Search - Eddie Henderson :: Sunburst

Miles Davis Electric musics fans take note..

Peppino | 06/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

".. the more or less unhearalded(except for the avid Jazz enthusiast), Eddie Henderson has been making great post bop and Electric jazz/funk for years.
Outside of a brief "ultra-commercial" fase, Mr Henderson has made some marvelous musics on trumpet, fluglehorn & cornet ,effortlessly articulating winding and complex, yet beautifully melodic solos. (He's another in the LONG line of examples why "Whine-tone" Marsalis ignores mention of these wonderful brassmen when HE pontificates at will as if he were some sort of "keeper of the jazz flame")
--Wynton ?- you can have him, I prefer a fresh and individual voice on the trumpet, not a passionless technician , and Edddie Henderson is one of my favorites! You listen to Eddie H., Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, etc etc, and W.M. becomes superfluous.These guys , as said in musicians parlance, BURN!E.H. was a seminal member of Herbie Hancock's unusually adventurous "Mwandishi" band, and "Sunburst" takes an interesting "middle ground" between the "outside" avant leanings and the commercial side(read "Fat Albert Rotunda")of the Mwandishi filosofia.Ex-Mwandishis Bennie Maupin , Buster Williams and Billy Hart are featured along with illustrious names as Alfonso Johnson and George Duke,and the sound created sounds like a more cogent version of Miles' electric things. If I may be so bold, Mr Henderson's firey lines far outshine Mile's playing during his electric fase, as EH is equally as introspective as Miles could be, but burns more complex , snaking lines than the Dark Magus , in my humble opinion.And I thinks that the use of the echoplex is very tasteful, and equal to mile's "wah-wah" trumpet work as electric manipulation of an acoustic instrument goes..Only 1 cut from 6 is pedestrian, the rest is a combination of funky groove, jazzy inspired solos and intergallactic electric aspirations! Grab this hidden underground gem, you can always "be-bop" later.."

The Past is in The Future

ZAHZAH | MISSION VIEJO, CA USA | 07/10/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"My Sunburst album became very worn well before the 70's were over. In that day, some of mankind's most creative and freethinking musicians had only recently mined, forged and began crafting the use of a newly found raw musical resource called electricity (in the pre-digital age!)? This record under Henderson's leadership successfully states the facts of funk and the sounds of space. It's playful outrageousness just sitting on the bus stop down the street. It's far out, but cool. It's fun. It's beautiful. The grooves are living and breathing, evolving under the ever-creative solos in tight cohesion, yet freely expanding. Eddie Henderson's trumpet playing here is a real sunburst of brilliance throughout, be it with wah-wah, echo-plex, ghost electronics or plain good old acoustic. The pieces are both accessible and explorative. The structures are as intelligent as the group's performance is emotionally intuitive. If Jazz became a dead language in the 60's, then this album is one of a small handful of recordings that gave birth to the next several decades of global musical styling. The only true American art form in action, not in the `30's, but again in 1975?"

Funk/Jazz fusion masterpiece!

D. Rapport | seattle, wa United States | 03/16/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Eddie Henderson, George Duke, and Alphonso Johnson brink the funk on this one. A really amazing album full of tight ensemble playing, brilliant and out solos, funky grooves, and excellent compositions. Many might know Henderson from his work in Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group and although the last track on this album sonds similar to that free style of jazz this album is really much more funk oriented, with pretty tight arrangments. If you are a fan of Geroge Duke's early solo work or Stanley Clarke's early work, you'll love this album."