BLP 4209

Hank Mobley - Dippin'

Released - August 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 18, 1965
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Harold Mabern, piano; Larry Ridley, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1615 tk.10 Recado Bossa Nova
1616 tk.22 Ballin'
1617 tk.27 The Vamp
1618 tk.31 The Dip
1619 tk.36 I See Your Face Before Me
1614 tk.37 The Break Through

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Dip	Hank Mobley	June 18 1965
Recado Bossa Nova	Luiz Antonio, Djalma Ferreira	June 18 1965
The Break Through	Hank Mobley	June 18 1965
Side Two
The Vamp	Hank Mobley	June 18 1965
I See Your Face Before Me	Arthur Schwartz, Howard Dietz	June 18 1965
Ballin'	Hank Mobley	June 18 1965

Liner Notes

As I write this, Hank Mobley is playing an engagement at the It Club, a well known jazz club in Los Angeles, California. It could just as easily have been at the famous jazz emporium in London, England - Ronnie Scott's. It so happens that Mobley has a goodly following among the musicians and fans that make up the British jazz community. I first became aware of this when a friend of mine - an American - was based in London for several years in the first half of this decade. Once a year, he would return to New York for a visit and would use the opportunity to pick up on the new LPs for himself and some of his English friends. One of these records was Hank Mobley's Soul Station (Blue Note 4031). In due course, I received a letter from him requesting that I send him two more copies of the same, one of which was for a chap that had worn his first one out. Subsequently there were impassioned calls for Roll Call (Blue Note 4058) and Workout (Blue Note 4080) as they were issued.

During this period I had occasion to meet a young British bassist who was spending some time in New York soaking up sounds. He also spoke to me of Mobley and how many of the modern musicians in England dug him. Specifically, this had stemmed from the records that Hank had made while a member of Miles Davis's group, and the Blue Notes of his own, named above.

What does all of this mean, you ask? Well, obviously Mobley has more of a following in the United States than in England, but it appears as more concentrated there because of the relative size of the countries. However, it is significant that he has had such an impact in another country. It is a partial testimony to his talent's strength. Curiously, while he led his own group at Slug's in New York in 1965, and recorded another album for Blue Note - The Turnaround (4186) - the general appreciation of his playing was not up to the level it deserves.

When I reviewed his next-to-last Blue Note album, No Room for Squares (4149), in the August 27, 1964 Down Beat, I wrote: "Mobley has long been my choice as recipient of that overused word, underrated. Fellow musicians have realized his worth for a number of years, but others seemed oblivious to his talent. A trio of albums for Blue Note [Soul Station, Roll Call, and Workout) should have remedied this, but they did not get the recognition due them, perhaps because they were not radical statements of the avant garde."

It is ironic that when a man spends years developing his craft to the point where he is a completely mature artist, musicians who could not meet the demands of an intricate music are garnering the publicity by making strange sounds on their instruments in the name of "freedom."

In the No Room for Squares review, another point I made was that, "Mobley, who came first from Charlie Parker, absorbed from Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane at different points in his career, but long ago developed his own sound and style." I also mentioned the "heated, connective flow of his attack and the tensile muscularity of his sound."

The way in which Hank has developed his sound is indicative of his general growth as a player. When, after hearing him at a club in the early-fifties, I said of him, "He sounded as if he was inhaling notes from the field between the microphone and the bell of his horn and transmitting them through the loudspeaker at our left by means of a magnetic reed," he became disturbed. I characterized the texture of his sound as more like a pulling in than a blowing out. While the comment was not offered in a derogatory sense, but rather as a piece of writer's imagery, Hank took it as cue to say that this was not the kind of sound he was trying to get and that he was going to make even a greater effort to achieve the one he wanted. Although I still hear some of the old edge - and find it most attractive - now the Mobley sound is more full-blown, assertive, and representative of the confidence with which he communicates his ideas. You can literally feel the surge of raw power as he sinks his teeth into the beat.

That same kind of strength is evident in the playing of Lee Morgan. For all its puissance, his style, like Mobley's, is never harsh or ugly. Its brilliant, brassy bite is in the tradition of the best of jazz trumpeting. Lee's recording The Sidewinder (Blue Note 4157) heralded a reawakening in a career that had begun at the age of 18 in Dizzy Gillespie's 1956 band. Morgan, the young veteran who, like Mobley, played prominently with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (for the most part they were in different editions although there was one unit that found them together in the front line), reaffirms here the high caliber of his recent work.

Harold Mabern, Jr. is a vigorous pianist with a two-handed attack that gets very bluesy but in a very personal way. Even when "funky" jazz was at the height of its vogue in the early-sixties, Mabern had his own thing going and never got into the self-conscious rut that many pianists did. First heard with the MJT out of Chicago, he moved to New York and has since been part of both The Jazztet and J. J. Johnson's group, among others.

Larry Ridley and Billy Higgins are not featured in solo here - Higgins does get into some exchanges with the horns on "The Break Through" - but both contribute greatly to the cohesiveness of the date. In fact, this quintet sounds more like a working group, in terms of being "together," than many units that are operating on a regular basis. Ridley's wide range of experience in the last few years, including a stay with Roy Haynes's quartet, has made him a seasoned performer; and Higgins is merely one of the very best drummers in jazz. With Mabern, they give the horns support of a most sympathetic stripe.

Dippin' begins, appropriately with "The Dip," Mobley's contemporary version of what Jelly Roll Morton once called the "Spanish tinge."

Although 12-bar constructions are employed, this is not a conventional blues design, and when the soloists commence, the rhythm does not revert to 4/4 either. Mobley, Morgan, and Mabern all make good use of the rhythmic thrust in their improvisations as Higgins rolls and boils underneath.

"Recado Bossa Nova" by Djalma Ferreira might be termed the "Brazilian tinge" for it was from that Latin American neighbor that we imported this "new wrinkle" a few years ago. Tenorman Zoot Sims first did this particular bossa nova in the midst of this form's great popularity. Although the fad has ended, b.n. has taken its place in the scheme of American music and is still very enjoyable, especially when it is swung like Hank and Lee swing it here. This is not "pure" bossa nova, but rather a marvelous combination of the best in North and South American music.

"The Break Through," by Hank, is an unabashed, straightahead cooker with its roots planted firmly in bop. As in most Mobley compositions, there are interesting harmonic twists and turns, and the writer-leader makes good use of them. After Morgan's short solo, Mabern alternates a single-line with his two-fisted style before Higgins and the horns trade "fours."

"The Vamp" is not dedicated to Theda Bara, but derives its title from the suspension that is used extensively in stating the theme, and also utilized behind the soloists on this minor-key number. Morgan leads off, and then Hank shows why he has few peers when it comes to generating genuine emotional heat.

The ballad of the date finds a serene Mobley in the spotlight. "I See Your Face Before Me," the evergreen by Dietz & Schwartz, has not been done that often by jazzmen. One version that comes to mind is Miles Davis's of about 1955. After Hank's tender theme statement, Lee enters muted. Then some cologned chords by Harold lead Mobley back in for a reprise.

Mabern leads off the soloing on the last of Mobley's four pieces, "Ballin'," another intriguing theme, this time in flowing 3/4 with an emphasis put exactly between 2 and 3, dividing the measure in half. Lee comes sweeping in, followed by a climactic solo by Hank. All of this is strongly underlined by Ridley and Higgins. Not too much can be said in praise of Billy. No matter what the meter or the tempo is, he makes his presence a highly creative, positive force.

As for Hank Mobley, in Dippin' he has once again dipped into his bag of goodies and pulled out some plums. While adding this achievement to his growing list of successes for Blue Note, he reiterates what people who really listen (New York, California, England, or anyplace else) have known for some time - that he is an extremely virile lyricist of the tenor saxophone and among the very best playing that instrument today.

- Ira Gitler

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DIPPIN'

To judge from the two sessions that comprise the album No Room for Squares, 1963 was a very good year musically for Hank Mobley. In contrast, 1964 was a disaster, with the saxophonist in prison after a narcotics conviction. When Mobley was released, he emerged with some significant new music (including the compositions featured on his wonderful 1966 octet recording A Slice of the Top) and a distinct change in his approach to the tenor saxophone.

From 1965 forward, Mobley, the most fluid and relaxed of the influential hard bop sax stylists, placed greater emphasis on blunt phrasing and harder articulation. John Coltrane's example was now detectable alongside the strains of Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins that had been molded into the earlier Mobley persona, and Coltrane's growing influence was highlighted by a greater use of harmonically static stretches in Mobley's writing. What listeners ultimately came to recognize as the late-period Hank Mobley style emerged on a series of Blue Note sessions in 1965 and early '66, of which Dippin' is among the very best.

Mobley's writing evolved in a manner that was tailor-made for highlighting the new elements in his style. The program here is illustrative, and as good an example as any, of the knack he found for creating blowing frameworks that contained subtle challenges without sounding overtly complex or exotic. Three of his four compositions are variations on the blues, each with its own inspiring wrinkles. The title track, like that on his previous Blue Note collection The Turnaround, is funk from an angle in this case a 46-bar A—A—B-A form that moves between straight and suspended time on both the main phrase and the bridge. The dip arrives at bar seven of the bridge, where the suspension arrives two bars earlier than expected. "The Break Through" (reprised as the title track on Breakthrough, the 1972 Mobley/Cedar Walton album that was the saxophonist's final recording) is a more traditional 12-bar form with harmonic alterations in the final four bars, while "The Vamp" is the minor blues in long meter, again with distinct harmonic touches. The fourth original, "Ballin'," sounds unfinished, with Harold Mabern chording his way through the bridge, but a spry triple-meter, joyous main theme and more harmonic twists make it another winning opus. Each of these tunes gives the soloists something to think about and each allow Mobley to apply the more declarative touches that were now central to his style.

The old grace had not been entirely expunged, as Mobley's work on the two non-originals makes most evident. "Recado Bossa Nova" had been introduced to American audiences by Zoot Sims in 1962 during the early days of the bossa nova craze, yet the Djalma Ferreira melody is so perfectly in synch with Mobley's middle-period persona that Javon Jackson can be forgiven for mistakenly identifying "Recado" as a Mobley composition on his own 1996 Blue Note album A Look Within. If the samba allows Mobley to blend his new and old concepts, "I See Your Face Before Me" is more resolutely nostalgic in both mood and techniques, and a fitting complement to earlier versions of the ballad by former Mobley associates Miles Davis and Coltrane.

Stellar support is offered by the rhythm section, which includes pianist Mabern in his only recorded appearance with Mobley. Mabern's blend of Memphis blues roots and the influence of his contemporary McCoy Tyner suggests that pianist and saxophonist might have built a productive long-term relationship similar to the one that Mabern enjoyed with Lee Morgan during the last seven years of the trumpeter's life. Larry Ridley and Billy Higgins are a superb team, with Higgins his typically outstanding self, especially on "Recado" (his beat may not be authentically Brazilian, but its Latin/Caribbean mix swings like mad) and "Ballin"' (check his ringing cymbal on the bridge of Morgan's first solo chorus for an audio extension of the Higgins smile).

The key partnership, however, is between Morgan and Mobley, two men whose Blue Note discographies each span 16 years. One of the saxophonist's rare non-Blue Note albums was titled Introducing Lee Morgan (Savoy, 1956), after which they collaborated on a slew of Alfred Lion productions that include such highlights as Mobley's Peckin' Time, Morgan's Cornbread (with Ridley and Higgins also present), and the aforementioned Squares and Slice, They also co-led a group in clubs during the late '60s, and the music here is the best evidence we have of how that unfortunately undocumented unit must have sounded.

- Bob Blumenthal, 2005