In particular, I enjoy Ellington’s use of motivic development and use of space. I have heard that Thelonious Monk’s unique piano style was influenced by Duke Ellington, and listening to this solo I can hear the connection. (The track is currently available on the album The Great Summit which also includes material recorded at the same time but originally released separately.) The tune Duke’s Place is the opening track from the 1961 LP Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington: Together For The First Time. The melody is probably better known as “C Jam Blues,” which is the original title of the instrumental version recorded by the Ellington band in 1942. Here is Hank Mobley soloing over his own composition, This I Dig Of You. In his current Blue Note bio, Mobley is credited as a pioneer of the hard bop sound, described as “jazz that balanced sophistication and soulfulness, complexity and earthy swing,and whose loose structure allowed for extended improvisations.”Īpplying those descriptors to Mobley’s sound seems fitting to me: sophisticated, soulful, complex, earthly, swinging. Putting aside tonal characteristics, I find his vocabulary to be firmly based in the bebop idiom, rhythmically inventive, and original. Hank is the middleweight champion because his sound, as he once put it himself, is “not a big sound, not a small sound, just a round sound” and because, while fads and fancies change, he has remained for some 15 years a consistently successful performer, working almost exclusively as a sideman except on records, and retaining a firm, loyal following.Īs I listened to Mobley for this transcription, the word that came to mind to describe his sound was unencumbered. He was famously called the “middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” by jazz critic Leonard Feather positioning him between “heavyweights” such as John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins, and “tonal lightweights” like Stan Getz and his ilk.įeather clarified his position in the 1968 Mobley bio for Blue Note: These ideas really fit into his approach naturally they're as far from contrived as can be.Hank Mobley tends to be a polarizing figure. It's interesting how clichés don't sound like clichés the way that he phrases certain familiar melodic ideas my first instinct is that this has to do with authenticity in some way, that Jones was the progenitor or at least early adopter of many of these ideas with Bird and the original bebop musicians, but I think it also has much to do with the overall aesthetic of his playing. I haven't checked out Hank Jones enough (this is the first solo of his that I've transcribed), but I'm looking forward to digging into more of his improvisations in the near future. In some ways, I hear a strong Bill Evans influence (or at least confluence) in some of Chris Potter's rhythmic bebop phrasing-all the instantaneous shifts of momentum in a line with interpolated triplets, arpeggio fragments, and eight note-two sixteenths constructions that I originally found so refreshing in Chris's playing I rediscovered in Bill's single-line playing a few years ago. I don't think many would disagree that Bill Evans and Hank Jones are two pianists who are most reliably described as "elegant." They're definitely two of the more mainstream, more widely disseminated stylists of the jazz piano tradition, but certainly for good reason. Ever since Miguel has been having me transcribe classic '60s Blue Note Herbie for my lessons, I've been increasingly cognizant of the great players in the bebop tradition and thought I'd take a closer look at their improvisations. In retrospect, I still think that was a good call, but I thought I'd make up for last week with an extra solo. Last week I passed on Transcription Tuesday because I had made a pledge with some friends not to bring our laptops to Vermont during spring break.
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