Haitian Sensation Radio: Stardust/Old Folks

I’ve never been much of a free-jazz guy. I mean, I respect and even dig some of the work that falls into the category, like the efforts of Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders and others. But the place where I instinctively go as a jazz fan has always been to hard bop. Hard bop, as the name suggests, came out as an evolution of be-bop but worked in more elements from rhythm & blues, gospel and blues sources. Hard bop didn’t trade away the intellectualism of be-bop but was less concerned with the technicalities of the songcraft, and homed in more on communicating certain sensibilities.

A friend once mocked my jazz preferences by basically saying, “Ha ha, youuuu like structure!” in that sing-songy playground teasing way. But you listen to this track by Joe Henderson and the way he plays with the structure of these two standards is indicative of what a fertile imagination can do within the strictures of melody and tunefulness. (It’s the fourth track on the album.)

Dig the way the audience eats up those big, churchy piano chords pianist Wynton Kelly lays out in the intro. Then, when he states the melody, it’s clear they recognize Hoagy Carmichael’s tune. At 1:08, you can even hear someone humming along loudly, though it might be Wynton himself or someone else on the bandstand. A few seconds later, when Henderson starts soloing, you can hear the audience responding to the smokiness of his tone and the spacing of his notes. Peep the dude saying “Take it away, Joe” at 1:48.

Henderson continues to keep the crowd rapt when he bears down and returns to the song’s melodic structure at about three minutes in. They applaud the heroic exertion of his ragged arpeggio that ends at 3:30 and he probably knows he’s got ‘em hooked. From there, he opens up a bit, swaggering with muscular, free-ranging riffs that jump up and down all over the range of the tenor sax. Hear the folks paying attention again at 4:59. It’s a long solo, too, clocking in at a little more than eight minutes.

Joe Henderson was a great tenor player and that’s half of what makes this performance so awesome. The other crucial half is that you can hear the listeners responding to him being great. Amongst the tinkling of classes and bar chatter, you can feel the collective focus of the room keenly coalescing every phrase being played. Even after Henderson’s virtuoso turn, you can hear the enthusiasm when Wynton Kelly takes the lead and transitions into Old Folks. The hollers, whistles and exhortations go against the grain of how most people think about jazz—as coolly, sedate exercises where everything stayed buttoned-down. Nope, there’s fire too. In fact, there’s even fire in jazz’s cool school.

Joe Henderson never became a well-known legend like Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, despite working on some of the same labels with some of the same people. But the reason I like his work is because he could still generate his own kind of heat.  The brilliance of Star Dust/Old Folks and, really, this whole recording is that you can hear that he’s not alone in the wilderness. Artists of any stripe need feedback and it’s glorious to Henderson getting heaps of it as he plays his heart out.

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