Hob Nob With Brother Bob – Buddy Montgomery

A medium swinger with a happy sound. The melody has a laid-back attitude over a tasty set of changes, in a compact 18-measure form (eight-measure A and ten-measure B sections). Almost every phrase of the melody is infused with blues vocabulary—but not always in the tonic key of B♭. The 5th through 12th measures imply a D♭ major or B♭ minor key center; in fact the second four measures have the same changes as the first four up a minor third. There's a bit of a rhythm section arrangement, with plenty of passing chords, rhythmic hits, and bass figures that fill in around the long notes of the melody. We have a bass part, fully notated on the head. The coda tags the last six measures of the B section.

Our C lead sheet is written an octave above where Buddy plays the melody on the recording, which puts it in a playable range for guitar. Click on Piano Corner for details about the piano melody transcription.

As with Aki's Blues, this song's first released recording was on the "Here Again" album, but there is an earlier, unreleased recording. From Ted Panken's interview with Buddy from "Here Again"'s liner notes: "I actually found [Hob Nob With Brother Bob] on a date that I used Jeff [Chambers] and Ray [Appleton] and a couple of conga players, and I also used Herman Riley, a tenor player[, ]a trumpet player[...]I can’t remember his name, and [guitarist] Kevin Eubanks. It’s never been released. I still have the master. I haven’t been able to get a deal on it yet. But I recorded that Hob Nob on that date, and since that was over two years ago and nothing happened with it, I decided to do it again." Eubanks apparently also played on the initial, unreleased version of Aki's Blues.

Piano Corner: A piano melody transcription clip is available so you can see exactly how Buddy played this melody. Buddy never played his own songs the same way twice. Our piano melody transcription shows the entire in and out heads, which are each repeated—four different interpretations of the same melody. He plays generally similar voicings, especially in the last six measures of the B section, but there's a lot of variation in both his phrasing and left-hand accompaniment. Check out the accented, two-handed chords he uses to punctuate the melody at the beginning of A2 of the in head, and the last measures of both A1 and A2 in the out head. Buddy doesn't play the last melody note B♭ in both repeats of the in head, instead using a voicing with F on top; he plays B♭ here both times in the out head.

Trust us, you'll want to know how he makes everything sound great and examine his touch which is also notated.