BLP 4166

Joe Henderson  In 'N Out

Released - January 1965

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 10, 1964
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Richard Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

1332 tk.6 Punjab
1333 tk.9 In 'N Out
1334 tk.11 Short Story
1335 tk.14 Brown's Town
1336 tk.19 Serenity

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
In 'N Out	Joe Henderson	10 April 1964
Punjab	Joe Henderson	10 April 1964
Side Two
Serenity	Joe Henderson	10 April 1964
Short Story	Kenny Dorham	10 April 1964
Brown's Town	Kenny Dorham	10 April 1964

Liner Notes

Jazz, in the last five years, has progressed in fits and starts of sudden discoveries and startled reactions. New principles, new sounds, new rhythms, and harmonies have been advanced with unusual frequency. Not surprisingly, many of the younger musicians have been quietly digesting this information almost as quickly as it has appeared. As a result, they have acquired a degree of musical sophistication which supercedes many of the previous standards of excellence. It is no longer especially relevant to ask that a young saxophone player, for example, demonstrate his ability by running through all the Charlie Parker licks. Parker’s music is, to the players of the Sixties, as much a part of the growing process as the music of Lester Young was to the players of the Forties. But for the creative players it is a starting point rather than an end. Young artists — especially in periods of great change — are guided by their own definitions and not by the definitions of post performers or present observers.

I do not think it excessively demanding to suggest that an audience should attempt to understand these definitions — to find both the premises and the procedures of a performer’s work — especially when the music is spontaneous and improvisational. Since jazz occupies that peculiar netherworid between entertainment and art, it has been deceptively easy for audiences to be misled by the superficialities of near-jazz and quasi-jazz. It has also been easy for listeners (and commentators) to lull themselves into the belief that their love for the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, etc., assures their status as members of on artistically aware, sophisticated audience. Too often this belief has been used as a rationale for their negative response to the new players of the late Fifties and Sixties. They proffer an “understanding” of Parker and Getz as justification for rejecting the music of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.

For the younger players, this rejection has sometimes proved disastrous. With the exception of the bigger “names,” few of the original voices of the Sixties receive major opportunities to be heard. In part, this is because the newer principles of jazz improvisation are difficult, even For a receptive audience. Yet despite diminishing opportunities to perform, a vast majority of young players have continued to work in the directions suggested by Coltrane, Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Cecil Taylor. This is all to the good; new principles become meaningful in direct proportion to their continued use.

It would be redundant to offer biographical information about the musicians on this recording. Joe Henderson’s vital facts have been well-documented in his previous Blue Note albums. Richard Davis is one of the most active of the new wave of bass players, and Kenny Dorham, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones have been stalwarts on the jazz scene for years.

Henderson, one of the best of the new tenor players, comes most directly from the general style area established by John Coltrane. But in a broader sense his roots are deeply imbedded in the traditional areas of jazz. (His understanding of Charlie Parker’s music, for example, is apparent.) More important, however, he is one of the adventurous young musicians pragmatically exploring contemporary jazz improvisation. In his brief recording career, Henderson has shown considerable development. Since his lines are usually profuse with musical ideas, it would be easy to overlook the technical fluency with which he executes these thoughts. One sign of his early maturity is that he does not permit this technical fluency to overwhelm his thinking. Like Coltrane, he uses the rhythm section as a foil, playing against it at one point, with it at another, and urging his lines through a spectrum of contrasting rhythmic dissononces.

Given the kind of music Henderson plays — flowing, modally-oriented, rhythmically complex — he could hardly have chosen a more appropriate rhythm section. Jones and Tyner are remarkably, and understandably, adept in the comping style which pits on independent rhythmic counterpoint against a soaring solo line. Richard Davis, however, brings something special, a contribution which is of considerable importance. Instead of acting as a droning ostinato voice, permitting all the rhythmic counterplay to come from the percussion, Davis’s bass adds an additional rhythmic dimension, thickening the densities and urging the soloists into unusual patterns. Davis makes these rhythmic excursions only in the appropriate musical context and never as ends in themselves. His work on this date exemplifies his growing musical powers.

Dorham has had an unusual background. In his best moments he makes nearly as much from the bop and post-bop style as any trumpeter has done. His playing on this recordng is comparable to that on an excellent date made several years ago for Blue Note (Whistle Stop, Blue Note 4063). If anything, with maturity Dorham seems to be gaining additional articulateness, a surer voice than he had in the days when he was a more publicized player. He now plays with an economy and care that brings choruses together in a constructive unity, and he does this with few pyrotechnics or obvious displays of virtuosic conceit.

The compositions on this date are, for the most part, functional rather than developmental. Their purpose is to spring the soloists into improvisatory actions and to serve as convenient points of reference during the solos. None of the lines are especially intricate harmonically — an intentional decision, I think, since the improvisational style is one which derives its cohesion from the interrelationship of riff material and from changing patterns of emotion rather than from a predetermined harmonic complex.

Few people can listen to jazz improvisation without finding special moments which appeal to them alone. The performances on this record, in which the players have a great deal of relative freedom, are especially provocative in this respect since the soloists follow closely the lines of their own personal expression, unlimited by excessive harmonic demands. Tunes like “In ‘N Out” and “Brown’s Town” can be improvised upon in a nearly scalular context, and even “Punjab,” “Serenity,” and “Short Story,” which have somewhat more specific harmonic structures, do not really demand that the soloists outline every chord. Unlike the usual jazz variation technique in which one is always aware of the subliminal presence of the blues or a popular song, Henderson’s style depends upon the interaction between percussion and saxophone and the exposition and development of short melodic fragments. If one listens with this interaction in mind, the music of Henderson’s group becomes especially rewarding. Like much of the other music produced by the new young players of the Sixties, it is both accessible and enjoyable to a receptive audience.

— Don Heckman

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes[edit]

A NEW LOOK AT IN 'N OUT

This album is part of two great series of recordings on the Blue Note label those with Joe Henderson as leader, and those on which Henderson performs in the company of Kenny Dorham. The trumpeter, whose own career with the label dates back to the 1947 Art Blakey (pre-Jazz Messengers) session, and who released his first Blue Note album as a leader (Afro-Cuban) in the closing days of the ten-inch LP era, had been Henderson’s mentor/sponsor when the saxophonist first arrived in New York. It was Dorham who brought the saxophonist to Alfred Lion’s attention, gave Henderson his first recording opportunity (on Dorham’s Una Mas), and not only played on but also wrote the notes for Henderson’s debut as a leader, Page One. In a period of 18 months, Henderson and Dorham cut five quintet albums under one or the other’s name, of which this is the fourth, and also appeared together on Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure, recorded three weeks before this album; yet they continued to work together in a cooperative quintet, and to co-lead a rehearsal big band, for at least two years more.

Henderson and Dorham were an ideal pair for a variety of reasons, including the way in which their individually gritty sounds blended, their shared love of harmonically and structurally uncommon material, and their ability to adjust to the various rhythm sections with which they found themselves playing. The infrequency with which they worked, and the availability of first-call musicians when the time came to record, led to great variety in their supporting casts. Here they are joined by McCoy Tyner, who had been heard on Page One, bassist Richard Davis, who was also on Andrew Hill’s album and would return for the final Dorham/Henderson recording, Trumpeta Toccata; and Elvin Jones. Tyner and Jones were part of John Coltrane’s quartet at the time, and their presence on any album of the period led by a tenor saxophonist (Wayne Shorter’s Night Dreamer and Juju, two more Blue Note dates from 1964, for instance) make comparisons to Coltrane inevitable. On this point, it strikes this listener that, while Henderson displays a related intensity and willingness to test the limits of his horn, his phrases are often closer to Charlie Parker, who Henderson always cited as his primary influence.

The presence of Richard Davis also opens up the bottom of the music in terms of both harmonic choices and rhythmic complexity, giving the quintet an energy that brings it closer to the new music that Don Heckman discusses in his notes than any of the other Dorham/Henderson sessions. It is, unfortunately, a rare example of Davis working with both Tyner and Jones — they are also heard on one cut from a 1964 J. J. Johnson album, plus a 1982 Tyner/Jones reunion with Pharoah Sanders. Davis and Jones together may have been too much for Dorham, who sounds a bit uncomfortable throughout, while Henderson thrives in the highly charged atmosphere. The saxophonist would use Tyner and Jones again, with Bob Cranshaw on bass, for his next Blue Note album, Inner Urge.

While the writing here may not display harmonic intricacy, it does offer challenges that would not necessarily be found in more conventional blowing material. Henderson’s title tune gives a modal twist to blues changes and contains a memorably angular pattern in its final eight bars. The alternate version heard here as a bonus track is fine, but Henderson clearly took his own playing up a notch on the master take. Dorham’s “Short Story” has both a form and a melodic line that recalls Lester Young’s “Tickle Toe,” and had been played frequently by the trumpeter during a European tour a few months earlier, from which live versions of “Short Story” were subsequently released. The trumpeter also wrote “Brown’s Town,” where the familiar AABA scheme is freshened by stop-time patterns and a bridge that does not resolve in a typical manner. Oddly, Henderson does not solo on this track.

The album’s true compositional gems, and its most covered titles, are Henderson’s remaining two contributions. “Punjab” is a kaleidoscope of moods over an unusual 18-bar structure that can be broken down as 6-4-8, and that is retained throughout the solos. “Serenity,” which has become a true standard on the order of the saxophonist’s “Recorda Me” and “Inner Urge” in recent years, sounds like something that Benny Golson might have created. It begins like a blues, and then meanders into a different direction, ending up as a 14-bar chorus that again is preserved for the improvising. While covers of both tunes are too numerous to mention, it is worth noting that Jones recorded both again on the same 1968 Pepper Adams date, Encounter! (available on a Fantasy/OJC reissue), where Adams is paired with Zoot Sims.

- Bob Blumenthal, 2003