Search - Hank Mobley :: Thinking of Home

Well Worth It

Michael Hardin | South Duxbury, Vermont United States | 02/25/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a good later Hank Mobley Album. The group is made up of some fantastic musicians, Woody Shaw is one of my favorite trumpeters, and Cedar Walton is a fine pianist, very well suited for Mobley's style and conception. There's some great guitar work from Eddie Diehl and the rest of the rhythm section is solid, with Mickey Bass on bass and Lex Humphries behind the kit.The tunes are originals, four from Mobley and one from Bass. Highlights are the title track, a suite that is made up of three different but connected pieces, and "Justine," a little more open and contemplative than the general Mobley mold. The latter is stretched out for thirteen minutes, and features good work from Shaw, Walton and Diehl, but Mobley is a little choppy and doesn't seem to know what to do with the bridge. The rest of the tunes are a little more casual and the feel is more relaxed and less serious.Though Mobley sounds kind of drunk at times throughout this album, it's a worthwhile purchase for someone who has decided they like Hank Mobley and want to see some later work. It's not a great first Mobley album just because there are some earlier ones, like Roll Call, that are classics and should be appreciated first."

Make up your own mind - i love it

Daddy | Australia | 05/24/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this record. I've got a few Hank mobley discs and this is the one i listen to most. Yep soul station is great , roll call too but this most definitely is also a gem. Hank sounds great and woody shaw steals the show. wow!All the musicians are first rate , great guitarist too.It's a shame all the negative hype that surrounds Hank Mobley, that stops people appreciating the MUSIC on its own terms."

Still ringworthy.

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 12/04/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The so-called "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone," Mobley has no peers when it comes to unfettered, non-formulaic, free-flowing melodic inventiveness, 1954-1963, whether it's his own date or someone else's. He's the all-purpose, all-occasion tenor player incapable of wearing out his welcome, his unforced, musky, soulful sound always the perfect complement to the extraordinary substance of his solos.



The problems begin to appear as early as 1964, as pressured by the market place and the success of "Sidewinder" and "Rumproller" formulaic sessions, Hank along with other Blue Note artists attempted to come up with another profit-maker for ailing Blue Note records (which kept some of his best work locked in the can until bought out by EMI years later). Moreover, the "new thing"--Coltrane, Coleman, Shorter modalities--begin to gnaw away at Mobley's natural strengths, inducing him to adopt musical personae that didn't fit him.



"Thinking of Home" is a refreshing, somewhat surprising Mobley session, especially for such a late date in the tenor great's career. No "boogaloo" commercial formula tunes, but excessive "open-ended" modal ideas on which Mobley sounds awkward and somewhat limited, his tone rather dead and lifeless compared to his glory years ("Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers" on Columbia, "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia" or "Soul Station," both on Blue Note).



It's definitely a Van Gelder-engineered session--the by-now predictable, frequency-deficient Cedar Walton piano sound, the overly-boosted bass, overly-separated horns, with Shaw's reverb-enhanced trumpet coming from some other studio. Even as a Mobley completest, I've been unloading most of his post-1965 work. This one certainly won't make it to the top of the pile, but at least it's worth hanging on to for a while."