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Hank Mobley by Larry Kart


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Jazz Profiles has issued an article that Larry wrote in 1987 that was in Larry’s Jazz in Search of Itself. 

Hank Mobley: A Posthumous Appreciation

Jazz Profiles has also posted an article written by Michael James in 1961, which is apparently hard to find. 

Hank Mobley in Jazz Monthly

Edited by Brad
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Another piece of mine on Mobley is coming on that site if it's not there already -- the liner notes for "Poppin.'" I like that one better than the one that's posted now. It's looser, in a good way I think.
 

P.S. Michael James was one heck off a noble pioneer when it came to taking hard-bop players seriously and writing about them in shrewd detail. Believe me, a lot of those  players weren't getting much positive critical attention back then, or much critical attention at all. In some cases, their music wasn't even being understood, was felt to be some sort of ugly abberation. Witness, for one, Whitney Balliett's infamous and later on suppressed put down of Sonny Rollins in the liner notes to John Lewis' "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West." In the course of praising the certainly praiseworthy Bill Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

Actually, I kind of like "the hair-pulling" -- in one way, it's completely out of left field; in another way, it reveals exactly where Whitney was coming from. Also, of  course, his lumping Mobley together with Rollins and Monterose from the point of view of their supposed shared tonal-timbral characteristics etc. is evidence that he wasn't even paying much attention.

For sure, Ira Gitler was giving the up-and-coming hard-bop stalwarts their due in real time but in a more fan-like, less analytical manner than was James' style. James passed away much too soon.

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1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

P.S. Michael James was one heck off a noble pioneer when it came to taking hard-bop players seriously and writing about them in shrewd detail. Believe me, a lot of those  players weren't getting much positive critical attention back then, or much critical attention at all. In some cases, their music wasn't even being understood, was felt to be some sort of ugly abberation. Witness, for one, Whitney Balliett's infamous and later on suppressed put down of Sonny Rollins in the liner notes to John Lewis' "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West." In the course of praising the certainly praiseworthy Bill Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

Actually, I kind of like "the hair-pulling" -- in one way, it's completely out of left field; in another way, it reveals exactly where Whitney was coming from. Also, of  course, his lumping Mobley together with Rollins and Monterose from the point of view of their supposed shared tonal-timbral characteristics etc. is evidence that he wasn't even paying much attention.

For sure, Ira Gitler was giving the up-and-coming hard-bop stalwarts their due in real time but in a more fan-like, less analytical manner than was James' style. James passed away much too soon.

Could not agree more about James. I have his 1960 book "Ten Modern Jazzmen," published by Cassell (London). It's a collection of essays on Bird, Bud, Dizzy, Miles, Monk, Mulligan, Levis, Konitz, Getz and Gray. Some of these were from Jazz Monthly but others appear to have been written for the book. What's really needed is a collection of his pieces on the hard bop folks. I recall Gitler referring in some set of liner notes -- might be "Capuchin Swing" -- to a James essay on Jackie McLean. I've never seen it. Do we know what happened to James?

Edited by Mark Stryker
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Don't know precisely what happened to James (i.e. why)  except that, per his younger Jazz Monthly colleague of the time Terry Martin, James died in early middle age. I'll try to find out more, but I recall that it was matter of illness, not of any sort of dissipation. I know  that James was active as late as 1968 because in that year he wrote a somewhat negative review of Lester Bowie's "Numbers 1&2" for Jazz Monthly. Haven't seen that whole review, but George Lewis' exceprts from it "A Power Stronger Than Itself" make clear how puzzling that music could be to a listener whom one might think would be well-equipped to respond to it.

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1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

Michael James was certainly writing for Jazz Journal in the 1970s.

Also co-authored this gem from circa 1975. One of my ‘bibles’.

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James didn't quite "co-author" this book; assembled/edited by Max Harrison, it's a compilation of uniformly worthwhile and at best superb essayistic record reviews  (many of them, I think, originally written for Jazz Monthly)  by the writers listed on the cover. An altogether terrific book. Also known as "Modern Jazz: The Essential Records." My first copy literally fell apart after the cover fell off; fortunately I found another copy.

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2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

James didn't quite "co-author" this book; assembled/edited by Max Harrison, it's a compilation of uniformly worthwhile and at best superb essayistic record reviews  (many of them, I think, originally written for Jazz Monthly)  by the writers listed on the cover. An altogether terrific book. Also known as "Modern Jazz: The Essential Records." My first copy literally fell apart after the cover fell off; fortunately I found another copy.

The cover of mine fell off (from use) too. I taped it back on.

Edited by jlhoots
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12 hours ago, jlhoots said:

The cover of mine fell off (from use) too. I taped it back on.

Amazingly, my original copy remains in very good shape. Some years ago I also found a nicely bound second copy, in even better condition. So - sorted !

Somewhat superseded by the second book (+ Thacker, Nicholson and co. ) which came out later on though, although I still refer to the earlier book quite a bit.

The most annoying thing about it in the mid 70s was that the US issues they quoted were long since unobtainable in the UK (if ever they ever were outside of e.g. Dobells for about 1 day) , so that many of the titles remained elusive until the CD era.

 

Anyway - back to Hank...

Edited by sidewinder
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