Huge Tip! Joe Henderson Our Thing To In ’N Out Revisited notes: The Blue Note label in the early and mid 1960s was a haven for musicians engaged in the process of expanding the jazz vocabulary with unconventional harmonic strategies and new compositional infrastructures that elicited equally exploratory improvisational responses. And it was an ongoing process, benefiting from the sporadic, albeit calculated, interaction of different perspectives and methods of creative inspiration. Established or working groups notwithstanding, the changing personnel on various recording sessions over time facilitated the exchange of ideas, the inclination to experiment with unfamiliar modes of expression, and the challenge of spontaneous ensemble compatibility. These special musicians found themselves balanced on a tightrope stretched between their conservative instincts and radical desires. Though launched to reflect the founders’ interest in stride and boogie-woogie piano and early forms of swing, through the ‘50s Blue Note became established as a home for post-bop and blues-based jazz styles. By 1962, however, modern concepts had begun to infiltrate their catalogue – Jackie McLean touched upon the advances of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman on his Let Freedom Ring, Wayne Shorter was providing Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with quirky new material and occasioning subtly subversive impressions as sideman with not yet total converts like Freddie

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Hubbard and Lee Morgan, as were Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. 1963 was the breakthrough year, albeit through circuitous circumstances. In April, Kenny Dorham, a veteran bebopper with impeccable credentials dating back to Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie beginning in 1946, and Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, and the original Jazz Messengers in the ‘50s, plus a one-off session in 1958 with John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, was booked for a new album – at that point, his thirteenth appearance as leader or sideman for the label – and featured Hancock, Tony Williams, bassist Butch Warren, and a young tenor saxophonist making his recording debut, Joe Henderson. The album, Una Mas, was not revolutionary but made a splash, and Henderson so impressed the bosses, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, that he was signed and scheduled for his own album, Page One, returning the favor by including Dorham, two short months later. Apparently pleased with the result, they brought Henderson back in September for a second album, a more ambitious effort representing the contrasting, but not completely conflicting, tensions generated by simultaneous conservative and adventurous impulses. By naming the album Our Thing, Henderson implied a connection with jazz’s “New Thing” – reinforced by the title track’s eccentric construction, with episodes of varying length and contrasting meters, and the ambiguous tonality that Andrew Hill uses to introduce “Teeter Totter.” Henderson’s intricate, edgy solos, kinetic and

 finely detailed, develop a personal logic through jagged melodic contours and disjunct phrasing. By contrast, Dorham’s playing is dignified and supple, and his three compositions have thoughtful, lyrical themes that progress in more conventional fashion. Pianist Hill is the wild card, applying harmonic alterations without distorting the music’s equilibrium. As occurred with Henderson, Hill’s distinctive approach here directly led to his own Blue Note contract, albums which subsequently exemplified the “modernist” position between post-bop and free jazz. In his enthusiasm, Lion recorded Hill five times in the next ten months (twice before the end of ’63), with the first date (Black Fire) and the

rhythm section, eight months before they recorded A Love Supreme. McCoy Tyner’s penchant toward development and ornamentation (especially persuasive on “In ’N Out”), rather than Hill’s talent for reconfiguration, redefines the group dynamics, and Elvin Jones’ looser, fluid, propulsive intensity dovetails with bassist Richard Davis’ security and ingenuity. As if to illustrate the inherent dichotomy, Henderson’s “Punjab” and “Serenity” supply substantial harmonic frameworks and distinctive melodies through which he cavorts with capricious phrase lengths and motivic juxtapositions. One wonders if Dorham’s “Brown’s Town” – a feature for trumpet and rhythm section – is a tribute to Clifford Brown,

fourth (Point of Departure) featuring Henderson’s reliably rousing attack. In the seven months alone between Our Thing and Henderson’s next date, In ’N Out, the label recorded such pathbreaking albums as Point of Departure, McLean’s Destination…Out!, Grachan Moncur III’s Evolution, and Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch. Again, the title, In ’N Out, makes a sly reference to Henderson’s ability to maneuver within both of the prevalent tactics, “inside” and “outside” of the changes, exhibited on the title track, this time accompanied by two-thirds of John Coltrane’s

whom Dorham replaced in the Brown/Roach Quintet after his fatal car crash. Or if the thematic similarity of Dorham’s “Short Story” to Lester Young’s “Tickle Toe” was an intentional nod or simply, remarkably fortuitous. Together, Henderson and Dorham had one more go-round for Blue Note, Trompeta Toccata, the trumpeter’s last appearance on the label. But Henderson’s star was still rising.