if you really know - please share.
-_-
No, I don't know for sure, but I'll bet that either it was an outright overdose, general debilitation from drug use over time, or (a la Sonny Clark) a specific incident where someone is so completely out of it that and on the streets that one night he is exposed to the elements to a dangerous degree. If physical violence had been involved, I think I would have heard about that. In those days, in the jazz press, such things usually weren't talked about openly. There were one or two standard phrases -- can't recall them now -- that were understood to mean than X had been a drug addict and had died from an overdose or from one of many drug-related causes. Arguably, no alto saxophonist of talent -- with the possible exception of Jackie McLean on "Jackie McLean and Co." -- ever sounded more strung-out than Ernie Henry did. I recall an old Martin Williams Down Beat review of either "Presenting Ernie Henry" or "Seven Standards and a Blues" (or maybe it was "Brilliant Corners") in which, taking note of Henry's sharpish intonation and at times extreme effortfulness of articulation, he wondered whether Henry really could play much at all (as in, were these things a matter of choice or sheer infirmity) and also implied that those who were drawn to Henry's playing were in some sense voyeurs of pain. Martin, of course, was quite a puritan, but he does have a point. Henry's effortfulness is related to Monk's in that it is truly musically expressive of just what Henry, one feels fairly sure, is trying to bring off; on the other hand, he does falter at times, even by his own standards/narrow margins. As for the nature of what Henry expressed emotionally, while I'd say it would be voyueristic to prize Bird's "Lover Man" because it sounds like what it actually is, a man having a breakdown (and Martin may have had that in the back of his mind), Henry doesn't strike me that way. His limitations as an instrumentalist led him to come up with some unique, musically interesting moves (like a drowning man who invents a new swim stroke), while the "cry" of his playing never seemed external or self-regarding (as IMO Frank Morgan's sometimes did); rather, that aspect of Henry, listened to at the time (before his death), seemed like a dangerous, powerful act of realism, for him and to some degree, and along similar lines, for the listener. It sure was no vacation.
That's a very fair summary. For some of us, especially those of us who are saxophone players, the wayward intonation has always been a problem and I find it difficult to listen to Ernie's work on 'Brilliant Corners'. Jackie McLean was easier to take until the night I heard him at the Kennedy Center in DC in the mid 90s. He was playing almost half a tone under (or over - I can't now remember) the piano and seemed totally unaware of the fact. He certainly made no effort to get any closer and we had to leave after a couple of numbers.
_forumlogo.png.a607ef20a6e0c299ab2aa6443aa1f32e.png)
