Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s^[1] to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.

David H. Rosenthal contends in his book Hard Bop that the genre is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of African-American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music^[2]:24. Prominent jazz musicians included Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Miles Davis and Tadd Dameron .

Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop."^[1][3] The "funky" label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style.^[3] The descriptor is also used to describe soul jazz, which is commonly associated with hard bop.^[1][3] According to Mark C. Gridley, soul jazz more specifically refers to music with "an earthy, bluesy melodic concept and... repetitive, dance-like rhythms.... Note that some listeners make no distinction between 'soul-jazz' and 'funky hard bop,' and many musicians don't consider 'soul-jazz' to be continuous with 'hard bop.'"^[1] The term "soul" suggests the church, and traditional gospel music elements such as "amen chords" (the plagal cadence) and triadic harmonies seemed to suddenly appear in jazz during the era.^[3]

History[link]

Hard bop first developed in the mid-1950s, and is generally seen as originating with The Jazz Messengers, a quartet led by pianist Horace Silver and drummer Art Blakey.^[3][4] Some saw hard bop as a response to cool jazz and west coast jazz.^[4] As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill explain, "the hard bop school... saw the new instrumentation and compositional devices used by cool musicians as gimmicks rather than valid developments of the jazz tradition."^[3] However, Shelly Manne suggested that cool jazz and hard bop simply reflected their respective geographic environments: the relaxed cool jazz style reflected a more relaxed lifestyle in California, while driving bop typified the New York scene.^[5] Some writers, such as James Lincoln Collier, suggest that the style was an attempt to recapture jazz as a form of African American expression.^[6] Whether or not this was the intent, many musicians quickly adopted the style, regardless of race.^[3]

Michael Cuscuna maintains that Silver and Blakey's efforts were in response to the New York bebop scene:

Both Art and Horace were very, very aware of what they wanted to do. They wanted to get away from the jazz scene of the early '50s, which was the Birdland scene—you hire Phil Woods or Charlie Parker or J. J. Johnson, they come and sit in with the house rhythm section, and they only play blues and standards that everybody knows. There's no rehearsal, there's no thought given to the audience. Both Horace and Art knew that the only way to get the jazz audience back and make it bigger than ever was to really make music that was memorable and planned, where you consider the audience and keep everything short. They really liked digging into blues and gospel, things with universal appeal. So they put together what was to be called the Jazz Messengers.^[7]

Rosenthal sees the development of hard bop as a response to both a decline in bebop and the rise of rhythm and blues:

The early fifties saw an extremely dynamic rhythm-and-blues scene take shape.... This music, and not cool jazz, was what chronologically separated bebop and hard bop in ghettos. Young jazz musicians, of course, enjoyed and listened to these R & B sounds which, among other things, began the amalgam of blues and gospel that would later be dubbed 'soul music.' And it is in this vigorously creative black pop music, at a time when bebop seemed to have lost both its direction and its audience, that some of hard bop's roots may be found.^[2]:24

A key recording in the early development of hard bop was Silver's composition "The Preacher," which was considered "old-timey" or "corny," such that Blue Note head Alfred Lion was hesitant to record the song.^[2]:38[7] However, the song became a successful hit.^[7]

Miles Davis, who had performed the title track of his album Walkin' at the inaugural Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, would form the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane in 1955, becoming prominent in hard bop before moving on to other styles.^[4] Other early documents were the two volumes of the Blue Note albums A Night at Birdland, also from 1954, recorded by the Jazz Messengers at Birdland months before the Davis set at Newport. Clifford Brown, the trumpeter on the Birdland albums, formed the Brown-Roach Quintet with drummer Max Roach.

The hard bop style enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz. According to Nat Hentoff in his 1957 liner notes for the Blakey Columbia LP of the same name,^{[clarification needed]} the phrase "hard bop" was originated by author-critic-pianist John Mehegan, jazz reviewer of the New York Herald Tribune at that time.

Other musicians who contributed prominently to the hard bop style include Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Drew, Bill Evans, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Carl Perkins (pianist),^[3] Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, and Sonny Stitt.

Noteworthy performances[link]

• A Night at Birdland (Vols. 1, 2, 3), Art Blakey 1954
• Walkin', Miles Davis 1954
• Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver 1955
• Blue Train, John Coltrane 1957
• Moanin', Art Blakey 1958
• Finger Poppin', Horace Silver 1959
• Work Song, Nat Adderley 1960
• Soul Station, Hank Mobley 1960
• Ready for Freddie, Freddie Hubbard 1961
• Page One, Joe Henderson 1963

See also[link]

• List of hard bop musicians

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Hard Bop Homepage
• Art Blakey University, School of Hard Bop

Look up hard or hardness in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Hard or Hardness may refer to:

• Hardness, resistance of physical materials to change under force
• Hard water, water with a high mineral content
• NP-hard, a term used in Computational complexity theory
• Hard, Austria, a town in Austria
• Hard (Zürich), a quarter in Zürich
• Hard (tennis), a type of tennis court
• Hard (music festival), concerts and live events
• Hard, or hard-on, a slang term for an erection
• Hard (nautical), a firm or paved beach or slope convenient for hauling vessels out of the water
• Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, abbreviated H.A.R.D.

Music

• Hard (band), a Hungarian hard rock supergroup
• Hard (Brainpower album)
• Hard (Gang of Four album)
• Hard (Jagged Edge album)
• "Hard" (song), by Rihanna

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Look up bop in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

BOP or bop may refer to:

• bop, a smack, strike, or punch
• bop, (to bop or boppin') a style to dance solo to rockabilly or blues music, common since the 1950s
• bop, shortened form of Bebop, an early modern jazz developed in the 1940s
  • hard bop, a style of jazz music that is extension of bebop (or "bop") music
• bop, organised party or club night at many British universities
• bop, west coast U.S. slang for whore
• Bop (magazine) an American magazine for teens
• Bop (Dan Seals song), a single by Dan Seals, released in 1986

Abbreviations[link]

• Balance of Power
• Border Observation Post - United States Military Border Observation Post.
• Bureau of Prisons - United States Bureau of Prisons.
• Blow Out Preventer - a large valve used in oil or natural gas drilling
• Business Owners Policy
• Bird of paradise - a family of birds
• Border outpost / Border out post or Border observation post
• Bill of process - in Product lifecycle management
• Bird of prey, eagles, owls and other raptors
• BOP reagent, Benzotriazole-1-yl-oxy-tris-(dimethylamino)-phosphonium hexafluorophosphate
• Breach of the peace (common law)
• Brew on Premises
• Big Open Party, name of university-wide parties organized by the college common rooms at the University of Oxford.
• Best Operating Practice (used by Thames Water to describe operation of water and waste water treatment plants in the UK)
• Bind on Pickup, Items that become bound to a character in MMORPGS upon looting
• Basic Oxygen Process - a method of steelmaking

In economics[link]

• Balance of payments, measure of payments that flow between any individual country and all other countries.
• Base or bottom of pyramid, the largest, but poorest socio-economic group.

Places[link]

• Bay of Pigs, in Cuba; the site of the abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion by ex-Cubans, supported by the U.S.
• The Bay of Plenty Region, New Zealand
  • The Bay of Plenty, for which the region is named
• Bophuthatswana, South Africa
• Border Pacific Railroad, a short-line railroad headquartered in Rio Grande City, Texas, United States
• Bowes Park railway station, London, England; National Rail station code BOP

Entities[link]

• Brown Opera Productions, a student-run opera company at Brown University
• balance of payments, measures the payments that flow between any individual country and all other countries
• bleeding on probing, expression used by dentists to signify gingival (gum) bleeding on mechanical stimulation by a probe
• Bottom of the Pyramid (or Base of the Pyramid, or Bottom of the Pile); a reference to the large class of those in extreme poverty
• Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac. An acronym denoting common parts and specifications across engine and automobile offerings from these three General Motors divisions.
• Federal Bureau of Prisons, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department
• Businessowners policy, a type of insurance policy
• Balance of Power
• Balance of Plant, a logical section in nuclear power plants and boiler control systems
• Bond Order Potential, a form of interatomic potential used, for example, in molecular dynamics simulations

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Sonny Rollins
Background information
Birth name	Theodore Walter Rollins
Also known as	Newk, Colossus, Uncle Don
Born	(1930-09-07) September 7, 1930 (age 81)
Origin	New York, New York, United States
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Saxophonist
Instruments	Tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
Labels	Prestige, Blue Note, Contemporary, RCA Victor, Impulse!, Milestone
Associated acts	Jackie McLean, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk

Sonny Rollins at Stockholm Jazz Fest 2009

Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930 in New York City)^[1] is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians.^[1] A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Although Rollins was born in New York City, his parents were born in the United States Virgin Islands.^[2] Rollins received his first saxophone at age 13. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. He said that a concert by Frank Sinatra there, accompanied by a plea for racial harmony, changed his life.^[3][4][5]

Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high-school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor. He was first recorded in 1949 with Babs Gonzales ( J. J. Johnson was the arranger of the group). In his recordings through 1954, he played with performers such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.^[6]

In 1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery and given a sentence of three years. He spent 10 months in Rikers Island jail before he was released on parole. In 1952 he was arrested for violating the terms of his parole by using heroin.^{[citation needed]} Rollins was assigned to the Federal Medical Center, Lexington, at the time the only assistance in the U.S. for drug addicts. While there he was a volunteer for then-experimental methadone therapy and was able to break his heroin habit.^{[citation needed]} Rollins himself initially feared sobriety would impair his musicianship, but then went on to greater success.

As a saxophonist he had initially been attracted to the jump and R&B sounds of performers like Louis Jordan, but soon became drawn into the mainstream tenor saxophone tradition. Joachim Berendt has described this tradition as sitting between the two poles of the strong sonority of Coleman Hawkins and the light flexible phrasing of Lester Young, which did so much to inspire the fleet improvisation of be-bop in the 1950s.^[7]

Rollins began to make a name for himself in 1949 as he recorded with J. J. Johnson and Bud Powell what would later be called "Hard Bop", with Miles Davis in 1951, with the Modern Jazz Quartet and with Thelonious Monk in 1953, but the breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo" "Airegin" and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis. Rollins then joined the Miles Davis Quintet in the summer of 1955, but left after a short stay to deal with his drug problems.^[8][9] Rollins was invited later in 1955 to join the Clifford Brown–Max Roach quintet; studio recordings documenting his time in the band are the albums Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street and Sonny Rollins Plus 4. After Brown's death in 1956 Rollins began his subsequent career as a leader, his first long-playing albums released on Prestige Records. He also recorded during the 1950s for Blue Note, Riverside, and the Los Angeles label Contemporary.

[edit] Saxophone Colossus

His widely acclaimed album Saxophone Colossus was recorded on June 22, 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, former Jazz Messengers bassist Doug Watkins and his favorite drummer Max Roach. This was Rollins' sixth recording as a leader and it included his best-known composition "St. Thomas", a Caribbean calypso based on a tune sung to him by his mother in his childhood, as well as the fast bebop number "Strode Rode", and "Moritat" (the Kurt Weill composition also known as "Mack the Knife").^[1]

In 1956 he also recorded Tenor Madness, using Miles Davis' group – pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The title track is the only recording of Rollins with John Coltrane, who was also in Davis' group.^[1]

At the end of the year Rollins recorded a set for Blue Note with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Gene Ramey on bass, and Rollins' long-term collaborator Max Roach on drums. This has been released as Sonny Rollins Volume One (the superstar session Volume Two recorded the following year has consistently outsold it).

The pianoless trio[link]

In 1957 he pioneered the use of bass and drums (without piano) as accompaniment for his saxophone solos. This texture came to be known as "strolling". Two early tenor/bass/drums trio recordings are Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957). Rollins uses the trio format intermittently throughout his career, sometimes taking the unusual step of using his sax as a rhythm section instrument during bass and drum solos. Way Out West was so named because it was recorded for a California-based record label (with L.A. stalwart drummer Shelly Manne), and because the record included country and western songs such as "Wagon Wheels" and "I'm an Old Cowhand". The Village Vanguard CD consists of two sets, a matinee with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete LaRoca and then the evening set with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones.

By this time, Rollins had become well known for taking relatively banal or unconventional material (such as "There's No Business Like Show Business" on Work Time, "I'm an Old Cowhand", and later "Sweet Leilani" on the Grammy-winning CD This Is What I Do) and turning it into a vehicle for improvisation.

1957's Newk's Time saw him working with a piano again, in this case Wynton Kelly, but one of the most highly regarded tracks is a saxophone/drum duet, "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" with Philly Joe Jones. Also that year he recorded for Blue Note with a star-studded line-up of J. J. Johnson on trombone, Horace Silver or Thelonious Monk on piano and drummer Art Blakey (released as Sonny Rollins Volume 2).

In 1958 Rollins recorded another landmark piece for saxophone, bass and drums trio: The Freedom Suite. His original sleeve notes said, "How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."^[10]

The title track is a 19-minute improvised bluesy suite, much of it interaction between Rollins' saxophone and the drums of Max Roach, some of it very tense. However the album was not all politics – the other side featured hard bop workouts of popular show tunes. The bassist was Oscar Pettiford. The LP was only briefly available in its original form, before the record company repackaged it as Shadow Waltz, the title of another piece on the record.

Finally in 1958 Rollins made one more studio album before taking a three-year break from recording. This was another session for Los Angeles based Contemporary Records and saw Rollins recording an esoteric mixture of tunes including "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody" with a West Coast group made up of pianist Hampton Hawes, guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Shelly Manne.

1959 to 1971[link]

By 1959, Rollins was frustrated with what he perceived as his own musical limitations and took the first – and most famous – of his musical sabbaticals. To spare a neighboring expectant mother the sound of his practice routine, Rollins ventured to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice. Upon his return to the jazz scene in 1962 he named his "comeback" album The Bridge at the start of a contract with RCA Records, recorded with a quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall and still no piano. The rhythm section was Ben Riley on drums and bassist Bob Cranshaw. This became one of Rollins' best-selling records.

The contract with RCA lasted until 1964 and saw Rollins remain one of the most adventurous musicians around. Each album he recorded differed radically from the previous one. Rollins explored Latin rhythms on What's New; tackled the avant-garde on Our Man in Jazz featuring Bob Cranshaw on bass, Billy Higgins on drums and Don Cherry on pocket trumpet; played with a tenor saxophone hero, Coleman Hawkins, on Sonny Meets Hawk, re-examined jazz standards on Now's the Time and some great American songbook standards on The Standard Sonny Rollins.

His 1965 residency at Ronnie Scott's legendary jazz club has recently emerged on CD as Live in London, a series of releases from the Harkit label; they offer a very different picture of his playing from the studio albums of the period. (These are unauthorized releases, and Rollins has responded by "bootlegging" them himself and releasing them on his website.) He then provided the soundtrack to the 1966 version of Alfie while recording for Impulse! records, which also produced East Broadway Run Down, Next Album, There Will Never Be Another You, and Sonny Rollins on Impulse!.

1972 to 2000[link]

Sonny Rollins

Rollins took his most recent sabbatical to study yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophies. When he returned in 1972, it was clear that he had become enamored of R&B, pop, and funk rhythms. His bands throughout the 1970s and 1980s featured electric guitar, electric bass, and usually more pop- or funk-oriented drummers. For most of this period he recorded for Milestone Records and the compilation Silver City: A Celebration of 25 Years on Milestone contains a selection from these years. The 70s and 80s were not all disco though and it was during this period that Rollins' passion for unaccompanied saxophone solos came to the forefront. In 1985 he released The Solo Album.

In 1981, Rollins was asked to play uncredited on three tracks by The Rolling Stones for their album Tattoo You, including the single, "Waiting on a Friend".^[11]

In 1986 Documentary filmmaker Robert Mugge released a film titled Saxophone Colossus. It featured two Rollins performances: a quintet in upstate New York and his Concerto for Saxophone and Symphony in Japan.

2001 to present[link]

Sonny Rollins at Newport in 2008

Critics such as Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch have noted the disparity between Sonny Rollins the recording artist, and Sonny Rollins the concert artist. In a May 2005 New Yorker profile, Crouch wrote of Rollins the concert artist:

"Over and over, decade after decade, from the late seventies through the eighties and nineties, there he is, Sonny Rollins, the saxophone colossus, playing somewhere in the world, some afternoon or some eight o'clock somewhere, pursuing the combination of emotion, memory, thought, and aesthetic design with a command that allows him to achieve spontaneous grandiloquence. With its brass body, its pearl-button keys, its mouthpiece, and its cane reed, the horn becomes the vessel for the epic of Rollins' talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors."

Rollins won a 2001 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for This Is What I Do (2000).^[12] On September 11, 2001, the 71-year-old Rollins, who lived several blocks away, heard the World Trade Center collapse, and was forced to evacuate his apartment, with only his saxophone in hand. Although he was shaken, he traveled to Boston five days later to play a concert at the Berklee School of Music. The live recording of that performance was released on CD in 2005, Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert, which won the 2006 Grammy for Jazz Instrumental Solo for Sonny's performance of "Why Was I Born?".^[12] Rollins was presented with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2004, but sadly that year also saw the death of his wife Lucille.^[12]

In 2006, Rollins went on to complete a Down Beat Readers Poll triple win for: "Jazzman of the Year", "#1 Tenor Sax Player", and "Recording of the Year" for the CD Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert). The band that year was led by his nephew, trombonist Clifton Anderson, and included bassist Bob Cranshaw, pianist Stephen Scott, percussionist Kimati Dinizulu, and drummer Perry Wilson.

After a highly successful Japanese tour Rollins returned to the recording studio for the first time in five years to record the Grammy-nominated CD Sonny, Please (2006). The CD title is derived from one of his late wife's favorite phrases. The album was released on Rollins' own label, Doxy Records, following his departure from Milestone Records after many years and was produced by Clifton Anderson. Rollins' band at this time, and on this album, included Bob Cranshaw, guitarist Bobby Broom, drummer Steve Jordan and Kimati Dinizulu.

Rollins performed at Carnegie Hall on September 18, 2007, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his first performance there. Appearing with him were Clifton Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Kimati Dinizulu (percussion), Roy Haynes (drums) and Christian McBride (bass).^[13]

September 25, 2009, Rollins performed to a packed crowd at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. The personnel was similar to the Carnegie Hall performance; Clifton Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Kobie Watkins, drums, Sammy Figueroa (percussion).^[14]

On June 27, 2010, Rollins played at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Montreal's Place-des-Arts for the 31st annual Montreal Jazz Festival, accompanied by, among others, Bob Cranshaw and Russell Malone. Prior to this show, he received the Miles Davis Award.^[15]

He also released on Doxy/Emarcy Records, 2 critically acclaimed albums from his archives: Road Shows: Vol. 1 and Road Shows 2 (with 4 tracks documenting his 80th birthday concert, which includes Rollins' first ever appearance with 'new thing' master Ornette Coleman on the 20 minute "Sonnymoon for Two".

Tributes and legacy[link]

Rollins is recognized for the length and quality of his career, one not easily matched in the world of music. His melodic sensibilities, playing style and solos have influenced several generations of musicians.^[1]

On September 7th 2011, his 81st birthday, Sonny Rollins was named as an honoree for the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.

Rollins was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.^[16]

The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota officially named October 31, 2006 after Rollins in honor of his achievements and contributions to the world of jazz.

In 2007 Rollins received the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, Sweden, together with Steve Reich, and Colby College awarded him a Doctor of Music, honoris causa, for his contributions to jazz.

Rollins was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1973.

The cover of Donald Fagen's 1982 LP The Nightfly shows Fagen playing Rollins' 1958 LP Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders. The cover of Joe Jackson's 1984 A&M album Body and Soul is a replica of Rollins' 1957 Blue Note album Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2.

In The Simpsons Episode 6 Season 1, jazz musician Bleeding Gums Murphy plays the saxophone on a bridge in the middle of the night, a reference to Rollins famously playing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Discography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Blancq, Charles. (1983). Sonny Rollins: The journey of a jazzman. Boston: Twayne.
• Nisenson, Eric (2000). Open Sky, Sonny Rollins and his world of Improvisation. Da Capo Books: Printing Press. 
• Christian Broecking (2010). Sonny Rollins - Improvisation und Protest. Creative People Books / Broecking Verlag, ISBN 978-3-938763-29-2

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sonny Rollins

• Sonny Rollins Official Website

Henry (Hank) Mobley (July 7, 1930 – May 30, 1986) was an American hard bop and soul jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Stan Getz. In addition, as his style was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players like Sonny Rollins and Coltrane. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed he is "one of the more underrated musicians of the bop era."^[1]

Biography[link]

Mobley was born in Eastman, Georgia, but was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, near Newark. When he was 16, an illness kept him in the house for several months. His uncle thought of buying a saxophone to help him occupy his time. It was then that Mobley began to play sax. He tried to enter a music school in Newark, but couldn't, since he was not a resident, so he kept studying through books at home. At 19, he started to play with local bands and, months later, worked for the first time with musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach.^[2] He took part in one of the earliest hard bop sessions, alongside Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Doug Watkins and trumpeter Kenny Dorham. The results of these sessions were released as Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers. They contrasted with the classical pretensions of cool jazz, with Mobley's rich lyricism being bluesier, alongside the funky approach of Horace Silver. When The Jazz Messengers split in 1956, Mobley continued on with pianist Horace Silver for a short time, although he did work again with Blakey some years later, when the drummer appeared on Mobley's albums in the early 1960s.

During the 1960s, he worked chiefly as a leader, recording over 20 albums for Blue Note Records between 1955 and 1970, including Soul Station (1960), generally considered to be his finest recording,^[3] and Roll Call (1960). He performed with many of the other important hard bop players, such as Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Clark, Wynton Kelly and Philly Joe Jones, and formed a particularly productive partnership with trumpeter Lee Morgan. Mobley is widely recognized as one of the great composers of originals in the hard-bop era, with interesting chord changes and room for soloists to stretch out.

Mobley spent a brief time in 1961 with Miles Davis, during the trumpeter's search for a replacement for John Coltrane. He is heard on the album Someday My Prince Will Come (alongside Coltrane, who returned for the recording of two tracks), and some live recordings (In Person: Live at the Blackhawk and At Carnegie Hall). Though considered by some as not having the improvisational fire of Coltrane, Mobley was known for his melodic playing.

Mobley was forced to retire in the mid-1970s due to lung problems. He worked two engagements at the Angry Squire in New York City November 22 and 23, 1985 and January 11, 1986 in a quartet with Duke Jordan and guest singer Lodi Carr a few months before his death from pneumonia in 1986.

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

As sideman[link]

with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

• At The Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1 (1955) Blue Note
• At The Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 2 (1955) Blue Note
• The Jazz Messengers (1956) Columbia
• The Cool Voice Of Rita Reys (1956) Colombia
• At the Jazz Corner of the World (1959) Blue Note

with Kenny Burrell

• All Night Long (1956) Prestige
• K.B.'s Blues (1957) Blue Note

with Donald Byrd

• Byrd's Eye View (1955) Transition
• Byrd in Flight (1960) Blue Note
• A New Perspective (1963) Blue Note
• Mustang! (1966) Blue Note
• Blackjack (1967) Blue Note

with Sonny Clark

• Dial "S" for Sonny (1957) Blue Note
• My Conception (1959) Blue Note

with John Coltrane, Zoot Sims & Al Cohn

• Tenor Conclave (1956) Prestige

with Miles Davis

• Someday My Prince Will Come (1961) Columbia
• In Person Friday Night at the Blackhawk (1961) Columbia
• In Person Saturday Night at the Blackhawk (1961) Columbia
• Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall (1961) Columbia

with Kenny Dorham

• Afro-Cuban (1955) Blue Note
• Whistle Stop (1961) Blue Note

with Kenny Drew

• Undercurrent (1960) Blue Note

with Art Farmer

• Farmers Market (1957) Prestige

with Curtis Fuller

• The Opener (1957) Blue Note
• Sliding Easy (1959) United Artists

With Dizzy Gillespie

• Afro (Norgran, 1954)
• Dizzy and Strings (Norgran, 1954)
• Jazz Recital (Norgran, 1955)

with Grant Green

• I Want to Hold Your Hand (1965) Blue Note

with Johnny Griffin

• A Blowin' Session (1957) Blue Note

with Freddie Hubbard

• Goin' Up (1960) Blue Note
• Blue Spirits (1965) Blue Note

with Jay Jay Johnson

• The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson Volume 2 (1955) Blue Note

with Elvin Jones

• Together! (Atlantic, 1961) with Philly Joe Jones
• Midnight Walk (Atlantic, 1966)

with Lee Morgan

• Introducing Lee Morgan (1956) Savoy
• Lee Morgan Sextet (1957) Blue Note
• Cornbread (1965) Blue Note
• Charisma (1966) Blue Note
• The Rajah (1966) Blue Note

with Dizzy Reece

• Star Bright (1959) Blue Note

with Freddie Roach

• Good Move! (1963) Blue Note

with Max Roach

• The Max Roach Quartet Featuring Hank Mobley (1953) Debut Records
• Max Roach + 4 (1957) Emarcy
• Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker (1957) Emarcy

with Archie Shepp

• Yasmina, a Black Woman (1969) BYG
• Poem for Malcolm (1969) BYG

with Horace Silver

• Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955) Blue Note
• Silver's Blue (1956)
• 6 Pieces of Silver (1956) Blue Note
• The Stylings of Silver (1957) Blue Note

with Jimmy Smith

• A Date with Jimmy Smith Volume One (1957) Blue Note
• A Date with Jimmy Smith Volume Two (1957) Blue Note

Bibliography[link]

• Derek Ansell, Workout: The Music of Hank Mobley. London: Northway Publications, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9550908-8-2

References[link]

External links[link]

• Sample: The Dip