...and then, years later, it finally *CLICKED*!!!

[Rooster_Ties]

So I've got half-an-hour to kill today, while my wife is in getting her hair cut. So, I sit in the car, read the paper, and listen to a CD I haven't heard in a long time, probably over a year.

The 1989 "McMaster" version of Hank Mobley's "No Room For Squares", which is the entire session of Oct. 2nd, 1963, with Lee Morgan, Andrew Hill, John Ore, and Philly Joe Jones. (Not any of the other sessions (without Hill) that got split across the original LP's, and now the new RVG CD's.)

I've had this CD for 7 or 8 years. It was the first Mobley CD I ever bought. AND, until today, I've never really connected with it all that much. Sure, it's OK - how could it not be with Mobley and Morgan. BUT, over the years, I've often been board enough by this disc to only get part of the way though it, before deciding to switch to something else. It's just never worked for me all that much, what can I say??

AND, this being my 'first ever' Mobley album, I didn't buy any other Mobley for a really, really long time. In fact, not until a couple years ago, actually. (I got "Third Stream" and went: - and immediately bought every post-1960 Mobley disc I could find.)

Still, I never could 'get' that first one, "No Room For Squares" (again, we're talking about the "McMaster" version, all one session, Morgan, Hill, etc...)

Then, today, the fog lifted, and I finally GOT this session!!!.

I'm not really sure why, now??? - other than maybe I was really listening to it with my "Andrew Hill" ears on today, cuz I've been listening to so much Hill recently. Or maybe it was from having listened to Jimmy Woods' "Conflict" so much (and having really been interested in "Conflict", cuz Hill was on the date, as much as anything). Maybe "Conflict" trained me to listen to the "Hill"-ishness in the Mobley/Hill date.

AND, I found something new in Mobley's playing, which I had never heard before today. All these years, Mobley sounded a bit awkward to me on this date, and Lee Morgan did too (a bit). But today, Mobley and Morgan both sounded to me like they were playing on a Hill date (sorta), and playing really well (and interestingly too) within that context...

...much like Charles Tolliver doesn't sound at all like "Charles Tolliver" to me on Hill's "Dance With Death" and also that one side of Hill's "One For One" that he's on. I like Tolliver's playing with Hill, but it's so different than what I'm used to from Tolliver. In fact, I really didn't care much for "Dance With Death" at first (nor "One For One"), until I got away from expecting them to shine in terms of their "Toliver"-ishness.

==========

This is so weird. It's not like Ornette, where nothing he did made any sense to me until about a year after I first heard him (about a dozen years ago, when I was back in college) - and suddenly the light bulb went off for me, and everything Ornette did suddenly made perfect sense.

No, it was just this one album that never clicked for me - and then today it was like the best album I'd ever never heard before, but had actually heard many times before, kinda, but not really.

Anything like that ever happen to you with a specific album??? Which one??

[A Lark Ascending]

Bitches Brew.

My first Miles LP bought in 1976. It sounded dull. I couldn't get on with the lack of harmonic variation (Good god, when is the key going to change!!!).

Fortunately I heard 'Blue in Green' on the radio a couple of months later and rapidly became obsessed with Kind of Blue. For the next 15 years I had a great time exploring pre-electric Miles but never getting on with BB.

Then in the early 90's I took a chance with In A Silent Way and was instantly converted. And suddenly, when I listened to BB again it all made sense.

I now have the BB box and can't for the life of me understand why I was so unsympathetic for so long.

It showed me that often to appreciate music you have to have certain things in place inside your own head. The fact that a piece of music doesn't affect you or even annoys you is as likely to be your fault as it is any shortcoming of the music.

[Rooster_Ties]

Ditto, me and Bitches Brew too. I even 'got' On The Corner several years before I ever connected with Bitches Brew. I was into everything before it, and nearly everything after it (including all the heavy 70's Miles), before BB finally 'hit' with me.

[JohnS]

It took me a long time to get into Wayne Shorter. It wasn't until I heard Shorter's Blue Note records that I realised just that I was listening to a master. That in turn opened up the Davis/Shorter/Hancock.. quintet for me.

[Jazzmoose]

It took me a long time to get into Wayne Shorter. It wasn't until I heard Shorter's Blue Note records that I realised just that I was listening to a master. That in turn opened up the Davis/Shorter/Hancock.. quintet for me.

Same here. Shorter just sounded "off" somehow on his own stuff. Now I love it, and the change was just as Rooster describes. I was giving "All Seeing Eye" one more chance, dammit, and a 2 X 4 popped me upside the head.... ...when the fog cleared, I was a Shorter fan!

[Rooster_Ties]

I took to Shorter's playing with Miles immediately, since Nefertiti was (luckily) one of the very first Jazz albums I ever owned. ( I think the very first two jazz tapes I ever made were "KoB" with "Nefertiti" on the flip side. And Henderson's "Mode for Joe" with his "Power To The People" on the flip side.)

BUT, I was slower to connect with Wayne's own Blue Note albums. I always liked them OK, but only connected with them on a much deeper level several years later. In fact, in some ways I feel like I'm connecting with them even more deeply in the last year or so, for some strange reason. You think you know somebody...

[bertrand]

I'm not at all surprised that Wayne comes up as a frequent example of this. If you read his interviews, his albums are designed to grow on you slowly, rather than knock you out on first listening.

This didn't work for me, however. Most of his records blew me away upon my first encounter. There were some exceptions - Phantom Navigator, Joy Ryder, and High Life. Alegria was an instant smash, however.

Bertrand.