Workout: The Music of Hank Mobley

by Derek Ansell

Among the great American modern jazz saxophonists, Hank Mobley has been the most unjustly neglected - the truly forgotten man. Yet he played and recorderd prolifically with the greatest legends of his era such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gilespie, Lee Morgan, Johnny Griffin and Art Blakey, helping to create some of their finest work. His best recordings are classics, characterized by an instantly identifiable sound and style, and constant musical inventiveness. But his loner personality made him his own worst enemy, many of his records remained unissued in his lifetime, and he died forgotten and destitute. Now, at last, most of his recorded legacy is available on CD and he is increasingly recognized as one of the major figures of modern jazz. In this book, the first to be published about Hank Mobley, Derek Ansell provides a detailed critical introduction to his music and a timely reassessment of his contribution to the jazz art.

Genres: Music

175 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Derek Ansell was a British novelist and biographer.

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not quite a four star book, but I am going to round it up, spotting the author an additional ½ star or so. This is, after all, not only the first book ever written about the late Hank Mobley, but even fifteen years after its publication is still the only book about him ever published as far as I can tell, and that ought to count for something. In addition, I just discovered today that the author has only been writing for publication since the late 1990s. I had seen enough of Mr. Ansell's work online over the years that, given his age, I somehow developed the mistaken impression that he had been writing about jazz for considerably longer than in fact he has; I did not realise that he had only begun to write at all seriously after a more conventional career in business. I also had no idea that he is actually better known for writing historically-based fiction (!) than for music journalism; apparently, the "second career" he took up in retirement has been both somewhat varied and remarkably successful. This was his first book, if I am not mistaken, and he did a good job with it, particularly given his relative lack of experience when he wrote it.

In its rough outlines, I mostly agree with this author's perspective on the music and career of Hank Mobley (7 July 1930 - 30 May 1986). This is in large part the traditional view among those of us who believe that Mr. Mobley never really got his due, especially from critics, who often "damned him with faint praise" as the saying goes, and who often negatively compared him to his contemporaries (most often Sonny Rollins & John Coltrane, but others as well on occasion). Even during his career as an active professional musician from the early 1950s to the early 1980s, Hank Mobley also perhaps suffered more acutely than many others from the more-or-less normal vagaries of the music business; it is after all not uncommon for even musicians with extraordinary talent to be completely undone by something as simple and prosaic as bad luck. To become a professional musician can obviously bring great rewards, but also commensurate risks- more often than not even successful musicians live well for a time, but then either die young or are eventually forgotten and spend their last years in poverty. One can make the argument, in fact, that many other great jazz musicians had even worse luck; even solely among those whose primary instrument was also the tenor saxophone, one has only to remember Wardell Gray (13 February 1921 - 25 May 1955), who died while still quite young (he was most likely murdered), and Lucky Thompson (16 June 1924 - 30 July 2005), whose name must have seemed like a particularly cruel joke during his last years, many of which he spent homeless and/or in dire poverty. Both of those men were undeniably great musicians, and of course ranking musicians is like trying to catch minnows in your fist (thus a pointless exercise to my mind), but regardless of this, Hank Mobley had a much longer and more prolific career than either of those gentlemen, and looking at that totality could be said to have been more successful. This is the crux of the matter- for many years, at least since Mr. Mobley's death in 1986 but arguably for much longer, there has been considerable debate about his place in the "jazz canon" (so to speak). One side says he was "the middleweight champion of the saxophone", in other words not in the same class as John Coltrane (23 September 1926 - 17 July 1967) or Sonny Rollins; the other side says that he was absolutely in the same class, and furthermore one can make an argument that his already large influence has only been growing in the years since his passing (this is the side I am on, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

As of this writing, in September 2023, Sonny Rollins (born 7 September 1930) is happily still with us (underscoring his claim to immortality as an artist, perhaps?) although the other two have been gone for many years now. Unlike Mr. Coltrane, who died before I was born, or Mr. Mobley, who for all practical purposes had stopped performing when I was still a child, I had the incredible good fortune to see Mr. Rollins perform at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 1989. Although I could not honestly describe him as one of my favourite musicians then or now (at that time the only record I owned on which he appeared was the Miles Davis LP 'Dig'; the 12-inch reissue version with the blue cover), I do have enormous respect for him as a musician. The great Detroit musician & teacher Marcus Belgrave played a set right before him that night, and between the two of them they had packed the Hart Plaza Amphitheatre full to bursting, with people dangling off the side-railings above to get a better view; I was just about a yard left of center-stage, maybe 20 feet away from the mic-stand. From the time he walked out onto the stage until the last wild standing ovation, it was one of the most powerful, amazing performances I have ever been fortunate enough to witness. He dominated that stage so completely that I don't even remember who else was in his band, how many there were or what they played. His badass chalk-stripe suit, dead clean Chuck Taylor shoes and enormous "rock star" sunglasses only underscored what a bad motherfucker he was; more than three decades later that set is still one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I just discovered, trying to figure out exactly which year that was, that Louis Smith played a quintet set on the last day of the festival the following Monday. Sadly, I was not in the audience that Monday night. Despite the fact that I had spent several of my childhood years as a young trumpet player just outside Ann Arbor, where Professor Smith taught both privately and at the University of Michigan, I had no idea who Louis Smith was in those days. I found a nice re-mastered copy of one of his albums a couple of months ago at Dearborn Records, bought it on a whim, and have been listening to it ever since. I did get to see Dizzy Gillespie (with the great John Lee on bass!) the following year, but to my lasting regret I missed my greatest musical hero and influence, Miles Davis, in 1991. I had to work- I had not been scheduled, but had foolishly answered the telephone when my boss called. I don't blame him for insisting I come in on my day off- the guy who was scheduled blew off work, and no-one else had answered or called back, so he really didn't have much choice. I'd still like to kill the dirty son-of-a-bitch who blew off work, though; it's probably a good thing I don't remember his name. It turned out to be one of the last gigs Miles Davis ever played; he died a few weeks later, on 28 September 1991. Almost exactly a decade later, I saw the extraordinary Tommy Flanagan play a solo piano set that had every last person in the place openly weeping by the end, including Mr. Flanagan; I think we all realised it would be the last gig he ever played in his home city. He passed just over two months later, in November 2001. In 2012, another great Detroit jazz musician, Curtis Fuller, played several sets during his long overdue appearance at the Detroit Jazz Festival, to celebrate his moving back to Detroit; unfortunately, I could not go due to a lack of money for either gasoline or bus fare. I don't think even he realised those would be the last gigs he would ever play. Just over thirteen months later, my wife & I moved into our home on Detroit's near East side. I eventually realised that Mr. Fuller lived in one of the half-dozen or so old folks' homes down the street from us, but I never did figure out which one. I always kept an eye out whenever I would drive down that way, just in case I might see him walking down the sidewalk or whatever. Curtis Fuller, who was one of my favourite musicians and, for my money, the greatest trombone player ever, died on 8 May 2021.

At this point, I should probably outline my own perspective on the "Great Hank Mobley Debate"- like most people my own age or younger (I was born in 1970), and despite the fact that I have been both a musician and, albeit briefly, a music journalist, I was not fully aware that such a debate existed until comparatively recently. Although I first heard jazz (in the form of two Miles Davis records owned by my mother) as a small child in the early 1970s, I did not begin listening to jazz (or indeed any music) seriously until I began playing the trumpet at the age of 11. Not long after that, I bought my first two jazz records at two separate yard sales: 'The Happy Bird' (1961) by Charlie Parker (a posthumous 12-inch LP release of a 1951 live recording) and 'The Chase and The Steeple-Chase' (1952) by Wardell Gray & Dexter Gordon (the original 10-inch LP release of a 1947 live recording). In retrospect, I was incredibly lucky- unlike most of my contemporaries, I got to start more-or-less from the beginning of "modern jazz" and follow a sort of natural progression from musician to musician and record to record even though I began decades after the fact. This was not only an immensely rewarding experience, but also served me well in building a knowledge base in the music which later easily established my bona-fides with older jazz enthusiasts, who because of this accepted me as their equal despite my relative youth. Before the internet, that was simply the way things worked- you had to pay attention to the credits, liner notes and other information that might (or might not) appear on the backs of record jackets, then build on that knowledge with information from books, magazines and/or older and more knowlegeable friends and acquaintances. One of these, my dear friend Larry G., eventually turned me on to John Coltrane's 'Blue Train' (1957) one afternoon in the mid-1990s, which was the first time I had ever heard any of Mr. Coltrane's work as a bandleader prior to 'Giant Steps' (1960). Some younger readers may find this hard to believe, but 'Blue Train' was actually out-of-print at the time. I eventually found a used cassette copy of the first re-mastered edition from 1985, and after a few years was lucky enough to find an early vinyl copy in reasonably good condition. That LP, which later turned out to be one of the rarest and most difficult to find of the early pressings of that album (though not even close to the most valuable!) is still one of my most prized possessions and among my favourite records.

The argument about Hank Mobley's place in the pantheon of great jazz musicians had shifted a great deal by the time I became aware of it as a young man just over two decades ago- not long, in fact, before this book was published. First and foremost, as Mr. Ansell speculates in this book, the most damaging piece of bad luck in terms of obscuring and distorting the place of Hank Mobley in the "jazz canon" was the fact that many of the albums he recorded as a bandleader were not issued until many years after the fact, in some cases not until after his death. This obviously bothered him; he is quoted at length in the book describing his frustration with this state of affairs during his later years. Although this particular issue was remedied to some small extent toward the end of his life with the release of 'A Slice Of The Top' (1979), 'Third Season', 'Thinking Of Home' & 'Poppin' ' (1980), 'Far Away Lands' (1984) and 'Another Workout' (1985), the excessively tardy and haphazard way these records were finally issued must have seemed far too little and much too late, offering cold if any comfort. This process continued to some extent even after his death, albeit much more sporadically- 'Straight No Filter' (1986) was released immediately after his death, his 1959 final studio recording with the Jazz Messengers was released as 'Just Coolin' ' in 2020, and there have also been several live recordings released during these last few decades. Most notably, perhaps, the 7 March 1963 recording session which Mr. Ansell described in this book as potentially one of Mr. Mobley's greatest was finally released in its entirety as 'The Feelin's Good' (2013) after a great deal of agitation over the years by not only Mr. Ansell but also many others. The various tracks from that session had previously been parceled out in dribs & drabs over several different releases.

Because of this belated process of releasing these records, and the consequent re-evaluation of Hank Mobley's place in jazz history, things were already looking a bit different by the time I became aware of his work some time around 1990. I am unable to pinpoint this with any real accuracy, because I don't remember exactly when I bought my first Kenny Dorham album, 'Afro-Cuban' (1955). If I'm not mistaken, that was the very first CD I ever owned- I did not yet own a CD player when I bought it! I had gotten turned on to Kenny Dorham's trumpet playing when I bought a copy of one of the many cheap, low-end Charlie Parker cassette releases which had proliferated during the 1980s, and which I had believed featured Miles Davis on trumpet. As it happened, the fact that it was Kenny Dorham, his replacement in that band, led to my accidentally hearing one of my favourite trumpet players for the first time (I made the same mistake with another similar release a month or two later; that one featured Charlie Parker Quintet line-ups with Kenny Dorham on side 1 and with Red Rodney in the trumpet chair on side 2). In any case, I liked his playing enough that I couldn't resist buying the CD as soon as I saw it, and that was my introduction to Hank Mobley. 'Afro-Cuban' is a great record, and quickly became one of my favourites. See, like I said, in those days you had to remember who played on the records you liked, and simply keep an eye out for their names on other records- there was nowhere to look up a particular musician's discography, and books about jazz were few and far between. During the early 1990s I was quite busy playing gigs, writing for local papers, doing poetry readings, and working "straight jobs" as necessary to pay the rent and bills- I don't remember the chronology of which records, tapes and CDs I bought then for the most part. At some point, however, I found an LP called 'Two Tenors' (1962) by John Coltrane & Hank Mobley. I didn't know this at the time, but that record was actually a reissue (under a new title) of an album which had first come out in 1956 on Blue Note, 'Informal Jazz' by the Elmo Hope Sextet. I really liked that record, and someone suggested to me that I would probably also enjoy a record by Johnny Griffin called 'A Blowing Session' (1957) which also featured both Coltrane and Mobley (as well as the leader, Griffin) on tenor saxaphone, along with the absolutely all star line-up of Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. I eventually got a copy (I seem to remember having it specially ordered at the old Dearborn Music store on Monroe St.), and soon afterward, by this time significantly impressed by his playing, I bought the first of many albums recorded under Hank Mobley's leadership: 'Workout' (1962). That one is probably still my favourite of all his albums as a leader (at least partially due to the great Grant Green's exceptional guitar playing!); like Mr. Ansell (and many others) I am also very fond of 'Soul Station' (1960) & 'Roll Call' (1961), those three being the albums most would name as his best work, but I've also become quite partial to 'Hi Voltage' (1967), which is not widely considered to be one of his best works. At this point, I am fortunate enough to have copies of many of his records, and listening to jazz recordings by Hank Mobley and many other fine musicians is an inseparable part of my daily life.

I haven't gone off on a tangent here, nor am I pointlessly rambling on, reminiscing about my own particular history and tastes as a jazz listener. The reason I'm going through all this is to, hopefully, illustrate that for those in my own generation (or age cohort), and certainly for those who are even younger, there never was any question of whether Hank Mobley deserved to have the same stature as John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. By the time I encountered his work more than three decades ago, he simply had that stature, and it was abundantly clear even then that he had earned it. For me, personally, I simply took it for granted from the day I picked up that 'Two Tenors' record- after all, he shared top billing with Coltrane on the cover, and it would be extremely difficult to evaluate whether one out-played the other on that session. The same thing is true most of the other times they were recorded together. It is really nothing more than a matter of personal taste; at the end of the day, I don't dislike the way Sonny Rollins plays- I'm simply a bit more partial to the work of John Coltrane and Hank Mobley. Like the man said, your mileage may vary!

This brings me to the only thing that Mr. Ansell said in this book with which I vehemently disagree. Toward the end of the book, he made some comment to the effect that any comparison of Hank Mobley's playing to the playing of Wardell Gray is "ridiculous". Well, I think the statement itself is ridiculous. This is because it was precisely the fact that Hank Mobley's phrasing reminded me a little bit of not only Wardell Gray, but occasionally even of Lucky Thompson, that his playing appealed to me in the first place. You can only compare a musician you are hearing for the first time to others with whom you are already familiar. When I first heard Hank Mobley, my knowledge of music was still fairly limited, but even then I could hear that the fluid lightness of his phrasing had more in common with Wardell Gray's than with, for example, the smooth but very muscular phrasing of Dexter Gordon. Mr. Ansell states several times in the book that, in his view, Hank Mobley took far more stylistic influence from Charlie Parker than he ever did from Lester Young, and I would agree with that. On the other hand, I would say that while it is true that Mr. Mobley's style and tone were certainly more muscular and aggressive than Lester Young, Lucky Thompson, and perhaps even Wardell Gray, he still played with a far lighter touch than either Dexter Gordon (who also had a somewhat gruff, foggy tone) or indeed Charlie Parker (on either alto or tenor), who most often used a more aggressive style and powerful tone.

And for the record, while I love and regularly listen to the music all of them made, if I could listen to only one of them for the rest of my life I would still have to choose Dexter Gordon, just as I would have done forty years ago...

[Chris Greene · Rating 1 out of 5]

A TERRIBLE book about one of my favorite musicians. It would have been nice to read a musical analysis of Mobley's music from a musician or musical historian instead of a gushing fanboy. All anedotes in the book have a second-hand feel. Everything smacks of hearsay. The most underrated tenor saxophonist of all time deserves better than this shitty book.

[Alex C · Rating 4 out of 5]

A steller player

Hank Mobley was a private person. We learn that from the biography. Not many details were known about him.
Whats left is his musical legacy and this is dealt with the authors opinions of which recordings are essential and which are better than others.
I give a charitable 4 stars because I'm a huge Hank Mobley fan and think other fans will also want to know as much as possible though this book doesn't shed much new information on its subject. If it only gets Mobley's name back into the public it's worth the stars.
As for the journalistic questions....
Who? Mobley was a private person and a bit of an enigma, want to know more? You wont find it here
What? A great jazz musician never given his due. Details?...not many.
Why? We don't really find out. The author speculates some.
Where? Places are laid out but not much about interactions or details.....yes he was in Europe but other than giving the places and dates there's not much interaction and no explanation of why he moved back. Places are stated but not described much. I like the info about his Paris stay.
When? Recording dates are given though this is no real discography with air checks and such.
Ansell is obviously a fan and it was an good read to inspire me to listen to my Mobley recordings.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nicely structured and well-reasoned treatise on the work of the great Hank Mobley. Author Derek Ansell doesn't spend much time on Mobley's biography (much of which is unknown or known only through anecdotal testimony), but instead focuses on a mostly chronological walk-through his recorded output and its highlights. He offers passionate arguments about the virtues and value of specific tracks and albums. Although the book is occasionally repetitive, it continually sends the reader back to the music, and I found myself listening to my entire collection of Mobley's work, appreciating it anew and seeking out the few items I am missing from his large discography. This is a long overdue tribute to the fabulous music of a shy and introverted man who was ill-suited to cope with the "business" side of music. I might quibble about a few items I think he over or under-rates, but Derek Ansell has done jazz and Mobley a great service here

[Karon McNutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hank was one of the best.

This book is a nice story of a great sax player. I learned a lot about his life and career. His lines are so cool.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Mobley, but sadly the writing of this bio is very mediocre, making the whole thing rather a dull read.

[Enno · Rating 2 out of 5]

i had hoped for more biografical information & stories about his life. instead the book focusses on an enumeration of his recordings, and, as there are so many, the read becomes a bit repetitive.