Inner Urge cover

Inner Urge

Released

Henderson’s fourth album for Blue Note was his most intense and hard-bitten. The band included pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and drummer Elvin Jones, and the compositions were sometimes little more than sketches. On the album’s best track, “El Barrio,” he asked them to “play something with a Spanish feeling” using just two chords while he improvised a melody (and a raucous, crying solo introduction). The result is astonishing for 1964; in some ways, it points to what David S. Ware would be doing in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Ask the Ages cover

Ask the Ages

Sonny Sharrock
Extrapolation cover

Extrapolation

John McLaughlin
I Can See Your House from Here cover

I Can See Your House from Here

Pat Metheny, John Scofield
Now Then cover

Now Then

Tani Tabbal Trio
Risa Negra cover

Risa Negra

Arturo O'Farrill
Unity cover

Unity

Larry Young
The Magic Triangle cover

The Magic Triangle

Famoudou Don Moye, Joseph Jarman, Don Pullen