Hank Mobley: The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-1970

The influential jazz writer and producer Leonard Feather dubbed Hank Mobley the “middleweight champion” in the liner notes for the 1961 Blue Note album Workout, an apt epithet for the tenorman in an era when Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane were all active performers. Heavy company to keep, and because it has always seemed difficult for the jazz press to have more than one or two heroes on a particular instrument at any given time, Mobley’s contributions to the art have often been undervalued. As the ever-astute Bob Blumenthal writes in his lengthy and highly informative essay, “Mobley’s time has not come yet, but it draws ever closer.” As I’ve discovered over the years, the more you hear him play, the more you want to hear him play, which makes Mosaic’s The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-1970 a very special release, and the perfect complement to the now out of print Complete Blue Note Hank Mobley Fifties Sessions (Mosaic MD6-181).
Before you even start to listen to the music, statistics are one way to look at a Mosaic boxed set. This 8-CD package collects a dozen albums, totaling 8 hours and 43 minutes of prime hard bop. Of the 75 tracks, just one is previously unissued, an alternate take of Me ’N You from the No Room For Squares session of October 2, 1963. To me, the most interesting fact about this set is how many of these tracks went unreleased until years after the recording dates. Only seven of these albums came out contemporaneously, while five dates had to wait until Michael Cuscuna got into the Blue Note vaults in the late Seventies and had them released for the first time. That’s a lot of music to sit unreleased, and I suppose that label honchos Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff had their reasons at the time, or it’s possible they were just too busy. Whatever the case, those belated releases had the effect of keeping Mobley’s legacy alive, although Mobley himself was none too pleased with the situation. In one of his infrequent interviews, Mobley had groused to John Litweiler, saying “There’s no point going through two-three months trying to rehearse if they put it on the shelf.”
The high quality of Mobley’s albums were partly due to the top-notch musicians that played on them. Trumpeters Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard, Blue Mitchell, and Woody Shaw all make appearances, and there’s a generous helping of the great Lee Morgan, who performs on six out of the thirteen sessions that are included. The piano players include such eminences as Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Barry Harris, McCoy Tyner, and Cedar Walton. Most of the drum chores are handled by the wonderful Billy Higgins; there are also appearances by Philly Joe Jones and Leroy Williams. Bob Cranshaw is often the bassist, and we also hear from Paul Chambers, Walter Booker, and Ron Carter, among others. As the recording units expand from the typical quintet format, we have the added pleasures of hearing from musicians including trombonist Curtis Fuller, saxophonists James Spaulding and Jackie McLean, and guitarists Sonny Greenwich and George Benson. The familiarity and cohesion of the players, combined with the superb engineering of Rudy Van Gelder on all but one of these dates, and Mobley’s acknowledged penchant for writing suitable material make for a deeply appealing and swinging collection.
One of the best decisions that Mosaic ever made was to package their CD collections in LP sized boxes. The 20-page booklet that comes with this set includes a generous helping of Francis Wolff photographs that were taken at the recording sessions. A small CD-sized booklet could not do justice to Wolff’s evocative black and white images, nor would it have been as easy to read Bob Blumenthal’s liner essay. All told, this is another top-quality production from the good folks at Mosaic, in an edition limited to 3,000 collections. It’s available directly from Mosaic Records at their website: mosaicrecords.com
Mosaic MD8-268; Disc 1 (77:26): Sessions A (3/7/63) & B (10/2/63); Disc 2 (62:45): Session B & C (2/5/65); Disc 3 (61:47): Sessions D (6/18/65) & E (12/18/65); Disc 4 (59:30): Sessions E & F (3/18/66); Disc 5 (66:34): Sessions G (6/17/66) & H (2/24/67); Disc 6 (76:27): Sessions I (5/26/67) & J (10/9/67); Disc 7 (75:40): Sessions K (1/19/68) & L (7/12/69); Disc 8 (42:59): Session M (7/31/70). Complete discographical details are available here