Greasin’ Easy melody performed on guitar.
Hank Mobley. Damn, what else can you say?
I first got hip to Hank Mobley from the BlueNote Record, Soul Station. When I was just taking my first steps into American jazz music, I lived with a houseful of horn players. They would literally take my guitar driven rock CD’s out of the player and toss them aside for the great horn improvisers. For those of you who don’t know a time before widespread digital media, there was an era when you had get up off the couch, walk over to the disc player and change it. Many people spent small fortunes amassing collections of discs. The format was light years ahead of the tape cassettes the proceeded them. It marked what many people consider to be the golden era of music sales.
Hank Mobley, the great American tenor saxophonist.
Back to Soul Station… Every track on this album is a masterpiece. Greasin’ Easy is no exception. Starting off with Wynton Kelly bringing the band in on the piano with his signature touch. The rest of the quaretet is a calling list of the top jazz musicians of the day; Paul Chambers on Bass, Art Blakey on Drums and the ‘fifth man’ Rudy Van Gelder capturing that one of kind sound.
Hank plays the riff and it is so laid back and grooving. It repeats twice and then straight into the solos. So simple. So perfect. Any student looking to learn how to play over the blues would do well to transcribe the solo. It is beautifully chromatic, but so smooth you can barely tell.
I highly recommend this album to anyone who likes music. Make that anyone with a pulse and not deaf. Deaf people should listen to this album too.
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