Joe Henderson

Horace Silver Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse (Blue Note 2025)

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Silvermine.  

Personnel

Woody Shaw (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Horace Silver (piano), Teddy Smith (bass), Roger Humphries (drums)

Recorded

on August 12 & 19, 1965  at The Penthouse in Seattle

Released

as Blue Note in 2025

Track listing

Side A: The Kicker / Song For My Father / The Cape Verdean Blues / Side B: Sayonara Blues / No Smokin’

If you had to believe the majority of the jazz press in the mid-1960s, everything but the ‘new thing’ was irrelevant. Take the constant appraisals of the ‘spiritual’ Coltrane  and ‘primal screams’ of Albert Ayler. Fine, jazz is synonymous with change. But life went on. Though the original sparks of hard bop were gone, figureheads such as Horace Silver and Cannonball Adderley kept the flame burning with catchy music that entertained large audiences through hits as Silver’s Song For My Father and Cannonball’s Mercy Mercy Mercy (written by Joe Zawinul). Meanwhile, they embraced progressive patterns, Silver by collaborating with Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, Cannonball by recruiting Yusef Lateef and Charles Lloyd.

One of this year’s top-rate archival releases, Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse, proves my point. Actually, Silver – the consummate Blue Note artist – would keep on forming bands with cats that expanded on the tradition, notably Bennie Maupin and Randy Brecker. Seattle features young Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, who both had been making heads turn in 1965. Woody Shaw had worked with Eric Dolphy and was featured on one of Blue Note’s most beloved albums, Unity by organist Larry Young. Henderson had already recorded a couple of adventurous records on Blue Note and the label was about to release Mode For Joe at the time of the Penthouse gig in August.

The band was completed by bassist Teddy Smith and drummer Roger Humphries. The drummer had been part of the superb Silver albums Song For My Father, The Cape Verdean Blues and The Jody Grind, while Shaw was featured on Cape and Grind and Henderson on Song and Cape. As Silver In Seattle makes abundantly clear, a well-oiled machine.

They swing like mad on Henderson’s The Kicker, Silver’s No Smokin’, stretch out on Sayonara Blues and get into a sassy exotic groove on Song For My Father and The Cape Verdean Blues. Shaw and Henderson mix funk with dips into the outskirts of the chords, Silver is his typical propulsive self, his densely clustered chords keeping energy level high, his solo lines spicy and engaging. Humphries beautifully delineates all melodic twists and turns, spirited like a Jaguar on an empty coastal road. Have you heard him play on Carmell Jones’s Jay Hawk Talk? Awesome drummer with a great sound.

So, this year we’ve had Freddie Hubbard’s On Fire: Live From The Blue Morocco on Resonance and now there’s Silver In Seattle, another archival (Zev Feldman-produced) release that sounds fantastic, as if you’re in the room, pure joy for the lover of classic post and hard bop.

Here’s Alvin Queen, Eric Ineke and Jarmo Hoogendijk on Silver, Henderson and Shaw. 

Horace Silver - ©Ron Eckstein
Joe Henderson
Woody Shaw

The legendary drummer Alvin Queen (also featured in the liner notes of Silver In Seattle) played in Horace Silver’s band in 1969 and reconnected with the pianist in the early/mid 1970’s. He speaks with the utmost reverence regarding Horace Silver, but also has a few laughs about the way it went back then. Here’s a fragment from our interview in August 2023:

“When you make a hit record, that’s what people want to hear. I was sick of Song Of My Father! Horace said that we had to play it and we sometimes played it two or three times a night. That was the way it went. Miles had to play So What, Coltrane My Favorite Things and Cannonball Adderley Mercy Mercy Mercy by Joe Zawinul. We also played Sēnor Blues and Filthy McNasty. But then Horace changed up and started going into spirituality and recorded the United State Of Mind records. One night I said, ‘Horace, all that Hare Krishna stuff, God, what is going on?’ He said, ‘Alvin, I haven’t changed my music, it’s just the lyrics’.”

Alvin’s Dutch colleague Eric Ineke, who played with everybody from Dexter Gordon and Dizzy Gillespie to Jimmy Raney and Johnny Griffin, not least Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, talks about the unique time feel of Joe Henderson in conversation with Dave Liebman in his book The Ultimate Sideman:

“His time was floating, a drummer’s dream. He had such great ideas and to follow that stuff was a lesson. Joe was so hip and smooth.” (Liebman: ‘The bar line did not exist when Joe was on. Is that true?’) “Yes, it was difficult. I really had to be there all the time with my head and listening, but what amazes me was that he had so much freedom with the time. You would think some guys taking a lot of freedom in the time would affect a drummer’s playing. But not with Joe Henderson… he was like a snake and it never affected your playing. You can just play on! It’s unbelievable, because he goes in and out without disturbing the thing…”

Ace Dutch trumpeter Jarmo Hoogendijk, formerly from Jarmo Hoogendijk/Ben van den Dungen Quintet and Nueva Manteca and nowadays an admired conservatory teacher, knew Woody Shaw very well in the mid-1980s. Here are his memories of Woody in Flophouse Magazine from 2023:

“I met Woody in 1986. I went to George’s Jazz Café in Arnhem with Ben. Woody played with the Cedar Walton Trio. We got to talking. From then on we met at concerts. Woody regularly stayed at the place of road manager Bob Holland. I met him over there and we chatted and studied together. Sometimes I took him out on a trip or to concerts or he visited my shows with Nueva Manteca. At some point, he was at my place and asked if he could stay overnight. Eventually, he stayed a couple of weeks and that was the last time that I saw him. It was pretty intense because Woody was quite a volatile character. People that act on such a high creative level are sensitive and vulnerable and sometimes self-destructive. And probably as a consequence things can get rough. Woody was like that. Wise but someone who in reality doesn’t know how to cope with life. But despite all of this, we also laughed a lot.”

“We were listening to music, chatting. Doing groceries, cooking. And going to jam sessions. Back then I lived right beside café De Sport, a flourishing and legendary jazz spot. At that time in his life, Woody rarely touched his instrument. But one day he said, ‘Ok, I feel like playing a bit’. We went to De Sport where the regular trio of pianist Frans Elsen featuring bassist Jacques Schols and drummer Eric Ineke was playing. Physically, Woody was in bad shape. But his playing was totally enchanting. I remember that he played The Man I Love, very subdued and humbling. When we finished, Woody made clear that he wanted to go home and have some sleep. This was very unlike Woody! He said, ‘I believe that this was the last time that I played.’ Incredibly and unfortunately, it was.”

“If there is one trumpeter that embodies the whole history of jazz but who is totally original, it’s Woody. What more could you ask for? His playing echoed Louis Armstrong and at the same time was super hip. It’s the max. When Shaw lived in Europe during the last years of his life, few musicians actually knew who he was or how great he was. If you ask about Shaw nowadays, many trumpeters pick him as their big favorite.”

“How can someone who lives such a chaotic personal life act at such a continuous high level? It’s astonishing. On his posthumous live albums and bootleg cassette tapes, that’s when you hear him playing totally different and original versions of the same compositions night after night. Truly amazing. His memory was fabulous and his ears were pitch-perfect. Woody was absurd. His constitution must’ve been very strong. Woody studied eight or nine hours every day, then went to a gig and a jam session afterwards. Every day, every week, on and on. Who can put that thing in his mouth for so long? His son Woody III told me that he should not dare to come in his dad’s room with this or that message, like ‘telephone’ or ‘dinner’s ready’. He just didn’t hear him and kept on playing! He was one with the trumpet. But he also partied hard.”

Party hard and start with Horace and the gang killing it on The Kicker below.

Duke Pearson Sweet Honey Bee (Blue Note 1967)

- Francois 1 Comment

Hard bop was in a rut but Pearson was on a roll.

Personnel

Duke Pearson (piano), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), James Spaulding (flute, alto saxophone), Ron Carter (bass), Mickey Roker (drums)

Recorded

on December 7, 1966 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BST 84252 in 1967

Track listing

Side A: Sweet Honey Bee / Sudel / After The Rain / Gaslight / Side B: Big Bertha / Empathy / Ready, Rudy?

Stable, good-natured, down to earth, hip, shrewd. These are some of the characteristics of Duke Pearson’s personality. Honestly, I have no way of knowing but still I’m sure of it. To be the A&R guy of Blue Note in the 1960’s – the role that Duke Pearson played as follow-up to Ike Quebec from 1963 to 1970 – geniality and quick-wittedness is indispensable.

Besides, these traits also apply to his piano and songwriting skills. Somewhat under the radar, not unusual in an era of stellar pianists, Pearson plowed the field of hard bop modernists as Horace Silver and Sonny Clark. Pearson had his own thing going on. Bright solos clear as spring water. A man full of gaiety and the blues.

And a songwriter, damn. He wrote Jeannine. It was recorded excellently by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. But the essential version is on At The Half Note Café Vol. 2 by Donald Byrd, featuring Pearson on piano.

Pearson wrote Idle Moments for Grant Green’s career-defining session in 1963. And was pianist of service.

Cristo Redentor, The Phantom, Sudel, Wahoo, Chili Peppers, New Girl. Many Pearson songs, great blends of sassiness and ingenuity, not unlike Horace Silver’s compositions, have made a lasting impression. Small wonder that people like to play his tunes. Striking contemporary tributes are The Other Duke by bassist Dave Post’s Swingadelic big band from 2011 and Is That So? by Dutch baritone saxophonist Rik van den Bergh from 2021.

Pearson was a Blue Note recording artist but recorded intermittently for Prestige and Atlantic. He recorded for Blue Note until it was sold to Liberty and co-founder Francis Wolff passed away in 1971. Pearson suffered from multiple sclerosis and died at the premature age of 47 in 1980.

His most adventurous album Wahoo from 1965 is a perennial favorite. Pearson followed it up with two soulful albums on Atlantic, Honeybuns and Prairie Dog. His return to the Blue Note catalogue, Sweet Honey Bee, recorded at the tail end of 1966 and released early 1967, is a sizzling synthesis of groove and lyricism.

By 1967, Blue Note hard bop had become a dinosaur in a world of upheaval that spawned The Black Panthers and the sorrowful cry of Albert Ayler. Yet, Pearson kept the flame burning, seemingly intent on getting the job done. Putting a smile on our face. If records like Sweet Honey Bee don’t make you at least temporarily gay, it seems it’s about time that you order the nails of your coffin. If somebody makes a record like Sweet Honey Bee today, it’ll get a four-star review as a great neo-hard bop album.

Sweet Honey Bee was written for Pearson’s wife. She couldn’t have asked for more. It’s lavender in full blue bloom. It’s a Saint Tropez breeze. It’s killer no filler… But it wasn’t a hit record. There is no reason why, three years after Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder, it shouldn’t have been a hit, what with James Spaulding’s sweet-toned flute melody. No luck. Desperately attempting to reach the top of the charts again after mega-hit The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan, Blue Note opened albums of Morgan, Hank Mobley, Duke Pearson, Andrew Hill, with funky tunes to no avail. Chart success is a mysterious phenomenon.

What is success but a matter of perspective? With all due respect, I’ve heard Taylor Swift singing acoustic guitar songs no better than your average village talent show contestant. In hindsight, successful or not, Pearson recorded his gems for posterity. Like Sudel, a happy marriage of a Carribean theme and Hancock/Tyner-inspired layout. Or After The Rain, an achingly beautiful, melancholic ballad. And Gaslight, somewhat Pearson’s Killer Joe, a lightly swinging walk in nocturnal shadows and a glimpse of neon light, not a care in the world though and not a hustler in sight. Serene, dark night.

Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson feel like fish in the water, adapt to Pearson’s bouncy and mellow tunefulness with easygoing but lightly charged solos. Ron Carter and Mickey Roker in the house. Amen.

Listen to Sweet Honey Bee on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Ycbx8TctM&list=PLw9ozJMqRxLbE768Z2sPzgcSjhDcmAC-k

Duke Pearson - Wahoo
Swingadelic - Tribute To Duke
Rik van den Bergh - Is That So?

Pete La Roca Basra (Blue Note 1965)

- Francois 4 Comments

Drummer Pete La Roca delved into exotic modality on his much-admired 1965 record on Blue Note, Basra.

Pete La Roca - Basra

Personnel

Pete La Roca (drums), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Steve Kuhn (piano), Steve Swallow (bass)

Recorded

on May 19, 1965 at Rudy van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as RLP 12-232 in 1956

Track listing

Side A:
Malaguena
Candu
Tears Come From Heaven
Side B:
Basra
Lazy Afternoon
Eiderdown


If I say Pete La Roca you will most likely answer with: Sonny Rollins, Live At The Village Vanguard. Small wonder, since it is his feature on Rollins’ game-changing LP that put him squarely in the vision of the night binoculars of serious jazz fans. Bird watchers may constitute a fanatical breed, blessed with encyclopedic knowledge, waiting patiently in their cabin in the woods. But serious jazz fans are a passionate lot as well. They spot a gem from miles away and will discuss the merit of the “birds” that play on the disc much in the manner of monks pondering over the words of Saint Augustine.

La Roca shared sideman duties on Village Vanguard with the developing genius of Elvin Jones. As the sole accompanist, however, there are plenty of top-notch features that serious jazz fans cough up effortlessy. He played on, for instance, George Russell’s cutting-edge The Outer View, Joe Henderson’s hard bop winner Page One, Jaki Byard’s far-out Hi-Fly, Slide Hampton’s soulful Sister Salvation and Art Farmer’s folk song gem To Sweden With Love.

La Roca recorded only three albums as a leader: Basra, Turkish Women At The Bath (Douglas 1967) and Swingtime (Blue Note 1997). La Roca – born Pete Sims, the pseudonym was made up after years of playing in Latin bands in his birthplace of New York City – was a taxi driver in the 70s. It’s a disgrace that fine black artists as La Roca had to resort to day (or night) jobs, however honorable the menial activity may be. But it must’ve been one swinging cab. La Roca subsequently attended law school at New York University and returned to jazz in 1979. He passed away in 2012 at age 74.

Basra and Turkish Women At The Bath are highly collectible artifacts, acclaimed albums for the wildly ecstatic ‘bird watchers’. With sound reason, it’s a hell of a couple of albums. Turkish Women is impressive experiment, terse complex groove and abstract painting, as much colored perhaps by Chick Corea than LaRoca, though, it must be said, La Roca wrote all originals. (It was released by Muse under Corea’s name as Bliss, which La Roca successfully fought in court) Basra is progressive mid-sixties Blue Note, on par with the records of Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean, adventurous with a keen sense of the past. It’s a sleeper for the general audience, a winner for the birdwatchers. And it features a number of interesting feathered creatures: tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Steve Kuhn and bassist Steve Swallow.

Both Malaguena and Basra are one-chord (Spanish and Eastern-flavored) drones resting on the fantastic, loose-but-solid drumming from La Roca. Either the man’s got a hip approach to the snare drum or his engineers were in continuous top form, but I’ve heard a lot a awesome drums sounds from La Roca. His snare drum is the Crisp of Crispiness, a healthy slap in the face, cocky like a 42nd Street hustler and wide like the open spaces of East Texas. Joe Henderson is comfortable with the exotic groove, his patiently timed clusters of grunts, growls and bellows on the drone admirable. Henderson whirls lines around the chord like the way a snake charmer directs the movement of the reptile on the streets of Manila or Punjab. He really creeps deep into the vessels of the groove. Candu is loose-jointed blues, Tears Come From Heaven a crisp modal romp, Eiderdown a dark-hued Wayne Shorter-ish melody, Lazy Afternoon a piece of slow-moving ambience with a leading role for the impressionistic Steve Kuhn.

Sometimes the rebellious La Roca hits his polyrhythm as hard and wide as Elvin. Can you imagine?! It’s that kind of excellence and power driving Basra, coupled with the Rudy van Gelder touch, that has for many years now caused the bird watchers to drop their binoculars in awe.

Bobby Hutcherson The Kicker (Blue Note 1963/99)

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It can only be attributed to the risk of market overflow that Blue Note didn’t release vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s de jure debut album The Kicker in 1964, a superb date including Joe Henderson, Duke Pearson and Grant Green.

Bobby Hutcherson - The Kicker

Personnel

Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Grant Green (guitar B1-3), Duke Pearson (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Joe Chambers (drums)

Recorded

on December 29, 1963 at Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

BST 21437 in 1999

Track listing

Side A:
If Ever I Would Leave You
Mirrors
For Duke P.
Side B:
The Kicker
Step Lightly
Bedouin


HHutcherson & Henderson. Sounds like the misfits of the insurance business have joined forces in a run-down office on the outskirts of town. But the late Bobby Hutcherson and Joe Henderson are regarded as towering figures of mainstream and avant-leaning jazz now, and as burgeoning class acts back then at the tail end of 1963, when they were really hitting their stride. Hutcherson had built a reputation first on the West Coast, subsequently in NYC, he had played on front-line beauties as Jackie McLean’s One Step Beyond and Grachan Monchur’s Evolution. Henderson had recorded two albums as a leader, Page One and Our Thing. The Kicker was left on the shelves, seeing release as late as 1999. It is puzzling why Lion and the Wolff decided against release. They probably figured they had enough quality sessions to promote. Perhaps Joe Henderson was the kind of perfectionist disgruntled by the rough edges around a phrase or two. It doesn’t have to perfect, Joe. Coming with your package of supple, soaring post bop, we just might come to like that extra bite.

Regardless, there’s a pairing of talent attuned to each other’s needs and shining brightly during a set of original compositions and one standard, a sprightly mid-tempo take of Lerner and Loewe’s If Ever I Would Leave You. The crystalline, ringing vibes of the versatile modernist Bobby Hutcherson. Joe Henderson, already a strong-willed counterpart of a yes-man. Duke Pearson, inspiring accompanist, weaver of mellifluous lines. Grant Green, featured on side B’s three tracks, the prolific in-house guitarist of the Blue Note label, a class act in both hardboppin’ and modal contexts. Around that time, November 4 and 15 to be exact, 1963, Green, Henderson, Pearson and bassist Bob Cranshaw had cooperated on one of Grant Green’s career highs, Idle Moments. The mutual understanding is evident.

Hutcherson was a major contributor to Eric Dolphy’s free jazz classic Out To Lunch on February 5, 1964. He would venture into more front-line territories soon, recording his de facto debut Dialogue, and subsequently, the avant-garde LP side of Joe Chambers tunes on Components and the Happenings album with Herbie Hancock in 1965. A travel into uncharted territory. A balancing act of simplicity of expression and complex context. New vistas for vibraphonists ever since, the guys spellbound by Hutcherson’s siren-like cadenzas, the move into dark-hued corners of the mind, the zing of his angelic sound.

Already apparent on The Kicker is Hutcherson’s alert ear for group dynamics and controlled, conversationalist approach to the development of his expertly meandering lines. The great mood piece by Joe Chambers, Mirrors, suits Hutcherson to a tee. Throughout the set, which also consists of Henderson’s The Kicker and Step Lightly, Hutcherson’s For Duke P. and Pearson’s Bedouin, the rhythm section flawlessly and in uplifting fashion underscores Hutcherson’s vibe abacadabra and Henderson’s playful imagery. Henderson’s notes form fine-tuned blue and odd clusters, placed with a keen, floating sense of timing.

Though the title track, The Kicker, doesn’t thrive on the background riffs that propel the soloists into action as convincing as the classic take of Horace Silver on the Song For My Father album (including Henderson) and Henderson’s own version in 1967, it is a smokin’ affair, benefiting from the addition of Green in the ensemble and the guitarist’s propulsive, vivacious statements. Perhaps the moving, succulent phrases of Hutcherson and Henderson during Step Lightly should be attributed to the presence of Green, blues master at heart.

Surely Dialogue made up for a more distinct debut. But The Kicker remains a winner, having earned its rightful place among the hard bop cookies that rolled off the assembly line of the Blue Note label in the early sixties.

Joe Henderson The Kicker (Milestone 1967)

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After a series of vanguard jazz releases and collaborations on Blue Note in the mid-sixties, Joe Henderson switched to Orrin Keepnews’ Milestone label and delivered the more straightforward, hard-swinging album The Kicker. Relatively more straightforward. Henderson’s characteristic, adventurous playing style has remained intact. An absolutely sizzling album.

Joe Henderson - The Kicker

Personnel

Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Mike Lawrence (trumpet), Grachan Monchur (trombone), Kenny Barron (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Louis Hayes (drums)

Recorded

on August 10 & September 27, 1967 at Plaza Sound Studios, New York City

Released

as Milestone 9008 in 1968

Track listing

Side A:
Mamacita
The Kicker
Chelsea Bridge
If
Side B:
Nardis
Without A Song
O Amor Em Paz
Mo’ Joe


Henderson must be about the most perfect saxophonist in modern jazz. Exceptional chops, a powerful tone and supurb execution. He’s a tenor sax innovator that has explored the outermost regions of the instrument as well as a great storyteller who keeps constant focus on one of mainstream jazz’ most important axioma, meaningful simplicity. A flexible tenorist that moved just as easily ‘in’ and ‘out’. Henderson might not instill cathartic listening experiences like John Coltrane. Nevertheless, a sensitive and fiery personality rings through Henderson’s strong, probing, eccentric lines, lines that suck one into a thrilling tale, including the added bonus of refreshing wit. One cannot possibly subdue feelings of awe for Henderson’s crafty, passionate game. Keeping blues phrasing to a minimum, Henderson’s lines instead slyly suggest the blues.

Henderson was in the thick of mid-sixties hard bop as well as vanguard jazz, recording acclaimed albums as Mode For Joe, In & Out and Inner Urge. Henderson recorded with Kenny Dorham, Grant Green and Horace Silver and appeared on avant-leaning Blue Note albums, among them Andrew Hill’s Point Of Departure, Pete LaRoca’s Basra and Larry Young’s Unity. One wonders why Henderson, during such a prolific period, traded Blue Note for Milestone. Perhaps Henderson regretted the fact that label boss Alfred Lion retired in 1967. (Lion moved to Mexico, his partner Francis Wolff took over production duties, assisted by pianist Duke Pearson, until his death in 1971) In the guise of Orrin Keepnews, Henderson certainly met a like-minded, equally perceptive label boss.

The septet of The Kicker, including young lions Mike Lawrence and Kenny Barron, cuts loose on three classic Henderson compositions. The Latin tune Mamacita swings hard and Henderson embellishes it with confident legato and dead-pan asides. Henderson initially recorded Mamacita with Kenny Dorham, on the trumpeter’s swan song as a leader in 1964, Trompeta Toccata (read review here). The Kicker and Mo’ Joe, both of which were recorded by Horace Silver while Henderson was part of the hard bop pioneer’s quintet in 1964, are explosive, stunning versions of Henderson’s intricate hard bop anthems.

The apparent ease with which Henderson personalizes standards that were carved in stone for posterity by legendary forebearers, is impressive. Billy Strayhorn’s Chelsea Bridge, which showcased Duke Ellington’s prime tenorist Ben Webster in the forties, gets a vital treatment, tender, endearing yet driving. Saxophonist Benny Green typified Chelsea Bridge as the most ethereal composition in jazz history (in his liner notes for Tommy Flanagan’s 1975’s album Tokyo Recital.) Henderson’s breathy excursion certainly does justice to that eternal charm. Henderson fastens the pace of Without A Song, which was performed beautifully, for instance, by Sonny Rollins on the tenorist’s eponymous The Bridge in 1961. Louis Hayes’ and Ron Carter’s free-flowing accompaniment is a big part of the take’s artistic succes. Speaking about Hayes, Louis Hayes’ swift, furious drumming lifts the whole proceedings to an entirely different level. He’s outrageous!

Henderson also wrote the idiosyncratic blues If, taking it at a fast pace, starting with staccato notes, then exploring the low and high register, sprinkling his ‘out’ phrases with a myriad of slurs, while remaining continuous flow and swing. Riveting stuff.

Kenny Dorham Trompeta Toccata (Blue Note 1964)

- Francois 1 Comment

Nothing prepares you for what’s going to happen after Kenny Dorham’s lyrical opening statements in duet with the piano of Trompeta Toccata’s title track. What follows is a buoyant Afro-Cuban gem, the opening track of one of the trumpeter’s finest recordings.

Kenny Dorham - Trompeta Toccata

Personnel

Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Tommy Flanagan (piano), (Richard Davis, bass), Albert Heath (drums)

Recorded

on September 14, 1964 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 8418 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
Trompeta Toccata
Night Watch
Side B:
Mamacita
The Fox


Trompeta Toccata suggests Dorham played cousin to Blue Note’s front-line albums of the period like Andrew Hill’s Point Of Departure and Herbie Hancock’s My Point Of View. Dorham played on Point Of Departure alongside Richard Davis. But those albums are more dark-hued. Trompeta Toccata bears a lithe charm all its own. Like his colleagues, Dorham stretched the boundaries of hard bop, playing more freely, with a varied, more percussive style. At the same time, Dorham retained his trademark lyrical style and sweet-sour tone. The combination of the experimental Richard Davis, combative Joe Henderson, elegant Tommy Flanagan and versatile Albert Heath guarantees a lot of interesting textures.

Trompeta Toccato didn’t suddenly came out of the blue. Both Dorham’s albums that preceded it, Matador (with Jackie McLean) and Una Mas broadened the horizons of the trumpeter. Dorham had cooperated with Joe Henderson as well, notably on the abovementioned Una Mas and Henderson’s dates Page One (that included the oft-covered Dorham winner Blue Bossa), Our Thing and In & Out, a title that suggests the same modus operandi as Trompeta Toccata. A key figure on a lot of Blue Note’s vanguard sessions (A series of Andrew Hill albums, Joe Henderson’s In & Out, Booker Ervin’s The Freedom Book) and the iconic Out To Lunch from Eric Dolphy) is the brilliant bassist Richard Davis. Davis’s cutting edge bass playing, including virtuoso sliding technique, is strongly featured on Trompeta Toccata. His work on the title track, advanced but firm and coherent at the same time, is a gas. The contrast between the experiments of Davis and Tommy Flanagan’s impressionistic voicings is very enjoyable.

Meanwhile Dorham and Henderson are preoccupied with the melody, stressing staccato runs that start or finish with unexpected notes. Dorham’s husky edge and playful growls mix well with Joe Henderson’s virile, angular phrases. Dorham had been a premier advocate of the Carribean theme in jazz since the early fifties. The title track, consisting of a contagious 6/8 rhythm pattern, is one of his liveliest performances.

Joe Henderson’s Mamacita is equally catching. It’s a more mellow, less pithy take than Henderson’s re-visit on his 1967 Milestone album The Kicker. The medium-tempo Night Watch’s elaborate structure doesn’t take anything away from its unmistakable blues feeling. Dorham sprinkles the landscape of the fast-paced The Fox with a shower of elegant, fluent lines.

I like the fact that Blue Note resisted the temptation to go for a hit record by putting a more straightforward danceable track like Mamacita at the start of the album, as the label often did. (which worked out pretty swell, by the way) But for Dorham’s album, Blue Note favored the lengthy title track as the opener. It immediately states Dorham’s intentions and attributes to the album’s coherence. I’m fond of the album’s brisk, ebullient atmosphere.

Unfortunately, it was Kenny Dorham’s last album as a leader. In hindsight, the underappreciated Dorham, ‘the uncrowned king of the trumpet’, as Art Blakey so aptly put it in his 1955 live show introductions for the original Jazz Messengers (as captured on Live At The Bohemia I & II), was ready for public acceptance. More than ready, having stood at the helm of bebop alongside Charlie Parker in the late forties and early fifties and with a batch of classic albums as Afro-Cuban and Quiet Kenny and sideman appearances on a series of outstanding hard bop recordings in his pocket. Instead, Dorham slid into obscurity and untimely passed away in 1972 due to kidney disease.

But if you’re going to have a swan song, Trompeta Toccata more than qualifies.