Tag: Hard Bop

Hank Mobley on This I Dig Of You

Hank Mobley tends to be a polarizing figure. 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.

Feather clarified his position in the 1968 Mobley bio for Blue Note:

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.

As I listened to Mobley for this transcription, the word that came to mind to describe his sound was unencumbered. Putting aside tonal characteristics, I find his vocabulary to be firmly based in the bebop idiom, rhythmically inventive, and original.

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.”

Applying those descriptors to Mobley’s sound seems fitting to me: sophisticated, soulful, complex, earthly, swinging.

Here is Hank Mobley soloing over his own composition, This I Dig Of You.

 

 

Red Garland on Oleo

Red Garland was the pianist for Miles Davis’ group that became known as the First Great Quintet. Stylistically, he is known for his block chord style, but for this week’s transcription we will look at an example of his virtuosic 8th-note lines.

The album Relaxin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet was one of several albums the group recorded for Prestige between 1956 and 1961. This excerpt is taken from the beginning of Garland’s solo on the tune Oleo (a popular “Rhythm Changes” tune by Sonny Rollins).

Red Garland on Oleo

 

Things to note:

  • most of the solo takes place below middle C on the piano
  • frequent use of enclosing chromatic notes. Chord tones are often approached from above and below by chromatic neighbors.
  • I have placed brackets around a few notes where the connecting notes are not heard clearly and probably not played at the recorded tempo. My instinct is that these are the “intended” notes but the tempo does not allow for them to come out cleanly.
  • Garland often plays four or more measures of solid eighth-notes without rests, but when he does rest, it feels just right.

 

 

Transcription Tuesday: Donald Byrd on “On It”

Donald Byrd’s solo on Elmo Hope’s “On It” is a particularly clear example of the hard bop aesthetic. Over the 12-bar blues structure Byrd deftly incorporates both bebop vocabulary and elements of the blues language.

For this transcription, I’ve included three versions—For C, Bb, and Eb instruments. You can flip through them using the arrows.

Update: a previous version of this post had the transcriptions in the wrong key. This should be fixed now.

Transcription Tuesday: Billy Higgins on The Sidewinder

Allaboutjazz.com calls Billy Higgins “reportedly the most recorded jazz drummer in history, and certainly one of the most beloved.”

Here is an excerpt from “The Sidewinder,” one of his classic grooves, (iTunes link).

Some things to note:

  1. The time feel is famously somewhere between straight and swing.
  2. Seemingly insignificant details make it work. For instance, Higgins lays out on the very first beat of the head and enters on beat 2.
  3. Higgins sticks the exact same groove with no improvisation until partway through the first solo. Sometimes simple is best.

Billy Higgins on Sidewinder

Transcription Tuesday: Joe Zawinul on Unit 7

I first heard Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley several years ago while searching for great arrangements for a jazz quintet plus vocalist. At the time, I was focused on the first half of the album that features Nancy Wilson and didn’t pay much attention to the final five instrumental tracks.

I’m happy to say that I’m in the process of rectifying this oversight and the first tune I am focusing on is Sam Jones’ “Unit 7.”

I particularly like the way Joe Zawinul incorporates bebop and blues vocabulary in his solo. The form of the tune is “blues with a bridge” in the key of C. The sections marked A, B, and D are each 12-bars in length while C functions as an 8-bar bridge. The blues progression is slightly non-standard, with an Abmaj7 chord in bar 9 (and, by extension, 21 & 41) that leads to G7alt in bar 10 (and its companions). This harmonic motion is common in a minor blues progression, but less so in a major blues like this one. Also listen for the “Lady Bird” turnaround that happens at the end of many of the phrases (C – Eb- Ab- Db). Zawinul outlines this turnaround clearly at the end of the bridge in bars 31 and 32.