JazzWax on Mobley

[Larry Kart]

"...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" )) 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.

To answer the question "the voice of what exactly is speaking there?" you have to know who Whitney, or at least Whitney circa 1956-7, was, and what the role and style of the New Yorker was in its heyday (a role and style that Whitney stepped into). First, I would be surprised if Whitney even knew who (with the exception of Jacquet, and possiblly Leo Parker and Hal Singer) any of the saxophonists you mentioned were, or if he did, they wouldn't have showed up on his aesthetic radar screen as figures he would have needed to know much about/take account of. Second, Whitney's stance was not that of an 'oh so sophisticated "jazz-art-for-art's-sake" proponent who sneered at the lowly "exhibitionism" that only goes after the lower instincts of the masses.' Rather, he was , as I said above '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.' In this, though perhaps there was no direct influence, he was in the line of descent from figures like George Frazier and Lucius Beebe (though the latter was not a jazz fan to my knowledge). In other words, the stance or pose was not that of an intellectual but of a certain sort of "finer things in life" gentlemanly urbanity, one that could be thought of as unstuffy and/or a bit raffish or "colorful" around the edges but one that finally could be domesticated. In the words of Isaac Rosenfeld (writing of E.B White and the New Yorker in 1946): "There is no such thing as urbanity without partisanship.... The bourgeois will never give up its tone without a struggle."

[Big Beat Steve]

I think I understood quite well what you meant in your first post referring to the above liner note excerpt.

It is not difficult to imagine the kind of gentlemanly bonvivant connoisseur speaking out against whatever would unsettle him in his comfortable personal jazz connoisseurdom.

And I certainly would not have thought Whitney Balliett adopted the stance of the "art-conscious intellectual" who sneered at those "lowly, exhibitionistic" sax honkers.

But such criticism has been voiced fairly often and typically in jazz circles about these musicians, first about Illinois Jacquet (who chronologically came first) and then about the others. Both in the 50s and later on. And by all accounts there was very much an aura of self-perceived intellectualism about many of those who voiced such criticisms.

Now what strikes me as rather funny is that on the one hand there is the bourgeois gentleman speaking out against the alleged "ugliness" and "bad tone" of Sonny Rollins et al,, and then there are the "jazz-as-art-music-only" intellectuals (who'd certainly value Sonny Rollins or Mobley or J.R.Monterose very highly in their shrines of jazz art) using exactly the same invectives to speak out against other saxophonists who in their own playing catered to those who continued to see jazz (and R&B as a subgenre of jazz of the 50s) as a primary vehicle to cater to the dancing and partying audience (just like jazz had universally done in earlier decades).

Now if this isn't amusing ...

And this exactly is what I meant to hint at when I spoke of personal tastes and terms of reference that color our judgment.

Of course those who'd be inclined to take sides in these debates would insist that there are musicians who are above all criticism and there are others who have forfeited any right to indulgence because they have not lived up to the art standards set up by those very critics, scribes (whoever ...). (Guess who'd be in which camp among the musicians named above?)

Which is an attitude I for one would find just as objectionable. Project something into a piece of music that this was never intended to be in the first place and wilfully disregard what this very piece of music actually was intended to be (because these intentions evidently do not fit into your own self-perceived framework of what you, the jazz intellectual (no, not YOU in person of course ), would find comforting in jazz) and you are bound to have things all skewed up, particularly since this spells out clearly that those "jazz intellectuals" (for want of a better word) are just as easily unsettled in what they don't feel comfortable with in jazz as those "jazz bourgeois" à la Whitney Balliett are. And they resort to exactly the same clichés of criticism.

To bring things full circle, such judgments ARE colored by personal tastes either way, and I'd be VERY wary of anybody claiming any sort of universal truth (and, hence, immunity from criticism) or superiority in their criteria of judgment, particularly since IMO the judgments quoted and evoked here need to be seen primarily in the context of their times..

Edited January 10, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[Larry Kart]

Interesting post, Steve. (BTW -- and this comes up from time to time -- it's JR Monterose, not J.R. The JR are not initial letters but the standard abbreviation for "Junior" -- his given name was Frank Anthony Monterose Jr, and the JR got tagged onto the front early on).

Back to your post -- I agree up to a point about "those who'd be inclined to take sides in these debates would insist that there are musicians who are above all criticism and there are others who have forfeited any right to indulgence because they have not lived up to the art standards set up by those very critics, scribes (whoever ...)," except that a good many musicians themselves were uneasy about the requirement that they cater"to the dancing and partying audience (just like jazz had universally done in earlier decades)" -- e.g. Coltrane's feelings about "walking the bar" (and I don't agree with that "universally in earlier decades" -- Ellington, for openers, anyone?). In any case, I don't think that Trane had those feelings because of anything that, say, Martin Williams or someone of that sort said; they were his feelings, and he was not alone. Further, I don't see the point of regarding the differences between, say, Rollins and Willis Jackson or Jay McNeely as only or essentially a matter of personal and/or primarily socially conditioned taste. Satisfying as the latter figures may be in terms of succeeding at what they aim to do, Rollins was aiming and succeeding at doing something that was both different (allowing for some overlap) and (dare I say?) more. The real sore point in what I think you're talking about would be those critics of a certain austerely intellectual sort who can't see/hear the across-the-board stature of, for example, a Gene Ammons because they think of Ammons (Jacquet and others, too) as a mere popularizer or some such when IMO nothing could be further from the truth.

[JSngry]

FWIW, I've never really found Jay McNeely particularly "satisfying". Joe Houston, either. Both guys make better baseball cards than they do baseball players, if you know what I mean.

Gator, otoh, often hits a sweet spot. Rollins, obviously, some other sweet spots (and yes, it is "more", although it ends up being as much of a dead-end to assume that "more" is going to be universally "better" as it is to think that "more" is 100% subjective).

Point just being that when a discussion gets reduced to "types", you got to start "choosing sides", and hell, there are so many sides, I'll have all or none, thanks, although if push comes to shove, you can go ahead and take Jay McNeely & Joe Houston.

I will say, though, that the notion of "entertainer" is in no way an absolute one in any way, and not wanting to walk the bar in 1953 and wanting to reach a "wider audience" in 1973 and going so far as to have a polished presentation and put on a "show" in 2013 involves at least as many unrelated elements as they do related ones, so to think about 1953 in terms of 2013 (or vice-versa) will get you right back to where you started, which is probably where you want to be anyway, if that's how you're going to argue it.

At some point, it all becomes schtick to some degree, be it the "entertainer", the "dignified artist", the "get down" extrovert, the "serious" introvert, all of it. Once you're in front of the public, you have to be some "thing" if you want to stay in front of them. Nobody's going to come out to hear an anonymous sound, or to see an anonymous figure. People who realize this end up with careers as public performers. Those who don't don't. Or end up as teachers or studio players.

In the end, it's all good, really, so long as no lies are told. And to that end, let us distinguish between lies and bullshit.

Edited January 10, 2013 by JSngry

[Big Beat Steve]

... except that a good many musicians themselves were uneasy about the requirement that they cater"to the dancing and partying audience (just like jazz had universally done in earlier decades)" -- e.g. Coltrane's feelings about "walking the bar" (and I don't agree with that "universally in earlier decades" -- Ellington, for openers, anyone?). In any case, I don't think that Trane had those feelings because of anything that, say, Martin Williams or someone of that sort said; they were his feelings, and he was not alone. Further, I don't see the point of regarding the differences between, say, Rollins and Willis Jackson or Jay McNeely as only or essentially a matter of personal and/or primarily socially conditioned taste. Satisfying as the latter figures may be in terms of succeeding at what they aim to do, Rollins was aiming and succeeding at doing something that was both different (allowing for some overlap) and (dare I say?) more.

In fact the point I tried to make is just the opposite: Of course Trane would have not been one to "walk the bar", nor Rollins (etc.), and it would have been foolish to expect them to. But I don't think anybody loooking at (and understanding) modern jazz in the 50s would have seen them in such a role ever.

On the other hand, judging by what has been written about all those "honkers and bar walkers" (as descendants of Illinois Jacquet or Flip Phillips who had often been accused of vulgarity, ugly tone, etc. in their JATP days too), it was them who were faulted for being primarily entertainers (and wanting to be entertainers, evidently) and not living up to the esthetics of those lovers of jazz as fine art of the 50s. So it was them who were denigrated for not living up to a role model they never set out to aim for in the first place IMO. A skewed perception on the part of the critics, scribes, etc. IMO. And it happened with many jazz writers.

I agree modern jazz sax men of the 50s achieved higher levels in jazz as an art form (there is your "more" ) than those R&B sax men did. But for all the technical competence on their instrument the aims and the target crowds of the R&B sax men were quite different, their music served different purposes (within one larger overall framework IMHO) and to anybody broad-minded enough and not focusing very narrowly on one's very own yardsticks there ought to have been room for both after all? Beyond that point, personal taste does come in IMO, but that would be another discussion altogether.

(As for that "universal" tag for jazz as dancing and partying music in earlier times - point taken. Make it "generally", O.K.? (With "partying" also including certain brands of jazz jazz being played to a seated audience that was non-dancing but very much drinking-glass clinking, O.K.?)

JR Monterose also duly noted )

Edited January 10, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

I agree modern jazz sax men of the 50s achieved higher levels in jazz as an art form (there is your "more" ) than those R&B sax men did.

I don't know what that means, since I'd have to know what an "art form" is, as well as where the elevator stops and begins for each "level".

Sure Rollins was an artist. But so was Rusty Bryant. If Rollins played at a "higher level", it's because of personal decisions he made, not because he played "modern jazz". Hell, I'd rank Rusty Bryant as much more of an "artist" than, say, Frank Foster. Whatever that means.

This whole "higher level" thing is a red herring, anyway. Higher than what? Going from where to where?

But by the same token, let's not pretend that there are no empirical differences either. Sonny Rollins not played a helluva lot more notes (and spaces, and tones) than Jay McNeely, he considered and allowed more possibilities in his music as well (and yes, there were possibilities that he did not allow for, maybe even denied, but of whom is that not true?).

Whether or not that's a "higher level" or not is, again, subjective (at best), but to deny the difference is more than a little flat-earthish.

The earth is not flat. It's not exactly round, either. But it's definitely not flat.

[JSngry]

This whole "art" thing anyways...it's tired. People change their perceptions as time goes by, and their expressions change along with their perceptions. People who like the changes use it to call/justify the expression as "art", and those who don't like the changes play the "art" card in order to uphold their "classical" (or whatever) values.

I call bullshit on all of it. All there really is is craft in the service of perception. I think it's fair to say that the keener the craft and the perception, the less easily dismissed the perception will be, especially as time goes by. And funny how the sometimes the broader the perception, the more specific the expression, and sometimes the other way around. And sometimes not.

But "art"? Yeah, whatever. You got truth, you got reality, and you got commerce. Where the hell "art" comes into that mix is not something I'm particularly concerned with at this time.

[Big Beat Steve]

O.K., referring to your post of 05:11, maybe I used somewhat inappropriate terms and maybe this is just a case of using one word instead of another to describe very much the same thing.

The bottom line to me is that when I wrote "higher" I basically meant exactly what I understood Larry Kart to mean when he wrote "Rollins was aiming and succeeding at doing something that was both different (allowing for some overlap) and (dare I say?) more", and I'd understand your statement "let's not pretend that there are no empirical differences either. Sonny Rollins not played a helluva lot more notes (and spaces, and tones) than Jay McNeely, he considered and allowed more possibilities in his music as well".

If you still object against the word "higher" because this would introduce an inappropriate hierarchy of "better" or "worse", then .. fine. I for one won't insist on that term.

Of course this is not a case of modern jazz being automatically "art", though isn't it so that there were jazz scribes in the 50s who'd consider modern jazz being very much up there in the olymp of the performing arts, whereas R&B ... well ... And weren't there jazz musicians who very much preferred to be seen as "artists" as opposed to "entertainers"? To me those terms aren't mutually exclusive but others drew a line somewhere in there, it seems ...

As for the Sonny Rollins/Rusty Bryant comparison, I'd agree with you too that one is as much an artist as the other in their own right (though I am not sure if you were primarily thinking of THIS particular LP. Because this would lead us straight back to the honkers and bar walkers corner and whatever they allowed or didn't allow in their music, etc. )

Edited January 10, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Sounds to me like you're wanting to argue more with the critics of the 1950s than anybody here. I think a lot of us would, but..they're dead. And most of us are closer to being dead than we are to having been born, so maybe the time to do that is in the future. Or not!

As for Rusty Bryant, yeah, he was a fine straight-ahead player, as was Red Prysock (although not as "schizophrenically" so), but the artistry of so many of their "honking" (a jive term if ever there was one as it pertains to their type of R&B playing, SO much more to it than that) solos comes in the ability to speak a superficially "limited' language without relying on just "licks". Jay McNeely didn't really have that ability (or if he did, he kept it pretty well to himself). I hear Rusty, Red, some of those other guys, I hear full sentences, punctuations, questions, answers, implications, all of it, in just 8,12, or occasionally 24 bars. I hear Jay McNeely and it's like reading a billboard.

And ok, if there must be "art", let it be this - the ability to speak - or do anything, really, even taking out the trash - with more than just a basic regurgitation of basic licks. After that, all bets are of on anything other than life just going on, one way or the other.

[Larry Kart]

... except that a good many musicians themselves were uneasy about the requirement that they cater"to the dancing and partying audience (just like jazz had universally done in earlier decades)" -- e.g. Coltrane's feelings about "walking the bar" (and I don't agree with that "universally in earlier decades" -- Ellington, for openers, anyone?). In any case, I don't think that Trane had those feelings because of anything that, say, Martin Williams or someone of that sort said; they were his feelings, and he was not alone. Further, I don't see the point of regarding the differences between, say, Rollins and Willis Jackson or Jay McNeely as only or essentially a matter of personal and/or primarily socially conditioned taste. Satisfying as the latter figures may be in terms of succeeding at what they aim to do, Rollins was aiming and succeeding at doing something that was both different (allowing for some overlap) and (dare I say?) more.

In fact the point I tried to make is just the opposite: Of course Trane would have not been one to "walk the bar", nor Rollins (etc.), and it would have been foolish to expect them to. But I don't think anybody loooking at (and understanding) modern jazz in the 50s would have seen them in such a role ever.

On the other hand, judging by what has been written about all those "honkers and bar walkers" (as descendants of Illinois Jacquet or Flip Phillips who had often been accused of vulgarity, ugly tone, etc. in their JATP days too), it was them who were faulted for being primarily entertainers (and wanting to be entertainers, evidently) and not living up to the esthetics of those lovers of jazz as fine art of the 50s. So it was them who were denigrated for not living up to a role model they never set out to aim for in the first place IMO. A skewed perception on the part of the critics, scribes, etc. IMO. And it happened with many jazz writers.

I agree modern jazz sax men of the 50s achieved higher levels in jazz as an art form (there is your "more" ) than those R&B sax men did. But for all the technical competence on their instrument the aims and the target crowds of the R&B sax men were quite different, their music served different purposes (within one larger overall framework IMHO) and to anybody broad-minded enough and not focusing very narrowly on one's very own yardsticks there ought to have been room for both after all? Beyond that point, personal taste does come in IMO, but that would be another discussion altogether.

(As for that "universal" tag for jazz as dancing and partying music in earlier times - point taken. Make it "generally", O.K.? (With "partying" also including certain brands of jazz jazz being played to a seated audience that was non-dancing but very much drinking-glass clinking, O.K.?)

JR Monterose also duly noted )

FWIW I meant specifically that at one point in his early career Coltrane was told that he should/had to walk the bar as part of the gig, and he resisted this, apparently because he felt that doing so would be demeaning/at odds with what he was hoping to accomplish musically, and that this lead to trouble between him and the bandleader or clubowner. Others, of course, didn't resist and/or felt otherwise. As for Jacquet and Phillips, while I can't read minds and thus don't know for sure how each of them did or didn't feel about what they were doing when they began to honk or squeal more or less on cue with JATP or elsewhere, it's a fact that a whole lot of their playing in a shall we say less by-the-numbers demonstrative mode was also very exciting, and inventive and spontaneous. And I do like a good deal of JATP Illinois and Flip. BTW, about not knowing "for sure" -- I would guess that Illinois was a deeply/inherently excitable player, though not only that, while Flip was at heart more of a rhapsodist, even if he could swing you into bad health.

[JSngry]

...at one point in his early career Coltrane was told that he should/had to walk the bar as part of the gig, and he resisted this, apparently because he felt that doing so would be demeaning/at odds with what he was hoping to accomplish musically, and that this lead to trouble between him and the bandleader or clubowner.

I think it was even more a personal/human demeaning than a musical one to which he objected, although it could just as easily be argued that at that time and place there was no distinction to be made between the two for a lot of people.

A tuxedo on John Coltrane in 1963 and a tuxedo on Wynton Marsalis (to use but one example) in 2013 signify totally different things, if you ask me, and/or if you know what I mean. And all those Roy Brown (to use but one example) songs about getting so drunk and being so low down and no good mean- and meant - something totally different to a guy surrounded by/feeling trapped by (en)forced human degradation than they to do a causal partier/spectator, now and then.

From there, the math is pretty easy.

[jlhoots]

Lots of pontificating in this thread IMO - I suppose that's O.K..

It's all just opinion & supposition & whatever else it is.

[JSngry]

Lots of pontificating in this thread IMO - I suppose that's O.K..

It's all just opinion & supposition & whatever else it is.

Dude, who do you think you are? Hank "The Voice Of Reason" Mobley?

[jlhoots]

Lots of pontificating in this thread IMO - I suppose that's O.K..

It's all just opinion & supposition & whatever else it is.

Dude, who do you think you are? Hank "The Voice Of Reason" Mobley?

Glad to be of service.

[Larry Kart]

When others do it, it's pontificating. When I do it, it's informed opinion.

[danasgoodstuff]

http://www.oldtimey....1losangeles.jpg

Some times he was one damn effective billboard!

Edited January 11, 2013 by danasgoodstuff

[A Lark Ascending]

This whole "art" thing anyways...it's tired.

You are saved, my son.

[JSngry]

"art", not art. I still very much believe in art...but not so much artists, and especially not "artists".

And put an upper-case "A" on any of it and.....I'll be back after while, ok?

[marcello]

http://www.oldtimey....1losangeles.jpg

Some times he was one damn effective billboard!

20 years later those buffoons in the tee shirts were telling their kids that were really "hep" in back in the day, but they never smoked dope.

Their kids were thinking "Maybe you should have".

[Big Beat Steve]

Sounds to me like you're wanting to argue more with the critics of the 1950s than anybody here. I think a lot of us would, but..they're dead.

Not really. On the contrary, I try to see and judge such statements in the context of their time. Which is what prompted me to react to a TODAY's comment on a liner note statement by Whitney Balliett dating back to 1957 in the first place (in fact I am not unduly shocked by this statement, and seen in the context of its time, it isn't even hard to see how such statements came about IMO. It is rather when the impression sneaks up that such period-colored statements are still being upheld today despite everything we ought to have come to get to know better in the meantime that I feel there is a time to argue) .

http://www.oldtimey....1losangeles.jpg

Some times he was one damn effective billboard!

20 years later those buffoons in the tee shirts were telling their kids that were really "hep" in back in the day, but they never smoked dope.

Their kids were thinking "Maybe you should have".

Why buffoons? Does it take dope to be really hep (provided all of these kids actualy were clean)? Why so condescending?

Why not take them for what they probably just were? Just kids having a good time at a musical event that transcended the usual musical and above all social straitjacket that stiff, stilted, WASP America still was tied up in almost everywhere in 1951 (when that concert took place) in the way the US music market catered to the teenagers wanting to have a music of their OWN?

Do you actually think that having one's own teenage music was a privilege of the oh so progressive 60s youth pop music market or, at best, the post-1955 rock'n'roll scene? The writing had been on the wall well before that time.

Those who you call "buffoons" were anything but that. They were trailblazers in that they dared to go attend events (a lot of which were integrated at a time this was far from societally acceptable to white USA) that set the pace for things to come at a time when by far the hugest part of the teenage music listeners feared to tread there even at a mile's distance and preferrred to remain stuck in their "Tennessee Waltz" and "Blue Tango" schmaltz shoved down their throats by an ADULT music industry. (Yes this is one of the very, very few cases where I wish I'd been around back then)

Buffoons are those who jump on a rolling bandwagon when there is nothing special anymore about jumping on such a bandwagon and who THEN claim how hip(pie?)-ish they were.

Sorry but unless you did an exceedingly good job at hiding your tongue-in-cheek attitude (that may therefore have escaped me) you really missed the mark on that one.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[marcello]

No worries BBS, I'm just a music fan.

I'm going back a re-read Jim Sangry's posts on Jay McNeely for equanimity.

[Peter Friedman]

This entire lengthy discussion has moved back and forth between interesting and pompous and silly.

The whole thing began based on some less than clear words in a blog that was focused on praising

tenor man Hank Mobley.

The idea of a highly positive look at the career and recordings of Hank Mobley has been ignored.

To my way of thinking, Mobley is deserving of a good deal of praise. It strikes me as a shame that

the primary purpose of the article seems to have been lost because of a few less than ideal, though

by no means evil, words.

[danasgoodstuff]

This entire lengthy discussion has moved back and forth between interesting and pompous and silly.

The whole thing began based on some less than clear words in a blog that was focused on praising

tenor man Hank Mobley.

The idea of a highly positive look at the career and recordings of Hank Mobley has been ignored.

To my way of thinking, Mobley is deserving of a good deal of praise. It strikes me as a shame that

the primary purpose of the article seems to have been lost because of a few less than ideal, though

by no means evil, words.

Mobley, or at least his work, is indeed deserving of praise, but sloppy/nonsensical praise is not particularly helpful to anyone trying to grasp the import of that work.

[JSngry]

Mobley's gotten more praise in the years since his death than he got while he was alive (John Litweiler's epic Down Beat article/interview notwithstanding). People GET it now, much more than they did then, and will probably continue to GET it more and more as the years go by. He'll never be an "icon" in the Armstrong/Ellington/Parker/Coltrane mold because....that's not what he did. But what he DID do is certainly more appreciated now than it ever was. He'll always be an "insider's favorite" because that was how his life and career played out, but the "critical spotlight" shines exponentially more favorably on him now than it ever did.

And yet...

If the argument is going to be that Hank Mobley was under-appreciated in his lifetime, that's always going to be an argument that has no satisfactory resolution, because his lifetime is over. The time to make THAT right has come and gone. And if the argument is going to be that Hank Mobley can never get enough praise, then that's an argument that by definition is never going to be won, because never will never be anything other than never.

[Larry Kart]

Here's what I wrote about Mobley in my book. It's not perfect (I feel queasy about the periodization of his career), but it's certainly a positive look at him:

HANK MOBLEY

The first of these two pieces was the liner note for a reissue of Hank Mobley’s 1957 album Poppin’. (The reference there to Nietzsche supposedly commenting on Mobley’s style was a would-be serious joke. Nietzsche did write those words, in his essay “Contra-Wagner,” but he was referring to the music of Georges Bizet.) The second piece was a posthumous appreciation.

[1982]

In the mid-1950s the Blue Note label yielded momentarily to supersalesmanship, releasing such albums as The Amazing Bud Powell, The Magnificent Thad Jones, and The Incredible Jimmy Smith. That trend was dormant by the time Hank Mobley became a Blue Note regular and unfortunately so--a record titled The Enigmatic Hank Mobley would have been a natural. “To speak darkly, hence in riddles” is the root meaning of the Greek word from which “enigma” derives; and no player, with the possible exception of pianist Elmo Hope, has created a more melancholically quizzical musical universe than Mobley, one in which tab A is calmly inserted in slot D.

Though he was influenced by Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, and, perhaps, Lucky Thompson, Mobley has proceeded down his own path with a rare singlemindedness, relatively untouched by the stylistic upheavals that marked the work of his major contemporaries, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, not previously known for his interest in jazz, Mobley’s music is “without grimaces, without counterfeit, without the lie of the great style. It treats the listener as intelligent, as if he himself were a musician. I actually bury my ears under this music to hear its causes.” And that is the enigma of Mobley’s art: In order to hear its causes, the listener must bury his ears under it. In a typical Mobley solo there is no drama external to the developing line and very little sense of “profile” the quality that enables one to read a musical discourse as it unfolds. Not that high-profile players--Rollins and Dexter Gordon, for example—are necessarily unsubtle ones. But to understand Mobley the listener does have to come to terms with complexities that seem designed to resist resolution.

First there is his tone. Always a bit lighter than that of most tenormen who worked in hard bop contexts, it was, when this album was made, a sound of feline obliqueness--as soft, at times, as Stan Getz’s but blue-gray, like a perpetually impending rain cloud. Or to put it another way, Mobley, in his choice of timbres, resembles a visual artist who makes use of chalk or watercolor to create designs that cry out for an etching tool. Harmonically and rhythmically, he could also seem at odds with himself. For proof that Mobley has a superb ear, one need listen only to his solo here on “Tune Up.” Mobley glides through the changes with ease, creating a line that breathes when he wants it to, one that that is full of graceful yet asymmetrical shapes. And yet no matter how novel his harmonic choices were--at this time he surely was as adventurous as Coltrane--Mobley’s music lacks the experimental fervor that would lead Coltrane into modality and beyond. Mobley’s decisions were always ad hoc; and from solo to solo, or even within a chorus, he could shift from the daring to the sober. What will serve at the moment is the hallmark of his style; and thus, though he is always himself, he has in the normal sense hardly any style at all.

Even more paradoxical is Mobley’s sense of rhythm. His melodies float across bar lines with a freedom that recalls Lester Young and Charlie Parker; and he accents on weak beats so often (creating the effect known in verse as the “feminine ending”) that his solos seem at first to have been devised so as to baffle even their maker. That’s not the case, of course, but even though he has all the skills of a great improviser, Mobley simply refuses to perform the final act of integration; he will not sum up his harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral virtues and allow any one element to dominate for long. In that sense he is literally a pioneer, a man whose innate restlessness never permits him to plant a flag and say “here I stand.” Thus, to speak of a mature or immature Hank Mobley would be inappropriate. Once certain technical problems were worked out--say, by 1955--he was capable of producing striking music on any given day. New depths were discovered in the 1960s and the triumphs came more frequently; but in late 1957, when Poppin’ was recorded, he was as likely as ever to be on form.

Much depended on his surroundings, and the band he works with here has some special virtues. The rhythm section is one of the great hard-bop trios, possessing secrets of swing that now seem beyond recall. Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers, partners, of course, in the Miles Davis Quintet, shared a unique conception of where “one” is--just a hair behind the beat but rigidly so, with the result that the time has a stiff-legged, compulsive quality. The beat doesn’t flow but jerks forward in a series of spasmodic leaps, creating a climate of nervous intensity that was peculiar to the era. Either the soloist jumps or he is fried to a crisp on the spot. As a leavening element there was Sonny Clark--equally intense but more generous and forgiving in his patterns of accompaniment. Clark leads the soloists with a grace that recalls Count Basie; and his own lines, with their heartbreakingly pure lyricism, make him the hard bop equivalent of Duke Jordan.

The ensemble sound of the band, a relatively uncommon collection of timbres heard elsewhere on Coltrane’s and Johnny Griffin’s first dates under their own names, gives the album a distinctive, ominous flavor; but this is essentially a blowing date. Art Farmer, for my taste, never played as well as he did during this period, perhaps because the hard bop style was at war with his pervasive sense of neatness. Possessing a musical mind of dandaical suavity, Farmer at times sounded too nice to be true. But this rhythm section puts an edge on his style (as it did a few months later on Clark’s Cool Struttin’), and I know of no more satisfying Farmer solo than the one preserved here on “Getting Into Something,” where he teases motifs with a wit that almost turns nasty.

Adams’s problem has always been how to give his lines some sense of overall design, and too often the weight of his huge tone hurtles him forward faster than he can think. But when the changes and the tempo lie right for him, Adams can put it all together; and here he does so twice, finding a stomping groove on “Getting Into Something” and bringing off an exhilarating doubletime passage on “East of Brooklyn.”

As for the leader, rather than describing each of his solos, it might be useful to focus first on a small unit and then on a larger one. On the title track, Mobley’s second eight-bar exchange with Jones is one of the tenorman’s perfect microcosms, an example of how prodigal his inventiveness could be. A remarkable series of ideas, mostly rhythmic ones, are produced (one might almost say squandered) in approximately nine seconds. Both the relation of his accented notes to the beat and the overall pattern they form are dazzlingly oblique; and the final whiplike descent is typically paradoxical, the tone becoming softer and more dusty as the rhythmic content increases in urgency. In effect we are hearing a soloist and a rhythm player exchange roles, as Mobley turns his tenor saxophone into a drum.

On “East of Brooklyn” Mobley gives us one of his macrocosms, a masterpiece of lyrical construction that stands alongside the solo he played on “Nica’s Dream” with the Jazz Messengers in 1956. “East of Brooklyn” is a Latin-tinged variant on “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise,” supported by Clark’s “Night in Tunisia” vamp. Mobley’s solo is a single, sweeping gesture, with each chorus linked surely to the next as though, with his final goal in view, he can proceed toward it in large, steady strides. And yet even here, as Mobley moves into a realm of freedom any musician would envy, one can feel the pressure of fate at his heels, the pathos of solved problems, and the force that compels him to abandon this newly cleared ground.

In other words, to “appreciate” Hank Mobley, to look at him from a fixed position, may be an impossible task. He makes sense only when one is prepared to move with him, when one learns to share his restlessness and feel its necessity. Or, as composer Stefan Wolpe once said, “Don’t get backed too much into a reality that has fashioned your senses with too many realistic claims. When art promises you this sort of reliability , drop it. It is good to know how not to know how much one is knowing.”

[1987]

“Ah, yes, The Hankenstein. He was s-o-o-o-o hip.” That was the response of Dexter Gordon when the late Hank Mobley’s name came up in conversation a while ago --“Hankenstein” identifying Mobley as a genuine “monster,” in the best sense of the term, while the slow-motion relish of “he was s-o-o-o-o hip” seemed to have both musical and extra-musical connotations. But then, like so many who came to know Mobley’s music, Gordon decided to qualify his praise, echoing critic Leonard Feather’s assessment that Mobley was “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” whose approach to the instrument (according to Feather) lacked the “magniloquence” that Gordon, Sonny Rollins, and others had brought to it.

But that is not the only way to estimate Mobley’s achievement. The middleweight champ, yes, if magniloquence and size of tone are what is involved, but never merely a middleweight--for Mobley, who died last May at age fifty-five, blazed his own trail and left behind a body of work that never ceases to fascinate. Indeed, when one examines the core of Mobley’s music (the twenty-four albums he recorded under his own name for Blue Note from 1955 to 1970), it seems clear that his poignantly intense lyricism could have flourished only if magniloquence was thrust aside.

Mobley’s career as a recording artist falls into three rather distinct stages. The first ran from 1955 to 1958, when he made eight of his Blue Note albums, while working with the Jazz Messengers and groups led by Horace Silver and Max Roach. The second produced the magnificent Soul Station, Roll Call, Workout, and Another Workout albums in 1960 and 1961, when he was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet. And the third ran from No Room For Squares (1963) to Thinking Of Home (1970). Influenced initially by Sonny Stitt, but incorporating far more of Charlie Parker’s asymmetrical rhythmic thinking than Stitt chose to do, Mobley also was attuned to the lyrical sensitivities that Tadd Dameron brought to bop--an unlikely, even perilous, blend that gives Mobley’s stage-one solos their special flavor. Perhaps the first critic to pay close attention to him was an Englishman, Michael James, in the December 1962 issue of Jazz Monthly, and James’s account of the tenor saxophonist’s solo on “News”--from the 1957 album Hank Mobley (Blue Note )--is particularly apt. “His phrases grow more and more complex in shape,” James writes, “until . . . it seems that he is about to lose all sense of structural compactness. But he rescues the situation... and his last 12 bars, less prolix and tied more closely to the beat, imbue the whole improvisation with a unity of purpose that is paradoxically the more striking for its having tottered for a while, as it were, on the brink of incoherence.”

Solos of that kind and quality can be found as early as 1955, when Mobley recorded his first album, Hank Mobley Quartet (Blue Note ). And, as James suggests, his best work of the period is so spontaneously ordered and so bristling with oblique rhythmic and harmonic details that its sheer adventurousness seems inseparable from the listener’s--and perhaps the soloist’s--burgeoning sense of doubt. That is, to make sense of Mobley’s lines, one must experience every note--for there are so many potential paths of development, each of which can inspire in Mobley an immediate response, that the ambiguities of choice become an integral part of the musical/ emotional discourse.

And that leads to the genius of stage two, for as Mobley gained in rhythmic and timbral control, his music became at once more forceful and uncannily transparent--as though each move he made had its counterpart in a wider world that might not exist if Mobley weren’t compelled to explore it. Two fine examples of that urgently questing approach are “I Should Care” and “Gettin’ and Jettin’,” both from Another Workout (Blue Note). Rather than being a direct romantic statement, “I Should Care” becomes a song about the possible contexts of romance--not so much a tale of love but a search for a place where that emotion could be expressed. (Mobley does this by building his solo around “balladized” bop phrases whose angular tensions, here made more languid, serve to test the romantic dreaminess, which in turn tries to subdue those “realistic” intrusions.)

Mobley’s sensitivity to context is present in a different way on “Gettin’ And Jettin,’ ” as he pares down his lines toward the end of his brilliant solo in order to invite the active participation of drummer Philly Joe Jones. (Mobley’s interaction with drummers is a story in itself--his exceptional taste for contrapuntal rhythmic comment bringing out the best that he and such masters as Jones, Art Blakey, and Billy Higgins had to offer.)

Stage three of Mobley’s career has its virtues, too, and if such recordings as A Caddy ForDaddy (Blue Note ), Dippin’ (Blue Note ), and the first side of the recently issued Straight No Filter (Blue Note ) were all we had, Mobley still would be a major figure. But as John Litweiler has pointed out, Mobley “consciously abandoned some degree of high detail in favor of concentrating his rhythmic energies,” which gave his music a bolder profile but left less room for the jaw-dropping ambiguities of his stage one and stage two work. Above all, though--and to a degree that is matched by few jazz soloists--Mobley invites the listener to think and feel along with him. Indeed, his commitment is such that a commitment of the same sort is what Hank Mobley’s music demands.