Sun Ra - Hendersonia (Sun Ra Performs Fletcher Henderson) (2023)

Sun Ra was never reticent about honoring his musical heroes. These icons included Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, George Gershwin, Fats Waller, songwriters such as Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, and Irving Berlin, even Walt Disney, whose film music Ra performed jubilantly and often. But no one meant as much to Ra as Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952). With the exception of Ellington, no bandleader's repertoire was honored more in Ra's set lists than the man who invented the jazz big band.

However, Ra's respect for Henderson was not from an historical distance. He worked with Henderson in Chicago in the late 1940s, during the twilight of the great conductor's career. Sonny served as the band's pianist and arranger.

Henderson never achieved the public acclaim (and financial rewards) bestowed on such legends as Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Gershwin; one posthumous anthology of his recordings was titled "A Study in Frustration." Henderson and his arrangers, especially Don Redman and Fletcher's brother Horace, created the jazz big band format in the 1920s, but had limited commercial success. Other bandleaders, such as Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw achieved much greater success with the Henderson formula in the so-called Swing Era of the 1930s.

When he was still a teen, Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount (young Ra) taught himself to transcribe arrangements of Henderson recordings from commercial 78 rpm discs. In 1937 he purchased a steel tape recorder called a "Soundmirror" and captured audience recordings of famous bands playing in his hometown of Birmingham. Henderson's outfit, of course, was one of these. Sonny made speedy transcriptions of these numbers, eventually learning the entire Henderson songbook. When Fletcher embarked on a 15-month engagement at Chicago's Club DeLisa in 1946, Ra (who had since relocated to Chicago's South Side) introduced himself to his hero and offered his musical services. Sonny eventually got an opportunity when Henderson's regular pianist failed to show for a gig, and the eager Blount was his replacement for the remainder of the stand.

In a 1978 Minneapolis interview, Ra recalled, "When I first came to Chicago all the musicians would hire me to play trios and things, because they were fascinated with what I was playing. Although I had a lot of enemies who were against what I was playing because I was playing different from other pianists. In fact, in Fletcher Henderson's band I had a lot of enemies, because they said I kept on playing these chords so strange. So finally it came to a point where I had to tell them, 'Look, Fletcher Henderson plays piano, doesn't he?' Yes. 'He hired me, didn't he?' Yes. So I said, 'Don't you think that one piano player knows more about the piano than you do? You playin' horns.' After that, they shut up."

By the time the extended run ended, Sonny was ready to lead his own band, which evolved into the ever-changing Sun Ra & His Arkestra. Like those of his Swing Era idols, Sun Ra's band was BIG—and he maintained it during an era when few others could sustain large traveling entourages.

Only one title in this collection, "Can You Take It," was composed by Fletcher Henderson, and another, "Big John's Special," was written by brother Horace. These titles weren't all first recorded by Henderson or even made famous by him. But these works all received the Henderson treatment, were recorded by him, and became associated with his band. To Sun Ra, all of these works were part of the Henderson legacy, which Ra was driven to preserve.

"Big John's Special" and "Yeah, Man!" log dozens of appearances in the Ra discography, and "Queer Notions" was also a bandstand favorite. Others, such as "Great Caesar's Ghost" and "Can You Take It" were rarely performed. Three others—"Shanghai Shuffle," "Rug Cutter's Swing," and "Tidal Wave"—are known to have been performed, but aside from a poor-quality rehearsal tape of the first two, no decent recordings of any have surfaced. Oddly, all recordings of Henderson titles by Ra originated at club or concert dates; there are no known studio performances of any Henderson-related works.

The recordings in this set span fifteen years, from 1976 to 1991. Most have not been previously issued commercially. Some have been circulating among Ra collectors for decades; in such cases, we have upgraded the audio from original tapes where available. Some tracks are stereo, some mono. Some are beautifully recorded, others less pristine but no less powerful. Some tracks were diligently mixed at the console; others captured ad hoc by staff, fans, or by Ra himself. No surprises here.

Of particular interest:

"Rose Room" is an extended showcase for John Gilmore's galvanizing sax work. Fans of the tenor genius—take note.

Rollo Radford's mesmerizing electric bass on tracks 1, 10, and 12, from a 1985 set at Stache's. Radford has gone underacknowledged in the chronicles of Ra bassists. His dancing, serpentine lines on these three tracks manage to simultaneously dominate yet complement the arrangements.

James Jacson's growling, spirited vocal on Irving Berlin's "Slumming on Park Avenue."

There are additional terrific versions of many of these titles, but at present we do not plan a second volume of Hendersonia.

—I.C.

Tracklist
01. Sun Ra Arkestra - Yeah, Man! (Columbus, 1985)
02. Sun Ra Arkestra - Hocus Pocus (New York, 1991)
03. Sun Ra Arkestra - Great Caesar's Ghost (Chicago, 1978)
04. Sun Ra Arkestra - Slumming on Park Avenue (Santa Cruz, 1987)
05. Sun Ra Arkestra - Big John's Special (Utrecht, 1983)
06. Sun Ra Arkestra - Queer Notions (Mannheim, 1982)
07. Sun Ra Arkestra - King Porter Stomp (Chicago, 1976)
08. Sun Ra Arkestra - Blue Lou (Santa Cruz, 1988)
09. Sun Ra Arkestra - Can You Take It (Tokyo, 1988)
10. Sun Ra Arkestra - Limehouse Blues (Columbus, 1985)
11. Sun Ra Arkestra - Rose Room (unknown)
12. Sun Ra Arkestra - Christopher Columbus (Columbus, 1985)