The only film of Hank Mobley

[Ian Thumwood]

I think that the absence of Hank Mobley and Albert Ayler on film is symptomatic of a broader problem in jazz in that large swathes of musicians are absent from either film or more significantly audio recordings. It has always struck me how someone from what is effective modern history like Buddy Bolden can be so elusive from the historical records whereas in this country you would be able to find out a lot about a descendent who lived in the 1890s. As someone who is has a keen interest in history, it always strikes me that our levels of understanding about Bolden are almost on a par with historical figures from the medieval period. (Thinking about what we know about Simon De Montfort, for example, about whom I recently finished reading a book.)

Seeing as recording was still in it's infancy when jazz emerged, I am almost inclined to be surprised what was recorded prior to 1917 whilst wishing at the same time that Edison had pulled his finger out and developed the recording cylinder much earlier. Even during the Swing Era, there was a proliferation of bands and musicians who never made it to record who were supposedly deserving higher stature in the music. You get a lot of this with the Territory Bands of the 30s and 40s who frequently toured the States and usually included a fair sprinkling of soloists who would either go on to make names for themselves in other big bands or who went on to become involved in the Be-bop movement. There are bands like Speed Webb's who never made it to wax although were captured in early sound films or later outfits such as Nat Towle's which was considered to be one of the best big bands in the country and on a par with Lunceford's at least.

With players like Mobley it does seem strange from retrospect that he never appeared in film. I can understand why Ayler is missing because his career coincided with a period when people had stopped listening to Jazz and his music is even very niche in 2020. Mobley is probably less understandable but looking through his discography last night, it is actually quite salutary to see just how many of his albums on Blue Notes were issued in the 1980s and not at the time they were recorded. This equates to almost 50% of the material available in the 1960s and by the time he cut his last album, musical tastes had moved on and his covers of then popular hits would have hinted of desperation. (Incidentally, the ratings for the albums are fascinating as they are consistently high - even something like "Roll Call" which suffers from lacklustre material and a badly out of tune piano.) I just get the impression that Mobley's reputation took a long while to establish itself and coupled with his addictions, you can appreciate why television producers would have overlooked him. I think Blue Note's cult status does distort jazz history insofar that records have grown in reputation beyond that of the time when they were issued. I wonder just how often other players like Sonny Clark, Herbie Nichols, Clifford Brown, Blue Mitchell, Freddie Redd, etc, etc made it to the small screen? It is also worthwhile noting that the whole Hard Bop movement was effectively over and done with in about 15 years even if it's legacy continued on afterwards as these musicians worked on beyond their middle age. To put things in perspective, the whole movement was at the peak of it's powers for a period that is equivalent to the career of a musician such as Soweto Kinch who most people on here would consider to be new and contemporary. It is difficult to imagine that a player like Mobley would have enjoyed the kind of following outside of jazz that players such as Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck enjoyed and by the time television had become less of a luxury, Mobley was in effective retirement.

[Jazzrook]

Ian

A brief clip of Freddie Redd in the film of 'The Connection':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=frOgv6UNGiA

& Clifford Brown on 'Soupy Sales TV Show'!:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=9iuP3CfFZDQ

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"The Connection" is a good film! I've got it somewhere on DVD. I'll dig it out tonight and toast Jackie et al with a coool bottle of Malbec. Red for Redd.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think that the absence of Hank Mobley and Albert Ayler on film is symptomatic of a broader problem in jazz in that large swathes of musicians are absent from either film or more significantly audio recordings. It has always struck me how someone from what is effective modern history like Buddy Bolden can be so elusive from the historical records whereas in this country you would be able to find out a lot about a descendent who lived in the 1890s. As someone who is has a keen interest in history, it always strikes me that our levels of understanding about Bolden are almost on a par with historical figures from the medieval period. (Thinking about what we know about Simon De Montfort, for example, about whom I recently finished reading a book.)

Seeing as recording was still in it's infancy when jazz emerged, I am almost inclined to be surprised what was recorded prior to 1917 whilst wishing at the same time that Edison had pulled his finger out and developed the recording cylinder much earlier. Even during the Swing Era, there was a proliferation of bands and musicians who never made it to record who were supposedly deserving higher stature in the music. You get a lot of this with the Territory Bands of the 30s and 40s who frequently toured the States and usually included a fair sprinkling of soloists who would either go on to make names for themselves in other big bands or who went on to become involved in the Be-bop movement. There are bands like Speed Webb's who never made it to wax although were captured in early sound films or later outfits such as Nat Towle's which was considered to be one of the best big bands in the country and on a par with Lunceford's at least.

With players like Mobley it does seem strange from retrospect that he never appeared in film. I can understand why Ayler is missing because his career coincided with a period when people had stopped listening to Jazz and his music is even very niche in 2020. Mobley is probably less understandable but looking through his discography last night, it is actually quite salutary to see just how many of his albums on Blue Notes were issued in the 1980s and not at the time they were recorded. This equates to almost 50% of the material available in the 1960s and by the time he cut his last album, musical tastes had moved on and his covers of then popular hits would have hinted of desperation. (Incidentally, the ratings for the albums are fascinating as they are consistently high - even something like "Roll Call" which suffers from lacklustre material and a badly out of tune piano.) I just get the impression that Mobley's reputation took a long while to establish itself and coupled with his addictions, you can appreciate why television producers would have overlooked him. I think Blue Note's cult status does distort jazz history insofar that records have grown in reputation beyond that of the time when they were issued. I wonder just how often other players like Sonny Clark, Herbie Nichols, Clifford Brown, Blue Mitchell, Freddie Redd, etc, etc made it to the small screen? It is also worthwhile noting that the whole Hard Bop movement was effectively over and done with in about 15 years even if it's legacy continued on afterwards as these musicians worked on beyond their middle age. To put things in perspective, the whole movement was at the peak of it's powers for a period that is equivalent to the career of a musician such as Soweto Kinch who most people on here would consider to be new and contemporary. It is difficult to imagine that a player like Mobley would have enjoyed the kind of following outside of jazz that players such as Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck enjoyed and by the time television had become less of a luxury, Mobley was in effective retirement.

Another factor may be that when politically, socially and historically progress slows and almost goes on hold, it allows for re-assessment of those once swept to the wayside amid the tides of gallivanting advance. I remember someone saying something similar about relatively conservative composers of the interwar period such as Zemlinsky, back in the 1980s. No one was interested in Zemlinsky at a time when anything not taking music further than Schoenberg was thought passé.

[Ian Thumwood]

[QUOTE=Serial_Apologist;793550]Another factor may be that when politically, socially and historically progress slows and almost goes on hold, it allows for re-assessment of those once swept to the wayside amid the tides of gallivanting advance. I remember someone saying something similar about relatively conservative composers of the interwar period such as Zemlinsky, back in the 1980s. No one was interested in Zemlinsky at a time when anything not taking music further than Schoenberg was thought passé.[/QUOTE

The real threat to Mobley's generation was not any "advance" in jazz but the fact that rock had supplanted the music in popularity. Clubs were closing in the late 60s and the scene changed with the consequence that jazz could no longer claim to be part of popular culture. You can therefore appreciate why some of his contemporaries held little interest to the media as jazz became increasingly specialist. There was no longer the situation as had happened throughout the 30s and 40s where bands were making short films which were the equivalent of today's videos. The size of many of the big bands featured also meant that a fair number of musicians were captured in film albeit in a context that they might not have preferred. In addition to these "shorts", bands often feature in a lot of films in the 1940s as they were effectively the pop music of the day.

My personal opinion about the development of jazz is that it happened too quick. Jazz broadly covered the same territory Classical music took 500 years to achieve between the period of 1917 - 1970 and it still continues to evolve. By the 1980s, this effectively meant that you could still hear musicians from the 1920s such as Tommy Benford, Benny Waters, Jabbo Smith or Art Hodes, big band leaders like Goodman, Herman and Basie, a swathe of bop musicians and the likes of Jan Garbarek or John Zorn theoretically on the same night. The main consequence of the rapid development of jazz is that it left so many corners unexplored that the music remains ripe for exploration. A lot of the mainstream players performing in the 1950s were still very much middle aged at a time when most people associated the likes of Miles Davis as being typical of this era.

Interesting to see the clip with Freddie Red!

[Serial_Apologist]

[QUOTE=Ian Thumwood;793617]

Another factor may be that when politically, socially and historically progress slows and almost goes on hold, it allows for re-assessment of those once swept to the wayside amid the tides of gallivanting advance. I remember someone saying something similar about relatively conservative composers of the interwar period such as Zemlinsky, back in the 1980s. No one was interested in Zemlinsky at a time when anything not taking music further than Schoenberg was thought passé.[/QUOTE

The real threat to Mobley's generation was not any "advance" in jazz but the fact that rock had supplanted the music in popularity. Clubs were closing in the late 60s and the scene changed with the consequence that jazz could no longer claim to be part of popular culture. You can therefore appreciate why some of his contemporaries held little interest to the media as jazz became increasingly specialist. There was no longer the situation as had happened throughout the 30s and 40s where bands were making short films which were the equivalent of today's videos. The size of many of the big bands featured also meant that a fair number of musicians were captured in film albeit in a context that they might not have preferred. In addition to these "shorts", bands often feature in a lot of films in the 1940s as they were effectively the pop music of the day.

My personal opinion about the development of jazz is that it happened too quick. Jazz broadly covered the same territory Classical music took 500 years to achieve between the period of 1917 - 1970 and it still continues to evolve. By the 1980s, this effectively meant that you could still hear musicians from the 1920s such as Tommy Benford, Benny Waters, Jabbo Smith or Art Hodes, big band leaders like Goodman, Herman and Basie, a swathe of bop musicians and the likes of Jan Garbarek or John Zorn theoretically on the same night. The main consequence of the rapid development of jazz is that it left so many corners unexplored that the music remains ripe for exploration. A lot of the mainstream players performing in the 1950s were still very much middle aged at a time when most people associated the likes of Miles Davis as being typical of this era.

Interesting to see the clip with Freddie Red!

Aha, Ian - I think we've hit upon the area where we most fundamentally disagree. I don't happen to think jazz development happened too quick: I think the pressures for its idiom to advance were an expression of its revolutionary nature in a time of social and racial upheaval, and came from the intersection of two pressures within the music in operation since the late 30s as black musicians began to confront marginalisation by the music business in the drive to promote and champion white bands and personalities.

Firstly, there was the straining at the boundaries of adopted and adapted possibilities already inherent in western musical advance - chromatic elaboration, mastery in marshalling instrumental forces - as contending innovators of the rising bebop generation challenged western academic notions of the inherent superiority of the Euroclassical heritage in a bid to demonstrate jazz as being on a par... down to its very roots. Secondly (but equally), inasmuch that the new-found performance principles of bebop, viz. the increased emancipation of "sidemen" into greater equivalence in terms of input with front-line soloist, to be furthered with the coming of free jazz, these very principles exemplified in combination how contemporary jazz could make its own declaration of equal value with the great classics, while doing this on its own terms.

Why jazz should have wished to do this is another question; we have to consider the second-class position of blacks in American society as something that was always to be challenged on the terms of American capitalism - this being the only socieconomic system in situ in which the struggle for equal legitimacy could be fought at the same time as challenging, as part of a much bigger bid for historical change, the very moral, political and historical legitimacy of a system whose success had been built on slavery followed by further racial oppression and discrimination.

This was what jazz needed to face up to, and the urgency of the issues involved - and the inadequacy of existing popular white-dominated forms such as Country music and rock and roll to do this due to their rapidly understood elementarily reductive commercial exploitability - made it vital to continue to plug the direction(s) set by the predecessors, even when those selfsame predecessors themselves had elected to ease up on the direction... which, of course, has continued to be the case with once-radical figureheads right to the present. Such is the richness and complexity of jazz that the two ends of its spectrum - the radical cutting edge at one end and the bid for popular appeal without too much caving in to commercial pressures on the other - that the "middle course" has been able selectively to gain from each, so that, as with the classical repertoire, we have in Keith Tippett's choice of words, the creators and the curators: the former giving the push without which jazz as a revolutionary musical force in society would die, the latter providing an incentive to refer back, courtesy those vintage recordings we are blessed with, to reassess those earlier pioneers and respect their contributions for where they were leading the music as much as in their own right.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I think you under-estimate a lot of great and important jazz. I do not see jazz divided as "cutting edge" or "commercial" as these are largely just constraints put on the music which reflect the times when a particular idiom may have been popular, whether we are talking about the shock value of ODJB, the big bands if the 30's and 40's, artists like Peterson and Brubeck in the 50s or fusion in the 70's.

There is so many avenues in jazz that were either not fully explored at the time or that have taken decades to be understood. For me, this is the great strength of jazz and why it is great not only to look at whatever is new or exciting, but also explore earlier styles which may have been overlooked. It has taken a long while for the likes of Andrew Hill or Herbie Nichols to be understood, for example. There have been plenty of musicians whose ideas offer inspiration across the decades, whether it Erik Friedlander exploring Oscar Pettiford or Bill Frisell being influenced by Eddie Lang and the off-kilter music of the likes of Adrian Rollini. Keith Tippett's comments are spot on although I am personally glad that there is such a variety in jazz which means I can listen to Louis Armstrong one minute and then check out Maria Schneider the next. In Mobley's case, I don't feel it was a matter of becoming passe and feel that the jazz musicians of the 1960s were unfortunate to confront rock and soul as being more popular so tat their career's suffered as a result. This is no different to what happened in the early 1930s when the preference for crooners and sweet bands effectively drove jazz underground albeit the likes of Benny Goodman, etc were instrumental in salvaging the situation. You can appreciate why Mobley might not be recorded on film for the historical record although I don't think this denigrates his music which was right on the money when he was on form.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA

I think you under-estimate a lot of great and important jazz. I do not see jazz divided as "cutting edge" or "commercial" as these are largely just constraints put on the music which reflect the times when a particular idiom may have been popular, whether we are talking about the shock value of ODJB, the big bands if the 30's and 40's, artists like Peterson and Brubeck in the 50s or fusion in the 70's.

There is so many avenues in jazz that were either not fully explored at the time or that have taken decades to be understood. For me, this is the great strength of jazz and why it is great not only to look at whatever is new or exciting, but also explore earlier styles which may have been overlooked. It has taken a long while for the likes of Andrew Hill or Herbie Nichols to be understood, for example. There have been plenty of musicians whose ideas offer inspiration across the decades, whether it Erik Friedlander exploring Oscar Pettiford or Bill Frisell being influenced by Eddie Lang and the off-kilter music of the likes of Adrian Rollini. Keith Tippett's comments are spot on although I am personally glad that there is such a variety in jazz which means I can listen to Louis Armstrong one minute and then check out Maria Schneider the next. In Mobley's case, I don't feel it was a matter of becoming passe and feel that the jazz musicians of the 1960s were unfortunate to confront rock and soul as being more popular so tat their career's suffered as a result. This is no different to what happened in the early 1930s when the preference for crooners and sweet bands effectively drove jazz underground albeit the likes of Benny Goodman, etc were instrumental in salvaging the situation. You can appreciate why Mobley might not be recorded on film for the historical record although I don't think this denigrates his music which was right on the money when he was on form.

Thanks for the reply Ian.

For me, for a cutting edge to be there is the vital spark without which jazz would have just stagnated and succumbed permanently to commercial or racial pressures. Like yourself I too love the musicians who might be said to occupy a middle ground between maintaining a continuity or the accepted tropes of traditional lines, but getting to grips with the avant-garde is for me of utmost importance, and has often challenged my own conception of where legitimate boundaries lie. The main emphasis I want to put forward is that, for me at any rate, it is easier to identify with the music of the time I am living through than with that of a past era when people thought differently and whose priorities were germane to their times not mine. It's the difference between identifying with characters in a modern play or film and trying to figure out the ways and manners displayed in a Jane Austen novel or period drama: interesting to see how they did and thought things differently, the past is another country etc., but other than admiring the artifact as one might a Ming vase or Regency chaise longue for how it works as an integrated form, one can only appreciate in terms of something in the process of becoming. I can't remember now somebody remarking on the Marsalis view of things that Coleman Hawkins would have looked back on the wonderful work he achieved in the 1930s through its recordings, but from the vantage point of the advances of the 1960s he was making but could never have envisaged in the 1930s, whereas the curator, looking back as if on something static and unrelated to the changing circumstances around it, wants historically, or rather ahistorically, to freeze it. It's revealing to hear the past through the present, or where the past was going, which can only be known retrospectively, and partially at that! How can the past be viewed otherwise?! - just from another, hopefully more informed perspective.