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JazzWax on Mobley


BillF

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If the hard bop movement had a musical voice of reason, it was Hank Mobley.

I don't know what this means.

Me either, not quite. But it does sound somewhat related to that dire gobbet of spit that Whitney Balliett hocked up about Sonny Rollins (the "bad taste ... hair-pulling" phrase IIRC) in his liner notes for the original issue of "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" (a.k.a. "Grand Encounter"). Don't think those notes were reprinted in any of Balliett's collections, BTW. The passage in full would be instructive to read if anyone has access to it, because it certainly encapsulates a moment in the pipe-and-slippers mode of responses to jazz. In any case, What Myers probably means is that Mobley's relative/surface air of calm or lower intensity, versus the often extreme surface turbulence of a Rollins or a Coltrane et al., made him "the hard bop movement's musical voice of reason." No, no, a thousand times no, but I would guess that's what he was thinking.

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I don't think it means anything either.

How about

If the hard bop movement had a musical avatar, it was Hank Mobley.

Not only does that have an understandable meaning but it ties into the other opening sentence:

But Mobley—as Blue Note's house tenor saxophonist—was hard bop's iron man, its anchor and dependable force.

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If the hard bop movement had a musical voice of reason, it was Hank Mobley.

I don't know what this means.

Me either, not quite. But it does sound somewhat related to that dire gobbet of spit that Whitney Balliett hocked up about Sonny Rollins (the "bad taste ... hair-pulling" phrase IIRC) in his liner notes for the original issue of "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" (a.k.a. "Grand Encounter"). Don't think those notes were reprinted in any of Balliett's collections, BTW. The passage in full would be instructive to read if anyone has access to it, because it certainly encapsulates a moment in the pipe-and-slippers mode of responses to jazz. In any case, What Myers probably means is that Mobley's relative/surface air of calm or lower intensity, versus the often extreme surface turbulence of a Rollins or a Coltrane et al., made him "the hard bop movement's musical voice of reason." No, no, a thousand times no, but I would guess that's what he was thinking.

I don't even know how to guess what he's thinking, because he follows that up with this:

If the hard bop movement had a musical voice of reason, it was Hank Mobley. Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Elmo Hope, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd and others certainly were significant players who helped develop and define the jazz style's exciting fanning sound and expressive ambitions. But Mobley—as Blue Note's house tenor saxophonist—was hard bop's iron man, its anchor and dependable force.

So "anchor and dependable force" = "voice of reason"? Ok, let's go down the list:

  • Horace Silver - so much of an anchor and so dependable that he became one of the best businessmen of his era, and maintained it until health took him out of the game.
  • Art Blakey - not always "dependable", especially in the days right after Horace took the Messengers as his own band and the replacements were generally strung out, but he got over that. And ok, he "played loud". But more people seemed to not mind than did.
  • Elmo Hope - Seriously? Was Elmo Hope ever anything other than an "insider's favorite"? Was he ever a "face" of the "Hard Bop movement"? Even for a quick minute? Not that I know of.
  • Clifford Brown - Anchor? Yes. Dependable"? Totally. I guess getting killed in a car wreck was his own fault?
  • Lee Morgan - Ok, I'll give him Lee Morgan
  • Donald Byrd - Geez, this guy was the epitomization of reliability (and predictability, not that there's anything worng with that). Gimme a BIG break, ok?

But no, I'm not buying that either, because being the "voice of reason" out of that bunch seems to inply that there was a lot of un-reasonableness going on in that group, and c'mon now, Rollins & Coltrane making Whitney Balliet and Fans Of Coll nervous and shit, and Miles pissing people off because he dared turn his back and not emcee and stuff, what does that have to do with people like Donald Byrd & Clifford Brown & Horace Silver, who were some of the most "reasonable" - and not coincidentally, successful - practitioners and presenters of "modern jazz" in their or any other time.

I think what he's trying to say is that Mobley was a steady, dependable talent in a time and place where those were in no way regular qualities. But "voice of reason"? What, was Hank standing at the door giving temperance lectures, or making sure that cats didn't veer outside the changes too much, or that drummers not get too bashy, or advising everybody to cop at the agreed upon time and place so the sessions ran smoothly w/o any unpleasant surprises? Hank Mobley, Voice Of Reason, The Hard Bop Good Cop?

I don't think so.

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...because being the "voice of reason" out of that bunch seems to inply that there was a lot of un-reasonableness going on in that group, and c'mon now, Rollins & Coltrane making Whitney Balliet and Fans Of Coll nervous and shit, and Miles pissing people off because he dared turn his back and not emcee and stuff, what does that have to do with people like Donald Byrd & Clifford Brown & Horace Silver, who were some of the most "reasonable" - and not coincidentally, successful - practitioners and presenters of "modern jazz" in their or any other time.

I think what he's trying to say is that Mobley was a steady, dependable talent in a time and place where those were in no way regular qualities. But "voice of reason"? What, was Hank standing at the door giving temperance lectures, or making sure that cats didn't veer outside the changes too much, or that drummers not get too bashy, or advising everybody to cop at the agreed upon time and place so the sessions ran smoothly w/o any unpleasant surprises? Hank Mobley, Voice Of Reason, The Hard Bop Good Cop?

I don't think so.

If by "Fans of Coll" you meant to say fans of cool and meant to lump in Balliett with such, Whitney (at least c, 1956-7 Whitney) was a man who more or less wished that anything post the mellower side of the Swing Era (i.e. Bop, Cool, and Hard Bop) had never comes to pass. He was, again (and IMO), a pipe and slippers, Irish setter at my feet, snifter of brandy in the library sort of jazz fan, and while he was very fond of any number of truly estimable figures -- e.g. Ben Webster, Pee Wee Russell, Bobby Hackett, Sid Catlett -- his fondness for them was very much akin to the "comfortable because it's comforting; if it's not comforting, we probably won't like it" way the magazine that he wrote for, the New Yorker, tended to regard many of the manfestations of the so-called Modern World.

Getting back to Mobley and Myers' "voice of reason" remark then, I think that, a la Balliett, the reference is not to steadiness and dependability but to, in Myers' view, the relative smoothness/calmness of the surface of Mobley's playing in terms of timbre, melodic flow, accents, volume level, tonal "distortions", etc. -- all those things in hands of Rollins, Coltrane, et al. being marked by lots of typically Modernistic disturbance/agitation and thus serving as signs of "unreason." But of course we all know that Mobley was, as Dexter once put it, the "Hankenstein." Or, in the words of poet Frank O'Hara: "A lot of people would like to see art dead and sure, but you don't see them up at The Cloisters reading Latin."

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I don't read Myers enough to know if he's so reactionary in the face of 50-60 years of Already Done Happened so as to find 50s Rollins & Trane "un-reasonable" or something, but if so, hey...I got a Cee-Lo song for him, edited or unedited.

Me, I think he's just a frequently sloppy fan-boy. Prolific, with great access, and not always uninteresting in subject matter, but a frequently sloppy fan-boy nevertheless. Nothing wrong with that per se, but like the song says, I can do bad by myself, dig?

And when he shows up here (and I'm sure he will at some point, so many people do once they get wind that a bunch of "amateurs" are not crazy about their work), I'll tell him the same thing...more or less. And then he can tell me that I'm a even-more-frequently sloppy fan-boy who's not prolific, does not have great access, and who is often quite uninteresting in subject matter, and then I can say, well, yeah, but I already know that about myself (and besides, I've been called worse by better!), so what's your next point, to wit, wtf does "If the hard bop movement had a musical voice of reason, it was Hank Mobley." mean anyway. Explain that to me before you try to explain me to myself, and then let's discuss the whole Jordi Pujol thing, hmmm?

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I think y'all already done thought about this way more than the guy who wrote it, which i guess is kinda the point, but still...

Ah, I get cranky these days, that's all. Achy joints, slow bowels and stuff like that. I need for stuff to be lucid either in its insanity or its factuality. Normal but meaningless just makes it all worse than it already is. A lot of restaurants do that to me too, especially the ones where the servers introduce themselves, say they'll be "taking care of you" and then you get home after a mediocre meal energetically served and all your bills are still unpaid. You wanna talk about a BIG wtf?, there's one for you right there. :g

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Just wondering ...

Could it maybe be that this "voice of reason" thing is intended to mean that Mobley is not quite that much perceived to have been part of those hard boppers who went to great pains to spread that "Angry Young Men" aura around them (or at least appeared like that to the jazz scribes of the times)?

So, relatively speaking, may he just have appeared - correctly or incorrectly - to be more "reasonable" than those all-out "angry" 'uns?

Just wondering ...

.... that Whitney Balliett hocked up about Sonny Rollins (the "bad taste ... hair-pulling" phrase IIRC) in his liner notes for the original issue of "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" (a.k.a. "Grand Encounter"). Don't think those notes were reprinted in any of Balliett's collections, BTW. The passage in full would be instructive to read if anyone has access to it, because it certainly encapsulates a moment in the pipe-and-slippers mode of responses to jazz.

This'un? ;)

That section refers to Bill perkins, BTW, and as it happens, Hank "Mobely" is lumped in with Rollins.

HRow1mx0Z5.JPG

A product of its time, those liner notes, IMO, and opinions differ anyway, and of course those who are/were on a traditional/"mainstream" kick will see things palatable to them in jazz differently than those who, for example, by their own admission have seen the light in jazz when experiencing free jazz firsthand. ;) Nothing wrong with either approach but isn't this how attitudes and approaches to the subject on hand are formed and passed on after all?

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I've liked some of Balliet's writings but I'm always leery of reviewers who praise someone by putting down someone else who's not even the subject of the review. I imagine the artists being put down as seeing themselves as the victims of a random drive-by shooting.

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And while I'm asking the I don't know what that means question, I've been meaning to ask Whitney Balliett since 1971 or so wtf does "sunny drybones" mean anyway?

Yeah, I know you're dead, Balliett, and that means you got might the dry bones your ownself by this point, sunny or otherwise, but you still gotta answer, because somebody's gotta be the voice of reason, just as Willis Conover gotta was be the voice of america.

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And while I'm asking the I don't know what that means question, I've been meaning to ask Whitney Balliett since 1971 or so wtf does "sunny drybones" mean anyway?

Yeah, I know you're dead, Balliett, and that means you got might the dry bones your ownself by this point, sunny or otherwise, but you still gotta answer, because somebody's gotta be the voice of reason, just as Willis Conover gotta was be the voice of america.

Sonny Dry Bones would be the cover of Way Out West - but seriously I think Balliett and the rest of them New Yorker writers sometimes got a little too in love with their own cleverness.

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how did the concept of intense jazz essays/"liner notes" devlop. was it to make jazz appear more intellectual. blue note, huge culprit. blue note didnt start this, right? i never learned much from these essays. a little of the bio stuff is always great to have, but a lot is very opinionated or just used as space to describe "how the music works". i used to have in mind the worst offenders on blue note, i cannot recall which ones now....

btw big beat steve that must be a UK copy, nice gloss on that PJ

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I think that Mark Myers is doing a fine service in his interviews and

Me, I think he's just a frequently sloppy fan-boy. Prolific, with great access, and not always uninteresting in subject matter, but a frequently sloppy fan-boy nevertheless. Nothing wrong with that per se, but like the song says, I can do bad by myself, dig?

I think that Mark Myers does a fine job on his blog with the interviews and general promotion of jazz. I have never thought of him as a very profound thinker on American music or repository of knowledge, himself, but I don't really hold that against him. In fact, the discussion that some of his comments initiiate on the blog is sometimes deeper than the original essays.

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how did the concept of intense jazz essays/"liner notes" devlop. was it to make jazz appear more intellectual. blue note, huge culprit. blue note didnt start this, right? i never learned much from these essays. a little of the bio stuff is always great to have, but a lot is very opinionated or just used as space to describe "how the music works". i used to have in mind the worst offenders on blue note, i cannot recall which ones now....

It gave the record companies a way not only to fill up that space on the back of a LP, but to also give potential reviews a little piece of work. A little hand washing, so to speak. Nothing so lofty as you suggest!

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And while I'm asking the I don't know what that means question, I've been meaning to ask Whitney Balliett since 1971 or so wtf does "sunny drybones" mean anyway?

Yeah, I know you're dead, Balliett, and that means you got might the dry bones your ownself by this point, sunny or otherwise, but you still gotta answer, because somebody's gotta be the voice of reason, just as Willis Conover gotta was be the voice of america.

I would guess that Whitney meant warm (as in warmed by the sun) and thus relaxed. Don't know about the "dry" part; it does imply skeletal remains, and I don't think he thought of Bill Perkins that way, at least I hope not. Of course, the sardine in the machine here is that Perkins would soon go on to attempt to assimilate as much Rollins and Coltrane as he could, arguably with not that much success in terms of personal musical coherence, yet doing so (so IIRC Perkins said in an interesting Cadence interview) in part because he felt that his lovely and I would say quite personal Prez-drenched playing of his "Grand Encounter" period was at once retrograde and even rather effete. Interestingly enough, his running buddy of that time, Richie Kamuca, began to travel much the same stylistic path in the late '50s/early '60s, i.e. assimilating some and/or a fair amount of Rollins and Coltrane, and did so IMO with great success, in large part because (as time would fully reveal when Kamuca would eventually to go on to record beautifully on alto) he must have had a whole lot of Bird's fluidity/angularity in him from the first and thus had had a running head start on what Rollins and Coltrane were up to.

Just wondering ...

Could it maybe be that this "voice of reason" thing is intended to mean that Mobley is not quite that much perceived to have been part of those hard boppers who went to great pains to spread that "Angry Young Men" aura around them (or at least appeared like that to the jazz scribes of the times)?

So, relatively speaking, may he just have appeared - correctly or incorrectly - to be more "reasonable" than those all-out "angry" 'uns?

Just wondering ...

.... that Whitney Balliett hocked up about Sonny Rollins (the "bad taste ... hair-pulling" phrase IIRC) in his liner notes for the original issue of "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" (a.k.a. "Grand Encounter"). Don't think those notes were reprinted in any of Balliett's collections, BTW. The passage in full would be instructive to read if anyone has access to it, because it certainly encapsulates a moment in the pipe-and-slippers mode of responses to jazz.

This'un? ;)

That section refers to Bill perkins, BTW, and as it happens, Hank "Mobely" is lumped in with Rollins.

HRow1mx0Z5.JPG

A product of its time, those liner notes, IMO, and opinions differ anyway, and of course those who are/were on a traditional/"mainstream" kick will see things palatable to them in jazz differently than those who, for example, by their own admission have seen the light in jazz when experiencing free jazz firsthand. ;) Nothing wrong with either approach but isn't this how attitudes and approaches to the subject on hand are formed and passed on after all?

"...the hair-pulling, the bad tone ... the ugliness..." -- has the voice of genteel appreciation ever spoken more clearly?

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"...the hair-pulling, the bad tone ... the ugliness..." -- has the voice of genteel appreciation ever spoken more clearly?

Yet I wonder ...

When exactly the same accusations are raised against Joe Houston, Big Jay McNeely, Chuck Higgins, Hal Singer, the early Willis Jackson, the latter-day Joe Thomas (who actually graced us with a tune called "Tearing Hair" :D)) and of course Illinois Jacquet or Leo Parker, the voice of what exactly is speaking there? ;)

Apart from, possibly, the voice of the oh so sophisticated "jazz-art-for-art's-sake" proponents who sneer at the lowly "exhibitionism" that only goes after the lower instincts of the masses (blissfully neglecting any of the original purpose of jazz music played to a live audience)...

See?

Look at it any way you want, it all boils down to one's personal terms of reference that determine the angle we use to approach a given subject and to pass judgment. ;)

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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