Workin' & Wailin'

Workin' & Wailin'
Studio album by Harold Mabern
Released	1969
Recorded	June 30, 1969; Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Genre	Jazz
Label	Prestige ; PR 7687
Producer	Bob Porter
Harold Mabern chronology

Last updated February 24, 2019

Workin' & Wailin' is the third album led by pianist Harold Mabern which was recorded in 1968 and released on the Prestige label.^[1]

Harold Mabern, Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, principally in the hard bop, post-bop, and soul jazz fields. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as "one of the great post-bop pianists".

Prestige Records American jazz record label

Prestige Records is a jazz record company and label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York City. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them under subsidiaries. In 1971, the company was sold to Fantasy, which was later absorbed by Concord.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	^[2]

Allmusic awarded the album 3 stars stating "The date utilizes trumpeter Virgil Jones, tenor saxophonist George Coleman, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Idris Muhammad on four challenging Mabern originals and Johnny Mandel's "A Time for Love."^[2]

Track listing

All compositions by Harold Mabern except as indicated

"Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" (Janie Bradford, Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong) - 4:18
"Strozier's Mode" - 7:50
"Blues for Phineas" - 5:05
"I Can't Understand What I See in You" - 8:40
"Waltzing Westward" - 9:16
"A Time for Love" (Johnny Mandel, Paul Francis Webster) - 4:50

Personnel

The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.

An electric piano is an electric musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of the piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations which are converted into electrical signals by magnetic pickups, which are then connected to an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to make a sound loud enough for the performer and audience to hear. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument. Instead, it is an electro-mechanical instrument. Some early electric pianos used lengths of wire to produce the tone, like a traditional piano. Smaller electric pianos used short slivers of steel to produce the tone. The earliest electric pianos were invented in the late 1920s; the 1929 Neo-Bechstein electric grand piano was among the first. Probably the earliest stringless model was Lloyd Loar's Vivi-Tone Clavier. A few other noteworthy producers of electric pianos include Baldwin Piano and Organ Company and the Wurlitzer Company.

A trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group contains the instruments with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BC; they began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets are used in art music styles, for instance in orchestras, concert bands, and jazz ensembles, as well as in popular music. They are played by blowing air through nearly-closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound that starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the instrument. Since the late 15th century they have primarily been constructed of brass tubing, usually bent twice into a rounded rectangular shape.

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References

↑ Prestige Records discography accessed April 10, 2013
1 2 Yanow, S. Allmusic listing accessed April 10, 2013

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[1] Prestige Records discography accessed April 10, 2013

[Allmusic-2] 1 2 Yanow, S. Allmusic listing accessed April 10, 2013