Joe Henderson’s second recording as a leader features a very strong supporting cast: trumpeter Kenny Dorham (one of Henderson’s earliest supporters), pianist Andrew Hill, bassist Eddie Khan, and drummer Pete La Roca. Together they perform three Dorham and two Henderson originals, advanced music that was open to the influence…

Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson’s debut as a leader is a particularly strong and historic effort. With major contributions made by trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Butch Warren, and drummer Pete La Roca, Henderson (who already had a strikingly original sound and a viable inside/outside style) performs six…

This early recording by Joe Henderson is not only one of the finest of all of his fine recordings, but is also a high point for 1960s jazz. At this point in his career, Henderson was a full-time member of Horace Silver’s combo and did not yet have a…

On Unity, jazz organist Larry Young began to display some of the angular drive that made him a natural for the jazz-rock explosion to come barely four years later. While about as far from the groove jazz of Jimmy Smith as you could get, Young hadn’t made the complete…

Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson’s fifth and final early Blue Note album is his only one with a group larger than a quintet. Henderson welcomes quite an all-star band (trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Joe Chambers) and together…

The first of two LPs documenting tenor-saxophonist Joe Henderson’s engagement at the Village Vanguard in 1985 (with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster) features Henderson in top form on six selections. Highlights include “Beatrice,” Thelonious Monk’s rarely performed “Friday the Thirteenth,” “Ask Me Now” and “Isotope.” All of…

The 1966 edition of the Andrew Hill Quartet included saxophonist Sam Rivers, bassist Walter Booker, and drummer J.C. Moses. This group recorded what was to be the first of Andrew Hill’s four “free” sessions for Blue Note. The other three were all recorded in 1967 and were solo piano…

Compulsion continues Andrew Hill’s progression, finding the pianist writing more complex compositions and delving even further into the avant-garde. Working with a large, percussion-heavy band featuring Freddie Hubbard (trumpet, flugelhorn), John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Cecil McBee (bass), Joe Chambers (drums), Renaud Simmons (conga), Nadi Qamar (percussion), and,…

Pax is one of those seminal Andrew Hill albums that sat locked in Blue Note’s vaults for a decade before the first five cuts here were finally released as part of a double-LP package in 1975 entitled One for One. The final pair, recorded at the same time, didn’t…

Andrew Hill has been, in the gentlest of cases, an idiosyncratic player, composer, and bandleader. But often, reviews of his work have been quite strident and refer to him as an iconoclast. That’s okay; some critics thought of Monk and Herbie Nichols that way, too. Time Lines has Hill…