Critics called Hank Mobley the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone, a player who sat between the aggressive and the mellow and developed a laid-back, melodic tone all his own. Born in Eastman, Georgia in 1930 and raised near Newark, he received a saxophone from his grandmother during months of illness at 16, was rejected by a local music school on residency grounds, and taught himself theory and harmony from books.

The episode traces his fast rise with Max Roach, a two-week stint in Duke Ellington's orchestra, Charlie Parker's advice to weave in the blues, and his role as a founding architect of hard bop with Art Blakey and Horace Silver in the Jazz Messengers. It covers the rehearsal-driven studio culture at Blue Note under Alfred Lion, the 1960 masterpiece Soul Station, the pressure of replacing John Coltrane in Miles Davis's ban ...