Inner Urge | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | End of March 1966 [1] | |||
Recorded | November 30, 1964 | |||
Studio | Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 43:14 | |||
Label | Blue Note BST 84189 | |||
Producer | Alfred Lion | |||
Joe Henderson chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
All About Jazz | (very favorable) [2] |
AllMusic | [3] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz | [4] |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | [5] |
Inner Urge is an album by the jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson, released in 1966 via Blue Note Records, his fourth recorded as a leader. It was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on November 30, 1964. Featuring Henderson along with pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones (both members of the John Coltrane quartet at this time), and bassist Bob Cranshaw (a member of Sonny Rollins' band). [6] [7]
Jazz critic Nat Hentoff interviewed Henderson for the album's original liner notes essay, and Henderson described the creative impulses behind several of the songs to Hentoff. The title track, "Inner Urge," which has since become a jazz standard, was a reflection of a time in his life when Henderson was "coping with the anger and frustration that can come of trying to find your way in the maze of New York, and of trying to adjust the pace you have to set in hacking your way in that city in order to just exist." Henderson also told Hentoff that "Isotope" is a tribute to Thelonious Monk and Monk's use of musical humor. Hentoff writes elsewhere in the liner notes that "El Barrio" represents Henderson's attachment to the "Spanish musical ethos", and that the piece was inspired by Henderson reflecting on his childhood in Lima, Ohio. Henderson is quoted as saying that he gave the other musicians "two simple chords, B minor and C major 7 (B phrygian)", and asked them "to play something with a Spanish feeling" while he improvised a melody for the piece. [8]
In a review on All About Jazz, Norman Weinstein calls Inner Urge Henderson's, "most emotionally urgent album" and the "ultimate showcase of his distinguished career . . . . The album seems like an apotheosis of hard bop, a ruthlessly probing amplification of a typical, hard-blowing, Blue Note bop session, pushing bop formulas as far as they could be pushed. As such, I consider it not only one of the best dozen Blue Note sessions ever released, I hear it as one of the major statements of jazz in the '60s, actually recreating the political, economic, and social realities of the turbulent times more precisely than most recorded music of the '60s in any style. An absolutely essential listen and a major masterpiece." [9]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz described the music as "dark and intense". [4]
All compositions by Joe Henderson, except where noted.
Chart (2022) | Peak position |
---|---|
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders) [10] | 194 |
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia) [11] | 189 |
Scottish Albums (OCC) [12] | 73 |
Elvin Ray Jones was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era. Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such albums as My Favorite Things, A Love Supreme, Ascension and Live at Birdland. After 1966, Jones led his own trio, and later larger groups under the name The Elvin Jones Jazz Machine. His brothers Hank and Thad were also celebrated jazz musicians with whom he occasionally recorded. Elvin was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1995. In his The History of Jazz, jazz historian and critic Ted Gioia calls Jones "one of the most influential drummers in the history of jazz". He was also ranked at Number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".
A Love Supreme is an album by American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Impressions is an album of live and studio recordings by jazz musician John Coltrane, released by Impulse! Records in July 1963.
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The Real McCoy is the seventh album by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner and his first released on the Blue Note label. It was recorded on April 21, 1967, following Tyner's departure from the John Coltrane Quartet. It features performances by Tyner with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Elvin Jones. Producer Alfred Lion recalls the recording session as a "pure jazz session. There is absolutely no concession to commercialism, and there's a deep, passionate love for the music embedded in each of the selections".
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Night Dreamer is the fourth album by American jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. It was released in November 1964 by Blue Note Records. With a quintet of trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones performing six Shorter originals.
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Mr. Natural is the twelfth album by jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, recorded for the Blue Note label in 1964 but not released until 1980 as LT 1075, and performed by Turrentine with Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw, Elvin Jones and Ray Barretto.
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On November 30, 1964, nine days before John Coltrane would record A Love Supreme in the same room, late tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson brought two-thirds of Coltrane's rhythm section (and bassist Bob Cranshaw) into Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio and recorded an under-recognized masterpiece.
He is joined on Inner Urge by veterans of other combos: McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones from John Coltrane's unit and Sonny Rollins sideman Bob Cranshaw