Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 09/02/2008
For 1973's dynamite
Realization and
Inside Out, trumpeter
Eddie Henderson reassembled most of the legendary
Herbie Hancock sextet he'd been part of. In 1975 after leaving
Capricorn for
Blue Note, he kept elements of that group together for
Sunburst, his label debut, with some major changes:
George Duke played keyboards in place of
Hancock; bassist
Paul Jackson was replaced by
Alphonso Johnson, and drummer
Mike Clarke with
Billy Hart. It resulted in a funkier experimental outing that tightened up the tunes a bit, but left plenty of blowing room for himself, reedman
Bennie Maupin, and trombonist
Julian Priester. The set sold well commercially, but many jazz critics derided it because of its perceived "commercial" overtones. Released in 1976,
Heritage was greeted with even more ambivalence, but has since come to be regarded -- with
Sunburst -- as one of the great recordings of
Henderson's career by an entirely new generation who hold funky rhythms and electronics in high esteem.
Henderson brought back
Priester, and
Jackson and
Clarke returned to the rhythm section (
Hart played on the album's final cut,
"Dark Shadow"). Filling out the band were a young
Patrice Rushen on keyboards, saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist
Hadley Caliman in place of
Maupin, and percussionist
James Mtume from the
Miles Davis group.
Henderson emulates the spacier edges of
Davis' electric period in his own playing. Long lines of few notes are accompanied by hypnotic basslines and multi-layered polyrhythmic percussion on
"Time and Space." On
"Acuphuncture," Rushen's wah-wah keyboards,
Jackson's driven bassline, and
Clarke's rimshots and breakbeats introduce a lilting pair of lines from
Caliman's flute and
Henderson's trumpet, but within a minute, the tune cracks open into a driving, hard funk jam with
Henderson laying down some short, choppy post-bop lines on his horn. Things become even darker -- and funkier -- on
"Kudu," where
Jackson's bassline is at the top of the mix. It's furious as it pops against
Mtume's roiling congas in direct assaultive counterpoint to
Clarke's kit work.
Rushen creates fat, choppy chords and vamps for
Henderson,
Priester, and
Caliman to solo over. It's tighter than
Miles' electric material, but less spacy.
Priester's trombone feels like a futuristic version of one on the front line in
the J.B.'s.
"Mganga" has a less pronounced set of lyric imagery, and offers the best explanation for some punters' trouble with the set: the abstraction (and absence) of a true front line sense of lyric in favor of angular, articulate countermelodies played by individual horns that move toward the rhythms almost in opposition, rather than play above them. The beautiful
Star Trek futurism of the brass over
Rushen's crazy solo also rocks.
Caliman's bass clarinet tone is all but indistinguishable from
Maupin's on
"Dark Shadow" except for its economy. (He plays a continuous seven-note vamp through the entire tune.) The loopy, mournful wah-wah trumpet overdubs are a contrapuntal melody to that, but the drums begin to shake loose during
Priester's future blues solo. The cut explodes at about the four-minute mark via
Henderson's solo before deconstructing all but the vamps toward its close.
Heritage is a wonderful set, and should be revisited by anyone who either missed or was put off by it initially. For the new generation of jazz and funk heads, this one is right up your alley -- these are some dark, freaky, and delicious grooves that bear further investigation.
Heritage was re-released on CD in 2008 as part of the
Blue Note Rare Groove Series.
~Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
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