More Mobley

I picked up an excellent box set this week: Hank Mobley: The Complete Blue Note Fifties Sessions. I can't imagine that very many copies of this have sold, except to libraries. But it is six CDs of very fine jazz, covering one of the most important periods in the history of our music. I haven't had time to really study the box, but it does seem to me that there is a real shift in sophistication from the earlier fifties to the latter in Mobley's work. The first few discs just seem to me to be more light-hearted, more let's have a good time and sing some songs. By disc six, Mobley is trying to ride the wave a bit more. Now that I think about it, I am losing confidence.

Maybe you can tell. Here is piece from the first disc (Hank Mobley (ts) Horace Silver (p) Doug Watkins (b) Art Blakey (d).

Hank Mobley/Love for Sale/The Hank Mobley Quartet

And here is one of my favorite standards, from a 1958 date (Lee Morgan (tp) Hank Mobley (ts) Wynton Kelly (p) Paul Chambers (b) Charlie Persip (d) ):

Hank Mobley/Speak Low/Peckin

I don't know Charlie Persip, but the rest of the band is twenty-four karat. Lee Morgan is gorgeous, and Wynton Kelly does what he does. There is a lot of great jazz still out there! Enjoy, and if you do, drop me a line. I am getting really lonely here.