Harold Mabern's 'The Beehive'

I’ve written here before that I went to William Paterson University. The biggest musical inspiration I had there from the first day that I visited was Harold Mabern. I still remember him teaching me Begin the Beguine on that visit. The way he taught tunes, he would just yell out the changes:

“E Flat major, two bars; F minor, two bars, G half diminished, two beats, C seven two beats.”

I remember barely being able to keep up scribbling out the chord symbols. He would always go over the tune as many times as people needed to get everything written though. Melodies were always taught by ear. He’d play through the tune and expect us to pick it up.

Mabern did write on the chalkboard, but never music notation. He would write quotations or questions he had for us.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited, but imagination circles the world.”

I still remember that one because he always wrote it up on the first class of the semester, and I had several ensembles with him. Other times there would be a question like:

“Who are the three most important tenor saxophone players?”

or

“Who are the three most important piano players?”

To Mabern, these were not open-ended questions. They had right and wrong answers. If memory serves, on the Tenor, it was John Coltrane, Stanley Turrentine, and perhaps either Dexter Gordon. On piano, it was Art Tatum, Phineas Newborn, and Ahmad Jamal. I have all those old classes recorded. I should go back and double check these answers.

Anyhow, Mabern frequently taught us his own tunes. One of which was ‘The Beehive,’ which he said was named for a jazz club in Chicago (where he lived before moving to NYC). I played this several times last year here in Philly at Chris’ Jazz Cafe as part of the exploration of the music from Lee Morgan’s classic record “Live at the Lighthouse.” Like Morgan’s band, we often played it first in our set.

Of course, nowadays I don’t get to rehearse my band twice a week, so in the interest of convenience of the sidemen, I made this chart that I am sharing here for educational purposes. Play it on your gig! Bring it to a jam session! Help keep Mabern’s legacy going for the next generation of musicians.