Two tunes from Joe Henderson's first album as a leader became standards. That basically never happens.
Page One came out on Blue Note in 1963. Recorded June 3 of that year at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs. BLP 4140 in mono, BST 84140 in stereo. Alfred Lion produced it, Reid Miles did the cover, Francis Wolff took the photo. The usual Blue Note assembly line, working at full strength.
Henderson was twenty six. He had been discharged from the Army in 1962 and moved to New York right after, so about a year in town. He walks into his first date as a leader and leaves with Recorda Me and Kenny Dorham's Blue Bossa on the same piece of vinyl.
Blue Bossa might be the most played tune at jam sessions in this country. If you have taken more than three lessons on any instrument, someone has counted it off in front of you. Recorda Me is not far behind. Henderson wrote that one at fifteen, years before anyone in New York knew his name.
The band is stacked and it is not an accident. Kenny Dorham on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Butch Warren on bass, Pete La Roca on drums. Dorham is a big part of why this happened. Henderson had been playing in his band, and Dorham gave him guidance through the whole period. He also wrote two of the six tunes and wrote the liner notes. That is a veteran putting his reputation behind a kid.
Here is a detail I love. Tyner is not named on the front cover. Every other musician is listed. Tyner shows up as ETC. because he was signed to Impulse! at the time and Blue Note could not print his name. So one of the greatest pianists of the century is credited on a classic album as an abbreviation for and so on. Nobody was fooled. It is still funny.
The record is six tracks and none of them are filler. Blue Bossa opens it at eight minutes. La Mesha is next and it is the slow one, nine minutes, a Dorham ballad written for his young daughter. Homestretch is the short burner. Recorda Me sits at the top of side two. Then Jinrikisha and Out of the Night.
Blue Bossa gets played to death now, which makes people underrate the actual recording. Go back to it. Dorham states the melody and it sounds like a folk song someone found. Then Henderson comes in and the whole thing tilts. He plays over the changes without smoothing them out. La Roca is doing something with the ride cymbal underneath that keeps the bossa feel from getting polite.
That is the thing about Henderson on this record. He was already himself. A lot of debut albums sound like someone doing their homework in public. Rollins if you squint, Coltrane if you squint harder. Henderson does not sound like that. The tone is dry and a little rough at the edges, and he leaves space in weird places. He plays a phrase, stops, lets it hang, then answers it. On a first record most guys are too nervous to stop playing.
La Mesha is the one I go back to most. It is nine minutes and it barely moves. Dorham plays the melody straight and it is one of the prettiest things he wrote. Henderson stays out of its way. That takes discipline from a twenty six year old on his own session.
Recorda Me is where the record shows its hand. To my ear it plays the head over a Latin feel, then opens into straight swing for the solos, then comes back. Two feels in one tune, and the band flips between them without making a production out of it. That structure is a good part of why the song stuck. It gives a soloist two different playgrounds inside six minutes.
I want to be clear that I am not calling this Henderson's best record. Inner Urge is heavier. Mode for Joe has more going on. If you want the version of Henderson that is fully off the leash, those are the ones. Page One is more careful than either. You can hear him being a good host.
But careful is not the same as safe, and it definitely is not the same as boring. It is a guy showing you exactly what he can do, in order, with no waste. Plenty of players have a record like that in them. Almost nobody actually makes it.
On the collecting side, a real 1963 first pressing has the New York USA label, the Plastylite ear in the deadwax, and the VAN GELDER stamp with the catalog number hand etched beside it. Mono BLP 4140 is the harder one to find in decent shape and it costs accordingly. I am not going to tell you to chase it. The Classic Vinyl reissue is cut from the analog tape by Kevin Gray and it sounds excellent. If you want the original, buy it because you want the object. That is a fine reason. Just know what you are paying for.
I put it on Saturday night with a glass of red and let all six tracks run. Did not skip anything. Did not reach for the sleeve to read along.
Two standards, one afternoon in New Jersey, a trumpet player vouching for a kid nobody knew, and a piano credit that says ETC. Hard to beat.