Dig Dis

Hank Mobley (tenor sax), Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Art Blakey (drums). From the album Soul Station (1960).

Both Horace Silver and Art Blakey knew what they wanted to do. They weren’t interested in the way jazz was played in the early 1950s: the club hired a soloist who played with the usual rhythm section blues and standards that everyone knew. There were no rehearsals nor did the audience matter. Silver and Blakey knew that to change things thay had to compose new music and take the audience into account.

Since they both liked blues and gospel, they formed a group they called Jazz Messengers. Silver’s song “The Preacher” was instrumental in the initial development of hard bop. Miles Davis formed his quintet in 1955 with John Coltrane, with whom they excelled playing hard bop before moving on to other styles, and another important group was formed by Clifford Brown and Max Roach.

Kelly makes a long introduction and after a drumroll of Blakey the group begins to expose the theme at mid-tempo. After several call and response phrases between Mobley and the rest of the band, he starts his solo on the blues harmonies. It’s a conventional blues that Mobley deals fluently and introducing faster phrases as the solo progresses. Kelly follows him as bluesy and unhurried, although he also slowly becomes more an more animated, and finally the group re-exposes the theme.