Hank Mobley - Roll Call
Released - June 1961
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 13, 1960
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
tk.7 Take Your Pick
tk.18 The Breakdown
tk.20 My Groove, Your Move
tk.29 A Baptist Beat
tk.34 Roll Call
tk.35 The More I See You
Session Photos
 |
| Hank Mobley |
Photos: Francis Wolff
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| Roll Call | Hank Mobley | 13 November 1960 |
| My Groove Your Move | Hank Mobley | 13 November 1960 |
| Take Your Pick | Hank Mobley | 13 November 1960 |
| Side Two | ||
| A Baptist Beat | Hank Mobley | 13 November 1960 |
| The More I See You | Harry Warren, Mack Gordon | 13 November 1960 |
| The Breakdown | Hank Mobley | 13 November 1960 |
Liner Notes
PROBABLY the general atmosphere and character of this recording is well expressed in the individual attitude of the trumpet player, Freddie Hubbard. "I think it was my best date so far. Everything had a nice feeling. I was glad to be there — I learned a lot about how to swing just being there. I felt so much freer than I ever had before in a recording studio and that's because it’s so easy to play with the kind of talent of the guys on the date. And we had just about the best rhythm section there is — Blakey, um, ah, yes He fills up the whole studio. He makes you open up — he made everybody open up."
There are several prominent reasons for the success of this session. One, as Hubbard‘s statement more than implies, is Art Blakey, and another is the quality of inner relaxation embodied in and central to the talent of the leader Hank Mobley which seems, along with Blakey's brand of persuasion, to have extended to the other musicians.
"One thing about Hank,” Hubbard says, "he sure plays relaxed. Hank’s my favorite tenor player. He plays very fluently. He's very mature in his playing. I think he’s very underrated."
Mobley has been underrated. It is more than unfortunate that certain terms generally and accurately employed to describe him; steady, reliable. musicians’ musician, etc. have lost the dignity of their definitions and have come to imply only mediocrity. If Mobley is too frequently ignored or relegated to the rear in discussions of modern tenor saxophonists it is probably due more to a hero-jaded public consciousness than to the real capacities or limitations of his talent.
For Mobley's development has been unspectacular. He has been going his own way quietly and with an obviously growing assurance and conviction in the past several years and it is to his credit that in doing so he has compromised his individuality with neither current fashion nor the influence of the latest standard-bearer. This is not to say that Mobley’s style has not evolved or that he has not remained open to the achievements and impressions of his contemporaries (it would be equally untrue to claim that certain other tenor saxophonists have not, to an extent, effected the direction of that evolution). But as several writers have already pointed out, Mobley's style has remained pretty much uncategorizable. He has learned and borrowed from others in a natural selective process of the craftsman he most certainly is, but always in the interest of solidifying. not transforming, his own approach and statement.
The quality of relaxation that would seem to be an integral facet of Mobley‘s style is only one of the virtues of his style. By contrast to many of his contemporaries Mobley’s sound is comparatively soft and he has been done an injustice by being casually labeled a hard-bopper. He has also come to demonstrate a rhythmic and melodic imagination that is rivaled by few of his competitors. And any one of his solos here will exemplify the direct ease and fluent continuity of his expression.
Freddie Hubbard who complements Mobley on the front line with a vigor that occasionally borders on the frenetic, should raise heads with his work on this album. Anyone familiar with his initial recording ("Open Sesame", Blue Note 4040) will be astonished by the rapidity of his development. if he still, to use his phrase, plays "too wild” on occasion one might say that that is no cause for reproach at his age (he is twenty-three) and certainly the resultant openness of his expression, for he has something to say, is ultimately a virtue. The possible implications of the preceding to the contrary, Hubbard does play with a certain cohesion that promises a firmer sense of order and inevitability in his work as he develops further and acquires a restraint the size of his energy. He is gifted with an intriguing melodic imagination and a virtuoso technique and he plays with a growing awareness of the trumpet’s capacities. If comparisons are to be made, Hubbard's style might be likened to that of Lee Morgan or Donald Byrd, two other Blue Note-bred trumpeters of increasing stature. But Freddie is particularly concerned with retaining his own identity. On The More l See You (where he is muted), "Everyone said I sounded like Miles. I wish I could sound as good as Miles, but I don’t want to sound like him.”
The rhythm section; Blakey, Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers, provides a continuously stimulating and challenging foundation for the horns. Blakey, who is particularly energetic and forceful, controls and sparks much of the session which often, as a result, takes on the character of an early Jazz Messengers set. Kelly and Chambers, too, contribute valuably both in accompaniment and as soloists.
All but The More I See You are Mobley tunes and if the tenor saxophonist’s writing is not distinguished by innovation or always by a particular identity, it has good taste, form and a rhythmic persuasiveness going for it. It has also, here, provided the springboard for many solos of merit. One might arbitrarily single out Mobley's work on Roll Call, My Groove Your Move and The More I See You (the latter, a standard, is a glowing example of Mobley’s lyrical power); Hubbard’s fire on Roll Call and The Baptist Beat; Blakey’s mastery of the drum’s expressive possibilities on Roll Call; the consistency and general excellence of Wynton Kelly's airy, but grounded statements and Chambers' continuously rock-ribbed foundation.
Hank Mobley’s talent has traversed and distinguished the rosters of many important groups over the last few years (most notably, of course, the Jazz Messengers) but it is perhaps now (at this writing he has been a regular member of Miles Davis' group for more than two months) that he will begin to receive a sum of the recognition that is due. Certainly his more recent recordings, of which this is a significant entry, justify it.
- ROBERT LEVIN
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers perform by courtesy of Vee-Jay Records
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
A NEW LOOK AT ROLL CALL
To its credit, Blue Note did not expend much energy on concepts for its albums. A Jimmy Smith Plays Fats Waller has its place in the label's discography, but was truly an exception. For the most part, leaders of working bands led their troops, and perennial sidemen such as Hank Mobley drew upon a pool of collegial accomplices. A convergence of particular talents that worked on one record might be reassembled for the next, or modified with an added personality — whatever suited the featured musician in question.
Roll Call, recorded five-plus years into Mobley's relationship with Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, displays the success this approach yielded as well as any title in the Blue Note catalogue. After a two-year hiatus as a leader, the tenor saxophonist had returned to Rudy Van Gelder's studio in February of 1960 and made Soul Station with the rhythm section bf Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Art Blakey. Soul Station had been issued and was already drawing highly favorable reviews when the time for Mobley's next date arrived; and while everyone involved must have recognized the high standard it set, none could have anticipated the earlier album's place on more than a few desert island lists four decades later. This sequel takes just the right tack, building upon the foundation of its predecessor by bringing back the unbeatable rhythm section, then adding a new element in the presence of Freddie Hubbard's trumpet that channels the music in a different, more charged direction.
Hubbard and Robert Levin stress Mobley's relaxation in the original liner notes, and the saxophonist's work on Soul Station had indeed displayed a laid-back way to parse the changes and the beat that complemented both the explosive thrust of Blakey's thunder and the sleeker glide that Kelly and Chambers were in the process of perfecting as members of Miles Davis's rhythm section. Hubbard's presence here underscores the unpredictable, in-your-face Blakey side of the equation, and draws a more declarative response from Mobley than he offered on either the earlier session or his subsequent and sublime work on Davis's live recordings of April and May 1961. On the title track in particular, where the colloquy among tenor sax and the members of the drum-driven rhythm section is truly sublime, Mobley makes the aggressive adjustment work brilliantly — yet, while constantly surprising us with unexpected details amidst the flow of his ideas, Mobley still maintains a stunning nonchalance. His composure no doubt contributed to the indifferent reception he received in some quarters, and to the subsequent pleading for reconsideration by Mobley fans that Levin was neither the first nor last annotator to indulge.
Hubbard testifies to Mobley's no-respect status as well, and adds further comments about the session that are particularly interesting given the trumpeter's future membership in Blakey's Jazz Messengers (he joined in the summer of '61 and remained through the winter of '64). Having fallen into the super-pocket of this rhythm section, Hubbard applied his optimistic, assertive, still-developing talent to the situation and created solos that maintained force and focus, and signaled a growing maturity that Levin acknowledges. The roll was called, and Hubbard answered.
Kelly, Chambers and Blakey answered as well, individually and as a unit. A simple suggestion to let the rhythm section's groove carry you along may be all of the listening particulars required for an appreciation of this gem. Then again, Mobley's talent for bringing the right material to the studio is another focal point. In particular, note how "My Groove Your Move" puts melodic and harmonic meat on the blues, and savor the lilt of "Take Your Pick," which has become Mobley's most covered original of late. "The More I See You," in the line of standards with warm chord changes that Mobley favored, is another highlight. "A Baptist Beat" does not test the band's harmonic acumen in the same way as the other titles, but it locks into a zone where the walk-the-bar tradition of the tenor sax meets bop and beyond most felicitously. The longer, less fervid alternate take is a welcome bonus.
By March of 1961 — around the time Levin composed his essay, to judge from the reference to Mobley's tenure with Miles Davis — it was time for another Blue Note album, one on which Kelly and Chambers were joined by Philly Joe Jones, who gave a different slant to the groove, and the fifth chair was occupied by the label's new find Grant Green on guitar. That session, Workout, is another story, and another link in what Roll Call now marked as a chain of masterful Hank Mobley albums.
— Bob Blumenthal, 2002
