Joe Henderson – Black Narcissus

Patrick Gleesom’s opening cosmic keyboards line is totally fascinating, which made me interview him recently about it. Here’s his testimonial:

“Joe was a dear man. Learned a lot from him. I do recall how much I enjoyed working with Joe. Making music with him was always exciting and joyful.
Well, I'm not sure exactly how we first met. We'd both played with Herbie Hancock (not in the same band) so of course we knew about each other. I think Joe may have phoned me at some point to talk about an orchestral project. His record company, Fantasy, wouldn't pay for that, so then Joe suggested we do a synth orchestration. Finally, when we both talked to Orrin Keepnews about it, Orrin said why don't you guys take the 24 track tapes of a European recording Joe had done and see what you come up with? This wasn't exactly what joe and I wanted, but Orrin was Joe’s producer and a senior executive at Fantasy, so we took what we could get. That became Black Narcissus (1976). Orrin promised Joe that he could do the orchestral synth jazz album next, but it never happened. The truth was that Orrin was old school and didn't like synths much. But inevitably Orrin and I ended up working together on other projects-- I think his attitude was there are other synth players that could be even worse. Joe and I remained good friends.”