Looking for Hard Bop suggestions

You need to hear these:

Horace Silver: Finger Poppin'; The Tokyo Blues; The Cape Verdean Blues; Serenade To A Soul Sister

Art Blakey...: The Big Beat; The Freedom Rider; Mosaic; Free For All

Hank Mobley: Roll Call; No Room For Squares; The Turnaround; Straight No Filter

Jackie McLean: Jackie's Bag; Bluesnik; Jacknife

Donald Byrd: Fuego; The Cat Walk; Royal Flush; Slow Drag

 

Katanga - Curtis Amy and Dupree Bolton

 

This thread has some of my favorites mentioned. Dumb question follows : There are a bunch of titles I have not heard. How do I refer back to this thread on the forum? Does this post mean it will be in my "watched threads" ?

 

If you reply to a thread, it usually makes it as "watched" for you.

 

You can also search using Hard Bop

 

yes. you can also watch a thread without posting to it by clicking the 'watch thread' link beneath and to the right of the bolded title at the top of every page in the thread.

 

giant steps is absolutely a hard bop record. the title cut is literally the textbook definition of a hard bop tune--as in given as an (excellent) example in actual textbooks.

the Miles and Herbie are kinda post-bop flavored modal, I suppose, more so maiden voyage. not sure how the poster thought of out to lunch! though.

 

Coltrane defies labels!

 

Art Blakey Moanin'
Horace Silver Song for my Father
Lee Morgan The Sidewinder, and
Hank Mobley Soul Station

seem to me good places to start.

 

The Blue Note stuff is superb but I can't believe the best hard bop group of the era hasn't been mentioned yet, the Clifford Brown/Max Roach band. All the albums they made are classics of the hard bop genre and in Clifford Brown you had the best trumpet player of his generation, who influenced all the Blue Note players like Lee Morgan.

Buy anything with their name on.

 

Don't forget Stanley Turrentine.

 

Wow! I have got to get this. I have Harold Land's "The Fox" with Boltons' amazing solo on the title track and was unaware of any other recordings of him in his prime period before he "disappeared" for a couple of decades.

Be sure to check out the wealth of great West Coast hard bop recordings. I don't want to use the h-word (hipsters) but ignore any and all New York jazz elitists who look down their nose at West Coast jazz. And actually a great percentage of the edgier NY jazz artists Mingus, Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Ornette Coleman - all came up on the West Coast!

Hampton Hawes, Harold Land, Shelly Mann and his Men, Barney Kessel, Art Pepper were among the many exceptional West Coast leaders and side-men.
Pacific Jazz and Contemporary Records were a couple of great labels. Hard to go wrong with most titles on these - just like Blue Note. Contemporary also was known for exceptionally great sound as our host has pointed out on occasion.

 

I mentioned Brownie on a different Jazz thread, but yeah the Brownie box from Emarcy and the smaller Blue Note/Pacific box is essential Hard Bop listening.

 

Oh, I learned that a long time ago!

 

The last 2 posters I quoted are right, and Dolphy's Out to Lunch certainly isn't hard bop.

 

I wouldn't call Out To Lunch Hard Bop either, but it's a good transition album to go from Hard Bop to the later 60s Avant Garde.

 

I would assume that anyone posting a thread about hard bop would already know about Brown/Roach and Blakey.

 

Some strange stuff being included in the "hard bop" genre in this thread -- Shape of Jazz to Come? Out to Lunch? Miles Smiles? Great, great albums; some of my all-time faves, but not remotely hard bop records.

How about what many consider if not the progenitor at least the avatar of the style, Miles' Walkin'? Or for that matter all the great Miles '50s stuff -- the four Prestige albums from the famous Van Gelder session: Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', Steamin' -- and Bag's Groove (especially the portion of the 12" album that was originally the Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins 10"), and even In Person at the Blackhawk, which is post-modal, post-KoB Miles, but really is a slamming hard bop session.

And Max Roach-Clifford Brown band albums.

 

I'd suggest Outward Bound or the Five Spot albums with Booker Little if someone who knows bop or hard bop wants to start listening to Dolphy.

 

I hadn't seen that someone had mentioned Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. If anything is not hard bop, this is it. Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch and Miles Davis' albums with his 1960s Quintet aren't hard bop either, of course. Some people seem to have a strange idea of hard bop.

The Clifford Brown/Max Roach albums are quintessential hard bop, and so are Horace Silver's and Art Blakey's albums and the Miles Davis 1950s ones you mentioned.

 

BTW, given that people apparently think of The Shape of Jazz to Come and Miles Smiles as hard bop, David Rosenthal's slender primer on the subject, which does include a selected discography, is a good entry vehicle for the curious. http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Bop-Black-Music-1955-1965/dp/0195085566

 

I would have been reluctant to call Brown/Roach "hard bop," more a great latter-day bop group without the r&b or gospel element that I think is key to hard bop, but certainly everyone should hear them.

 

I agree. Same goes for Giant Steps. But I tend to think of Miles Davis and John Coltrane as genres unto themselves.

 

Blakey's Free for All sextet album dates from 1964 and has Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, just before he joined Miles' 1960s Quintet. It's a bit more advanced than Blakey's 1950s output, which might be more to your liking, especially the early quintet albums A Night at Birdland Vols.1-2 (1954) with Clifford Brown (trumpet) and Lou Donaldson (alto saxophone) and At the Cafe Bohemia Vols.1-2 (1955) with Kenny Dorham (trumpet) and Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone).