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A Slice of the Top

The quantity and quality of the sessions that were recorded for Blue Note records but not released until many years after the fact almost beggars belief. One imagines the increasingly adverse commercial climate for jazz as the '60s wore on must have played a significant part in that. Even so, some of their decisions seem baffling in retrospect. Saxophonist Hank Mobley's A Slice of the Top is a prime example: recorded in '66; released in '79. Personally I think it's one of his finest outings, and a better record than those adjacent to it in his discography (A Caddy for Daddy and Hi Voltage), both of which were given more timely releases. 

A Slice of the Top is unique in Mobley's output for having been written and arranged for an octet. The usual suspects of tenor sax (Mobley); alto sax (James Spaulding); trumpet (Lee Morgan); piano (McCoy Tyner); bass (Bob Cranshaw) and drums (Billy Higgins) were augmented by euphonium (Kiane Zawadi) and tuba (Howard Johnson) to create an enriched instrumental blend. Mobley had apparently composed the music while imprisoned for a drugs offence, with Duke Pearson called in to arrange the four tunes for the ensemble Mobley had in mind. Also on the record is a rendition of the '30s ballad 'There's a Lull in my Life'.

The results are terrific: it's soulful, tuneful, generous music with sharp solos and well-rounded unison playing. The recording isn't one of Blue Note's best - one wonders if the extra brassy bass may have posed some tricky technical challenges for Rudy Van Gelder. I'd had the album in download form for years before my covetousness led me to spend the better part of £20 for a gently-used mid-'90s CD copy of it (from the "Blue Note Connoisseur Series").

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