Soul Station (album)

Soul Station is an album by jazz saxophonist Hank Mobley, released in 1960 on Blue Note Records, catalogue BLP 4031. Along with Roll Call, the LP which followed this release, this is one of Mobley's best-known albums. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio and rooted in the hard bop idiom, Mobley's quartet features his past bandleader in the Jazz Messengers, Art Blakey, and two future bandmates from his time in the Miles Davis Quintet, Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers. The album's bookends are two standards, "Remember" by Irving Berlin and "If I Should Lose You" by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin. Between these standards are four new Mobley compositions, featuring the bluesy title track and the uptempo "This I Dig of You."

In the liner notes to the Rudy Van Gelder CD edition, longtime jazz critic and author Bob Blumenthal explains how the album is understood to be, for Mobley, what Saxophone Colossus or Giant Steps were for Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane respectively. Blumenthal goes on to describe the recording as "one of the finest programs of music on Blue Note or any other label."

Personnel

 * Hank Mobley — tenor saxophone
 * Wynton Kelly — piano
 * Paul Chambers — bass
 * Art Blakey — drums

Production personnel

 * Alfred Lion — producer
 * Rudy Van Gelder — mixing
 * Francis Wolff — cover photo
 * Reid Miles — cover design