Hank Mobley

A debut on 10-inch vinyl, and the rhythm section alone tells you everything about where Mobley stood in the Blue Note hierarchy at twenty-four: Horace Silver, Doug Watkins, Art Blakey. The first lineup of what would become the Jazz Messengers, minus the trumpet. Mobley is the sole horn, and the exposure suits him. Without another voice to share the front line, every phrase has to carry its own weight, and you can already hear the patient, singing quality that would define his playing for the next decade.

Silver's comping is characteristically punchy, pushing Mobley through the changes with rhythmic jabs that keep the energy high even when the tempos are moderate. Blakey, of course, is Blakey: explosive and swinging in equal measure, his press rolls and cymbal accents providing all the drama the date needs. Watkins walks with a dark, woody tone that anchors everything.

A modest record by Blue Note standards, issued on the label's shrinking 10-inch series, but it establishes the template that Mobley would refine across the rest of the decade. The compositions are straightforward hard bop, the solos are lyrical and unhurried, and the whole thing swings from beginning to end. A quiet beginning to a major career.

Mobley's first Savoy LP, and only half of it is his. Tracks 1 to 4 are his February 8, 1956 quintet date; tracks 5 to 7 come from a January 30, 1956 session with Donald Byrd, John LaPorta, Horace Silver, Wendell Marshall and Kenny Clarke, and Mobley does not play on them. The February session is the stronger of the two: a lean quintet with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Ronnie Ball at the piano, and the always-reliable Doug Watkins holding down the bottom. Kenny Clarke drives both dates with the relaxed authority that made him one of the founding voices of bebop drumming.

The January tracks swap Mobley's tenor for John LaPorta's alto and put Horace Silver at the piano and Wendell Marshall on bass, which gives that side a different texture altogether. Neither session is a classic, but there is good, swinging hard bop throughout, and Mobley's playing is characteristically smooth and inventive.

That patchwork quality is its weakness and, in a minor way, its charm: you get Mobley's own quintet on the first four tracks and a session he does not play on for the last three.

The first of two Prestige sessions recorded a week apart in the summer of 1956, and the one where Mobley's writing starts to show real personality. The quintet with Donald Byrd is a natural pairing: Byrd's brighter, more assertive trumpet against Mobley's rounded, easygoing tenor, with Barry Harris providing the ideal Detroit-bred accompaniment. Harris comps with an attentiveness and swing that lift the whole date.

Jackie McLean sits in for a single track, adding an alto voice that is sharper and more urgent than anything else on the session. The contrast is instructive: McLean cuts through the ensemble like a blade, while Mobley floats above it. Neither approach is superior; they simply represent different ways of inhabiting the hard bop vocabulary.

Doug Watkins and Art Taylor are the rhythm section of choice for half the Prestige catalog in this era, and for good reason: they are incapable of not swinging. A solid, workmanlike session that rewards close listening more than it announces itself from across the room.

Recorded exactly one week after the first Message, with Kenny Dorham replacing Donald Byrd on trumpet and Walter Bishop Jr. stepping in for Barry Harris. The change in trumpet voice matters: Dorham's playing is more lyrical and harmonically sophisticated than Byrd's, and the partnership with Mobley feels more intimate. Two tenors of thought, rather than force, playing off each other through melody.

Walter Bishop Jr. is a subtler pianist than Harris, less rhythmically insistent, more interested in the space between the notes. The effect on Mobley is audible: his solos breathe more easily, his phrasing is more contemplative, and the ballad performances have a warmth that the first Message session did not quite reach. Watkins and Taylor, unchanged from the week before, provide the continuity.

If the first Message is a straightforward blowing session, the second has more nuance and shade. Dorham's presence brings out a side of Mobley that is gentler and more searching. The two had already been colleagues in the Jazz Messengers, playing together at the Café Bohemia the previous November, and you can hear that established rapport here.

Another Savoy compilation from two sessions, but this one has a genuine surprise: the November 7 date features an eighteen-year-old Lee Morgan on trumpet, already playing with the confidence and fire that would make him a star within two years. Thad's Blues and Doug's Minor B'ok come from the same Van Gelder session that produced part of Introducing Lee Morgan for Savoy, and they have the same bristling energy. Hank Jones at the piano is the elder statesman, his touch elegant and precise, steadying the date against Morgan's youthful exuberance.

The July 23 session has Donald Byrd and Barry Harris with Kenny Clarke on drums, a more conventional hard bop quintet that sounds confident and road-tested. Doug Watkins appears on both dates, his warm bass tone the connective tissue between two different bands. The contrast between Morgan's brashness and Byrd's polish gives the album a split personality, but both sides swing.

Not a unified artistic statement, but a valuable document of Mobley working with two different trumpet voices in the same period, each drawing out a different aspect of his playing. The Morgan tracks have the edge; the Byrd tracks have the craft.

Two trumpets, one tenor, and a rhythm section that could power a locomotive. The pairing of Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan in the front line gives Mobley a luxury he had not enjoyed before: a wall of brass that can fill out his compositions and trade fours with explosive energy. Silver, Chambers, and Persip are as solid a rhythm section as existed anywhere in jazz at the time, and they push the three horns with unflagging drive.

Mobley's compositions are all originals, and they show a growing sophistication in his writing. The heads are tighter, the changes more interesting, the arrangements more considered than the blowing-session format of the Prestige and Savoy dates. Having two trumpets also means the ensemble passages have a richness that the quintets could not achieve. Byrd and Morgan complement each other beautifully: Byrd's control against Morgan's daring, with Mobley threading his warm tenor between them.

If the record has a weakness, it is that the sextet format occasionally crowds Mobley's solo space. He is at his best when the room is quieter, and with this much firepower around him, the introspective side of his playing recedes. But as a hard bop blowing date, it delivers with authority.

The best record of the early period, and the one where everything aligns. Milt Jackson's vibraphone replaces the trumpet in the front line, and the effect is transformative. Jackson's instrument has a warmth and sustain that blends with Mobley's tenor in a way no brass voice could. The two sound like they are having a conversation rather than a contest, trading ideas with a fluency and mutual respect that elevates every track.

Silver, Watkins, and Blakey were the original Messengers rhythm section, back together here after that band split in 1956: Silver's comping is sharp and propulsive, Watkins walks with authority, and Blakey provides the explosive drive that made him the most exciting drummer in hard bop. But what makes this date special is the way Jackson's presence changes Mobley's approach. Freed from the need to compete with a trumpet, Mobley plays with a relaxation and melodic inventiveness that he rarely achieved on the more horn-heavy dates.

Jackson, on loan from Atlantic Records by courtesy, plays with the bluesy sophistication that made him the defining voice of his instrument. His solos are models of swing and economy, and his accompaniment behind Mobley is tasteful and supportive. An essential early Blue Note date.

Art Farmer is the ideal trumpet voice for Mobley: warm, lyrical, harmonically adventurous, and never inclined to overpower the ensemble. Together they form a front line of uncommon elegance, the kind of partnership where both players listen as much as they speak. This is essentially the original Jazz Messengers lineup with Farmer in the trumpet chair, and the band sounds like it has been playing together for years.

All six compositions are Mobley originals, and they demonstrate a growing command of form and melody. "Funk in Deep Freeze" is the standout: a blues-drenched head that gives both horns room to stretch, with Silver comping behind them in his most soulful, gospel-inflected style. Blakey is restrained by his standards, which means he is merely spectacular rather than volcanic. Watkins, as always, walks with impeccable time and a tone that is felt as much as heard.

This is Mobley at his most confident as both player and composer. The tunes are memorable, the solos are patient and melodic, and the rhythm section provides a foundation that never falters. One of the essential early Blue Note quintet dates, and proof that Mobley was as potent a composer as he was a tenor saxophonist.

A new rhythm section, and the difference is striking. Bobby Timmons brings a bluesy, gospel-tinged approach to the piano that is earthier than Silver's punchy style. Wilbur Ware's bass is elastic and adventurous, sometimes walking conventional lines and sometimes bending them into something more angular and unpredictable. And Philly Joe Jones is a different animal entirely from Blakey: lighter on the ride cymbal, more interested in coloring the music than driving it, capable of explosive fills but equally capable of laying back and letting the horns breathe.

John Jenkins on alto adds a third voice to the front line, and the three-horn sextet format gives Mobley's compositions a richer palette. Jenkins plays with a warm, Cannonball-adjacent tone that blends naturally with Mobley's tenor and Byrd's trumpet. The inclusion of Bud Powell's "Dance of the Infidels" is a nod to the bebop tradition, played with the relaxed confidence of a band that has internalized the vocabulary and is ready to move beyond it.

The title is simply his first name, and the record has that quality of easy familiarity: nothing is forced, nobody is showing off, the music unfolds with the naturalness of a conversation among friends. A transitional album that points toward the more adventurous records Mobley would make in the early sixties.

The rarest record in the early Mobley discography: original Blue Note pressings are among the most sought-after items in the label's catalog. The scarcity alone would make it a collector's piece, but the music justifies the reputation. This is Mobley at his most assured, leading a sextet through five tunes, two by Curtis Porter, one of his own and two borrowed, with the quiet authority of a man who has found his voice and knows exactly what to do with it.

Sonny Clark is the key to the session. His piano playing is harmonically rich and rhythmically supple, darker in color than Silver's and more attuned to the moody, introspective side of Mobley's writing. Clark's touch gives the whole date a depth and sophistication that lifts it above the average hard bop session. Bill Hardman's trumpet is bright and assertive without being overbearing, and Curtis Porter (later known as Shafi Hadi, from his work with Charles Mingus) adds a second reed voice that is alternately smooth and sharply angular.

Paul Chambers and Art Taylor form one of the tightest rhythm sections on any fifties Blue Note date, and they give Mobley a platform that is both steady and responsive. The tunes are stronger here than on any previous record, the arrangements are more considered, and the solos are longer and more developed. A record that was overlooked on release and has been rediscovered as one of the hidden gems of the Blue Note catalog.

The summit meeting that the early records had been building toward. Lee Morgan, still only nineteen and fully in command of his instrument, meets Mobley in a quintet setting with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Charlie Persip. The result is pure hard bop perfection: two horns that complement each other ideally, a rhythm section that swings with effortless authority, and a set of tunes that give everyone room to play.

Kelly is the ideal pianist for this date. His touch is lighter than Silver's, his comping more fluid, and his solos have a breezy, soulful quality that brings out the best in both horn players. Chambers and Persip lock into a groove that is deep and propulsive without ever feeling heavy. The title track, a Mobley original, is one of the catchiest heads he ever wrote: a blues-based theme that sticks in your ear and makes you want to hear the whole record again from the beginning.

Morgan's solos are fiery and inventive, full of the brash confidence that would make The Sidewinder a hit a few years later. Mobley, characteristically, takes a different path: his lines are smoother, more legato, more concerned with melody than velocity. The contrast between the two approaches is the engine of the record, and it never stalls. The finest of the early Mobley dates, and a record that belongs in any serious hard bop collection.

Six tracks, one day, and nobody to hide behind. Mobley cut Soul Station on February 7, 1960 at Van Gelder's in Englewood Cliffs with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Art Blakey, and the thing that makes it work is what is missing. There is no second horn. He carries every head and every solo himself across about thirty seven minutes, and he does it without once pushing his tone past where it wants to sit.

Leonard Feather called him the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone and the tag stuck because it is accurate. Mobley does not have Coltrane's fire or Rollins's size. He works the middle of the horn with a soft round sound and phrases that land a half step from where you expect them. You have to lean in. Once you do it is hard to listen to anything else, which is the whole argument for this record over the louder ones around it.

Blakey is the surprise. He was Mobley's boss in the Jazz Messengers and he is famous for the press roll and the volume, and here he plays quieter than almost anywhere else in his catalog. Still driving it, just doing it with brushes and touch. Kelly and Chambers were Miles Davis's rhythm section that year, and Mobley joined that band himself within about a year, so these four already knew each other cold.

Irving Berlin's Remember opens it bright and If I Should Lose You closes it. Everything between is Mobley's. This I Dig of You is the one people know and the one that keeps getting covered. The title track is the other essential, just over nine minutes of slow blues that takes its time getting to the point and makes the wait worth it. Bob Blumenthal's reissue notes put this record where Saxophone Colossus sits for Rollins, and that is the right comparison.