Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

chronology
Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
Studio album by Joe Henderson
Publication ; (s)	1992
Label (s)	verve
Format (s)	CD
Genre (s)	jazz
Title (number)	10
running time	61:50
occupation	Tenor saxophone : Joe Henderson ; Trumpet : Wynton Marsalis ; Piano : Stephen Scott ; Bass : Christian McBride ; Drums : Gregory Hutchinson ;
production	Richard Seidel , Don Sickler
Studio (s)	Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey

Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn is a jazz album by Joe Henderson with compositions by Billy Strayhorn . It was recorded from September 3-8, 1991 in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey and released on Verve Records .

The album

The release of the Verve album Lush Life - The Music of Billy Strayhorn heralded the comeback of the then 55-year-old saxophonist; Henderson only attracted attention in the mid-1980s through his appearance at the Village Vanguard , recorded on the double album The State of the Tenor - Live at the Village Vanguard , otherwise in changing trios, among others. a. worked with Charlie Haden , Rufus Reid and Al Foster , but has not recorded a studio album for eleven years.

Joe Henderson

Henderson had worked with the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis during this time ; This led to the connection with the producer Richard Seidel, who brought Henderson the idea of a tribute album under his own name. From Betty Carter's backing band came the pianist Stephen Scott and the drummer Gregory Hutchinson . A special feature of the sessions was that the material for the album was not recorded by a band with the same cast , but instead Henderson and his teammates Wynton Marsalis, bassist Christian McBride and Scott and Hutchinson were put together in changing line-ups. So contains Lush Life , the title track (a solo performance Hendersons) duo of Henderson and McBride ( "Isfahan"), Henderson and Stephen Scott (as in the ballad "Lotus Blossom") and with the drummer Hutchinson ( Take the A-Train ) and the "Drawing Room Blues" in a trio line-up. All other pieces were recorded in a quartet or with Wynton Marsalis in a quintet; the successful interaction with the then almost thirty-year-old trumpeter in "Johnny Come Lately" reminded Joe Henderson himself of his quintet in the early 1960s with Kenny Dorham , with whom a. a. the album Page One was born.

Reception of the album

The tribute album Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn was a huge hit with both critics and audiences; nearly 90,000 copies of the album had been sold by the time of Henderson's death. Henderson then stayed under contract with Verve and subsequently played other tribute albums with the music of Miles Davis ( So Near, So Far (Musings for Miles) , 1993) and Antônio Carlos Jobim ( Double Rainbow , 1995) a. In the years before his death in 2001, a big band album and a Porgy and Bess album were made.

Henderson was first awarded the first (of three) Grammys for Lush Life in 1992 . The album also received the German Record Critics' Prize.

The album was enthusiastically received by jazz critics at the time; The New York Times wrote: Lush Life is "as close to artistic genius as jazz gets nowadays". Another article from 2002 describes the album as "perfectly produced, thought-out, carefully experimental and cross-generational". The magazine Entertainment Weekly declared Hendersons "originality and beautiful strangeness fit exactly to Strayhorn's compositions" and found that Henderson's "stormy muscle strength counterbalance Strayhorn fear" fancy. All Music Guide called the album very recommendable and gave it the highest rating.

The album hit # 1 on the Billboard charts in the Top Jazz Albums category and stayed in that position for two months. For the title track "Lush Life", Henderson received the 1992 Grammy Award for "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist".