mobley's "the flip"

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

wait what, the flip liberty lp is a completely different mix than the conn cd issue, the conn cd issue is more like a flat transfer and the other is processed in reverb by RVG, what?

[sidewinder]

I'm totally with you on your opinion of 'The Flip', Stereojack. Have found this session quite boring for some years and didn't like the recording sound but have been playing it (Conn CD) over the past week and like it more and more. The 'unfinished' feel put me off in the past but I'm hearing past that now. Proof that there ain't no bad Mobley !

[JohnS]

It's never been particularly fond of this session. But in view of sidewinder's comment I'll dig out the vinyl and give it a spin next.

[JohnS]

Just replayed this album. Once you get over the harsh sound and the rather scrappy playing on the title track then it's a fair example of late Mobley. If I remember this was the time when Philly Joe was scuffling in London.

edited for typo

Edited November 6, 2010 by JohnS

[mikeweil]

... and I think it's Philly Joe whose playing is below par on that album.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

wait wait wait wait wait wait wait are you saying, maybe.....theres other period bn releases, where the liberty lp stereo mixes differed from the mcmasters, cause CARAMBA....i have the cd and the lp, and, even thoygh the lps analog, i hate it compared w/ the cd....i swear to god theres some weird phasing thing.....if only you could hear it....

I AM LEARNING THAT IN CERTAIN INSTANCES, THE BLUE NOTE 90S CDS....---are not always inferior to the lp related counterpart---. the carambas even vangelder stamped and stuff, but i swear to god. something is off with this cut...

Edited November 8, 2010 by chewy

[mjzee]

Listening to this album again now makes me appreciate a few people/things even more.  Alfred Lion & Rudy Van Gelder: that consistent sound they achieved album after album.  In "The Flip" the studio sound is raw, while RVG's sound is so polished.  Billy Higgins: of course I appreciated Higgins before, but hearing the tunes on "The Flip," I can hear the way Higgins would have played these tunes compared to PJJ, and it would have been so much better - smoother, classier, and much less obtrusive.  I didn't have a problem with the bassist; it's PJJ that keeps careening close to chaos.  Bottom line: it's a Mobley album.  If you can ignore the pathos of it being his last BN album (and of his subsequent descent), it's a pretty damn good album.

[jazzbo]

I think the fact that the recording was in Paris and it was produced by Francis Wolff gives The Flip a different vibe that I like. Philly Joe may not be at his best, but he's still Philly Joe and there's something he brings to any session that I like to hear.

[JSngry]

Was this really Hank's last BN record? Not contemporaneously released, but recorded? Seems to me that he did some more stuff when he got back, one or two of the LT things?

The band here puts it more in line with an MPS record of the time than a Blue Note record (thinking in particular of Dex's A Day In Copenhagen, Dizzy Reese & Slide Hampton), the sound more like...one of those highly reverbed EZ listening records of the era, go figure that!.

I think it's a pretty invigorating listen, a lot of voices that you didn't hear around Hank from that time, and a recorded sound that forces one to "hear" him differently (as do the BYG performances of the same time). Philly in particular, because he had kind of fallen off the American jazz-record radar by that time, and for whatever personal/logistical reasons there were about that, as shown here (and elsewhere from the same time), the cat was not afraid to get ALL up in there with it.

 

[jazzbo]

Thinking of Home was recorded after The Flip. A year and three weeks later.

[JSngry]

Yeah, that's right, thanks.

Also about the sound...don't know what the CD versions say, but the LP credits RVG with "rerecording", which to me sounds like Wolff brought the Barclay tape back to America and said hey Rudy, make this sound like a Blue note, to which rudy probably said something, like, yeah, ok, let me see what I can do, and then he reverbed the fuck out of it, to which everybody then said close enough, and then bam, onto the shelves it went.