Hank Mobley – A Caddy for Daddy (UHQCD)

Hank Mobley was the epitome of the perfect artist for Blue Note in the 1960s. Between 1955 and 1970, the tenor saxophonist was extremely active as a solo artist and sideman. Recorded in 1965 with a first-class sextet consisting of trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist McCoy Tyner, double bassist Bob Cranshaw, and drummer Billy Higgins, the album “A Caddy For Daddy” was already his 19th (!) recording for Blue Note under his own name and is certainly one of his best. Allmusic awarded the album four and a half out of five stars.

The band’s easy camaraderie elevates the music in this set of four Mobley originals and Wayne Shorter’s “Venus Di Mildew” to a higher level. The album opens with the catchy title track, a classic mid-’60s Blue Note groove piece driven by Higgins’ Boogaloo beat, and also includes lesser-known Mobley pieces such as the rousing minor-key waltz “The Morning After”, the powerful “Ace Deuce Trey” with its unexpected harmonic twists, and the brightly swinging finale “3rd Time Around”, which the band keeps moving with changing time signatures throughout.

As part of the extremely popular “Blue Note 85th Anniversary Reissue Series”, Universal Music Japan presents the sonically impressive remastering of this jazz classic by the legendary Kevin Gray, who is also responsible for the analog reissues of Blue Note US such as “Tone Poet” and “Classic Vinyl” – as a limited-edition Japan only UHQCD with OBI Stripe. The recording session for “A Caddy For Daddy” took place on December 18, 1965 at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. Unlike conventional CDs, UHQCDs are not pressed from polycarbonate, but cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. Another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied to the softer photopolymer for scratch protection. The combination results in significantly reduced reflection of laser light inside the CD and an unmatched precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with standard CD players. Musically, the result is a sound image strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.

While Universal Music Japan’s first UHQCD series relied on the DSD data of previous SHM-SACD releases, with increasing popularity, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACD are now appearing. Typically, the Universal Archive master tapes are re-converted to DSD for this purpose. UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not own an SACD player.

Lista pieselor

UHQCD

1. A Caddy For Daddy

2. The Morning After

3. Venus Di Mildew

4. Ace Deuce Trey

5. 3rd Time Around