BNJ-61006

Hank Mobley - Curtain Call

Released - June 21,1984

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, August 18, 1957
Kenny Dorham, trumpet #1-5; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Jimmy Rowser, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.3 My Reverie
tk.6 Curtain Call
tk.9 On The Bright Side
tk.10 The Mobe
tk.11 Don't Get Too Hip
tk.12 Deep In A Dream

Session Photos

CD Cover - See Also BLP 1550

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

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Don't Get Too Hip	Hank Mobley	August 18 1957
Curtain Call	Hank Mobley	August 18 1957
Deep In A Dream	Delange-Van Heusen	August 18 1957
Side Two
The Mobe	Hank Mobley	August 18 1957
My Reverie	Debussy-Cliaron	August 18 1957
On The Bright Side	Hank Mobley	August 18 1957

Liner Notes

Hank Mobley started showing up on Blue Note sessions in 1954. By 1955, he had made his first album as a leader (a 10" lp) and was a member of the Jazz Messengers. He was prolific as a leader and sideman for Blue Note right up to 1971. But never was he so everpresent as during the 1500 series. He was on sessions by the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, Kenny Burrell, Curtis Fuller, Sonny Clark, Johnny Griffin, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, J.J. Johnson and Jimmy Smith as well as producing 6 issued albums under his own leadership. There were two more Mobley dates from this period: POPPIN' which was issued in the seventies and CURTAIN CALL released here for the first time.

Mobley has never received the recognition that he deserves. It is fortunate that Blue Note stayed with him for so many years, capturing one beautiful album after another. Part of the reason for his lack of popularity was his tone, softer than most of the hard boppers. Also his sense of solo construction is a complex, inventive marvel that can slip by the casual listener. He was never an audience grabber, but he could seduce one if given the chance.

This album brings him together with his old Jazz Messenger hornmate Kenny Dorham. And it is among KD's finest playing of the period. KD and Mobley were also in Max Roach's band at this time.

The rhythm section consists of Blue Note regulars Sonny Clark and Art Taylor with George Joyner (now Jamil Nasser) on bass. This same rhythm section propelled the Lou Donaldson Sextet four months later on LOU TAKES OFF (BLP 1591).

Nasser was born in Memphis in 1932 and raised with piano wizard Phineas Newborn. An early practitioner of the electric bass, he toured with B.B. King in the mid fifties, finally settling in New York in 1956 where he freelanced with Gene Ammons, Red Garland and many others. His prime recognition comes from the years he spent in the sixties and seventies with Ahmad Jamal's trio.

Except for two standards, all the compositions here are Mobley's. Don't Get Too Hip is a sly, easy 12 bar blues line, repeated twice. Sonny Clark plays a lovely intro and then glides in and around the melody as stated by the horns. He has the first solo, running through a range of attitudes. His first chorus is sparse and tasty, his second more playful, the third in a be-bop mode and the fourth evolving into funk. To add to the dynamics of the tune, Clark lays out for the first 24 bars of the trumpet and tenor solos. Dorham's solo is gorgeous and soulful with squeezed notes, bent tones and great thoughtful ideas. Hank's sound here foreshadows the smooth, round, soft tone of his 1960—61 period. His solo too is rich in beauty and well-thought out ideas. After a brief bass solo, the ensemble returns for a repeat of the theme, which is admittedly hesitant in spots.

Curtain Call, a fast 32 bar AABA melody on standard changes offers some wonderful playing. Mobley is sleek and swift and smooth like a jungle cat. KD is assured and cooking, applying his boppish roots with his own personal stamp. Clark is clean and sparkling. Even the tenor, drum, trumpet trading of four bar phrases has a seamless coherence to it.

Deep In A Dream is set up by Clark for beautiful tenor and piano solos. Dorham lays out here. This lovely lyrical performance makes for interesting comparison to Clark's 1961 quartet recording with Ike Quebec on tenor.

The Mobe, a medium up AABA tune with a hint of Dameronia. The bridge is played in Latin rhythm on the theme, but not on the solos. Mobley's solo is deceptively relaxed as it climbs in construction with ever moving lines. KD takes a nice warm approach to his solo, while Clark simply shimmers with clarity. The tenor-trumpet 8 bar exchanges are very effective.

Debussey's My Reverie is taken at a surprisingly bright tempo with the trumpet stating the melody. Dorham also takes the first solo with an arresting directness and intimacy; his control of the horn's air flow is hypnotic. Clark and Mobley turn in fine solos before KD steals the show again with a reading of the melody that is a solo unto itself. Mobley gracefully plays obbligato behind him.

On The Bright Side is a light, uptempo 32 bar AABA piece. This is a happy, straight ahead affair with spirited solos. Clark cleverly ends his solo with pieces of the theme. The solo sequence ends the tenor and trumpet trading fours with Taylor.

What is most striking about the 8 albums that Mobley led between November of 1956 and February of 1958 is the incredible variety in personnel, instrumentation and material. And there is not an unsuccessful session among them. He would re-emerge in 1960 and '61 with four masterful album of consumate creativity and then countless albums from 1963 to 1971 with a hard sound, but the same incredible imagination. The common thread throughout is beauty and intelligence.

—MICHAEL CUSCUNA

Original Session Produced by ALFRED LION
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

GXF-3066

Hank Mobley - Poppin' 

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, October 20, 1957
Art Farmer, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.3 Gettin' Into Something
tk.6 Poppin'
tk.8 East Of Brooklyn (aka Night Watch)
tk.9 Tune Up
tk.12 Darn That Dream

Session Photos

rehearsal

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Poppin'	Hank Mobley	October 20 1957
Darn That Dream	DeLange-Van Heusen)	October 20 1957
Gettin' into Something	Hank Mobley	October 20 1957
Side Two
Tune-Up	Miles Davis	October 20 1957
East of Brooklyn	Miles Davis	October 20 1957

Liner Notes

In the mid-1950s the Blue Note label yielded momentarily to supersalesmanship, releasing such albums as "The Amazing Bud Powell," "The Magnificent Thad Jones," and "The Incredible Jimmy Smith." That trend was dormant by the time Hank Mobley became a Blue Note regular and unfortunately so — a record entitled "The Enigmatic Hank Mobley" would have been a natural.

"To speak darkly, hence in riddles" is the root meaning of the Greek word from which "enigma" derives; and no player, with the possible exception of Elmo Hope, has created a more melancholically quizzical musical universe than Mobley, one in which "tab A" is calmly inserted in "slot D."

Mobley is a musician who bears little resemblance to any other. Though he was influenced by Sonny Stitt and, perhaps, Lucky Thompson, he has proceeded down his own path with a rare singlemindedness, relatively untouched by the stylistic upheavals that marked the work of his major contemporaries, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane.

In the words of Friederich Nietzsche, not previously known for his interest in jazz, Mobley's music is "without grimaces, without counterfeit, without the lie of the great style. It treats the listener as intelligent, as if he himself were a musician. I actually bury my ears under this music to hear its causes."

And that is the enigma of Mobley's art: In order to hear its causes, the listener must bury his ears under it. In a typical Mobley solo there is no drama external to the developing line and very little sense of "profile" the quality that enables one to "read" a musical discourse as it unfolds. Not that high-profile players — Rollins and Dexter Gordon, for example — are unsubtle, But to understand Mobley the listener does have to come to terms with complexities that seem designed to resist resolution.

First there is his tone. Always a bit lighter than that of most tenormen who worked in hard bop contexts, it was, when this album was made, a sound of feline obliqueness — as soft, at times, as Stan Getz' but blue-grey, like a perpetually impending rain cloud.

Or to put it another way, Mobley, in his choice of timbres, resembles a visual artist who makes use of chalk or watercolor to create designs that cry out for an etching tool.

Harmonically and rhythmically, he could also seem at odds with himself. For proof that Mobley has a superb ear, one need listen only to his solo here on Miles Davis' "Tune Up." The apparently simple but tricky changes pretty much defeat Art Farmer and Pepper Adams; but Mobley glides through them easily, creating a line that breathes when he wants it to, not when the harmonic pattern says "stop."

And yet no matter how novel his harmonic choices were — at this time he surely was as adventurous as Coltrane — Mobley's music lacks the experimental fervor that would lead Coltrane into modality and beyond. Mobley's decisions were always ad hoc; and from solo to solo, or even within a chorus, he could shift from the daring to the sober. What will serve at the moment is the hallmark of his style; and thu% though he is always himself, he has in the normal sense hardly any style at all.

Even more paradoxical is Mobley's sense of rhythm. His melodies float across bar lines with a freedom that recalls Lester Young and, Charlie Parker; and he accents on weak beats so often (creating the effect known in verse as the "feminine ending") that his solos seem at first to have been devised so as to baffle even their maker. But that, I think, is not the case.

Equipped with all the skills of a great improviser, Mobley simply refuses to perform the final act of integration; he will not sum up his harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral virtues and allow any one element to dominate for long, In that sense he is literally a pioneer, a man whose innate restlessness never permits him to plant a flag and say "here I stand."

Thus, to speak of a mature or immature Hank Mobley would be inappropriate. Once certain technical problems were worked out — say, by 1955 — he was capable of producing striking music on any given day. New depths were discovered in the 1960s and the triumphs came more frequently; but in late 1957, when "'Poppin' was recorded, he was as likely as ever to be "on."

Much depended on his surroundings, and the band he works with here has some special virtues. The rhythm section is one of the great hard-bop trios, possessing secrets of swing that now seem beyond recall. Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers, partners, of course. in the Miles Davis Quintet, shared a unique conception of where "one" is — just a hair behind the beat but rigidly so, with the result that the time has a stiff-legged, compulsive quality. The beat doesn't flow but jerks forward in a series of spasmodic leaps, creating a climate of nervous intensity that was peculiar to the era. Either the soloist jumps or he is fried to a crisp on the spot.

As a leavening element there was Sonny Clark, equally intense, but more generous and forgiving in his patterns of accompaniment. He leads the soloists with a grace that recalls Count Basie; and his own lines, With their heartbreakingly pure lyricism, make him the hard bop equivalent of Duke Jordan.

The ensemble sound of the band, a relatively uncommon collection of timbres heard elsewhere on Coltrane's and Johnny Griffin's first dates under their own names, gives the album a distinctive, ominous flavor; but this is essentially a blowing date.

Art Farmer, for my taste, never played as well as he did during this period, perhaps because the hard bop style was at war with his deadening sense of neatness. Possessing a musical mind of dandiacal suavity coupled with the soul of a librarian, Farmer usually sounded too nice to be true. But this rhythm section puts an edge on his style (as it did a few months later on the "Cool Struttin'" date); and I know of no more satisfying Farmer solo than the one preserved here on "Getting Into Something," where he teases motifs with a wit that almost turns nasty.

Adams' problem has always been how to give his lines some sense of overall design; and too often the weight of his huge tone hurtles him forward faster than he can think. But when the changes and the tempo lie right for him, Adams can put it all together; and here he does so twice, finding a stomping groove on "Getting Into Something" and bringing off an exhilarating doubletime passage on '"East of Brooklyn."

As for the leader, rather than describing each of his solos, it might be useful to focus first on a small unit and then on a larger one.

On the title track, Mobley's second eight-bar exchange with Jones is one of the tenorman's perfect microcosms and an example of how prodigal his inventiveness could be. A remarkable series of ideas, mostly rhythmic ones, are produced (one might almost say squandered) in approximately nine seconds. Both the relation of his accented notes to the beat and the overall pattern they form are dazzlingly oblique; and the final whiplike descent is typically paradoxical, the tone becoming softer and more dusty as the rhythmic content increases in urgency. In effect we are hearing a soloist and a rhythm player exchange roles, as Mobley turns his tenor saxophone into a drum.

On '*East of Brooklyn" Mobley gives us one of his macrocosms, a masterpiece of lyrical construction that stands alongside the solo he played on "Nica's Dream" with the Jazz Messengers in 1956.

"East Of Brooklyn" is a Latin-tinged variant on '"Softly As in a Morning Sunrise," supported by Clark's "Night in Tunisia" vamp. Mobley's solo is a single, sweeping gesture, with each chorus linked surely to the next as though, with his final goal in view, he can proceed toward it in large, steady strides.

And yet even here, as Mobley moves into a realm of freedom any musician would envy, one can feel the pressure of fate at his heels, the pathos of solved problems, and the force that compels him to abandon this newly cleared ground.

In other words, to "appreciate" Hank Mobley, to look at him from a fixed position, is an impossible task. He makes sense only when one is prepared to move with him, when one learns to share his restlessness and feel its necessity.

Or, as composer Stefan Wolpe once said. '*Don't get backed too much into a reality that has fashioned your senses with too many realistic claims. When art promises you this sort of reliability drop it. It is good to know how not to know how much one is knowing."

— Larry Kart

Original session produced by ALFRED LION
Produced for release by MICHAEL CUSCUNA
Recirdng engineer: RUDY VAN GELDER, VAN GELDER STUDIOS, NEW JERSEY
Remix engineer: TONY SESTANOVICH
Recorded on October 20, 1957
Cover photo: K. ABE

75th Anniversary CD Reissue Notes

Between November 1956 and October 1957, Hank Mobley recorded an amazing seven albums for Blue Note. Each had a different cast and different instrumentation. They were all exceptional sessions, but only the first five were issued at the time. "The Hank Mobley Quintet featuring Sonny Clark" and "Poppin"' sat in the vaults until the '80s.

"Poppin"' is a wonderful session. Mobley was really on a roll as a composer and small group arranger that year. His three originals here are definite highlights and the blend of Mobley's tenor, Pepper Adams' baritone and Art Farmer's trumpet is a fresh, unique sound.

The secret ingredient on this session is the rhythm section of Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Just a week earlier, they had made the explosive Blue Note masterpiece "The Sonny Clark Trio". At this point in time, you could not find a more sensitive or harder swinging rhythm section than these three men.

Michael Cuscuna

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 

LT-1045

Hank Mobley - Thinking Of Home

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, July 31, 1970
Woody Shaw, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Cedar Walton, piano; Eddie Diehl, guitar; Mickey Bass, bass; Leroy Williams, drums.

6734 tk.6 You Gotta Hit It
6735 tk.8 Justine
6738 tk.10 Gayle's Groove
6736 tk.18 Talk About Gittin' It
6737 tk.23 Suite: Thinking Of Home / The Flight / Home At Last

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Suite - A. Thinking Of Home B. The Flight C. Home At Last	Hank Mobley	July 31 1970
Justine	Hank Mobley	July 31 1970
Side Two
You Gotta Hit It	Hank Mobley	July 31 1970
Gayle's Groove	Mickey Bass	July 31 1970
Talk About Gittin' It	Hank Mobley	July 31 1970

Liner Notes

HANK MOBLEY: SMOKER OF THE PIPE

"There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his gifts... the human element is often bled for the benefit of the creative element, and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism, vanity, all kinds of vices; and all this in order to bring to the human at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

- Carl Gustav Jung (Psychology and Poetry June, 1930)

For the past century, there has been no more personal, passionately expressive, intensively idiomatic, or consistently creative artistic expression in this country other than the music we call jazz, or Black Classical Music, or New Music. Whatever the terminology used to verbally describe this music, it is precisely the uncategorizable nature of this art form that is the source of both its greatest and most enduring strengths and its most limiting and fragile weaknesses.

In 1980, the fact that this music still only reaches a relatively limited audience owes a lot less to the "limited sensibilities" of the masses than to the limited number of people on this planet who are willing and able to promote this music and significantly widen its audience. A music that demands such passion, intelligence and commitment to produce can only be effectively communicated to a "mass" audience by people with a commensurate amount of sustained dedication. The sad reality is that there have been, for whatever reasons, very, very few people who have the ability and position to "mass merchandise" this music in any kind of effective and lasting way.

Why else would the music of Henry "Hank" Mobley, one of the most important and eloquent American jazz instrumentalists and composers of the past several decades be such a little known cultural treasure in his own country? Cofounder of the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey, integral member of the music-making groups led by Max Roach, Horace Silver and Miles Davis the legendary saxophonist Hank Mobley today is in need of a "decent saxophone" so he won't "blow one of his lungs out." In America, an average, licensed doctor, lawyer or plumber with a little effort is almost guaranteed of making a good living, but a well-trained, even great, jazz musician just might have an awfully hard time finding any kind of satisfying - much less remunerative - work. And in the jazz world, a great, unique tenor saxophonist like Hank Mobley suffers considerable neglect because he is not as "spectacular" as three of the most influential tenormen of his day - John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Johnny Griffin.

"Hank Mobley is one of the most ingenious and constantly fresh composers in modern jazz," pianist Cedar Walton has stated, and the music of this album fully supports that assertion. "Thinking Of Home" opens with a deeply peaceful minor rubato interlude that evokes Mobley's early childhood exposure to church music in Newark, New Jersey. The tune quickly jumps over to Manhattan for some straight-ahead bebop. The brisk 16-bar head features a recurring, ten-note staccato theme stated in unison by the two horns. Trumpeter Woody Shaw's soaring, Gatling-gun solo on this tune (and his playing on the entire album) is among his best early recorded efforts; an unmistakable spark that Mr. Shaw was to develop into one of the most fiery and consistently creative jazz instrumental talents of his generation over the next decade. After steamy solos by Mobley and Walton, and a brief restatement of the bebop theme, Hank's thoughts of home suddenly segue "way down South" to a dreamy bossa nova theme gently explored by both the saxophonist and guitarist Eddie Diehl. (Before becoming a full-time guitar repairman and teacher, Diehl followed Grant Green and preceded George Benson and Pat Martino in organist Brother Jack McDuff's Hot House School for Great Guitarists.)

"Justine" is a bright, lilting Mobley original which has an interesting three-part structure. The first two eight-bar sections have the same chord changes with different melodies interpolated through them. The short, sustained phrases of the bridge are more of a gentle cry than a shout chorus. Cedar Walton's exquisitely tasty accompaniment on this song and throughout the album is a case study in how to swing and keep things interestingly moving at any tempo or in any climate. On this tune, the flowing syncopations of Diehl, bassist Mickey Bass, and drummer Leroy Williams could not be more sensitive or swinging either.

"You Gotta Hit It" is a rapid gallop through Hard-Bop Country climaxed by an exchange of fiery fours by Mobley and Shaw, punctuated by the tempo tantrums of drummer Williams. Mickey Bass's composition "Gayle's Groove" is a medium, blues-flavored theme featuring some particularly compelling and coherent solo work by both Walton and Mobley.

Longtime "roads" scholar of the saxophone, Dexter Gordon, recently talked about Hank Mobley: "Hank is definitely the 'middleweight champ' of the tenor. And that's meant to be as high an estimation as I can make of his playing... and it doesn't imply any limitation in his talent whatsoever. With that round sound and medium tone, he plays as hip as any tenor player around."

One of Mobley's closest personal friends, drummer Philly Joe Jones, still maintains almost daily contact with Hank. Philly Joe feels very strongly that Mr. Mobley is "one of the messiahs, one of the true geniuses of the saxophone, one of the real smokers of the pipe."

Whether or not he is a messiah or genius of the saxophone, Hank Mobley plays his horn with as much human warmth and personally articulated eloquence as it has never been played.

- Todd Barkan

Notes for the 2012 CD Edition

This album is important not just because it was Hank Mobley's last session on the label that he had called home for 15 years, but because the focus of his talent as a composer shares the spotlight with his powerful gifts as a master improviser on the tenor saxophone.  

He wrote all but one composition on the album, but it is the title suite that grabs our attention and lets us know what a thoughtful and fresh composer Mobley was. He'd had his share of jazz classics over the years that were covered by other artists, but "Thinking Of Home" offers a more ambitious composer.  

The band on his final Blue Note session features fellow Newark musician Woody Shaw (who'd appeared on his "Reach Out" a few years earlier) and Cedar Walton who'd recorded with Mobley countless times. Mickey Bass, who had been with Lee Morgan, and Leroy Williams, drummer for John Patton at the time, were new to Mobley's music.  
 
- Michael Cuscuna