Cornelius

You mean that that particular post of mine should be assumed to follow each of his posts. Yes, you have a good point there. Why even bother, eh? But has anybody ever figured out if he's a put-on or if he's serious?

Lee Morgan is not that great that having all his records saves you from the utter illogic of what you posted.

No, we cross-posted. My response was to ariceffron's post, as I edited it after seeing that yours intervened. As to your comment, I do see your point, and thought it witty the way you stated it, though I don't agree with it in the particulars. Aside from that, your petty attacks against me, across the board, are just inane. If you have some disagreement with me, then have the balls to state it rather than just posting the juvenile snipes that you do.

arriceffron's post makes no sense.

Chuck Nessa: Four smiley faces. If that's the best you can do. sheldonm: Do you have a specific criticism?

A Chuck Nessa post that says nothing - my dream post. By the way, Chuck, there's a thread in which people are telling stories about their own personal reactions to the death of Charlie Parker. You better go in to tell them that they all need psychiatric attention since you contend that such posts reveal pathological self-absorption!

There's benefits to both. Strictly by ear keeps things nice and immediate. But notation gives you insight into the constructions, especially the rhythmic figures.

Where to start?! A lot of people mention Tune-Up. If I had to pick one as his "magnus opus", this wouldn't be a bad choice. Also Constellation was packaged with Tune Up in the CD release Endgame Brilliance. Also from the Muse period is 12. Going back, the Prestige 'late 40s (and 1950?) sessions, especially with J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell, and others. The two discs from the Hi-Hat are INCREDIBLE (talk about intricate) (note: some of the solos from the other members of the band are cut out). The Verves with Gillespie, of course. The track "The Slow Blues" from the Jazz At The Philharmonic '60 concert in Stockholm is basically "Parker's Mood" but with even more oomph! Verve albums such as Personal Appearence, The Hard Swing, and Sits In With The Oscar Peterson Quartet. And, most of all, New York Jazz is killin'! Salt And Pepper on Impulse with Paul Gonsalves. Matchups with Gene Ammons on Prestige and Verve. Lots of good stuff on Roost too, all on the Mosaic box. That's off the top of my head. There are so many others... / He may have made some lousy albums too, but I've not checked them out , many of which just look schlocky in concept if nothing else, so I have no opinon on those.

His tone was beautiful, and I don't hear him lacking focus nor intricacy. On the contrary. As far as what his talent deserved, I've got no complaints. Album after album of great music: beautifully conceived and executed. (I'm not including some of the later stuff, especially with electric sax, of which I've not listened to enough to give an opinion.) You feel his drug problems are related to the deficiencies you percieve, but do you have any evidence of a causal relation?

Thanks, bluesForBartok. I printed it out and will listen to it.

"He had some drug problems, which perhaps influenced his playing [...]" [che] Influenced in what way?

Is there an association longer than Carney's with Ellington?

Thanks, sidewinder!

Hubbard is more abstract.

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.

"If at some point a new thread needs to refer to a locked thread, that can be done with a link." [Michael Fitzgerald] That's not too bad as long as there is also a link in the old thread to the new thread that is the continuation. Otherwise, when a reader gets to the end of a locked thread, he might not know that there followup posts in another thread.

Of course I agree that there is a passive quality in his playing and that his held-back style creates a wonderful tension. But I don't hear this as passive-aggressive. Nevertheless, your analysis is interesting and touches on some things I've been thinking about too. A good biography of Mobley would include insight into his music as it stands as music onto itself, but would also at least suggest that his personal behavior requires explanation. I understand that his addiction is not one easily overcome. And it's been remarked that among under-recognized jazz artists, especially Mobley suffered certain disappointments. But professionally, for a while, he seems to have been doing pretty well. A continual stream of albums for a prestigious label like Blue Note would be envied by many musicians. And many of his peers got even less recognition than he did, while it was clear that he had the admiration of many of those peers (though we can guess that he was hurt by Miles Davis) and especially of Alfred Lion. So I sincerely wonder what was so specially painful for Hank Mobley? We need to find out more about the tangible personal and professional circumstances, but one also must be led, as you are, to speculate as to what it is about his personality that caused him to face those circumstances as despairingly and self-destructively as he did. I don't see enough evidence, at least so far, that Mobley was passive-aggressive. It's a good question for those who knew him intimately. Also, as you describe his state as worsening, you say that he became even more entrenched in his musical passivity. I see what you mean, but this was also a time when he decided to make his sound harder and bigger. That's not consistent with passivity, and that decision seems to me the most salient difference (other than adapting to modal, whole-tone, boogaloo, and other trends) from his earlier work Then you say that in Breakthrough he gives us a "fuck you" as his usual defenses have failed him so that, as I understand you, he lets his music get ugly. Downright ugly, I would say. But, again, while that's a fascinating take on the album, I don't see enough evidence for it, as well as my own listening is primarily musical, not as psychological as yours. I also wonder if yours is not so much an explanation but rather a rationalization for bad music played by one of our musical heroes. And even if your psychological explanation were correct, it wouldn't make the music that much more valuable for me as music (especially as an example of the Hank Mobley I love), though I do see that with your explanation one would find a tremendous amount of drama and pathos in the album.

Chuck Nessa, if you were to mention but a single thing that contributes to your view that I'm an idiot, then your own post above would itself be that less idiotic.

"[...] a poster might choose to delete their thread after it has served it's limited purpose (i.e., offering and looking for, announcement of a specific show, etc.) [...]" [jazzshrink] Perhaps for purely functional or administrative threads it might be okay for posters to delete them. But, 1) There's no harm in allowing such threads to remain, so why even mess with it? And, 2) Such threads sometimes keep going with conversation anyway, and I think that those conversations don't need to be deleted but instead deserve to remain available. "in the matter before us now, i believe someone who originates a thread has the right to end it when things get terribly out of hand." 1) Why should the thread originator have sole discretion to determine what is "terribly out of hand"? A thread originator isn't an administrator nor moderator, nor should thread originators be given such power. 2) If things get "terribly out of hand" (whatever that means for each person), then I think it's better to it let go. Let people post what they want (within legal and other very carefully described limits such as spam, copyright violation, illegal threats, libel, etc.) and if you don't like what they post, then post back at them or ignore them and keep posting whatever you would have if the so-called "disruption" weren't present. 3) I did not read the thread in question, but from what's been described of it, even as the originator stated his reason for deleting it, I don't see that it was "terribly out of hand" anyway. "What does deleting a thread that has gotten out of control do that couldn't be done by locking the thread?" [Michael Fitzgerald] That's a good point. But I go further by advocating that threads not even be locked. One of the great things about these forums is that there is no "last word". Everyone is free to come back for yet another retort. Locking a thread defeats that. And for coherence and fairness it may be important that a reply be in the original thread so that the reply is in full context and so that it is immediately visible for readers who have read the posts leading up to it. As well as future visitors to the forum should be allowed to add their two cents at any future date, as long as it is technologically and economically feasible for the threads to remain open.

Do you mean Hank Mobley's playing evinces passive-aggressiveness or that my question does?

Come on, Aric, you damn well know that Roll Call is Mobley's best album.

Posters should not be enabled to delete one of their own threads after a single other poster has posted in it.

JSngry, what clues do you hear in, say, the Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers sessions or, say, Hank Mobley Quartet that suggest the way Mobley plays on Breakthrough? Getting back to Dippin', it's not a bad album and it does not disservice Mobley, but there is so much richer Mobley in so many earlier sessions. When we get to Breakthrough, though, for whatever passion and pathos we find there, he sounds desperate to sound different from himself. Like he wants to be full-fledged member of the club of really hard toned tenors. But that's just not him. True, his sound got a little harder (or at least, less "feathery") when he came back in '63 or right after that, and progressively harder through the mid and late '60s. And the result is okay, even if not as beautiful as '50s and early '60s Mobley. But with Breakthrough the makeover has gone really bad.

"If you're a Mobley nut..you probably already own it...if you're becoming a Mobley nut...you'll kick yourself in the head if you don't get it...if you're a casual Mobley listener...you can most likely live without it..." [shawn] If I didn't need it for reference, this Mobley nut would have no reason to keep it. Most of all, I'd hate to think of anyone getting this as their first Mobley record and thinking that this is what Mobley is all about.

It's bogus to start a thread then delete it just because you don't like what gets posted in it. Memorial thread or not, people can post their opinions. An artists dies, so there's some required waiting period during which no one should give a negative assessment? I don't think so.