Eddie Henderson - Heritage

Eddie Henderson got an informal trumpet lesson from Louis Armstrong at nine years old. Miles Davis, a friend of his parents, started taking him seriously at seventeen. He then went and finished a zoology degree at Berkeley, a medical degree at Howard, and a psychiatry residency, and practiced medicine for years while playing some of the sharpest electric trumpet of the seventies. Three years in Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band ended in 1973, and Heritage, released in 1976, is what that education turned into.

The band is remarkable even by the standards of the era. Julian Priester covers alto, tenor and bass trombones, Patrice Rushen is on electric piano, clavinet and synthesizers, Hadley Caliman plays bass clarinet, soprano saxophone and flutes, and the rhythm section is Paul Jackson and Mike Clark, the same pair driving the Headhunters. Mtume adds congas and percussion, with Woody Theus and Billy Hart taking the drum chair on the back half. Mtume's "Inside You" opens, Priester wrote "Acuphuncture," Rushen contributed "Kudu," and "Dr. Mganga" and "Dark Shadow" each stretch past six minutes on side two, where the record really opens up.

Skip Drinkwater produced, Fred Catero engineered at Wally Heider in San Francisco, and Doug Sax mastered it at The Mastering Lab in Hollywood. It lands at the exact point where Henderson's post-Mwandishi music tightened into something you could dance to without giving up the outer-space harmony. Blue Note has since brought it back in their Classic Vinyl series, which says plenty about where it stands now.

Original 1976 US Blue Note pressing, catalog BN-LA636-G.

Used copy: VG+ vinyl / VG+ sleeve