, the base of Mobley's sidemen was broadening out from the largely Miles and Blakey-associated pool he'd long favoured.  By 1968 he had recorded with McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, John Hicks, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, James Spaulding and Herbie Hancock, all musicians who had moved beyond the Hard Bop convention.

Two comments:

I don't think Cedar Walton ever moved beyond the "hard bop convention".

In terms of the "broadening" of the base of his sidemen goes, it seems to me there's a chicken and egg question. One might equally say that the pool of Blue Note affiliated players broadened and therefore Hank's pool of sidemen broadened.

[sidewinder]

Totally agree with the above comment about Walton - I don't think Hicks ever moved beyond the 'hard bop convention' either, great though his playing on 'Hi Voltage' is.

[Dave James]

Sidewinder,

Yes...thanks for posting the Mobley article. Fascinating. It's stuff like this that makes this board special. I also must say that I enjoyed the spirited repartee between Jim and Cornelius.

Up over and out.

[JSngry]

In this regard, a challenge to your explanation of Breakthrough would be to invoke the "blindfold principle." What if you didn't know it was Mobley (suppose you couldn't detect his sound or, hypothetically, you hadn't heard him before)? Would you really hear the album as a remarkably deep statement? Or, perhaps you'd just remark that the guy seems to have a background in jazz, and is blowing with a lot of passion, but, for whatever reason, possibly drunkenness, he sounds like crap on this album.

Without being able to replicate the scenario you describe, I can only speculate, but I would probably find it to be an incredibly engrossing album, very "on the edge". That was how it struck me the first time, way back when, whem all I knew of Hank was the 50s stuff & the Miles things.

Engrossing I found it then, even more engrossing do I find it today. The phrasing alone is some of the most intense I've ever heard out of anybody at any time.

We hear it differently, obviously. We've both had time to listen, digest, ponder, and change our minds if we were going to. We haven't. Nobody's right or wrong, not here.

It's like that sometimes.

[AllenLowe]

If I had heard this blind I would probably not have known it was Mobley, but would have recognized it as an old-school player having some problems but emoting with depth and feeling - I repeat my earlier statement of how deep this stuff is; I'm somewhat surprised that a jazz listener could miss this -

[Cornelius]

I don't miss that there's great feeling in the playing. But I think the execution and ideas are so embarrassingly poor that it's lousy music, and especially a lousy example of Mobley (whose execution and ideas I so deeply enjoy in so many of his other recordings), the depth of feeling notwithstanding.

I suspect that we humans are not likely to be anywhere close anytime soon to a satisfactory, objective aesthetic for deciding controversies such as the one we have here. But I do think that we can at least approach making our judgments meaningful beyond mere expression of taste. In that regard I am inclined to suspect that it is something of an error in critical judgment to give this album high marks, especially in terms of Hank Mobley. But, again, this does not mean that I don't appreciate the provocative reasons JSngry has so engagingly given for finding merit in the album.

Edited March 15, 2005 by Cornelius

[MartyJazz]

I don't miss that there's great feeling in the playing. But I think the execution and ideas are so embarrassingly poor that it's lousy music, and especially a lousy example of Mobley (whose execution and ideas I so deeply enjoy in so many of his other recordings), the depth of feeling notwithstanding.

I suspect that we humans are not likely to be anywhere close anytime soon to a satisfactory, objective aesthetic for deciding controversies such as the one we have here. But I do think that we can at least approach making our judgments meaningful beyond mere expression of taste. In that regard I am inclined to suspect that it is something of an error in critical judgment to give this album high marks, especially in terms of Hank Mobley. But, again, this does not mean that I don't appreciate the provocative reasons JSngry has so engagingly given for finding merit in the album.

It comes basically down to the old "floats your boat" axiom. The album didn't do much for me when I bought the Cobblestone LP some 30 odd years ago and it obviously doesn't do much for you either. If I gotta work to appreciate something, I just might do it if I know the artist or the composer (depending on what the piece of music is) is considered to be at or near the peak of his/her powers. In this case, we know that the artist in question was not, for various understandable reasons. So let it go, there's so much other stuff out there that deserves attention and the time we have to spare is, unfortunately, much too finite.

[sidewinder]

A bit more added 21/5/05