Joe Henderson - Our Thing (2026 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series)

Joe Henderson - Our Thing | Vinyl LP - 2026 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series (180g, Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio, Optimal Media GmbH)

• Joe Henderson's second Blue Note album, recorded on 9 September 1963 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs — three months after his debut Page One with the same frontline partnership of Henderson and Kenny Dorham
• Five originals written collectively by Henderson and Dorham: Henderson contributed "Teeter Totter" and the title track; Dorham wrote "Pedro's Time," "Back Road" and the closing "Escapade"
  
• 2026 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series, mastered from the original analogue tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed at Optimal Media GmbH on 180g vinyl

Joe Henderson recorded his debut Page One for Blue Note in June 1963, then returned to Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs on 9 September 1963 for this follow-up. The core relationship was the same — Henderson's tenor alongside Kenny Dorham's trumpet, Pete La Roca on drums — but Andrew Hill came in on piano where McCoy Tyner had played on Page One, and Eddie Khan on bass replaced Butch Warren. The substitution of Hill for Tyner is the record's defining character shift. Tyner's playing provides a rhythmic anchor; Hill's is more elliptical, his voicings deliberately off-centre in a way that keeps the harmonic ground unstable. 

The five tracks were composed entirely by the two frontline players. Henderson wrote the opening "Teeter Totter" and the title track; Dorham wrote the remaining three. "Pedro's Time" has a Latin feel and a 10-minute runtime that gives both players extended solo space. "Escapade" closes the album as a lyrical Dorham ballad, measured and cinematic. Dorham, whose career as a bandleader had produced Una Mas for Blue Note the same year, is given unusual room here to demonstrate his composing voice alongside Henderson's. The Henderson-Dorham partnership produced some of the most consistent hard bop-to-post-bop music of the early 1960s; Dorham also contributed to Song For My Father (Horace Silver) and Idle Moments (Grant Green) in the same year. When the album was released in 1964 it received a measured reception, but it has since become an essential post-bop recording of the era. This 2026 pressing is the latest in the Classic Vinyl Series, mastered from the original analogue tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media GmbH.