Original Joe's In San Francisco

Joe Henderson Quintet - Isotope

We'll move the Decemball with these exquisite two sets of pure hard bop bliss, on their 50th anniversary.

I've done him on here before, and anyone reading his oughta know who he was, so no redundant historical data today.

I mean, he's the premier Joe of Jazz, as far as I've ever known.

Meaning every fan or player with whom I've ever interacted has referred to him by his first name only, and everyone has seemed to know they mean this Joe.

There are some great Joes, too. Joe Chambers, Joe Zawinul (everyone calls him Joe Z), Joe Farrell. Joe Morello. Joe Sample. I've covered a few, and the ones I haven't are well worthy of inclusion on this page.

But when Jazz fans and players alike say Joe, they don't mean anyone but one guy.

I feel awful lucky that I got to see him play not once, or twice, but four times before he left the planet just before 9/11/01. At four different and iconic Bay Area venues too.

As potent and powerful as any tenor ever to have bent a reed -- that's a bold statement for sure, but we're talking about Joe -- I don't think he ever played a song the same way once, much less twice.

His solos? One phrase, you know who it is. Just from the tone alone, the meat is on the bone.

So, fasho there are a lotta Joes with the flow. But when someone just says Joe, and no mo'? Then you know it's time for the eternally extra immortal Joe Henderson to blow.

 Joe Henderson Quintet

Great American Music Hall

San Francisco, California USA

12.19.1975

01 Afro-Centric

02 Invitation

03 Isotope 

04 Recorda Me

05 Power to the People

Total time: 2:23:00

disc break goes after Track 03

Joe Henderson - tenor saxophone 

Bill Bell - piano 

Ross Traut - guitar 

Ratzo Harris - bass 

Ralph Penland - drums

256/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is fully lossless well past the FM cutoff at 17 kHz

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, repaired, tracked, very slightly remux-rebalanced & remastered by EN, December 2025
918 MB FLAC/direct link

This was taped 50 years ago tonight in the Great American in SF, a venue at which I've seen many an iconic performance, but in this one Joe and his guys just about levitate the place, with solos that just go and go from Joe and everyone else. Some of the tunes go on for over a half hour, but go by in what seems like half that.

Anyway I will hammer out the completion of The Feast of St. Anthony for Christmas, a compilation to finish out 2025 in truly ridiculous style, and I have a few more shows lined up for New Year's. So stay tuned, because around here we don't mess around with just any ordinary Joe.--J.

4.24.1937 - 6.30.2001

Jamaica Statement: Cliff 'Em All

Jimmy Cliff - Wild World

Saturday night is special indeed, courtesy of this homage to one of the great musical ambassadors of our age, who departed this realm just a few weeks ago after a lifetime scrambling the DNA of the Earth in wonderful ways.

Considered the alpha/omega figure of Reggae music -- preceding and superseding even Bob Marley for that title -- no one in all history could have done more to take Jamaica's greatest musical export from regional popularity to global conquest than he.

Because before there was Bob, there was The Harder They Come, and the star at the film's core that propelled it to the worldwide impact that still resonates today, 53 years after the fact.

It's impossible to explain to today's total multicultural world of immersion and instant access to media from far-flung places just how colossal the reaction to and acclaim of the first full-length theatrical feature film ever made on the island of Jamaica -- today, a tourist destination for everywhere, but in 1972 still a remote destination -- was in its moment.

From the time the movie hit theaters, it seemed the floodgates opened. It only took five years for Reggae to take over the world, to where Dolly Parton and Rush were making songs infused with it.

If you want to know who made that shift happen so profoundly so fast, one figure you would have to acknowledge as at the vanguard forefront of it all would be Jimmy Cliff.

He claimed to have coerced Leslie Kong, the legendary early Reggae enabler and producer, to go into the record business with him one night, having stumbled into Kong's restaurant at random towards the end of the 1960s.

The hits soon started flowing, and the island public started knowing that Jamaica was glowing with a vibrant, earthshaking new sound. Kong passed very young in 1971, but by then Jimmy Cliff was on his way to a caliber of superstardom no one from Jamaica had ever experienced.

Once The Harder They Come migrated to theaters outside of the Caribbean, he became Reggae's first real ambassador figure, with a presence everywhere from the huge Rock festivals to Saturday Night Live.

In all honesty when you're talking about the all time Kings, Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley and probably Peter Tosh start on the Mt. Rushmore of Reggae as charter members chiseled in glory at the outset.

Anyhow Jimmy Cliff passed into the ancestral history books on November 24 at 81, after a long career making Reggae and Jamaica monumentally influential forces on global culture for almost 60 years.

Having grappled for weeks with what sort of share fare might dare to compare with a figure of such flair -- and really tired of the same old regurgitated bootlegs of dubious quality anyway -- I at last settled on cooking up a halfway reasonable version of JC's complete Rockpalast performance, from 1984 in Düsseldorf.

This is a legendary burner of a show that circulates in all sorts of chopped up and compromised iterations, but never in its complete, 130-minute form and never sounding at least halfway as worthwhile as I hope I've done here.

Jimmy Cliff

"Rockpalast"

Philipshalle

Düsseldorf, Germany

6.1.1984

01 Rockpalast introduction

02 Spider Man

03 Bongo Man

04 Reggae Night I

05 Youth's a Ball (Beggar's Banquet)

06 Treat the Youths Right

07 Piece of the Pie

08 Rub-a-Dub Partner 

09 Reggae Movement

10 Third World People

11 It's Time 

12 Many Rivers to Cross

13 The Harder They Come

14 You Can Get It If You Really Want

15 No Woman No Cry

16 Nuclear War

17 Vietnam

18 Wild World

19 Reggae Night II

20 Roots Radical

21 Music Maker

Total time: 2:10:21

disc break goes after Track 11

Jimmy Cliff - vocals & percussion

Bertram "Runchie" McLean - guitar & vocals

Earl "Chinna" Smith - guitar & vocals

Harold Butler - keyboards & vocals

Ansell Collins - keyboards & vocals

Chris Meredith - bass

Uziah "Sticky" Thompson - percussion

Sidney Wolf - percussion

Wilburn "Squiddly" Cole - drums

Tracks 01-13 & 17-21 are sourced from 320/48k mono audio from an HD YouTube file of (almost) the complete concert, converted to 16/44 CD Audio

Tracks 14-16 are sourced from a master off-air stereo FM cassette, and -- together with the main segments above -- form the complete show

edited, repaired, merged & remastered for unity by EN, December 2025
724 MB FLAC/direct link

This show has never been officially released, possibly owing to the not-always-perfect sound, but until it does see a real DVD or whatever -- probably on that WDR label that puts out all the German TV stuff from back in the day -- this soundtrack might be as good a representation of it as may ever exist. Not perfect, but what is?

I shall be back in a week with more of the vital ital, and I've got quite the present for under the tree taking shape for Christmas morning proper, so you better stay naughty and be nice. And you better start by grabbing your weekend by the Roots Reggae, as we say farewell (and Rasta La Vista! OK, that was bad) to the unquantifiably incredible Jimmy Cliff, who brought the music of his native country to a Wild World that's still flying Irie on the wings of its plentiful charms.--J.

7.30.1944 - 11.24.2025
you can get it if you really want

Grovertime

Grover Washington, Jr. - Number 5 (On the Dark Side)

Well you're probably not wondering where I went, but I'm here anyway and it's gonna be a December to remember, even if it's just me and the memories.

I was just explaining to my husband that people of his generation may not know who today's birthday boy is, but they might know people whose parents conceived them to the man's music.

Such is the legend of Grover Washington, Jr., whose sultry, mellifluous saxophony has been the backdrop for many a knocking of the proverbial boots. And not the ROIO kind recorded to cassette, either.

He began in the 1960s jamming with future Mahavishnoid Billy Cobham, and first saw wax on those ridiculous 1970/71 Prestige records of the organist Leon Spencer, Jr., where there's no bass player but Idris Muhammad funks the drums so deep you've long since ripped off your shredded clothes and dove (loins first) into the Louisiana Slim swamp anyway.

Look at him on that LP cover, it's as if he's contemplating all the child support he's on the hook for, the judge having decided all the thousands of children created to his music were somehow his responsibility.

Anyway he really blew up the world -- and helped to initiate what became, unfortunately, the Smooth Jazz genre -- when he subbed for Hank Crawford on a 1972 date and ended up with a monster hit album of his own.

All it seemed to take was the one (OK, it's really good) cover of that Marvin Gaye song and all of the sudden he was everywhere, becoming a flagship artist on Creed Taylor's CTI label offshoot Kudu and selling zillions.

Then, as the 1970s ended, he moved to Elektra and teamed with Bill Withers for what might be termed his signature tune, Just the Two of Us. Again, a song so romantically timeless and sonically potent, you likely just bought a coffee from -- or had your teeth done by -- someone conceived to it.

I mean, if they paint building sized murals of you, you probably did OK in life. Unless you're a despot dictator, but those are usually on all the buildings while you're still alive, and then removed after they hang you from a post upside down in the Piazza, you know? There are, often than not, no saxophones involved or depicted either.

So to make a long story less long, Grover Washington, Jr. -- born this day in 1943 -- was a leading artist and the arguable originator of what came to be termed Smooth Jazz throughout the Seventies through 1999, when he suffered a massive coronary after a TV taping for a morning show and passed away, just days past his 56th birthday.

Which, if you've ever watched daytime TV in the US, is not surprising, as it's horrifying imbecilic enough to give anyone a heart attack. Maybe it was instant Karma for promoting Kenny G, who knows?

At any rate, we were referring to knocking boots earlier, but no one can knock this sizzling 1981 set I boosted off of Bill's Beautiful Boots here and goosed up/unflattened a bit. Watch out for the recently departed bass lord Anthony Jackson laying it down thick on this one... we'll be back to St. Anthony when St. Nicholas makes his appearance later on in the month, so consider this a preview.

 Grover Washington, Jr.

Shubert Theater

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA

6.27.1981

01 introduction

02 Winelight

03 band introductions/Let It Flow (For Dr. J)

04 Reaching Out

05 Jammin'

06 Make Me a Memory (Sad Samba)

07 GW intro

08 Number 5 (On the Dark Side)

09 Just the Two of Us

10 Little Black Samba

11 Mr. Magic

Total time: 1:22:53

disc break goes after Track 06

Grover Washington Jr. - saxophones

Eric Gale - guitar 

Anthony Jackson - bass 

Paul Griffin - keyboards & synthesizer 

Richard Tee - keyboards 

Steve Gadd - drums 

Ralph McDonald - percussion

Zack Sanders - vocals on "Just The Two Of Us"

256/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless up to 16 kHz

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, repaired, edited, retracked & remastered by EN, December 2025
513 MB FLAC/direct link

I'mma be right back here tomorrow with my usual party-of-one reservation, this time to salute another recently departed icon of sound with yet another undercirculated gem of a concert performance.

That's in 24 hours, but the next few should be spent with the Winelight on, grooving to Grover on what would have been his 82nd b'day. If you're really kicking off the weekend properly, you're not flying solo in a party of one, or wearing much (if anything) in the way of clothes either...-J.

12.12.1943 - 12.17.1999