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In Reply to: RE: Hank Mobley...by request posted by suretyguy on July 22, 2017 at 15:59:32
Hank had a light easy on the ear sound and music. Like I said below, he was a contemporary of Tubby Hayes, but I preferred Tubby. Hank may have recorded a bunch of sessions to feed his habit. Nice player, but I prefer less popular players like Sam Rivers, Charlie Rouse, Booker Ervin, Joe Henderson, etc.
Follow Ups:
GEO, no artist on record labels like Bluenote or Prestige had the authority to decide when to record/release an album. Lottsa jazz musicians went through a junkie period. They didn't wake up one Tuesday, look at their nearly empty stash and say to themselves "Uh oh, I better call Alfred Lion and tell him I want to record on Friday." in order to get cash for smack and expect Alfred Lion to just say "Fine, I'll set up the session". Do you think Jackie McLean did that?
I really can't understand why you and some others think Mobley was more popular than Joe Henderson - or Dexter for that matter. I don't have any stats in front of me, but I seriously doubt Hank recorded more than Henderson, and no way did he make as much money as either Dexter or Joe.
"...no artist on record labels like Bluenote or Prestige had the authority to decide when to record/release an album."
Perhaps not authority, but that didn't necessarily stop them from bugging the hell out of the label owners/producers to do recordings. According to Gene Lees, who was very close to Bill Evans, the pianist constantly tried to wheedle sessions at Riverside to generate cash to satisfy his habit. Frankly, I don't have any information to support the idea that Mobley did that, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
It's clear that Blue Note had a sizable catalog of unreleased recordings that didn't see the light of day until years after the sessions went down. I have no idea what the reasons were for that situation. It may simply have been that there were quality concerns or that they just had too many similar recordings on the market already. (Obviously not all of these were Mobley's.) And apparently some of it was related to the sale of the label. But this does make me wonder about how at least some of the sessions came about in the first place.
P.S. Not to get all nitpicky on you, but it is Blue Note, not Bluenote.
Considering that most of Blue Note's unreleased albums were very good - Mobley's A Slice Of The Top and Third Season for example - I gotta wonder if the label was saving some of 'em to capitalize on when musicians died.
That seems to be what Miles thought about Columbia. He had a long battle with that label over unreleased recordings. He refused to record new stuff until they released what they had in the can, and ended up changing labels.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the label thought at least some of the recordings were not typical of the artist and therefore would not get a positive reception. And, too, I think there were those that were a whole lot like others and were held back for later release. But when Lion sold the label-to Liberty if I remember correctly-that company really screwed things up and the plans for later release were never followed.
other previously unreleased Blue Notes, including stuff by Lee Morgan and Jackie McLean among others.
I'm sure that's true, but there were quite a few that didn't get released until Capitol bought the label as I recall. But I'm relying on memory here, which these days is sometimes faulty.
Let's just be glad it happened, however it did.
I am a big proponent of Blue Note. This is still a thriving label under the helm of Don Was. As above, smack, was very relevant in the 50-60's among the Jazz players. You would have been hard-pressed to find a player that did not use it? Really took a toll on Chet Baker and Art pepper.
Dexter made his way abroad, in the EU. After international success, and alot of it, he came back to the U.S.A.
Joe has a very extensive catalog, a strong body of work spanning decades.
If Coltrane had lived to date, we can only imagine his outcome as well?
I didn't think it worked like that. I was just wondering if Hank was just more or less on call more often. Not that he would have the power to arrange a session so he could make a score. I was going to look at his output vs say Joe Henderson to see if he had more LPs. He started his career a few years earlier I believe also. Jackie McLean put out a lot of LPs too. And yes, lots of guys had habits, unfortunately.
"Hank may have recorded a bunch of sessions to feed his habit."
I deliberately avoided this idea in my original post even though the thought had occurred to me. His addiction was apparently widely known and may have been a factor in his being so readily available for recording sessions. On the other hand he clearly managed to maintain his ability to perform at a pretty high level-or at least at a professional level good enough to be desirable as a leader and a sideman.
Yes. Absolutely. I was just wondering if that contributed to the number of LPs he put out. I like Hank. I have almost all of his BN albums. Early on, he was one of my favorites. Far Away Lands was my first Mobley LP.
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