Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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As of this afternoon I neither knew that James Moody was still alive nor that he died yesterday of cancer at age 85. My first acquaintance with this great saxophonist's music was in the 1970s, on a reissue of Eddie Jefferson's 1959 "vocalese" album The Jazz Singer. Jefferson was a genius at composing lyrics for famed instrumental melodies and performing them in a bop style, including all the inflections and phrasing idiosyncrasies of the originals. Moody's best-known melody originated in 1949 as an improvised solo based on an older composition called "I'm In The Mood For Love." Ten years later Moody played tenor on Jefferson's rendition, and in a funny turn of fate, he ultimately embraced the vocalese version and staked his own claim on it. Here is a 1991 performance of Moody's Mood featuring the great man on the vocal, in the company of other giants including Lionel Hampton, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, and Hank Jones. Just listen to how the melody unfolds, with inventive flourishes surely inspired by Charlie Parker.



Unfortunately and oddly, I can neither find a version of Jefferson's rendition nor Moody's 1949 seminal performance, so you can't gain a full appreciation for development of the melody or its nuances. Moody was a saxophonist, and his vocals were mostly novelty affairs along the lines of how his mentor Dizzy Gillespie would sing. His performance of Moody's Mood here, like others I've heard, is both heartfelt and hilarious, but it doesn't communicate the stunning greatness of the solo. But it definitely conveys something about the man.

I've recently bought several late 1940s recordings of Dizzy Gillespie's experimental bop big band---an ill-fated venture due to postwar music industry economics---and discovered that Moody was right there with Diz at the beginning of an era. I intend to pay closer attention to liner notes as I listen to these discs in coming weeks so I can try to better appreciate James Moody's earliest excursions into bop, even before Moody's Mood.

Moody's Mood For Love, with Lionel Hampton and the Golden Men of Jazz (1991, "Live At The Blue Note," Telarc Jazz), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.