BLP 4186

Hank Mobley - The Turnaround!

Released - June 1965

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 7, 1963
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.21 East Of The Village
tk.29 The Good Life

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 5, 1965
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Barry Harris, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1512 tk.7 Pat 'N Chat
1515 tk.19 The Turnaround
1516 tk.23 Straight Ahead (aka Kismet)
1517 tk.25 My Sin

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Turnaround	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965
East of the Village	Hank Mobley	March 7 1963
The Good Life	Sacha Distel, Jack Reardon	March 7 1963
Side Two
Straight Ahead	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965
My Sin	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965
Pat 'n' Chat	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965

Liner Notes

'The goal of any Jazzman," wrote Nat Hentoff in the liner notes for a Blue Note album (I'm Tryin' To Get Home, Donald Byrd, 4188) to find and be himself in his music." This important search to convey that personal feeling about things in life through music has proven highly elusive for many musicians. Some are content to give up the quest after a period of time. The more gifted find it and continue to discover new and exciting ways to say that important "something."

There are musicians who have gained acceptance from their musician friends. Their credentials are impressive. Their work is, always performed well with a minimum of fanfare. They approach the music with deliberation and almost effortlessly transfer it into a work of art.

Such a musician is Henry "Hank" Mobley. Throughout his career, he has proven to be one of the solid rocks in many of the groups led by such giants as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, Max Roach, Art Blakey and others. They have found him more than competent and ready to take care of business.

The road to total acceptance for a jazz artist by the public often takes a long delayed route. Unless a musician purposely directs his sound for commercial appeal and forgoes his "art," he remains on the periphery of the jazz world. He seldom emerges to bask in the sunlight of public adulation and great commercial rewards.

The foregoing is applicable to Hank Mobley. This quiet and almost unassuming tenorman has been a unique performer in |azz. He is well known among musicians and the "in group" of jazz. But to the general public he is virtually a stranger.

I asked Hank, as we listened to this album, whether this anonymity among the general public disturbed him. He paused for a moment and reflected: "No, not really. One moment in my life, I allowed it to disturb me. But then I thought as long as people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy and Miles give me fairly decent compliments, that's enough. As long as I can survive, that's enough. If anything is there, if anything is to happen, it will happen. I think their esteem is my greatest satisfaction. I worked with fellows like Bird and Dizzy when I first started and when I wasn't as sure of myself as I am now. I worked two and a half years with Miles and we never had a harsh word, just a lot of understanding."

In his album No Room For Squares, 4149, Hank led two different groups. He repeats that setting in this album. Listening to "Squares," I agree with critic Joe Goldberg's analysis, "I hear a greater order, economy and authority in his work, so that it now becomes much easier to understand the respect his colleagues have had for him all these years."

This present album is additional proof of the reasons for the compliments paid him by musicians. It should add for him a host of new fans who will discover one of the most able tenor saxophonists on the scene today.

I detect more bite and authority in his playing. The economy that Goldberg described in No Room For Squares has given way to a marvelous lucidness that is always lyrical. As an exponent of the "hard driving swing school" which has greatly influenced him, Hank does not forget to swing, as you will hear in "Straight Ahead" and "Pat M' Chat."

The ballads, "Good Life" and "My Sin" are examples of Hank's refinement and feeling for pretty tunes. Hank said, "I like to play ballads. I would like one day to do a couple of albums of ballads and standards." He does not find it necessary to impress you with phrases that display technique. His years with Miles taught him that there can be beauty in simply being melodic. Of the six tunes on this album, Hank has written five. I was curious to know if his future plans included more writing. He has ideas he wants to try. There are plans for big band writing and experiments with different combinations of brass and horns. His exploring is motivated in the hope of allowing a bit more of himself to project in his music. He feels a musician must continue to grow. He must study and observe, always hoping to be able to say it musically a little better.

This album of dual settings has him surrounded by some real swingers. I feel it will be the turnaround in a career that certainly deserves wider attention.

Side one leads off with the title tune, "The Turnaround." The significance of the title comes from the interesting time changes. He has written a 16-bar blues on the outside. On the inside, there are 1 8 bars. Since most blues are the conventional 12-bar structure, Hank decided to add a minor channel to the 1 6 bars and thus the reason for "The Turnaround."

It is not uncommon to find jazz musicians listening to all forms of music, from classical to rock and roll. It was interesting to note that Hank's idea for this tune stemmed from, as he says, "listening to some of those out-of-meter rock and roll groups. Sometimes they will play al 2-bar blues, sometimes 1 3 bars and it is interesting."

The rhythm section of Barry Harris, Paul Chambers and Billy Higgins is exceptionally fight. Billy's drumming is tastefully crisp. Harris's piano is inventive. Paul's bass is the perennial solid rock. The vampish line throughout is appealing and catchy. The melodic line remains dominant. Freddie Hubbard and Hank's solos are heightened by their weaving in and around "The Turnaround" theme.

"East Of The Village" brings the second group to the fore. Hank was living in the East Village at the time he composed this tune. He attempted to express musically his feelings of the mass groups of people from different nationalities who make this area of New York so colorful. Therefore, you'll hear nuances of the blues, Latin and swing in this tune. Written in a 6/8 meter, it has an interesting time change. The 6/8 remains constant only in the beginning of the composition and from the vamp. It should be noted that there was an extraordinary rapport within the group on this tune - Byrd, Hancock, Warren, Phillyjoe - all stellar members of the "swingers school."

"Straight Ahead" and "Pat N Choi" are potent examples of Hank's ability to swing. Each man takes a piece and drives straight ahead in a no-nonsense "lefs take care of business" vein. In listening to these two tunes you become more conscious of the fact that regardless of the varied directions jazz may take, rhythm is still and always will remain, the thing.

If there is to be a turnaround in his career, the evidence is here that the style he has slowly evolved from his early days when there was a definite Sonny Stiff and Sonny Rollins influence, is about to develop into his own personal way of interpretation.

Hank was well satisfied with this date and we can well understand his feeling. Hank said, "I want to get more out of my music. After you learn from the masters, you must pursue your own direction. I want to get a nice pleasant sound from the saxophone, and develop a rhythmic style and a swinging style." I feel Hank is well on his way in this album, The Turnaround.

- Del Shields

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE TURNAROUND

Of all the great albums Hank Mobley made for Blue Note, The Turnaround may be the most instructive regarding his own evolution and the change in jazz styles. The key is the two years that separate the quintet sessions that make up the program.

"East Of The Village" and "The Good Life" were made in 1963, shortly after Mobley had completed his tenure in the Miles Davis quintet, and they find the saxophonist at the height of what I like to think of as his middle period, which began with his Soul Station recording three years earlier. Mobley had perfected the "round sound" he had been seeking since his earliest recordings, and had grown particularly fluent in his phrasing. His imagination was also at its peak, and unexpected rhythmic and harmonic shifts filled even his most familiar phrases with nuggets of surprise. There is no better example on record than "East Of The Village," where the structural see-sawing between Latin and straight-ahead rhythms and the energizing Support of Philly Joe Jones inspire Mobley to create one of his definitive solos.

The remaining four tracks come from a session made after Mobley had been absent for more than a year from Rudy Van Gelder's studio. This was a particularly troubled time in his career, with drug problems removing him from the jazz scene for most of 1964, and these performances indicate that he had entered a new phase in his playing. Original annotator Del Shields's comment about "more bite" tells part of the story, for there is a new insistence in Mobley's attack. He makes greater use of short, declarative phrases, sacrificing some of the roundness in his sound and mobility of his phrasing for a harder edge. While this final phase proved less rewarding than Mobley's earlier incarnations, he remained an eloquent stylist, particularly on such 1965 sessions as Freddie Hubbard's Blue Spirits, Lee Morgan's Cornbread and his own Dippin' as well as the present titles.

Morgan, who does not appear on this collection, might be considered primarily responsible for the title track, since another major change that had occurred since the "East Of The Village" date was the success of the trumpeter's "The Sidewinder." That long-metered blues was climbing the pop charts in early 1965, and Alfred Lion made several attempts to repeat its success with similarly designed and similarly titled tracks on albums by various Blue Note artists. None of the "Sidewinder" progeny enjoyed similar popularity; yet "The Turnaround," with its unusual 18-bar bridge, is indicative of Mobley's knack for crafting originals that managed to sound both familiar and unique. In this regard, "Pat 'N' Chat" is also outstanding, a 44-bar AABA pattern that looks like a blues with a bridge yet contains a wealth of unexpected detail.

The presence of Barry Harris and Billy Higgins on the 1965 session might also be traced back to "The Sidewinder," where both players were featured. While Harris had recorded with Mobley on Savoy and Prestige in 1956, this was Higgins's first encounter with the saxophonist, and the tenor/drums affinity displayed here is born out by the appearance of Higgins on Mobley's next eight sessions. Freddie Hubbard also contributes outstanding sideman service, as he always did in this period, with the trumpet solo on "Straight Ahead" being a perfect case in point. This was an intriguing unit, with Hubbard's new ideas and Harris's more bop-centered approach proving quite compatible in the context of Mobley's music.

The equally inspired band on the 1963 tracks also made two contributions to Mobley's previous Blue Note album, No Room For Squares. As with that collection, each of the sessions presented here actually produced enough music to fill a standard LP, with the additional tracks surfacing on reissues in the '80s. Notwithstanding Mobley's comments to Shields about his fondness for ballad playing, there is precious little ballad Mobley on record, which makes the inclusion of two slow numbers most welcome. Mobley recorded Sacha Distel's beautiful "The Good Life" before Tony Bennett's hit version was released (Bennett had taped the tune two months earlier), and the original "My Sin" appeared on Mobley's debut disc for Blue Note, a ten-inch album from 1955 with Horace Silver, Doug Watkins and Art Blakey. The tempo is slower here, though no one resorts to doubling the tempo, and Mobley delivers one of his most heartfelt performances.

As with so many of Mobley's dreams, those albums devoted to ballads and standards he spoke of in the original notes never came to pass. He was able to experiment with brass and horns, however, on the wonderful 1966 session A Slice Of The Top.

—Bob Blumenthal