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Joe Henderson


skeith

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I've always felt that that quote was fascinating (and was surprised there was so little reaction here). It indicates some degree of insecurity, but more important is that it's a significant counter to the idea of bebop orthodoxy and a reflection of the kind of peer pressures jazz musicians can be subject to - I mean, he played changes as well as anybody, but he clearly thought that there was some prior "standard" that he was not living up to. It's also a little bit akin to Bill Evans oncesaying he felt like he was somehow insufficient because he was a bad mimic and had to come up with his own way of doing things.

I didn't read the quote as a reflection of insecurity, that is, an admission that he felt he wasn't living up to bebop standards. Rather, I read it more as a statment that he didn't completely relate spiritually or emotionally to pure bebop and not until Coltrane did the music hit him deep in his soul. Detroit was a bebop town -- Barry Harris was still the leading guru in town when Joe was in college -- and Joe once said he felt like a man alone listening to Ornette when he was here. (He also told me that studying Hindemith, Stravinsky and Bartok at Wayne State helped keep his ears open and was one reason that early on he related to the experiments of both Coltrane and Ornette.) Of course, it's possible that he harbored some insecurities, but he sure didn't play that way. In fact, one of the things that's so amazing was that he was so in control of time, articulation and harmony that he could at any moment shift from abstract, slippery phrasing that obscured time and form to laying down a row of swinging 8th notes that was so Right-On-The-Money it could put to shame Sonny Stitt. That's one of the things that I love most about his playing.

Allen: Do you know the source for that quote? I'd be curious to see the context.

Edited by Mark Stryker
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what I quoted above was a comment that Henderson made to Dave Schildkraut at a jam session, sometime in the early '60s, as I recall Dave told me.

Though we could go back and forth on this, and I never met Henderson, I think there is an element of insecurity indicated, especially now as I reflect on Mark's prior post and the thought of the kind of town Detroit was when Henderson was coming of age. I can relate from personal experience, having been pretty close with Barry Harris in the late 1970s that, wonderful guy as he is, he is very ideological when it comes to the music and the "right" way of playing - as a matter of fact, one of the biggest obstacles I had when I picked up the horn again in the early '80s was a sense of betraying Barry's ideals. I kid you not - he's one of the great people I've ever known, and has such a depth of integrity to his whole being that, having come under his orbit, one takes great pains to escape. He had basically told me that a lot of musicians were just plain wrong in the way they played - Ornette, Dolphy, even later Sonny Rollins, and it took some doing for me to overcome this fear that I was not a real musician if I had not mastered the bebop rudiments or if I played in any open-ended way.

So, maybe I am projecting, but I think there was real social pressure in that Detroit bebop era to stick to the bebop way. Especially as Barry was considered one of the prime teachers on the scene.

Edited by AllenLowe
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I guess I would add that pressure to conform does not always produce insecurity -- it's not a straight line. In fact, it can produce the opposite, an increased stubbornness to stick to your convictions, and Joe, as much as any musician of his generation, marched to his own drummer for his entire career.

Here's an in-depth 1991 interview that doesn't directly address the issue but does paint a larger and interesting portrait of Joe's personality and includes reflections on his early days.

http://www.melmartin.com/html_pages/Interviews/henderson.html

Edited by Mark Stryker
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Wish someone had asked him about Blood, Sweat & Tears...

In 1993, Joe told USA Today the following about BS&T: "Here you had a jazz-rock group and they didn't have any black faces. I was going to do a lot of writing, which was not necessarily going to be commercial. There was so much money, I was driven to rehearsals in a chauffeur-driven limo. They would go into the studio and live there for two months. I was used to recording in two days."

The USA Today reporter, James T. Jones IV, then interjects in a quick summary that's surely reductive: "That, along with the band's numerous personnel changes, led him to leave after six months."

Edited by Mark Stryker
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the only thing I would add to this collective potrait of Henderson is that, when it comes to jazz musicians, never understimate the true depth of neurosis and self-defeating behavior. In my experience there's always more than meets the media's eye.

When I interviewed Joe in 1996, one of the questions I asked him was how he felt about his current success -- he was then riding the Verve contract and resulting exposure to the biggest paydays of his his career -- especially in light of the fact that so many of his former colleagues like Kenny Dorham had been tragically under appreciated during their lives. The angle at which he came at his answer surprised me; I'm going from memory here as I haven't listened to the tape of that interview since it was done. But he essentially talked about how some guys really didn't want to be famous or created situations that in effect kept them underground, or perhaps more underground than they needed to be. He was clearly not talking about himself -- he liked flying first-class and dug the bread, though he said if it all went away tomorrow he'd still be getting up everyday and working on his music, just as he had during all those years when not many folks other than musicians were paying attention. I interpreted his answer that he was specifically talking about K.D., but I didn't follow-up, because I didn't think it was germane to the wider context of the interview.

Still, interesting.

Edited by Mark Stryker
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One lingering memory I have of Henderson is a 1980s Jazz Showcase engagement that paired him with Johnny Griffin. It seemed that Griffin's normal aggressiveness and Henderson's perhaps normal diffidence were exaggerated under the circumstances. What really threw me was the significant difference in sheer volume between them (Griffin, of course, being the more forceful; Henderson sounded like he was muttering to himself -- perhaps, I thought afterwards, he might not have been in good health).

Having been the pianist on the gig (April, 1987), my recollection is that neither Joe or Johnny were particularly enamored of the other and were essentially resigned to just sharing the bandstand with the same rhythm section. We also followed the Jazz Showcase with a week at Yoshi's in Oakland. It wasn't really a two-tenor band. Joe would play a few tunes then Johnny would play his three tunes, then they would play one together to close the set. How I wish I could have joined Griff a year earlier to have shared the stage with him and Jaws! But playing with Joe was VERY inspiring, despite the uninspired rhythm section. We played Punjab, Serenity, Without a Song, Invitation - the usual Joe-Hen songbook. He was very specific about piano voicings, which I welcomed enthusiastically, as few horn players have the piano/arranging skills to make such intelligent choices and really know what they want.

Unfortunately that was my only opportunity to work with him.

Edited by Michael Weiss
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About 1982 Joe had some students in San Francisco. One was a friend of mine. She was playing tenor in a little bar on Columbus (Ray's Cafe) and Joe was playing piano for her when I came by. They were playing a Monk tune and I was so surprised how well Joe was playing Monk's style! The voicings and the phrasing. The way Monk would play a chord and let some of the notes linger after stopping others. Joe was deep.

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Clifford, Joe Henderson problems were well know.

Todd Barkan told me that when he promoted a all star tour in Japan in the 80's, that Joe flew all the way there but turned right around and came back to the States because he couldn't make a connection there. If I remember the story right, Henderson was paid upon arrival for the tour and then split!

Fred Hersch told me ( along with his bandmates Nasheet Waits and Joh Herbert), about how difficult it was to be a member of Henderson's band because of his habit. He told the story, I think as a example for Nasheet and John of the trials and tribulations of works with someone with problems, about when they played a Seventh Avenue South ( a well know story): The band came to work at the regular time and waited for Joe, who didn't show up. After playing without him for the night, waiting in the empty club at 3am and taking to the manager, Joe shows up and rushes through the club directly to the dressing room. He emerges after a time with his tenor assembled, stops and stands there and slowly realizes that there is nobody in the room and that maybe something is wrong.

Hersch tells it better than me here.

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"Demons" were referred to earlier. I never thought of Joe Henderson as a junkie, though I know his cousin Jack Graham did not last too long because of it. Could anyone elaborate? (and no, it has no bearing on my appreciation of his art/humanity - I am just curious.)

Jack Graham who played on the Sunny Murray ESP album? was also irritated by the remarks about Demons, didn't really fit my image of Henderson...

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was also irritated by the remarks about Demons, didn't really fit my image of Henderson...

You gotta realize that thre's the musical self & the personal self (and many other selfs if you really want to go there...). The musical Joe - and quite often enough, the professional Joe - had their shit totally together. The intellectual Joe too, for that matter. But there was another Joe, who had....that thing. Those selfs only sometimes intersected, which is why we all know of Joe Henderson The Tenor Player today and don't let the demons define his image (unlike some others who either couldn't or didn't keep it private, for whatever reasons) . He kept his shit together and private enough that the "general public" never had an inkling, which, really, is how it should be done if at all possible.

This is just another way that Joe proved to be music first, everything else later. Serious people are not immune to problems. Joe Henderson the musician was a serious man and should always be thought of as such, no matter what. Anything else would be a mistake.

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Clifford, Joe Henderson problems were well know.

Todd Barkan told me that when he promoted a all star tour in Japan in the 80's, that Joe flew all the way there but turned right around and came back to the States because he couldn't make a connection there. If I remember the story right, Henderson was paid upon arrival for the tour and then split!

Fred Hersch told me ( along with his bandmates Nasheet Waits and Joh Herbert), about how difficult it was to be a member of Henderson's band because of his habit. He told the story, I think as a example for Nasheet and John of the trials and tribulations of works with someone with problems, about when they played a Seventh Avenue South ( a well know story): The band came to work at the regular time and waited for Joe, who didn't show up. After playing without him for the night, waiting in the empty club at 3am and taking to the manager, Joe shows up and rushes through the club directly to the dressing room. He emerges after a time with his tenor assembled, stops and stands there and slowly realizes that there is nobody in the room and that maybe something is wrong.

Hersch tells it better than me here.

Wow, I never thought that Joe Henderson was that way inclined. It's kinda upsetting.

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Clifford, Joe Henderson problems were well know.

Todd Barkan told me that when he promoted a all star tour in Japan in the 80's, that Joe flew all the way there but turned right around and came back to the States because he couldn't make a connection there. If I remember the story right, Henderson was paid upon arrival for the tour and then split!

Fred Hersch told me ( along with his bandmates Nasheet Waits and Joh Herbert), about how difficult it was to be a member of Henderson's band because of his habit. He told the story, I think as a example for Nasheet and John of the trials and tribulations of works with someone with problems, about when they played a Seventh Avenue South ( a well know story): The band came to work at the regular time and waited for Joe, who didn't show up. After playing without him for the night, waiting in the empty club at 3am and taking to the manager, Joe shows up and rushes through the club directly to the dressing room. He emerges after a time with his tenor assembled, stops and stands there and slowly realizes that there is nobody in the room and that maybe something is wrong.

Hersch tells it better than me here.

Wow, I never thought that Joe Henderson was that way inclined. It's kinda upsetting.

Yep, I agree. It's new to me, too and gives an insight into the title of "Junk Blues" on "Joe Henderson in Japan" which I happen to listening to right now from the Milestone box set.

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the only thing I would add to this collective potrait of Henderson is that, when it comes to jazz musicians, never understimate the true depth of neurosis and self-defeating behavior. In my experience there's always more than meets the media's eye.

And the only thing I would add to that is that, when it comes to human beings, never understimate the true depth of neurosis and self-defeating behavior, in all it's various forms (some much more "socially acceptable" than others). In my experience there's always more than meets the eye. And that goes for me as much as for anyone else.

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well, everybody's a pain, but there is something about the musician that stands out - I first got an idea of this in the 1970s when I worked for a well-known record producer who told me that in all his years in the business (and he knew everybody from the 1940s on) he'd only met one jazz musician who he considered to be a grown up.

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well, everybody's a pain, but there is something about the musician that stands out - I first got an idea of this in the 1970s when I worked for a well-known record producer who told me that in all his years in the business (and he knew everybody from the 1940s on) he'd only met one jazz musician who he considered to be a grown up.

Did he say who that one was?

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