BLP 4227

Joe Henderson - Mode For Joe

Released - November 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 27, 1966
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Cedar Walton, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums.

1685 tk.2 A Shade Of Jade
1686 tk.8 Caribbean Fine Dance
1687 tk.18 Granted
1688 tk.19 Mode For Joe
1689 tk.26 Black
1690 tk.31 Free Wheelin'

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
A Shade of Jade	Joe Henderson	27 January 1966
Mode for Joe	Cedar Walton	27 January 1966
Black	Cedar Walton	27 January 1966
Side Two
Caribbean Fire Dance	Joe Henderson	27 January 1966
Granted	Joe Henderson	27 January 1966
Free Wheelin'	Lee Morgan	27 January 1966

Liner Notes

The Detroit Sound does not necessarily refer to whanging guitars, adolescent lyrics or a massive accumulation of percussion. A viable argument might be propounded for the existence of a Detroit sound in jazz. Certainly the alumni of Motor City, or those who spent their formative years there, are as numerous as they are talented. If a distinctive style can be attributed to them, it may well be characterized by the work, as writer and soloist, of Joe Henderson.

Many of the younger Detroit-trained musicians seem to have an important personality trait in common: they are steeped in Bird-lore yet are receptive to the sounds of the ‘60s. They swing hard and strong, they can go “outside” when they choose to, but have retained enough of the basics to enable them to come back "inside" and groove with the spirit of the blues.

In this new album, Joe Henderson, who has previously been heard leading various quintets and a quartet, undertakes a more ambitious venture, one that involved a four-piece front line as well as the customary three-piece rhythm section. The sound, of course, is ampler, and there is room for new compositional initiatives on the part of Messrs. Henderson, Walton and Morgan.

Joe was particularly pleased with the company he kept on this date. All the sidemen are musicians he has worked with before and/or admired at a distance.

Of Lee Morgan, he says: “I met him some years ago in Detroit. He’s a fantastic musician. For the post four or five years he’s had a very mature concept, what you might call an old-young or young-old approach to the horn. I also like him because he has a sense of humor, and because he really digs in and helps with suggestions on dates. We a nice blend and seemed sympathetic to each other on his own dates like The Sidewinder and The Rumproller, so he was a logical choice for this session.

“I’ve known Curtis Fuller since the Detroit days, too; in fact, we were in a Few classes at Wayne University together when he was working locally with Yusef Lateef’s combo. Barry Harris is the first Detroit cat I ever recorded with, and Curtis is the second. I admire him as a person, and as an artist of great musical worth. “Bobby Hutcherson I don’t know that well personally; he’s spent a lot of his time on the West Coast. We did a Grant Green LP together a while back — the Idle Moments album — and I knew he’d be a valuable addition to this date, not only as a soloist but as part of the front line for the four-way writing.

“Joe Chambers is one of my favorite drummers to play with. I like to listen to Max Roach, but I don’t know whether I’d enjoy playing with him. Joe’s a fine pianist and composer too, you know. He’s one drummer with real musical knowledge; he has a sort of ESP, as all musicians should, when they’re working behind the soloist.

“As for Ron Carter, I don’t know him as a close friend, but as a musician he’s admirable, and he was really necessary for this album. I never really knew him in Detroit, though I jammed with him when he was in town with Chico Hamilton. He’s so sensitive. On "A Shade Of Jade” I just gave him a skeleton part, where he had to work closely with the horns and the rhythm, but he kept working his way into the arrangement exactly the way I wanted.”

Cedar Walton’s participation was equally helpful, says Joe: "Just before making this album we had a gig together in Pittsburgh, and we used it to rehearse his tunes and mine. So he came to the session familiar with everything, and played very eloquently.

“A Shade Of Jade,” the Henderson original that launches the proceedings, is based on o 52-measure chorus (12-12-16-12). Of his own role as a writer, Joe says: “I’ve been trying to compose music about as long as I’ve been trying to play. Started in grade school and got some encouragement from the band director in Lima, Ohio. I think I was originally under the influence of the Stan Kenton band — the one that had Lee Konitz in it. I wrote some charts for the high school band and was kind of shocked that they come out sounding the way I wanted.

“While I was playing gigs later on in strip joints I learned more about how jazz tunes are put together. I got more involved and we started playing my things on gigs and for dancers and other acts. I’ve written all kinds of things since then — marches while I was in the Army, commercial blues, whatever would fit the occasion.”

“A Shade Of Jade” certainly fits the occasion not only as an illustration of Joe’s melodic creativity but as a medium for some of the best blowing in the album by the leader, Lee and Cedar. Notice that the C-minor melody moves within a narrow melodic range, from G down to C, but in the release the cheerful changes offer a well-timed contrast in mood.

“Mode For Joe,” Cedar Walton’s theme, involves suspensions of the rhythm during the exposition of the theme. “In this passage I play two roles,” says Joe, “one as part of the four-way voicing with trumpet, bone and vibes, and then secondly the solo fills.” Joe’s fast-evolving technique is used in his solo here as a means to a well-structured end. Bobby and Curtis, in their choruses, seem well attuned to the vibrations of this delightful melody. “We got the feeling For this on right away,” says Joe. ‘This was the first take.”

“Block,” the other theme by Walton, is a simple tune in long notes with an 8-8-16-8 construction. Ron Carter’s sturdy walking provides an inspiring, propulsive element for Henderson; Chambers’s steady urgency is no less effective in his support of Lee. The piano solo is particularly outstanding (“Cedar really burned his hands off there,” says Joe) and the solo by the leader is notable For the use of unpredictable intervals, typical of the diversity of ideas to be found in a Henderson solo. Notice the tricky voicing on the concluding chord, which basically is on F minor.

“Caribbean Fire Dance” is a syncopated theme with a strange, haunting, unresolved quality and assorted touches of Latin and calypso feelings. “I did Latin music more and more,” Joe says. His own solo here has an engaging sense of freedom, though it is never so free as to escape from its context. Lee and Curtis follow, after which there is another reminder that Hutcherson may well be the most inventive of the new wave of vibesmen.

“‘Granted’ was named for Alan Grant, of WABC-FM in New York. He’s been very kind to me ever since I came to New York. In fact he and Kenny Dorham originally introduced me to Alfred Lion, Al has used me as leader of my own groups on concerts that he’s presented around town,” The composition represents Joe’s boppish bag, a unison affair that surrounds some of the most headstrong blowing of the set, by all three horns and by Bobby.

“Free Wheelin’” was written by Lee Morgan on the spur of the moment during the session. It might be called a 24-bar blues in 3/4 or a 12-bar blues in 6/4, depending how your ears adjust to it. Either way, Joe fits himself eloquently to the mood of the tune. His tendency to rhythmic and melodic complexity expands rather than limits the essential blues character of the performance. Note, too, the funky piano by Cedar behind Lee’s solo, the complementary accents by Chambers during Fuller’s outing (“Curtis reached back and got some of his old Detroit licks in there,” says Joe) and the simple, honest statement by Hutcherson.

Admirers of Henderson who have been following his career as a sideman and as a recording bandleader will probably know by now that he has decided on the important step into full-time leadership. As the six tracks on these sides fluently indicate, he is well on his way to becoming one of the major new jazz figures of the late 1960s.

—LEONARD FEATHER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT MODE FOR JOE

Expanding upon the common quartet or quintet setting, as Joe Henderson does here, was a fairly common practice at Blue Note in the mid-sixties. Henderson himself had participated in several such sessions involving Duke Pearson as either leader or composer/arranger, and Stanley Turrentine generated a memorable subsection of his own catalogue with mid-sized ensembles. On the more exploratory edge, Grachan Moncur III had employed three horns plus vibes for Evolution, while Wayne Shorter’s The All Seeing Eye featured four horns and rhythm.

Mode For Joe, while taking fewer chances than these last two titles, provides its leader with an opportunity to extend the colors and moods of his own music. As such, the date was thoroughly in keeping with both Henderson’s evolution during the period and his lifelong musical interests. Henderson’s partnership with Kenny Dorham was still alive at the time the album was recorded, and involved an undocumented rehearsal band that played the leaders’ original music as well as the quintets that made such timeless Blue Note albums under one or the other’s names. By decade’s end, Henderson had also spent a year in the first edition of Herbie Hancock’s sextet, after which he frequently led bands of his own with two additional horns in the front line. While the passing years provided fewer opportunities for Henderson to work beyond more modest formats, his final Porgy And Bess disc for Verve was another septet affair that, like the present date, included both vibes and piano. One suspects that, circumstances having permitted, Henderson would have made the bulk of his music in such environments, for he clearly knew how to maximize only slightly expanded resources.

In this instance, the added forces allowed Henderson to place greater emphasis on both the harmonic and rhythmic sides of his personality. The presence of two brass and two keyboard instruments provides a wide and distinct range of colors. while keeping the sonic focus on the leader as the only woodwind; and the added weight of seven instruments enhances the staccato charge that is central to most of the music. Henderson and Walton, responsible for five of the six compositions, designed arrangements that are economical yet hardly minimal, and that enhance the character of the strong melodies. Walton had enjoyed the luxury of scoring for three horns during his years with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and, like Henderson, rose to the present challenge. The pianist was still a year and a half away from his own first session as a leader, an astounding instance of neglect that has been remedied over time, thanks in part to the eloquence of such works as the present title track.

“Mode For Joe’ was not the only jazz standard to emerge from this session. Both “A Shade Of Jade” and “Caribbean Fire Dance” also became popular titles in the ensuing years, and all three were revisited by Henderson in the incendiary 1970 live recordings he taped for Milestone at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California. (The band on that occasion, while only a quintet, included Woody Shaw, George Cables, Ron McClure and the pre-Return To Forever Lenny White.) Those later performances should also be heard for the growth in Henderson’s saxophone conception (his live California and Tokyo sessions of the period contain some of Henderson’s best playing on record), and for examples of the manner in which he fine-tuned his materials. “Inevitably, new ideas come to you after you’ve recorded a piece,” he explained in 1993. “A year or two pass, and the tune becomes what it should have been on the record. Meanwhile, other people have learned the tunes off the records, or even transcribed them, and what they play isn’t the tune as I’ve come to know it.”

There was less tinkering in later years with the compositions heard here than with others, suggesting that Henderson was justifiably satisfied with the initial results. The major shortcoming of this album is that it was created in the vinyl era, which limited the amount of featured space for the talented cast. Solos are judiciously apportioned by necessity, though there is little doubt that all five of the primary soloists could have contributed something memorable on each title. While the CD era cannot add choruses where none exist, it can extend the program as it does here with a valuable alternate take of Walton’s “Black,” which first appeared when the album was reissued in the ‘80s.

-Bob Blumenthal, 2003