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Joe Henderson’s sax solo in “Song for My Father”
by Daniel Shapiro He wanders into Horace Silver’s pad, introduces himself in low warm stutters as if not sure he’s invited. Encouraged by the host’s nod he becomes the party’s fulcrum, testing the crowd’s polarities, egged on by others’ rhythms, needing his whole vocal range to capture a story accurately, a story about a big woman who took up two chairs at the lunch counter but ate with dainty movements, blotting the edge of her mouth with a pink silk handkerchief. Or a story about a tiny man who slithered downtown in search of the rest of himself, lost under a tattered felt hat or in a trash can amid scraps of yesterday’s chops. Suddenly, Joe worries he might be overdoing it, becoming a story himself, so he settles down, lips not tired, but mind tired of wrestling ferocious ideas. He returns to that low whisper he started with as the group resumes mingling in parallel. |
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