Now He Sings, Now He Sobs

Now He Sings, Now He Sobs is the second studio album by Chick Corea, released in December 1968 on Solid State Records. It features Corea in a trio with bassist Miroslav Vitouš and drummer Roy Haynes. In 1988 it was reissued on CD by Blue Note with eight bonus tracks recorded at the same sessions.

All of the tracks on the original album are improvisations based on Corea’s ideas, with some being entirely free improvisations (such as "The Law of Falling and Catching Up" and "Fragments"). Vitous and Haynes would reunite with Corea as an acoustic trio on Trio Music (ECM, 1982), Trio Music, Live in Europe (ECM, 1986), and The Trio Live From The Country Club (Stretch, 1996). The trio also backed saxophonist Toshiyuki Honda on the album Dream (Eastworld, 1983).

The bonus tracks released on the CD include a cover of Thelonious Monk's composition "Pannonica" and the Wood/Mellin standard "My One and Only Love". All eight pieces had originally been issued in 1975 on Circling In, a Blue Note “twofer”.

According to Corea, the album title comes from the I Ching, which contains a section called "Now He Sings; Now He Sobs — Now He Beats The Drum; Now He Stops." He recalled: "The poetry of that phrase fit the message of the trio's music... the gamut of life experiences — the whole human picture and range of emotions."