Craft Recordings’ latest vinyl reissue comes from a fertile period for tenor saxist Joe Henderson. His career is divided between his early Blue Note years with Horace Silver and a leader with usually Kenny Dorham, and he closed out with some autumnal sunrise sessions with Verve doing songbooks and live quartet dates.
This 1969 recording finds Henderson in his middle period with Milestone Records, leading a team that includes former employer Herbie Hancock/p-key along with Ron Carter/b-eb, Jack DeJohnette/dr and guest Mike Lawrence/tp on a couple tunes. Henderson’s dry and sandied tone is in excellent form as he debuts a handful of tunes that eventually became part of his standard repertoire, the sophisticated slithery “Isotope”, the exotic “Black Narcissus” and laconic “Lazy Afternoon”. The band stretches out in ideas on the left of center “Foresight and Afterthought” with Hancock and Carter getting a bit plugged in on the soulfully propulsive “Afro-Centric” and the title track. One of several high water marks of Henderson’s mountain range of music.