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

BLP 4189

Joe Henderson - Inner Urge

Released - March 1966

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 30, 1964
Joe Henderson, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

1481 tk.2 Inner Urge
1482 tk.10 You Know I Care
1483 tk.15 Isotope
1484 tk.21 Night And Day
1485 tk.23 El Barrio

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Inner Urge	Joe Henderson	November 30 1964
Isotope	Joe Henderson	November 30 1964
Side Two
El Barrio	Joe Henderson	November 30 1964
You Know I Care	Duke Pearson	November 30 1964
Night and Day	Cole Porter	November 30 1964

Liner Notes

ONE of the marks of Joe Henderson’s rapidly rising stature is that he cannot be neatly categorized. On the one hand, he is among the young explorers of new ways of expanding the jazz language. On the other, he can be equally convincing as a blues groover (as in Freddie Roach’s Brown Sugar, BLUE NOTE 4168 BLP4168) and as a masterful individualizer of ballads in the vintage, big-toned jazz tenor tradition. This album further illustrates Henderson’s scope and depth.

The title song, Inner Urge, was written at a time when, as Henderson explains, “I was consumed by an inner urgency which could only be satisfied through this tune. During that period, I was coping with the anger and frustration that can come of trying to find your way in the maze of New York and of trying to adjust to the pace you have to set in hacking your way in that city in order to lust exist. Now I’m calmer, but this tune represents a particular stage in my life.” Structured in a 16-8-16 pattern, the song is basically sequential in form. The outer 16-bar segments move step-wise and the channel moves in minor thirds.

In this number, as in the rest of the album, Henderson receives exemplary support from Bob Cranshaw and the long-term team of Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner from the John Coltrane unit “McCoy,” Henderson notes, “plays behind you as if he were your shadow. He seems to have a seventh sense of what you’re going to do. With him there I can relax. I don’t hove to worry about playing something that might not fit in with what he’s doing. Elvin, of course, provides the same kind of support. Along with his musical intuitiveness, Elvin always lays it in the right spot at the right time. And that makes me play better.” Of Bob Cranshaw, Henderson says “He’s got that big, fat, juicy sound. He generates such a good feeling that I can’t help but be affected by it.”

Isotope, another Henderson original, is described by the composer “as a compliment to Thelonious Monk, a tribute particularly to the humor in his music.” Basically a 12-bar blues, the song enters rather new territory in this context in the 11th and 12th measures. There it descends in o series of minor thirds — each getting two beats. The sequence goes from C7 to A7 to g flat 7 to e flot 7. The melody has a Monkish angularity and wryness; but although a tribute, the piece and the playing are at the some time very much Henderson’s own. Among the qualities that make his work consistently arresting are the freshness of his ideas; the penetrating strength of his tone; the sweep of his beat; and the sense of total emotional commitment in his playing. There is also his firm command of structure, as Isotope underlines. He really builds rather than strings together a series of fragmentary phrases. And to use a word that comes to my mind because of Henderson’s current association with Horace Silver, Joe “cooks.” And he cooks all the time — in every musical situation.

El Barrio represents Henderson’s attachment to the Spanish musical ethos — an attachment which began when he was a boy in Lima, Ohio. “I lived,” he recalls, “in a kind of international neighborhood, and it was the Spanish influence that particularly hit me. My affection for it just grew, stimulated by a couple of years of studying the language in school and by getting to have a number of Spanish friends.” El Barrio is meant to evoke not only the New York Puerto Rican neighborhood of that title, but any Spanish-speaking neighborhood.

The performance is impromptu. “I just gave the other musicians two chords,” Henderson says. “B major and C major 7. I asked them to play something on top of that with a Spanish feeling. And I improvised the melody. It worked so well that we did this in just one take. Incidentally, if you listen hard, you may find some Greek overtones as well.”

What especially moves me in El Barrio is both Henderson’s melodic freedom and the “cry” at the heart of his playing. It is a “cry” rooted in the blues but also understanding of the root passion at the core of Spanish musical feeling. There are touches of flamenco story-telling as well as of blues preaching, and the fusion is accomplished without the least self-consciousness. For me this album as a whole is Henderson’s best so far, and El Barrio in particular is a track that should endure for a long, long time because it is essentially timeless. No matter what changes occur in jazz, this quality of basic, song-like ardor has to remain one of the bedrock criteria of expressive eloquence.

Duke Pearson’s You Know I Care is a graceful, tender ballad on which Henderson reveals, as noted, that his range of skills extends to an ability to be directly lyrical. Listen too to the intricate subtlety and taste of Elvin Jones’ brushwork, the resonant suppleness of Bob Cranshaw’s line and the characteristic bell-like lucidity of McCoy Tyner’s background chording and solo.

Joe Henderson altered both the melody and the chord changes of Night and Day, and that act provided him with the challenge which enabled him to revivify this standard. In his playing here and on the other tracks, Henderson has a further insignia of unmistakable musical substance. He plays with authority. There is no groping far effects or coasting on technical agility. This is clearly a man who knows how to discipline passion and who does not substitute rhetorical flourishes for solid musical thought. He has the foundation — the knowledge of the whole of the jazz tradition and the technical equipment to execute everything he hears. With that base, he forges a distinctly personal and irrepressibly honest conception.

Eventually, Joe Henderson would like to lead his own unit. And it’s certain that when he does, his sets will have the same diversity of mood and material as his albums have had. “You see,” Joe points out, “I would never want to play in only one bag. When you do, eventually you get bored. And if you get bored, the listener will. And basically, it doesn’t make sense to play all funk or all hip. Music covers a much wider range than just one approach. I like to think of myself as having a feeling for all of music’s possibilities.”

It is because of Joe Henderson’s openness to change, challenge and his own inner breadth of emotions that he has already acquired so impressive a reputation. This album will add more to that reputation, and there is no question that his will be a major jazz career.

—NAT HENTOFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT INNER URGE

Joe Henderson had recorded an astounding amount of important music on Blue Note in the 20 months that separated Inner Urge from his label debut on Kenny Dorham’s Una Mas. There had been a total of five quintet albums with trumpeter Dorham, who had served as Henderson’s mentor when the saxophonist arrived in New York after completing his military service, as well as an array of sideman appearances that demonstrated the new tenor star’s uncommon consistency and versatility. Henderson never failed to bring inspiration and sensitivity to the music at hand, whether the mood was the after-hours mellowness of Grant Green’s Idle Moments or the dark, exploratory edge of Andrew Hill’s Black Fire and Point of Departure. As far as reaching beyond the hard-core jazz audience and connecting with the general public went, Henderson’s exclamatory solos were central to two of the most commercially successful performances in the label’s history, Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” and Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father.”

For all that, Inner Urge was arguably the defining moment in Henderson’s early career, not to mention the recording that ended any remaining debate regarding his prominence as a tenor stylist. While the album was the fourth to appear under Henderson’s name, it was his first as a leader without Dorham, and only the second of all his Blue Note appearances to feature a tenor/piano/bass/drums quartet. The absence of a second horn in favor of the format then employed by two of the music’s leading visionaries, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, was an implicit acknowledgement that Henderson was ready to stand alone in the context favored by two of the very giants who had provided him with inspiration.

Having McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones from the Coltrane Quartet as part of the Inner Urge rhythm section only reinforced the comparison, yet the music avoids sounding like recycled Coltrane. As was their habit in joint appearances on Blue Note with Wayne Shorter and others (including Henderson’s previous session In ‘n’ Out and the Grant Green Solid album where Henderson is also featured), Tyner and Jones took the opportunity to show their own range by playing music with different harmonic and rhythmic contours than they encountered in Coltrane’s band. Tyner remained fleet and powerful while finding different colors in the music, and Jones tailored his polyrhythmic swirls to new moods as well. Comparisons can obviously be drawn, as will be clear by hearing “El Barrio” next to Coltrane’s “Ole,” or “Night and Day” against the Coltrane version of “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.” At the same time, Henderson’s music expresses significant individuality. For their part, Tyner and Jones sound as inspired as they did when they returned to Van Gelder’s nine days later and recorded A Love Supreme.

Henderson programmed the session exceptionally well, and Nat Hentoff’s original notes do a fine job of capturing the mood of each track. Issue must be taken, however, with Hentoff’s structural description of the title track. “Inner Urge” is a 24-bar, A-A-B form, an extended blues variation if you will, with fascinating chord substitutions that descend in four bar units until the cycle of minor thirds in the B section accelerates the harmonic motion. Giving Bob Cranshaw the first solo was a brilliant way to extend the brooding mood of the piece. The other Henderson originals provide different kinds of drama, while Duke Pearson’s “You Know I Care” is one of the pianist’s loveliest ballads. Pearson never recorded the piece for Blue Note, but did cut a nonet version in 1965 for his Atlantic album Honeybuns that features the flute of Les Spann.

It is rather surprising given the success of Inner Urge that Henderson did not return to this specific instrumentation more frequently during the remainder of his career. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when he struggled to maintain a permanent group of his own, he carried one or two additional horns, while he often opted for a pianoless tenor/bass/drum trio during his final decades. Henderson did lead quartets in his live performances of the ‘80s, and gave important early exposure to pianists Fred Hersch and Renee Rosnes in the process, yet even then he rarely chose the instrumentation for recording purposes. There were other memorable Joe Henderson quartet moments on disc, of which the 1971 Joe Henderson in Japan on Milestone remains a personal favorite even with electric piano; but the quartet successor that approaches most closely the present classic, with Tyner and Jones again present and Ron Carter on bass, is Tyner’s 1967 debut as a Blue Note leader, The Real McCoy.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003

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

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