*** Tyrone Washington Corner ***

[JSngry]

Well, Chuck knows how much I dig him, and I hope you know of my unlimited respect for you too, Larry, but nobody's perfect, and y'all's opinion of Joe Henderson is just wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!!!!

But you're right about his sound - it was not particularly "loud". He used a close tip hard rubber mouthpiece that had, I think, the chamber slightly bored out to give a fuller bottom end. That's not the setup to use if you want to play loudly, not at all, but what you DO get is a beautifully burnished, dark tone that although not as "bright" as many conventional jazz saxophone tones, is every bit as full. Perhaps even fuller in terms of eveness of distribution of overtones.

I heard Joe a few times, and I remember being struck by how "soft" he sounded, but the longer I listened, the more I realized that regardless of the volume of his tone, he was PROJECTING. I could hear him no matter where in the rooms I was, and he wasn't drowned out by his various bands. I think this comes from his classical training w/Larry Teal, one of the gurus of classical saxophone instruction, and a man whose principals quite often apply across the hoard to ALL amnners odf saxophone playing. One of the bedrocks of all instrumental (and vocal) instruction is air support coming from the diaphragm, and Teal REALLY stresses this If you master it, you can play or sing as softly as imaginable and still be heard, and at the volume you intend, at the back of a room and over all but the most racuous noise. Joe had this training and it showed.

I'll agree, though that his was a tone better served by microphones (or very intimate settings, which is ultimately the role of a microphone in traditional usage - to create "intimacy" where none has a good chance of existing/surviving), simply because his tone had so many layers to it, and he used such a variety of microshaded tonal nuances. In that sense, he was very much a chamber player, and I think that reflects across his entire career - I always had the impression that he would be just as happy playing in a small room with a quartet and 5-6 people listening as he would in a crowded concert hall. Probably even happier. He seemed to be that kind of "reclusive" a person, and when fame at last found him, it seemed like his attitude was one of "y'all are joining this show already in progress. Don't expect me to stop and fill you in on the story so far, just pay attention and you'll get it". Hardly seemed to be a headline grabber, if you know what I mean. I think he, at root, was a cat who really wanted nothing more out of life than a good reed, a good buzz, and a good rhythm section (not necessarily always in that order), no matter where they were or who heard it when they were there. This I can relate to. Quite a bit, actually.

No sense arguing matters of taste, of course, but for my money, other people played with more passion, others with more intellect, and still others went far deeper into uncharted territory, but few combined them all as comfortably and as naturally, as organically, as Joe. To me, he's about as "hip" a player who has ever lived, if by "hip" I mean combining the full funk of the street with the full brains of the street (sic) in a balance that refuses to let one get the better of the other, because he was hip enough to realize that there was no need whatsoever for them to struggle against each other, that they might be opposite sides, but still the same coin. And I do. I'll certainly grant that many of his recordings show him to be a "licks-bound" player, but they're his licks, or his own idiosyncratic permutations on the standard vocabulary, his "post-modernization" of it, if you will. For the assembly line-like schedule that labels kept back then, I'd think that this was what kept him busy, because, not unlike Sonny Stitt, he had a "ready made" sound (call it a formula if you must, but I find it a bit too variated in it's various apllications to use that "derogatory" designation) that could walk right in, sit right down, etc. But he could also bump it up a notch or ten, and often enough did.

And nobody, NOBODY, swung harder than Joe when he wanted to. Just my opinion.

Edited November 11, 2003 by JSngry

[Chuck Nessa]

  Tyrone Washington sounds a lot like Joe Henderson.  It's amazing.  More comments later after I spin it a few more times.

One of the high points, for me, is that Tyrone does NOT sound like Joe Henderson.

Well that's a first impression, Chuck. Haven't been able to listen closely yet.

BTW, what's wrong with Joe Henderson??

Conn, Kart and Jimbo all seem to think I dissed Joe Henderson.

Please read again. I am not stupid enough to bring up misgivings about Joe in this house.

I do think he's "over-revered" but am not interested in that fight.

[Soul Stream]

Just to chime in on Jsngry's point about being a "licks" player. That is a non-starter argument for me. Everyone plays certain phrases over and over and over again. Some have a wider vocabulary of pet licks, but it's still the same. The human brain does not spew out original material endlessly by nature, no matter who it is.

[Chuck Nessa]

Everyone plays certain phrases over and over and over again. Some have a wider vocabulary of pet licks, but it's still the same.

The big diff is some make a career/reputation from these licks, nomatter how hip. Please note I did not charge anyone with this offense.

[Larry Kart]

Jim -- I just want to know one thing: How do you make those big BIG letters? Also, what about the inside/outside thing I mentioned? Not that I expect you to agree with me, but digging your approach to all things musical, I wonder what your take is on that aspect of JH, if in fact you see it as a real aspect at all. (I don't have the '60s BN album "In 'N' Out," but the title of the title track suggests that JH was thinking along those lines to some extent at that time.) Finally, I think you're right about JH being a reclusive spirit, a kind of musical introvert. That's one of the reasons I like some of the late laidback Verve dates; he's not trying to be more muscular and ballsy than he really is (or more than I think he really is).

About the licks thing--of course everyone has them, but it's how, when, and why you use them. My problem with JH here is encapsulated in your phrase "his own idiosyncratic permutations on the standard vocabulary." That is, licks may be the wrong term for what sometimes sounds to me like the byproducts of a self-invented and (I would say) too-heavily-invested-in-for-his-own-good permutation machine (especially in terms of harmonic options), one that was pouring forth so much information of one particular sort at such a very high rate that it must have been difficult for JH to adjust the controls in order to bring other useful options into play in the moment. How seldom--or so it seems to me--does JH ever surprise himself, or even let himself be put in a position to be surprised, especially by the arrival of something direct and "simple," how seldom does he come up with (or even just allow himself to play) a phrase that isn't covered with characteristic JH dense harmonic beadwork. No, it's not literally all worked out beforehand, but the ways in which JH moves through a solo at any given period in his career do seem, at least to me, pretty foreordained when compared to other solos JH might or did play at that general time. A possible reference point here might be the somewhat older Clifford Jordan (b. 1931 vs. JH b. 1937), who like JH had a very definite set of harmonic and timbral fingerprints and a relatively surefire way of producing them but who always struck me, in any of his several somewhat different stylistic periods, as a soloist who usually had a good deal more room to manuever than JH did on the plain-and-direct-is- possible vs. allover-design-must-predominate front.

But then, as Chuck says, you have to be stupid enough to bring up misgivings about JH in this house.

[JSngry]

Well, Joe always struck me as an R&B player at root, albeit one who was hip to Trane, Tristano, and a buncah other stuff. But at his best, I hear him as a honker and a shouter with a REALLY broad pallate. A lot of his "out effects" are based on overblowing and false fingerings, and I believe that this goes back to his early fascination w/Prez, who used exactly the same techniques to his own ends.

Overblowing, false fingerings, playing of the natural overtone series of the horn, these are all things that also figure into embrochure and breath control exercises in classical saxophone playing, and surely Joe encountered these in his studies w/Teal. It must have been a revelation for him to find a common ground between Prez and the conservatory, to realize that he could have it both ways technically. And technically, he was as adept at this technique as anybody I've ever heard. He plays whole lines that are fingured one way, but come out either a fifth or an octave, or a tenth (or on up the ovettone series) higher, and he plays them with perfect tone and intonation. The cat just had that kind of shit mastered in a way that I can't say anybody else has. Same way with his use of open side keys in lieu of closed hole fingerings to produce a different tone, another technique used by Prez for playing and classical cats for exercises. Joe could do that shit PERFECTLY.

But it's more than the technique I love, it's his time, his swing, his ability to push and pull against the beat at will. That's an area that I think he got from Newk as well as the Tristanoites, and it's where I feel him most when he's got it goin' on. Yeah, melodically (is that how you spell that word?) he had sort of set parameters more often than not, but how he permutated those lines rhythnically COULD be totally unpredictable. He could stretch a line out to where you think he's going to fall behind, and then BAM, he snaps it back into the pocket quicker than you can say motherfucker. Same thing with his mathematical triplet permutaions - he'll get going on those and begin stretching the harmony to the breaking point, and it all comes back in at the perfect time. A lot of times, yeah, you can hear where he's going before he gets there, but it's the times where he throws those wicked curveballs that catch you looking for game over strike threes that make me love him as much as I do.

I wonder how much of our differing views on the cat is chronological in nature. I have to confess, when I got into jazz, it was mostly from the left side of the street - late Trane, Ayler, the Shepp Impulses, Ornette, Mingus, etc. The little bit of Joe that I heard left me nonplussed, and this continued into my early college days, where I didn't go out of my way to dig deeper into his work. I think it was my sophomore year, some guy I had just met asked me, "So, what do you think about Joe Henderson?" "Uh, good chromatics scale" was my flip reply. Well, this cat got LIVID on my ass right there in the middle of the dorm and threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't come upstairs RIGHT THIS FUCKING MINUTE and listen to INNER URGE. Ok...

I dug it well enough, and a bit later hear THE REAL MCCOY for the first time. REALLY dug that one. Then after a while, UNITY (oh, that solo on "If" - bebop, R&B, you name it, it's in there, and it SWINGS LIKE HELL!!!), and the die was cast. I began to appreciate Joe for what and who he was - not a trailblazing firebrand or tonguespeaker like those I had been originally attracted to, or a whisperer of secret tales of quiet and private coolness like Hank or Prez, and not even revealers of the mystery like Sonny or Trane. Nah, Joe wasn't all about that AT ALL. Joe was just a cat who played, a cat who liked to swing when he felt like it, liked to go a bit out when he felt like it, and didn't see any reason not to do any of it whenever he felt like it. A genuine R&B player of the VERY highest level.

Joe was just a guy, a tenor player, period. Not a prophet or a messiah. Jazz has had those, and it would be wrong to put Joe in that category, for sure. I know that. But I'm just a tenor player myself, and I can dig where the cat was coming from. He was perhaps the ultimate "tenor player", somebody whose love was in playing his horn, and not much else, I'd bet (I sat next to his wife at the bar at Fat Tuesday once, and she was HOT. But Joe never once came over, not the entire night) and somebody who had mastered every facet of it. Playing the horn was his comfort, that's my guess, and if he didn't always seek "surprise", so be it. There's a place in music for "comfort food", and Joe was a gourmet of it. I hesitate to say that my love of his playing is a "tenor thing", but maybe it is. I love how he played the horn, and I love how he was able to make it do HIS bidding, which was neither as broad nor as deep as some, but in combination was a whole lot of both, something that's not at all common. Not everything he played was golden, no doubt, but enough of it rings true with me in a way that not very many things do. I can feel him. What can I say?

Oh yeah - the big letters? Look above the post box, and see the "size" options. You got small large and LARGEST. It's one of the many joys of Organissimo!

Edited November 11, 2003 by JSngry

[DrJ]

So Henderson got a lot of recognition outside of the jazz "inner circle" in his later years...so what? That certainly does not devalue his worth as an artist in my book. And about the licks: Eric Dolphy repeated a whole lot of licks very frequently (they just happened to be oddball licks that some people have a hard time picking out as licks)...Elvin Jones can be viewed as a licks-based drummer in my book, again repeating many of his best ones frequently...Grant Green, certainly...Woody Shaw, yep (there's a little fanfare thing he does at least once on just about every recording he was on)...hell, the great Thelonious Monk wasn't afraid of repeating himself if it sounded good, including a whole bunch of pet phrases. The more you listen, the more you hear this kind of thing in jazz, and I see it as one of the LEAST heinous of the crimes a jazz musician can commit.

And having a "mic" sound on an instrument, again not a big deal AT ALL to me given that there's not exactly a shortage of them...guess Henderson would just have had to make sure to avoid being booked at a gig where there was a high likelihood of a power outage. Otherwise, no problem.

Far worse are these sins: to lack an identifiable tone, use generic phrasing, and fail to put heart and soul into a performance. Henderson avoided those to me. Jim is so right - the guy was simply a great player, if not a major groundbreaker or school-starter.

[Rooster_Ties]

I still think Joe's the father of modern tenor playing. I hear aspects of him in all the younger (under 35, plus or minus) tenor players I like most -- and those who tend to be reguarded as being among the most important tenor players of the generation after Joe (and/or the generation after that).

But one example... I hear more of Joe in Ravi Coltrane's playing, than I hear of his father, or anybody else. Chris Potter too (often, but not always). Mark Shim (definitely). Some others I can't think of off the top of my head. Gary Thomas (sometimes, at least in terms of his tone).

I don't mean to say that Joe was light years ahead of everybody else, but to me - he's every bit as important as Trane, or Sonny Rollins, or even Wayne Shorter (though Wayne probably tops Joe slightly, in terms of compositional skills. Not that Joe didn't write some great tunes - which he certainly did.)

[Free For All]

So Henderson got a lot of recognition outside of the jazz "inner circle" in his later years...so what? That certainly does not devalue his worth as an artist in my book. And about the licks: Eric Dolphy repeated a whole lot of licks very frequently (they just happened to be oddball licks that some people have a hard time picking out as licks)...Elvin Jones can be viewed as a licks-based drummer in my book, again repeating many of his best ones frequently...Grant Green, certainly...Woody Shaw, yep (there's a little fanfare thing he does at least once on just about every recording he was on)...hell, the great Thelonious Monk wasn't afraid of repeating himself if it sounded good, including a whole bunch of pet phrases. The more you listen, the more you hear this kind of thing in jazz, and I see it as one of the LEAST heinous of the crimes a jazz musician can commit.

And having a "mic" sound on an instrument, again not a big deal AT ALL to me given that there's not exactly a shortage of them...guess Henderson would just have had to make sure to avoid being booked at a gig where there was a high likelihood of a power outage. Otherwise, no problem.

Far worse are these sins: to lack an identifiable tone, use generic phrasing, and fail to put heart and soul into a performance. Henderson avoided those to me. Jim is so right - the guy was simply a great player, if not a major groundbreaker or school-starter.

Amen, DrJ!

I heard Joe at the VV with Al Foster and Ron Carter in the 80s. No mic and he didn't sound weak or wimpy. He totally kicked ass, and I went back for more the next night. Don't tell me he can't blow- it may not have been loud, but it was clear he was IN CHARGE.

Bird, Bud, Dizzy, Monk, Tatum- they all had a repertoire of favorite phrases (I don't like the word "licks"- I tend to use it as a derogative description). Carl Fontana's musical vocabulary certainly didn't expand much after a point, but I could listen to him anytime- because of his SOUND and SOUL. The vocabulary is part of the personality.

What I like about Joe is not that he surprises me (most of the time) but that he make me smile when I listen to him. He may have a "bag of tricks" to draw from (albeit a BIG one) but he assembles his words, sentences and paragraphs in a way that seldom fails to gain and hold my interest. Joe's one of those players whose presence on any recording will usually influence my decision to buy a side, as does Woody Shaw.

Rooster, I agree that Wayne is the composition king (of just about everyone, IHMO). Rich Perry is another heavily influenced by JH but has managed to step out from Joe's shadow.

BTW, DrJ, you have a real cute little avatar dude there.

Edited November 11, 2003 by Free For All

[jazzbo]

I'm just very happy that Tyrone Washington strove to play a lot more like Tyrone Washington than Joe Henderson. Which may have been Chuck's point!

[Larry Kart]

Jim, when you say, "I wonder how much of our differing views on the cat is chronological in nature," you're right. I first heard JH when he made his first recordings, and it was like he was being taken among one good-sized segment of listeners as the more "reasonable," rational, "craft as we know it, and as we use to validate ourselves and our union card expertise, still matters most" alternative to all that nasty, threatening stuff that Trane and others had begun to do. I'm not saying that JH was thinking along those lines, but that was the feeling that was in the air (and that may be why my favorite JH of that time is his work as a sideman on "Black Fire," where Hill's structures usefully occupy, even consume, all of JH's agile intellect in the act).

A possible "of a certain time" parallel is the perhaps semi-forgotten initial response to Benny Golson. Golson came to light nationally as a player at a time--1957 as I recall--when people like Whitney Balliett were not only saying that Rollins and Trane were ugly but also were yearning for some warm-toned, graceful alternative that would turn back the tide -- a Scott Hamilton before the fact, in effect. In that light, Golson's first records were greeted--by Nat Hentoff, in particular, I recall, though he was not the only one--both as though Golson were a new Lucky Thompson (the resemblences were real) and as though history could be rolled back toward a time of supposedly kinder, gentler, more cozy tenormen (not that this is fair characterization of early Golson or any L. Thompson; I'm just trying to describe the initial response to Golson and what seemed to underlie it). But then Golson's recordings began to reveal all the common ground he had with Trane, and that little trip back to a "we sort of wish bop had never happened" island paradise had to be aborted. Understand that I'm not saying that early Golson wasn't terrific; I'm just saying that sometimes good music can be put to ideological uses, often through no fault of its own, and that this, as you suggest, can shape responses. As for pretty bad music being made to serve ideological "let's turn history around" goals, see the career (after a certain point) of W. Marsalis.

[JSngry]

I hear you, Mr. Kart, and I know where you're coming from. It' s different for me, who comes to a vast majority of the jazz legacy "after the fact", than it is for you, who has lived through, what, about half of it?, in "real time". I envy that in a lot of ways, because there's really no substitute for having been there.

I can certainly see how Joe might have seemed a "safe modern" alternative in some circles, and how one's response to him, pro or con, could be colored by that perception. I guess I feel like this - that might have been who he was in relation to the times, but I really don't think that he set out to fill that particular niche. It seems to go against the nature of his entire career, which as I said earlier, seems to have been "about" nothing more than playing the tenor and loving it.

You know, I can put on either ASCENSION (did last night as a matter of fact, for several hours, over headphones, while doing data entry; talk about salvation!) or INNER URGE and totally enjoy both, because I came to both of them after the fact. Free jazz was already into its third wave of evolution when I got into the music, and the modalesque, Tyner/Elvin groove had already achieved iconic status, so for me, they're both slabs of really beautiful music that happened a few years ago. But if I had been alive when all this was happening, I can see how the turbulence of the times would definitely color what I liked, what I figured to be important and what I figured to be of less urgency.

The same thing might be happening to me now, because there's no doubt a lot of recent stuff in a more "traditional" vein that I know is well played, and even has a bit of personality to it. But I just don't care. It's like I've more or less heard it already. and what "difference" there is is not overwhelming enough to grab me. I'd like to think (I'm pretty certain, actually( that if there was somebody playing in a "safe modern" bag (in a natural, non-ideological way) who had such a TOTALLY distinctive time and feel as Joe did back then that I'd hear it, but you never know...

Anyway, we are who we are, and we got here how we got here, so there's nothing much left to do except party on, eh?

[JSngry]

I'm just very happy that Tyrone Washington strove to play a lot more like Tyrone Washington than Joe Henderson. Which may have been Chuck's point!

I'm very happy that they each followed their own muses and did what they did, which was to be true to themselves. As far as I'm concerned, that's the cake and the icing. After that, it comes down to what flavor you like.

As a raging omnivore myself...

[Larry Kart]

Jim, What you say reminds me of a sentence I wrote a few months ago: "Jazz is an art in which history is always happening, and it is happening to us." Of course, you could say that about a whole lot of arts, and other things too, and you'd be right, but what I mean is that once you get bonded to this music and live through some of it in conjunction with the pace and events of your own life, it's like the texture and surge of history as it's happening in both realms almost becomes a single, physical sensuous fact -- and not only that, the music can begin to feel like a music that to some perhaps unusual extent is about the way its own history is running through it and through the lives of the people who love it. Another self-quote from something that hasn't seen print yet: "Unlike the two other chief new arts--photography and motion pictures-- that arose or coalesced at some point during the nineteenth century, jazz does not have a primarily technological basis, though it would come to benefit greatly from technological means of dissemination (the phonograph record and radio). Instead, jazz’s primary 'material' is the quintessentially historical set of human circumstances under which it arose--the collision/interpenetration of particular peoples under particular conditions in a new and expanding nation that had a form of government that was based on particular principles. And perhaps it is that inaugural immersion in the flux of history that has made jazz’s further artistic development so immediate, visible, and intense--as though this art were compelled to give us a running account of its need to be made and the needs its making served."

[JSngry]

Wise words, sir.

[Peter Johnson]

Wow. If anyone ever wondered about the value of this place, they need only read this thread. HOW MANY TIMES does one get to witness the likes of Lawrence Kart, Chuck Nessa and Jim Sangrey (and others) debate and discuss the musicianship of Tyrone Washington and Joe Henderson, with such a combined degree of knowledge, understanding and historical perspective? Not bloody many times! Thank you, all of you, for your insights on this music we all hold so close to our hearts and minds.

[connoisseur series500]

Joe's one of those players whose presence on any recording will usually influence my decision to buy a side, as does Woody Shaw.

Well put. Describes me as well.

[JSngry]

You're welcome, Peter, and all I can say is that when Larry's book comes out (when will that be, anyway?), I'm setting aside however much time I need to give it a thorough reading. The guy was a formative influence on how I thought about music in realtion to life back when I started reading DB in the early 70s, and to be able to converse with him now is both an honor and a privilige.

As for Chuck, well, all I can say is that Bernard Stollman was right.

This board is indeed a treasure.

Edited November 11, 2003 by JSngry

[Jazzdog]

Joe's one of those players whose presence on any recording will usually influence my decision to buy a side, as does Woody Shaw.

Well put. Describes me as well.

Kind of makes one want to slap on Unity!

[Larry Kart]

Book should be out in fall 2004 from Yale University Press; they have the final version of the manuscript as of two weeks ago. Title is "Jazz In Search Of Itself." Contents are all the stuff I've written from 1968 on that seems worth preserving (arranged in a way that seems to make sense), plus a fair amount of new framing material.

[mikeweil]

I agree: reading through this is invaluable, you don't get things like this in any jazz book.

I didn't know Henderson studied with Larry Teal, I know Bennie Maupin did, who shares some traits with Joe, the projection at all volumes, and the irresistible urge for a climax, although he doesn't have nearly as many tonal shadings.

Joe certainly was a musical and role model for many, some where mentioned above, but not Joe Lovano, who seems unthinkable to me without Joe, or Javon Jackson - I sold his first Blue Note CD 'cause he sounded too much like a Henderson clone to me ...

[mikeweil]

Book should be out in fall 2004 from Yale University Press; they have the final version of the manuscript as of two weeks ago. Title is "Jazz In Search Of Itself." Contents are all the stuff I've written from 1968 on that seems worth preserving (arranged in a way that seems to make sense), plus a fair amount of new framing material.

Please post in the "Jazz in Print" department when it's out. I'm sure you will sell quite a few copies to board members!

[WD45]

On an unrelated note, on a Law and Order SVU rerun this weekend, a character was named none other than...

Tyrone Washington.

Is there a fan among those writers??

[Rooster_Ties]

Interesting. Also, I think there's some famous basketball player (recently) also named Tyrone Washington. (Whenever I do Google searches for Tyrone's name, I always have to search on the following key: "tyrone washington –basketball".)

[DrJ]

I certainly agree I'm glad Tyrone was his own man. I must say that I find NATURAL ESSENCE to be a good but not great album, I think the scarcity of this BN brings it more attention than it might otherwise garner. Still, very glad to have it and would like to hear more Washington (I have another later date that's good too).