Hank Mobley
A Slice of the Top

Hank Mobley, described by Leonard Feather as "The middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone," was among the most unjustly overlooked and forgotten American jazz saxophonists by music critics and his own audience. Yet he was part of the ensembles of some of the greatest musicians of his time such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Johnny Griffin, and Art Blakey, providing his significant contribution to some of the most important and appreciated recordings in jazz history.

Hank, born in Georgia in 1930, was raised in the Newark area of New Jersey, where he began to play as a self-taught musician. At 19, he attempted to break onto the music scene in the "Big Apple," first with the alto sax, then moving to the tenor sax, and finally to the baritone sax, having realized it was utterly pointless to compete with the great Charlie "Bird" Parker.

His unmistakable tone and style were enriched by his vivid musical creativity. However, due to his reserved and solitary personality (he granted only two interviews in his entire career), and especially due to his drug addiction (the plight of many, indeed too many jazz musicians), many of his records remained unreleased while he was still alive. In fact, Mobley himself declared in an interview: "I have about five records on the shelf: Blue Note signed half the black musicians in New York City, and now the records are lying around. What they do is hold them and wait for you to die." A statement that was, to say the least, prophetic, considering that at his death at the age of just 56 on May 30, 1986, he had been forgotten by all and was practically living in poverty.

Mobley's first conviction for heroin possession and dealing, in fact, came at least three years before he himself became dependent, leading to probation, followed by two periods of incarceration, the first at the end of the 1950s and the second in 1964.

During this second period in prison, he wrote all five tracks of an album inspired by the listening of "Birth of the Cool" by Miles Davis. Once the writing of the pieces was completed, in the early months of 1966, he handed the music and a series of detailed instructions to the great Duke Pearson who handled the arrangements. Hank's esteem and admiration for Pearson is well known, so much so that he wrote to him: "'If I do it, it might take me two weeks, but you can do it in one day'."

In short, this is the story of the genesis of "A Slice of the Top" (LT 995), recorded at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs (NJ) on March 18, 1966, under the aegis of Alfred Lion, the Guru of Blue Note Records, with the splendid arrangements by Duke Pearson and Mobley himself.

This album, however, was released only thirteen years later, as part of the LT Series. The reason for its "burial" in Blue Note's vast archives, until Michael Cuscuna unearthed it in 1979, remains a great mystery to this day, especially since, along with "Soul Station" (1960), it is undoubtedly Mobley's best creation, but also one of the best recordings ever captured by the label during that period.

The line-up selected by our band-leader is composed of the monumental: Lee Morgan on trumpet, Bernard McKinney aka Kiane Zawadi on euphonium (better known as a baritone flugelhorn), Howard Johnson on tuba, James Spaulding on alto saxophone and flute, McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums.

This incredible octet offers us an unusual mix of five brass instruments: Mobley's tenor sax opposed to Spaulding's alto sax and flute, to which is added Lee Morgan's "spiced" trumpet. Finally, Johnson's mid-register tuba and Zawadi's euphonium steer the heavy register toward a more lively and cheerful sound, quite different from the conventional pairing of baritone horns and trombones typical of the Hard Bop jazz scene of that period.

It starts with "Hank's Other Bag," where the listener takes pleasure in savoring the beauty of Mobley's tone, who, influenced by Miles Davis and Trane, consciously gave up the pursuit of detail to focus all his energy on rhythm. This is very evident in the solo of "A Touch of the Blues" on the B-side of the record, consisting largely of simple rhythmic figures, something that would have been inconceivable just a few years earlier.

A notable feature of this masterpiece is also the unusual structure of its compositions. In "A Touch of the Blues," for example, there are a good 40 bars; moreover, the eccentric Eastern-esque vamp (a short melodic or harmonic sequence repeated continuously, in other words a loop) occupying 16 of the 24 bars in "Slice of the Top," as well as the vamp supporting the minor waltz in "Cute 'N' Pretty." Meanwhile, in "Hank's Other Bag," at first, it seems like Hank returns to the usual realm of his Hard Bop themes, but suddenly the melody takes a bright turn with a structure of 28 bars.

In my opinion, the ballad "Lull In My Life" is the most compelling track on the album, constituting another example of how Hank's expository talent is capable of making a remarkable ballad without altering its original content. The extraordinary improvisation of the second chorus rests on a dense rhythmic weave, which Mobley creates by adding double-time melodies to Higgins' double-time, much clearer and brighter than in the solo of "Hank's Other Bag."

The 1970s and '80s were a very difficult period for Mobley. He frequently moved between New York and Chicago, where he led an extraordinary quintet that included drummer Wilbur Campbell and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. In the mid-seventies, he permanently settled in Philadelphia, where he worked intermittently because he underwent two thoracic surgeries due to emphysema developed from smoking, which prevented him from playing for long periods. His last engagements were at the Angry Squire in New York in November 1985 and January 1986 with pianist Duke Jordan's quartet. He died four months later following a respiratory crisis due to severe pneumonia.

From his last recordings, although retaining all the energy and clarity of ideas Mobley was capable of, one can sense the subtle foreboding of an imminent end. His sound became harsher and edgier, almost as if to counteract the approaching adverse events that would soon overwhelm him. There is all the frustration of someone who, despite having all the qualifications to become great, was instead forced into the background. After all, isn't it precisely the pain that permeates blues music, the essential component of jazz, as a form of liberation and redemption of the human soul cast into the world and forced to face the affronts of life day by day?

"It's hard for me to think about what could have been and what should have been. I've lived with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk; I've walked up and down the street with them. I didn't know what it was like to hear them cry, until it happened to me." Hank Mobley.