In April 1963 Joe Henderson made his first record, as a sideman on Kenny Dorham's Una Mas, in a band that also had Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams. Two months later, on June 3, he was back at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with Dorham beside him again, to make an album of his own. Blue Note issued it in mid-October as Page One, BLP 4140 in mono and BST 84140 in stereo. Two of its six tunes, Dorham's "Blue Bossa" and Henderson's "Recorda Me," became standards, which is a rare thing to say about any record and almost unheard of for a debut.
Henderson was 26 and had been in New York for about a year. He was born in Lima, Ohio, on April 24, 1937, one of fourteen children, and an older brother, James T., was the one who pushed him toward music. He studied at Kentucky State College and took saxophone and composition with the teacher Larry Teal. From 1960 to 1962 he was in the Army. At Fort Benning he won first place in an Army talent show, and at Fort Belvoir he was picked for a touring show that entertained soldiers around the world, which put him in Paris long enough to meet Kenny Drew and Kenny Clarke. He finished his enlistment in Maryland, was discharged in 1962, and moved to New York. He met Dorham for the first time at the saxophonist Junior Cook's home, and that same evening Dexter Gordon invited him to sit in with his rhythm section at Birdland.
Dorham was the right person to meet. He had been an original Jazz Messenger, had reviewed records for Down Beat, and had spent three decades on the scene, and he made a habit of steering younger players toward work. Blue Note's own history of the pair puts it plainly: "no musician benefitted more clearly or deservedly from Dorham's coat-pulling efforts than Henderson." Page One was the second of five quintet albums the two made for Blue Note in seventeen months. Dorham played on every track, wrote two of the tunes, and wrote the liner notes, in which he called Henderson "the goateed astronaut of the tenor sax" and "one of the most musical young saxophonists to show since Charlie Parker." That is a veteran putting his name behind a newcomer in print, on the back of the newcomer's own record.
The rest of the band was chosen with the same care. Butch Warren, on bass, had been in Dorham's 1960 quintet, and Dorham had given him his first New York audience. Pete La Roca was on drums. The pianist was McCoy Tyner, who appears on the cover only as "ETC." because he had signed with Impulse!, a rival label. So one of the great pianists of the century is credited on a classic album with an abbreviation for "and so on." Nobody was fooled, and I still find it funny. Alfred Lion produced the date, Van Gelder engineered it, Reid Miles designed the cover, and Francis Wolff took the photograph. Henderson dedicated the album to his parents "for being so understanding and tolerant."
The program is six tunes, three to a side, and none of them is filler. Side one opens with "Blue Bossa" at eight minutes, followed by Dorham's ballad "La Mesha," dedicated to his daughter, at just over nine, and Henderson's fast "Homestretch" at a little over four. Side two belongs to Henderson as a composer: "Recorda Me," the intricately arranged "Jinrikisha," and "Out of the Night," a blues that closes the record.
"Blue Bossa" is now one of the most performed compositions in jazz, and that has made people underrate the original recording. Go back to it. Dorham and Henderson share the lead, and the melody comes out sounding like a folk song someone found rather than a tune written for a session. Then Henderson takes his solo and the whole thing tilts. He plays over the changes without smoothing them out, and underneath him La Roca does something with the ride cymbal that keeps the bossa feel from getting polite. If you have taken more than a few lessons on any instrument, someone has probably counted this tune off in front of you, and it is worth hearing what it sounded like before it became an exercise.
What strikes me most is that Henderson already sounds like himself. His tone is dry and a little rough at the edges, and he leaves space in unexpected places. He plays a phrase, stops, lets it hang, and then answers it. On a first record most players are too nervous to stop playing, and Henderson does it as if he had been leading sessions for years.
"La Mesha" is the track I go back to most. It runs nine minutes and barely moves. Blue Note's history calls it a "haunting short-form ballad," and Dorham plays the melody straight, with no decoration, while Henderson stays out of its way. That takes discipline from a 26-year-old on his own session, and it is one of the prettiest things Dorham wrote.
Henderson wrote "Recorda Me" at fifteen, according to a 1991 Saxophone Journal interview, and the title is Portuguese for "remember me." He first conceived it in a Latin style and later reworked it with a bossa nova rhythm, as a 16-bar tune in two sections. To my ear the recording plays the head over a Latin feel, opens into straight swing for the solos, and then comes back, and the band moves between the two feels without making a production of it. Henderson kept the tune in his repertoire for the rest of his career. He recorded it again as "Não Me Esqueça" on In Pursuit of Blackness and as "Recuérdame" on his Big Band album, and he played it at the 1985 One Night with Blue Note concert with Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.
Not every critic heard it at the time. Down Beat gave the original LP one and a half stars. Later opinion went the other way: AllMusic calls Page One a "particularly strong and historic effort," and Scott Yanow put it on his list of seventeen essential hard bop recordings. James Beaudreau, reviewing a later Henderson album for PopMatters, wrote that Page One "has the careful feel of a leader's first session," and I think that is fair. I would not call it Henderson's best record. Inner Urge is heavier and Mode for Joe has more going on, and if you want Henderson fully off the leash, those are the ones. On Page One you can hear him being a good host, showing you exactly what he can do, in order, with no waste.
On the collecting side, a 1963 pressing has the New York USA label and the Plastylite ear in the trail-off, along with Van Gelder's mark. The mono BLP 4140 is the harder one to find in decent shape, and it is priced accordingly: Jazz Collector reported an original mono copy in Ex condition selling for $1,108.33. I am not going to tell you to chase it. The Blue Note Classic Vinyl edition from 2021 was mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original master tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Optimal in Germany, and it sounds excellent. If you want the original, buy it because you want the object, which is a fine reason, and know what you are paying for.
I put it on a Saturday night with a glass of red and let all six tracks run without skipping anything or reaching for the sleeve. Two standards, one day in New Jersey, a trumpet player vouching for a newcomer, and a piano credit that says ETC.