Trumpet Great Eddie Henderson Turns up a Winning Hand with a Brilliant All-Star Quintet featuring Kenny Barron, Donald Harrison, Gerald Cannon and Mike Clark.
It’s never been wise to bet against Eddie Henderson. Not
that the trumpet great is a gambling man, despite what the jackpot ride and
shades-masked poker face on the cover of his invigorating new album, Shuffle
and Deal, might imply. “I play War, but that’s about it,” Henderson jokes. “I’m
not sophisticated enough for more than ‘high card wins.’”
Henderson’s storied biography suggests otherwise. The son of
a vocalist father and a mother who danced at the Cotton Club, young Eddie
received his first trumpet lesson from Louis Armstrong. His parents’ coterie of
friends included Miles Davis, who provided the fledgling trumpeter with some
typically sharp-toned mentorship. Henderson’s own remarkable career has
included tenures with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Herbie Hancock’s
Mwandishi band along with his successful parallel life as a psychiatrist in the
Bay Area.
Due out July 31 via Smoke Sessions Records, Shuffle and Deal
finds Henderson turning over yet another winning hand. It doesn’t hurt that he
arrived with four aces up his sleeve – namely, the members of his stellar
quintet: pianist Kenny Barron, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, bassist Gerald
Cannon and drummer Mike Clark. Add the leader into the mix and you end up with
an unbeatable royal flush.
The album features a mix of familiar standards and original
compositions by both Henderson’s musical and actual families – in addition to
pieces by Barron and Harrison, the repertoire also includes pieces by the
trumpeter’s wife Natsuko Henderson and his daughter, musician and educator Cava
Menzies. The collection adds up to a blend of identities and voices that
Henderson likes to refer to as a “collective portrait.”
Released just in time for Henderson’s landmark 80th
birthday, Shuffle and Deal reveals a master at the height of his powers, able
to unleash blistering, agile runs on bop burners as well as explore ballads
with an exquisite fragility (yet more evidence that a lack of sophistication
isn’t what’s keeping him away from the card table). If anything about this date
looks backwards through the trumpeter’s eight-decade history, it’s not the vitality
of the playing but the structure of the program, which keeps an engaged
audience firmly in mind throughout.
“I want the audience to really feel the music and start
moving,” Henderson insists. “Jazz started as dance music in the first place, so
I want to bring that element back into the music. The telltale common
denominator when people are really enjoying themselves is when they feel like
they want to get up and dance. Not the European concept of listening to music,
just sitting still and static, shushing people and politely clapping at the end
of the tune. No! I thought it was supposed to be fun. That’s the way I grew
up.”
Photo Credit: Jimmy Katz
Henderson’s newly penned title track should do the trick
from the outset, jolting listeners out of their chairs with its insinuating
shuffle beat (the actual source of the album’s title). The feel of the tune was
inspired by Henderson’s early mentor, in particular Miles’ shadowboxing
rhythmic feel on Jack Johnson.
“Miles just had this aura when he played,” Henderson
explains, citing the goal he envisioned when playing the tune. “In the liner
notes to My Funny Valentine they used the word ‘duende,’ which refers to the
presence that matadors have, like they could walk on eggshells without breaking
them. It’s a master’s approach; it leaves an indelible imprint on your memory.
I always have some ideal in my mind when I play. I close my eyes and there’s a
blank screen, but I envision elegance and purity. So I know where I want to go,
but I don’t know how I’m going to get there.”
Henderson described a similar approach to “Over the
Rainbow,” which he was inspired to play after seeing Judy Garland perform the
song in a documentary. The tragic life imbued the song with a very different
meaning than it possessed in the more innocent and whimsical context of her
original version in The Wizard of Oz. That emotional resonance makes it a
perfect companion piece with “God Bless the Child,” which is impossible to
imagine separate from Billie Holiday’s emotion-laden voice. Both are rendered
with aching tenderness by Henderson and the quintet, held aloft by Clark’s
delicate yet foundational brushwork.
Barron contributed two pieces to the album. The barbed
“Flight Path” was the title track to the 1983 second album by his Monk-inspired
quartet Sphere, while “Cook’s Bay” was originally recorded for 2000’s Spirit
Song with Henderson on trumpet. The two men share a long history and a
matchless chemistry, nowhere more gorgeously evident than on their intimate
album-closing duet on Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.”
“Kenny Barron is invaluable to me,” Henderson says. “He’s
always right there, always supportive and knowing exactly what I need. It’s
just like breathing in and breathing out with Kenny. It’s like he’s part of my
thoughts.”
The album’s final standard is a lyrical evocation of the
classic “It Might As Well Be Spring.” Menzies’ offering for the album is the
smoldering, dark-hued “By Any Means,” which echoes the tone of “Nightride,” her
contribution to Henderson’s previous album, Be Cool. “Both those tunes are
mysterious,” her father laughs. “I guess she got the mysterious side of her
character from me.”
A crisp call-and-response between Cannon and Clark ignites
“Boom,” Natsuko Henderson’s soulful new piece. It’s as aptly named as
“Burnin’,” reprised by Harrison from his own 2001 album Paradise Found (which
introduced his young nephew Christian Scott on trumpet). Like much of the
album, the tune was nailed in a single take – in this case, an off-the-cuff
rendition captured when Harrison was unaware that tape was even rolling. “I
thought we were just rehearsing,” he says, shrugging off the effortless
brilliance of his sharp solo. “I thought we were just jiving around but
everybody else thought it was killing.”
That modesty, belied by the compelling beauty of his playing
on Shuffle and Deal, is typical of Henderson, who has always preferred to keep his
cards close to his chest. That doesn’t seem likely to change as the trumpet
maestro turns 80. “That just happens to be another inch along the way,” he
says. “I’m not close to finished. I feel like I’m just beginning.”
"Shuffle and Deal" was produced by Paul Stache and
Damon Smith and
recorded live in New York at Sear Sound's Studio C on a
Sear-Avalon custom console
at 96KHz/24bit and mixed to ½" analog tape using a
Studer mastering deck.
Available in audiophile HD format.
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