BST 84435

 Hank Mobley - Straight No Filter

Released - 1986

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.17 The Feelin's Good

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.

1513 tk.9 Third Time Around
1514 tk.15 Hank's Waltz

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 17, 1966
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1743 tk.3 Straight No Filter
1744 tk.14 Chain Reaction
1745 tk.15 Soft Impressions

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Straight No Filter	Hank Mobley	June 17 1966
Chain Reaction	Hank Mobley	June 17 1966
Soft Impressions	Hank Mobley	June 17 1966
Side Two
Third Time Around	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965
Hank's Waltz	Hank Mobley	February 5 1965
The Feelin's Good	Hank Mobley	March 7 1963

Liner Notes

When Hank Mobley died in Philadelphia on May 30. 1986, even the usually alert New York Times failed to note his passing, and most jazz fans first heard the tragic news by word of month. This was hardly a fitting end for the man Leonard Feather once dubbed “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone;" but, given the neglect Mobley suffered through the last two decades of his cancer. it was not surprising. Feather's remark was intended to praise Mobley as a champion, and to set him apart as a “middleweight" from both the "heavy," Coleman Hawkins lineage (including Dexter Gordon. Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane) and the contrastingly “light" Lester Young school (Stan Getz, Zoot Sims). Unfortunately, many listeners misconstrued judgments of this type and simply relegated Mobley to the middle of the pack - “solid, but not indispensable," as one critic recently wrote. Such judgments, while hardly universal, were common enough to rob Mobley of deserved accolades both in life and in death.

If Mobley lacked anything, it was the personal drive to become a “star" in the context of the jazz world: he surely was not lacking in talent. In a sense he was the quintessential sideman, particularly during the years 1954-63, when he worked for virtually every important non-tenor-playing leader on the East Coast. His own star turns were confined primarily to Blue Note record dates, where Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff recognized his strengths and made him one of the most frequently featured artists on the label. Mobley repaid this confidence by producing sessions that survive as definitive and rarely equalled examples of hard bop. Yet there were always more flamboyant or more radical musicians around to overshadow Mobley's achievements; during the first part of the 1960s, when he reached his creative peak in sessions such as those contained in the present record, his work was considered irrelevant next to the manifestos of the free players. By the end of the ‘60s, with rock overwhelming all styles of jazz. Mobley had sunk into an obscurity from which he never really emerged.

Mobley‘s career got its first boost in 1951, when Max Roach hired the 21-year-old tenor saxophonist out of a Newark house band and introduced him to the New York nightclub scene. Two years later, the drummer was in California when the opportunity arose to form a quintet; according to Mobley, Roach called New York in an effort to recruit him and Clifford Brown, but was only able to locate the young trumpet star. This would turn out to be the only notable gig of the era that Mobley missed. He had already subbed briefly in Duke Ellington's orchestra and worked with Brown in Tadd Dameron’s band, followed by a year with Dizzy Gillespie. Then, in 1954, a cooperative quintet took shape including Mobley, Kenny Dorham, Horace Silver, Doug Watkins and Art Blakey. This group, known as The Jazz Messengers, started out by taking jobs whenever one of its members was offered work; all but Watkins also began recording for Blue Note as leaders. The Messengers favored a heavily percussive, blues-inflected style that was less overtly virtuosic than the bebop of Gillespie and Charlie Parker and far more visceral than the “cool" sounds then emanating from the West Coast; a style that quickly became known as hard bop.

Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (BST 81518) and both volumes of The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia (BST 81507/8) reveal Mobley's strengths at that point quite clearly. There is his tone, so compelling precisely because it is so “middleweight," so perfectly centered that it suggests a Platonic ideal of how a tenor sax is supposed to sound. “Not a big sound, not a small sound, but a round sound." as Mobley himself so aptly remarked. His attack does not seem especially “hard" either, next to such agitators of the time as Rollins, Coltrane and Johnny Griffin. Yet Mobley could swing mercilessly, because he was a master at generating rhythm through inflection. He loved to lay back on the beat, contrast simpler phrases with more convoluted arpeggios, and tie unexpected melodic tales on otherwise symmetrical lines. His deceptively nonchalant attack worked perfectly over the newly assertive comping of a pianist like Silver and a drummer like Blakey; he wove through their brittle comping and bomb dropping, incorporating their energy into the fabric of his improvisations.

Mobley’s warm and fluent playing with the Messengers, his knack for creating tersely eloquent solos (often on Silver’s catchiest “soul” pieces), and the ease with which he wrote hospitable bloating lines of his own were obvious enough to these record companies that favored the hard bop style and the Rudy Van Gelder studios. He participated in several blowing sessions for Savoy and Prestige, and quickly established his primary recording affiliation with Blue Note. Yet he did not seize the opportunity, as Dorham and Silver did in 1956, to form a hand of his own. Instead. when Silver split from Blakey (leaving the drummer with the Jazz Messenger name and an institution that thrives three decades later), Mobley went to work for the pianist. By the end of the ’50s, Mobley also worked a bit (but sadly did not record) with Thelonious Monk, returned to Roach (where he was reunited with old Messenger mate Dorham), and rejoined Blakey in time to strike up a productive musical acquaintanceship with trumpeter Lee Morgan. He also performed with most of the above-named players and others such as Milt Jackson, Sonny Clark and Philly Joe Jones on numerous Blue Note dates.

In 1960, Mobley's playing reached an even more rarefied plateau. This was the point at which he began to perform regularly with pianist Wynton Kelly, first on the Blue Note albums Soul Station and Roll Call, then (for a two-year period beginning in early 1961, around the time he recorded Workout) over the superlative Kelly-Paul Chambers-Jimmy Cobb rhythm section in the Miles Davis quintet. If anything. Mobley’s sound grew even rounder, his rhythmic agility even more acute during this period, but his steady lyricism was lost amid the surrounding sounds of more radial saxophone stylists. Davis also began to put his sideman down for playing behind the beat, a judgment which has been repeated as gospel in each of the several recent Davis biographies and has done little for Mobley's reputation among impressionable younger listeners In truth. Mobley was in peak form during the first half of the ’60s. The recently unearthed Another Workout (BST 84431), his final collaboration with Kelly, proved to be as exceptional as the three albums cited above; and in 1963, at the time he left Davis's band, Mobley ended a 15-month absence from leadership duties at Blue Note with a pair of equally inspired sessions that produced No Room for Squares and part of The Turnaround.

The earlier of these two sessions was the occasion for some especially choice Mobley performances. including “Up a Step” and “Old World, New Imports” (on No Room) and the incendiary “East of the Village” (on Turnaround). The present album concludes with the final title from this March 7, 1963 date, “The Feelin's Good,“ a 16-bar line that begins with an air of mystery (and stop-time support from the rhythm section), only to resolve in a sunnier mood and a shuffle beat. Philly Joe Jones makes everyone feel good, as then-new-star Herbie Hancock, Donald Byrd, and Mobley solo in turn.

Four tracks on The Turnaround come from a February 5. 1965 session notable for reuniting Mobley with Freddie Hubbard (the pair had inspired each other on two November 1960 dates, Mobiey’s Roll Call and Hubbard's Goin' Up) and bringing the saxophonist into initial studio contact with Barry Harris and Billy Higgins. Both Harris and Higgins were on the December 1963 Lee Morgan date that produced “The Sidewinder,” a long-meter blues that achieved surprising commercial success and encouraged producer Lion to attempt several less memorable versions of the formula. Harris, who has never received sufficient credit for contributing the piano vamp that served as “The Sidewinder’s” hook, would never record with Mobley again. Higgins, in contrast, established a strong bond with the tenor man, and appeared on Mobley’s next eight sessions.

“Third Time Around" and “Hank's Waltz" are the remaining products of the February '65 quintet. The first title illustrates Mobley’s penchant for creating subtly challenging blowing material, as what seems at first to be a conventional (though extremely tuneful) medium-tempo swinger turns into a 20-bar form with a rhythmic suspension in the last eight bars that is preserved during the improvisations. Larry Ridley, one of Blue Nate’s more reliable bassists during this period, introduces the tune and gets a solo spot. “Hank's Waltz" is the blues, and reminds us how effective both Mobley and Higgins could be in soulful surroundings. Both tracks capture Hubbard at a particularly fertile moment in his evolution, and take Harris in directions where his bebop-centered proclivities rarely lead him on his own sessions.

The major discoveries of the present collection are the three tracks on side one, which represent the complete output of a June 17, 1966 quintet containing Mobley, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw and Higgins. Almost six months earlier to the day. these five plus Curtis Fuller recorded A Caddy for Daddy, which includes a faster version of “Third Time Around.” Exactly halfway between these two blowing sessions, Morgan, Tyner and Higgins participated in Mobley's exquisite octet album A Slice of the Top, which features Duke Pearson arrangements. The strong ties among these players come across clearly during the present encounters.

"Straight No Filter,” like every other composition on the album, is Mobley’s. Given how the track smokes, the title must refer to the saxophonist’s preference in cigarettes. The 32~bar line points up the growing interest in modal forms that Mobley displayed after leaving the Davis band, although the greater harmonic motion of the bridge offers effective release to the tension generated by the main melody. Mobley exploits this contrast in his solo, relying on more emphatic phrases while the rhythm section builds pressure, then letting loose with longer lines as the bridge resolves. Note that Morgan does not merely repeat Mobley’s concluding idea, but works several bars of further variations out of it. The trumpeter, with his heated attack and bold tonal effects, complemented Mobley perfectly, as their inspired exchanges after Tyner’s solo demonstrate.

"Chain Reaction” might have been titled “Hard Impressions,” since it brings Mobley’s patented hard bop attitude to bear on a line that is extremely close to John Coltrane’s “Impressions.” Mobley does add eight bars to the bridge, creating a 40-bar, AABBA form. “Impressions” is based on the same modal sequence as Miles Davis's's “So What?,” and Mobley reprises several ideas from his great 1961 “So What?” solo on the Columbia album Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall (my choice for the best Mobley performance on a label other than Blue Note). Morgan’s solo is particularly crackling, and also finds him reconsidering to fresh effect some of his own pet ideas, particularly in his final chorus. (In the second half of the bridge, for example, he plays the line written in tribute to his and Mobley’s preferred drummer, “Our Man Higgins”) Modal juggernauts like this and the title track are meat and potatoes to Tyner, who takes the long and invigorating opening solo, spurred at one point by the riffing horns.

"Soft Impressions” is the blues, but a far different shade than “Hank’s Waltz.“ due to the fresh melodic/harmonic turns of Mobley’s writing and the personal stamp Tyner imposes with his supporting fills. If only the three featured soloists had stretched out for more than two choruses each on this infectious title.

And if only there were more Hank Mobley to be found in the Blue Note archives. The six tracks on this album, all of which were previously unreleased, are the last of the “new" Mobley that producer Michael Cuscuna has unearthed in recent years. The 1966 performances are particularly welcome because they offer a good glimpse of Mobley's final stylistic period, where, in response to the overwhelming achievements of Coltrane, his tone coarsened and his phrasing turned more blunt and direct. All of the music will be cherished, however, because it represents the final rounds of Hank Mobley, and Hank Mobley was a champion.

by Bob Blumenthal