Bobby Timmons’s Moanin’: a memorable opening still needed a middle

Gospel’s call-and-response patterns give “Moanin’” its immediate appeal, as critic Charles Waring points out. One phrase receives an answer: a musical exchange you can follow without knowing the names of the chords. Try Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ 1958 recording.

The piece still needed a bridge, its contrasting middle section. At rehearsal, saxophonist Benny Golson asked pianist Bobby Timmons to write it.

Timmons’s first version did not fit. Golson declined to finish it himself: it must remain “your tune.” The second attempt worked, Golson recalled in his National Endowment for the Arts interview.

The familiar theme is only one reason to stay with Timmons. In his Blue Note biography, Scott Yanow argues that the pianist’s gospel-and-blues reputation can obscure his bebop skill. Wait for the piano solo. Recognition has brought you into the performance; it need not be the only pleasure you take from it.