BLP 4152

Joe Henderson - Our Thing

Released - April 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 9, 1963
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; Andrew Hill, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; Pete La Roca, drums.

tk.14 Our Thing
tk.17 Escapade
tk.23 Back Road
tk.27 Pedro's Time
tk.28 Teeter Totter

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Teeter Totter	Joe Henderson	09 September 1963
Pedro's Time	Kenny Dorham	09 September 1963
Side Two
Our Thing	Joe Henderson	09 September 1963
Back Road	Kenny Dorham	09 September 1963
Escapade	Kenny Dorham	09 September 1963

Liner Notes

Henderson is a name of some distinction in music. It was a Henderson who led the first big band of any consequence in jazz; and it was in his elder brother, Fletcher’s, band that Horace Henderson first distinguished himself. Luther Henderson, an Ellington protege, is a younger and greatly talented pianist and arranger.

Joe Henderson, related by blood to none of these men but by spirit a little to all, is a 26-year-old tenor saxophonist whose earlier appearances on Blue Note made it clear that he would lend new luster to this respected name. He appeared as a sideman on Kenny Dorham’s Una Mas (4127) and as a leader on Page One (4140), but both albums offered examples of another aspect of his arrival on the scene: the very important rapport between Joe and Kenny.

A two-horn ensemble, because of its very simplicity, presents problems that are not easily overcome. Obviously there is nothing to do with the ensembles except devise interesting horizontal lines, to be played in unison, or now and then make use of the resources of two-part harmony. In order to lend substance to this instrumentation it is necessary to establish a quality that has often been characterized as empathy.

It is possible that Kenny Dorham, in his years as a musician circulating among the country’s most respected jazzmen, has Found other partners whose feeling for phrasing and breathing has been close to his own; but I doubt that he has ever before run across anyone whose style is more naturally designed to dovetail with his own than that of Joe Henderson.

That was my reaction on first listening to Page One. One can think back in jazz history to Venuti and Lang, to Bix and Trumbauer. Diz and Bird, Cannon and Not; there are a few more such duumvirates, but certainly not many of whom one can say that they seemed to have been destined to meet and play together.

If this discourse on the mutually beneficial partnership between Henderson and Dorham seems to be stressing too strongly the matter of cooperation, it should not be inferred that their individual talents are in any way less valuable than their joint efforts. As composers and soloists, both are artists strong personalities of their own; at no point is there any need to be concerned lest one dominate or overshadow the other.

Moreover on these sides, in addition to the mutual stimulation in the front line, there is the superb, top-form contribution of the rhythm section as a vital incentive to both hornmen.

Andrew Hill was born in Haiti and raised in Chicago. He was only 14 when he made his professional debut there with Charlie Parker. He was on the West Coast for a while early in 1963, working with the Lighthouse All Stars and Jimmy Woods; he has also been a member of the Roland Kirk rhythm section. Eddie Khan, by now, has established himself through an association with Max Roach, for whom he has worked during the past year or so and with whom he is touring Japan at this writing. Pete La Roca, a New Yorker now in his 26th year, is one of those rare contemporary drummers capable of allying formidable technique with admirable discretion.

The program on side one opens with Henderson’s own composition "Teeter Totter," a track that immediately sets in bold relief the qualities that are likely to establish him in the very near future as a subject for critical panegyrics. His sound is big and forceful, but there is no overemphasis, no ugliness for ugliness’ sake; and no matter how complex a phrase he may construct, he always manages to come out of it swinging. There is an occasional deliberately split note For tension’s sake; the timbre on the notes near the bottom of the horn is well controlled, never degenerating into a honk.

There is one point, a little over a minute before the end of his solo, where Joe grabs a phrase that ends with a sort of trill, the repeats it almost as if he were twisting a tiger’s tail. It is a dramatic moment with the quality of immediacy and urgency that should always be a part of a hard-driving solo like this.

"Teeter Totter" incidentally, is an up B-flat blues and the only major key track in the set. Hill hints at the melody in his opening 24 bars (and continues to remind us of it now and then both in his composing and his later solo). The theme itself is a simple unison 12-bar blues line of the type Bird used to write, with his effective use of bebops. (For those too young to know, this is any phrase leading to two eighth notes on the down beat). Kenny’s solo is vigorous, varicolored and intense. The performance includes some superb fours with La Roca before the reprise of the theme.

"Pedro’s Time" is a minor medium-paced Kenny Dorham theme with 12-bar construction and a Latin touch. Kenny achieves on impressively wistful sound here. Joe again makes full use of his command of the instrument, showing remarkable technical and ideational maturity for one so new to the major leagues. His sudden flurries of notes are accurately phrased and never fizzle out. The piano work here is pretty, and harmonically oblique; Khan’s boss solo, melodically more direct than the preceding Hill approach, nevertheless is inventive and rhythmically resourceful.

Our Thing, as Joe paints out, is a phrase that has been fashionable in many circles since its Italian equivalent made the newspaper headlines in recent months; but there are no underworld overtones here. The construction of this Henderson piece is most attractive. An eight-measure passage is followed by one of ten measures; then comes a 16-bar release in which the meter changes to 6/8, after which the ten-bar structure is repeated. The 6/8 gambit is retained during each of the succeeding solos, and it is interesting to note that it lends character and contrast to the performance without ever seeming intrusive or breaking the mood, as is sometimes the case with time signature changes under solos.

Kenny’s tune “Back Road” is based on a pattern that has often inspired both pop and jazz musicians. Notice that it consists mainly of a long pick-up phrase followed by a long note held for five beats. This is the basic formula used for a wide variety of compositions, from the “Cocktails For Two" to “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me.” More than any other track on the album, I think — possibly because of the easily-swinging moderato gait of the rhythm section — “Back Road” shows how keenly developed is Joe Henderson’s feeling for time. I once observed that in every jazz solo there ore two interdependent factors governing every single note: the way it is played and the way it is placed. Both in sound and in timing. Joe illustrates this axiom with unflagging success.

The concluding “Escapade,” again Kenny’s work, has a deceptively simple melody with subtle changes and a generally lyrical mood. Hill’s spare chords and unpredictable intervals are an outstanding feature. The work is patterned in 20-bar sequences.

It is interesting to remind oneself, while enjoying this record, of the statement in Nat’s Hentoff’s notes for the Dorham Una Mas album, that Charlie Parker was the main force in Joe Henderson’s development. Recently there has been a tendency on the part of young jazzmen to look down the nose at Bird, to claim that Gillespie and Parker sound as old-fashioned in today’s climate as Dixieland sounded to Diz and Bird. That this is a false and misleading analogy is made brilliantly clear in these sides. Henderson — and for that matter Dorham and the others on this LP — con serve handily as a reminder that the spirit of Bird is very much a part of the scene in the 1960s, and that as long as it can be the inspiration for such new talent as that of Joe Henderson, it would be foolish to belittle its undimmed value or try to hasten its demise.

- LEONARD FEATHER
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT OUR THING

Thanks to Blue Note, we know that a Kenny Dorham/Joe Henderson quintet existed in the mid-’60s. It was an exceptional example of a common jazz practice then and now, in which two or more musicians with excellent individual skills but limited public recognition pooled their efforts and took jobs together under the name of whomever could get a gig. The gigs never came in sufficient frequency to allow a stable supporting cast in this case; but a common body of challenging original compositions took shape and a distinctive sound and attitude emerged, one that gave this partnership a solidity that circumstances made otherwise difficult to establish.

The quality of Dorham’s and Henderson’s joint music-making places them in that exalted pantheon where mere first names or nicknames in combination are sufficient. Like Bix and Tram, Roy and Bean, Diz and Bird, Miles and Trane, Kenny and Joe realized a gloriously rich and original trumpet/sax blend. In their case, a mentor/student relationship that reflected a wider gap than the actual 13-year separation in their ages. Dorham was a veteran of nearly two decades on the New York scene and fruitful previous sax hook-ups with Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Hank Mobley when he met the 25-year-old Henderson, fresh from two years of Army service, in 1962. The body of music that the pair created together would prove to be the saxophonist’s Page One (as Henderson’s first album has it) as well, sadly, as the trumpeter’s final chapters under his own name.

They documented their music within a 17-month period in 1963-4 on three albums under Henderson’s name, of which Our Thing is the second, and two under Dorham’s. (They also appear together on Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure.) This September 1963 date was the third of the series, and the strength of the partnership (which astute listeners such as original annotator Nat Hentoff were already noticing) is underscored by the majority of tunes on the session being Dorham compositions. The quality of the material is worth underscoring, because it epitomizes Dorham’s brilliance as a writer in the small-group format. “Pedro’s Time” could be considered a blues, yet establishes its own personal aura in the 12-bar format through astute harmonic and rhythmic choices, and what amounts to an ABB’ inverted blues structure; “Back Road” is a deliciously funky and in the context of his other contributions, straightforward 24-bar AAB form; and "Escapade,” a simply heartbreaking melody with a unique 8/4/4/4 shape that recalls another knotty beauty, Sonny Rollins’s “Way Out West.” Henderson shows his own creative slant as a writer on the title track, a way-up 36-bar, AA’BA’ form with two extra bars in the second A strain and the modal bridge shifting to triple meter.

While the occasional nature of their partnership made it impossible to maintain a stable rhythm section, Dorham and Henderson always recruited some of the best players in New York for their Blue Note appearances. Here they have the great Pete LaRoca (aka Sims) on drums, who was also responsible for the infectious Latin rhythms that helped make ‘Blue Bossa” and “Recorda Me” from the Page One album standards. LaRoca had been turning heads on Blue Note dates for six years at this point (“A Night in Tunisia” from Sonny Rollins’s A Night At The Village Vanguard and “Minor Apprehension” from Jackie McLean’s New Soil are earlier examples), and he would call upon Henderson when he cut his own excellent Basra album for the label in 1965. Bassist Eddie Khan was working with Max Roach’s band, and had been heard on Jackie McLean’s important One Step Beyond session the previous April. Pianist Andrew Hill made his Blue Note debut here, and within ten weeks would launch his own influential career as a leader with Black Fire, the first of four Hill sessions to feature Henderson. Feather’s notes, reflecting a common misperception of the period, are wrong regarding Hill‘s origins. The pianist was born in Chicago, to Haitian parents.

This album is for hardcore Dorham/Henderson fans in particular, with its challenging blowing that balances “inside” structures and harmonic knowledge with an exploratory attitude toward sound and texture, and minus the funky blues jam that became standard on Blue Note dates of the time. (Granted that “Una Mas,” which helped start the trend, is a soulful jam for the ages; but see if you don’t agree that “Mamacita” from the later Dorham album Trompeta Toccata is a lesser example of the genre.) The improvising here is on the elevated level of the composing, with particularly noteworthy statements by Henderson on the master take of “Teeter Totter” and “Our Thing” (where he begins with a reference to his composition “Inner Urge”) and Dorham on “Pedro’s Time” and “Escapade.” Hill takes a bracing, totally personal approach throughout, and La Roca really inspires Henderson on the faster titles. And don’t overlook the unity of Dorham and Henderson as a front line that Hentoff notes, and that Rudy Van Gelder captured with his own expected brilliance.

—Bob Blumenthal