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Hank Mobley...by request

Someone below suggested a thread on this subject, so I thought, why not? It's likely my opinion will not reflect the views of a majority of jazz fans, especially those who listen a lot to jazz from the period when he was active, but, if it turns out to be somewhat controversial, so much the better.

I'll start by conceding that Mobley was obviously highly regarded by many front line leaders, including people like Art Blakey, Horace Silver and virtually every other musician who led a session for the Blue Note-and Prestige to a lesser extent-label in the 1950s and 1960s. (All of them by the way far more musically sophisticated than this writer.)

That said, I think he was overrated then and continues to be as witnessed by the flood of reissues of his own recordings as a leader. I've never found his work especially challenging compared to a number of contemporaneous saxophone players, particularly John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, Sam Rivers and Sonny Rollins.

Clearly not everyone has to be a genius or an innovator to produce enjoyable music and for me therein lies the problem with Mobley's outsized reputation and popularity. After my comments thus far it may be surprising for me to say that I find his work mostly enjoyable and quite listenable...but for me it's not much more than that. I'm also bothered by the sameness of so much of his output. That probably doesn't distinguish him from other fairly popular players of his era-Tina Brooks or Junior Cook anyone?-but as far as I can tell, none of them approach Mobley in popularity or record sales.

Of course, part of this is that Mobley was ubiquitous, both as a sideman and as a leader. I'm not at all certain what explains this. Did he readily fit in on any hard bop session? Was he cooperative and willing to do whatever was required? Did his mere presence enhance sales? Was he simply always available? Or was his music just nice and likeable?

Whatever the reason(s), he was and is much more popular* (or so it seems) than many other deserving players from the hard bop era: Dexter Gordon, George Coleman, Booker Ervin, Charlie Rouse, Joe Henderson, Harold Land, for example.

*Of course, when discussing popularity in a jazz context, we have to be mindful that revenues generated by a big seller can get lost in the petty cash of a label of any size.




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Topic - Hank Mobley...by request - suretyguy 15:59:32 07/22/17 (50)

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