LT-1081

Hank Mobley - Third Season

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 24, 1967
Lee Morgan, trumpet; James Spaulding, alto sax, flute #2-6; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Cedar Walton, piano; Sonny Greenwich, guitar #2-6; Walter Booker, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1846 tk.15 Don't Cry, Just Sigh
1847 tk.16 Third Season
1848 tk.29 Give Me That Feelin'
1849 tk.30 Boss Bossa
1850 tk.33 Steppin' Stone
1851 tk.36 An Aperitif

Session Photos

Cedar Walton, Hank Mobley

Sonny Greenwich

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
An Aperitif	Hank Mobley	February 24 1967
Don't Cry, Just Sigh	Hank Mobley	February 24 1967
Steppin' Stone	Lee Morgan	February 24 1967
Side Two
The Third Season	Hank Mobley	February 24 1967
Boss Bossa	Hank Mobley	February 24 1967
Give Me That Feelin'	Hank Mobley	February 24 1967

Liner Notes

This album was recorded at a time both personally and musically rewarding in Hank Mobley's career, when he was gigging on his own, sometimes co-leading groups with Lee Morgan, and just a month before his first tour of England and Europe, to the delight of Transatlantic audiences. His early mature art was already highly complex, requiring his utmost resources to sustain in performance after performance, often resulting in a perilous excitement. The revision of his style that he began in 1959 didn't exactly simplify his music; rather, he gave his improvisations a more immediately engaging surface by lightening his former resolute lyricism with sophisticated rhythmic contrasts as a new means of balancing his structures. Evident from the beginning was his harmonic mastery; the new-found mastery of saxophone technique in his '60s playing may have inspired his increasing mastery of design throughout the decade, leading to the vivid challenges he set for himself here. It's true that, far from seeming difficult, these solos fairly bubble with their inviting sparkle; within, however, they boil with rhythmic and melodic tensions.

Mobley's saxophone tone here, as in his other recordings, may provide a barrier to appreciation of his rhythmic scope, for while it is "round" (Mobley's word) and fuller in all registers than the variably light sound of his younger years, it lacks the hardness of hard bop. As critic Larry Kart wrote, there's no drama external to Mobley's developing line: the kinds of expression characteristic of hard bop peers such as Rollins, Griffin, or Coltrane are defied in a style that encompasses such rhythmic mobility as this. Because the evolution of Mobley's style resulted in periodic differences as striking as several other major tenormen, the increased robustness of his music resulted less from tone quality than from the restructuring of his lines' great activity.

From his first work the Jazz Messengers, Mobley has been committed to hard bop. In selecting his septet for this recording, he reaffirmed his unity with the idiom at its most intensely dedicated: Certainly Billy Higgins was the most important choice, since he was so important to Mobley in this period (he played on all but one of the sessions that Mobley led from 1965 on), providing the crucial engagement with the saxophonist that Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, and pianist Horace Silver provided in previous times. A first achievement for hard bop was its redefinition of rhythm section roles, for the pianist and drummer made emphatic their divorce from the limited accompaniment of previous eras. In varying degrees according to temperament, they instead became actively involved in the soloist's line, raising their contribution within collective improvisation to, at best, the level of counterpoint: Higgins not only accents a solo, but inspires and creates with the soloist, sometimes even leading on improvisers as sensitive as Mobley and Lee Morgan.

As author Michael James once pointed out, if we listen to Mobley in isolation, without simultaneously hearing his rhythm section, his charm will elude us; this is true of most soloists, but none more than Mobley because he begins where his less gifted contemporaries leave off. James' remarks apply also to Lee Morgan, but I can think of almost nobody else in a pre-Free Jazz style who fits his description.

Billy Higgins' choice of percussion colors is rather conservative, so that his style at least appears restrained. Perhaps his most personal quality is the precision of his beat, even in syncopation such as his three-and in "Give Me That Feelin'." Such consistency is supposedly antithetical to swing, yet Higgins certainly swings solidly while setting the soloist a fearsome pace: any imprecision of timing, and the hapless improviser has propelled himself, flailing helplessly, over the cliff. Next to contemporary models of high volume power and explosive punctuation, Higgins' nervous counter-point may seem spare until the listener becomes lured into his webs of crossrhythms and hairtrigger engagement.

Pianist Cedar Walton's piano, which also proved important to Mobley's later recordings, and the aggressive, heavy bass tones of Walter Booker complete the rhythm section. Altoist James Spaulding plays highly charged lines that derive force from his chromatic contrasts within his essentially diatonic style — Cannonball Adderley heard through a distorting filter, then reorganized. This session also offers three rare solos by the will o' the wisp Sonny Greenwich, the Canadian guitarist who at the time had a large underground reputation. It's a pleasure to hear his flair, for after the deviousness of the horns, his long straightahead lines sing out, dotted with melodic inspiration and with saxophone-like fluency.

Like Higgins, Lee Morgan is Mobley's spiritual brother, and not only because of their shared experience (dating on records to Morgan's second Blue Note, when he was but 18), their work with the same associates, or even, most importantly their near-equal sophistication of jazz scope and mastery. Their complementary qualities are both subtle and immediate: where wistfulness sometimes tinges Mobley's exuberance, Morgan is wholly extroverted, his solos attracting us with a dazzling shimmer that suddenly becomes the gleam of a knife blade. Unlike Mobley's legato, the trumpeter's staccato includes inflected notes, the better to cut with; they solo after each other on these six pieces, the better to contrast their responses to the material and to each other.

Third Season offers a mildly conservative variety of hard bop for the mid-'60s, since the only modal element is the vamp bridge of "Don't Cry, Just Sigh" and the only fusion piece is the jazz-gospel "Give Me That Feelin'"; however, the only casual choice is Morgan's blues "The Steppin' Stone," which simply spells out three chords. The rest of the themes are typically fine Mobley pieces, and the opening two are ideal in setting their moods without impinging on the improvisers' realm. Bop heads tended to be simplified transcriptions of improvised choruses; from standards to Monk songs, much of the modern repertoire consists of self-contained compositions. But from the opening strain of "An Aperitif" we know we're in an aggressive music of rhythmic amplification; in " Don't Cry, Just Sigh," one of Mobley's best tunes (perfectly titled, too), the falling changes and then the one-chord bridge set a mood of melancholy far too deeply felt for funk conventions. "Third Season" takes us to a distant harmonic setting, while the bossa nova and the gospel song offer voicings uncommon in hard bop, and make the listener wish that Mobley's Blue Notes included more middle-sized ensembles such as this, to add to the examples of his arranging talents.

The provocative theme of "An Aperitif" kicks off Mobley's own solo and, as is typical of his mid-'60s style, it's blocked into eight-bar units, downward figures marking the ends of strains; with an asymmetric line, he escapes the trap of Higgins' throbbing crossrhythms to begin his second chorus. Morgan seizes a motive from the end of the tenor solo and spends a chorus in variations before developing prophesies. A very fine Morgan chorus in "Don't Cry" fully characterizes the theme's mood; then over Higgins' easy rock, Mobley offers a superb example of spontaneous structuring over two choruses. The pedal bridges draw out his stark quality, as he struggles with and is entangled by the tonic F; though he swaggers from his second encounter, his solo ends in bluesy simplicity. It's Morgan first again in "Steppin' Stone"; Mobley offers a grab bag of ideas, his accenting subduing their disjunct qualities, then beginning about the middle, Coltrane phrases that sound so far removed from Coltrane in this profusion.

Within the ambiguous changes of "Third Season" Spaulding finds location by reworking a striking eight-bar passage over two choruses. Higgins' response is for the most part to simply accent, but then (as in "Aperitif") he accepts another Morgan invitation, this time developing his delayed variations into an extended conversation with the twisting, querulous trumpet line. Mobley slides in from above and, stimulated by the mounting density of the rhythm trio, plays with almost reckless heat, shouting into his second chorus, ending strains with downward plunges. The clarity and unbroken line of Greenwich provide no respite from intensity, for he incorporates something of Mobley's variety in his free associations, while Higgins continues to challenge.

The "Boss Bossa" is the setting for a display of Mobley's rhythmic virtuosity, and with the decorative phrases and the development through contrast (melodic curves vs. regular "one" accents; fabulous amplifications of the samba patterns), the listener is again aware of the profound advances in Mobley's style. By comparison, his "Give Me That Feelin'" solo is breezy, consisting of simple rhythmic figures; this time it is Morgan who digs in deeper, in a fashionable tune genre that can mislead the unwary improviser into false security (Spaulding's Khachaturian quote).

Hank Mobley recorded regularly for Blue Note for 13 years within the span 1954-70; the longest of his three absences from the recording studios was for less than two years, when he was touring with Miles Davis. This is the 21st Blue Note LP to appear under his leadership; he has led six others for other labels and has participated as sideman or in all-star combinations on 60 other albums. Since his career is strictly as a soloist, these statistics are impressive—yet as Blue Note's Mobley rediscoveries show (Third Season is the fourth of them), there is no letdown in the quality of his music or his intensity. One can only marvel at his musical ambitions, time and again increasing in dimension as this album shows, and at the delightful success of his achievements.

—JOHN B. LITWEILER

Notes for the 2012 CD Edition

It is a pity that this album and "A Slice Of The Top" (LT995) from the previous year were not released at the time. More than anything of Mobley's that was released then, these sessions highlight a maturing composer writing for larger ensembles and stretching the harmonic vocabulary of hard bop.  

With Lee Morgan, James Spaulding, Cedar Walton, Walter Booker and Billy Higgins in the band, the results were guaranteed to be exciting, interesting and swinging. The odd man out here is the Canadian guitarist Sonny Greenwich who had already earned legendary status in his home country and was in New York working with John Handy's group at the time of this session. He lives up to his reputation with fluid lines and three excellent solos.  

A previously unissued alternate take of "Don't Cry, Just Sigh" is added to the album. Taken at a slightly brighter tempo and recorded immediately before the master take, it was being considered as the master according to Alfred Lion's production notes, but he then decided the last take was the best. And based on Mobley's solos, he's right.  
 
- Michael Cuscuna