30 October 2008

An underrated post...

'Bout time for some jazz today...



The word that keeps popping up in every bio I've read of Tenor Sax cat Hank Mobley is "underrated". Apparently Hank got no shine going up against folks like Sonny and Trane, but now it's all love. Which means squat to Hank now since he's dead. I imagine if he were to come back from the grave, his first words would be something along the lines of "Fuck all y'all!" Yes, I imagine Hank Mobley to be a bitter, bitter man. I have nothing to base this on, but I'm gonna just go with it, okay? You know who else is underrated? Oates. Fuck Hall. Somebody had to say it. Anyhoo, when you're underrated, that means that you're good, and Hank Mobley was good at music. Here's an original he penned, with a couple guys who were actually pretty accurately rated (as awesome) named Donald Byrd on trumpet and Herbie Hancock on piano. I bet Hank hated their accurately rated guts...

Hank Mobley - Up A Step (ysi)







If you ask me, that piano riff at the beginning is just begging to be sampled. It's an underrated sample, that. And how 'bout YouTube? No Hank. Totally getting underrated there, too. Man, I bet he is pissed...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Underrated my ass. The guy played with every Jazz legend in the book - Ellington, Dizzy, Miles, Horace Silver, max Roach, Art Blakey, on and on. He was referred to as "the middleweight champion of the tenor sax". If anything kept him off his game, it was a bad drug habit, and eventually, bad health.
He made some great records in his time, particularly the Blue Note stuff. Good tune there.