McCoy and Henderson, Forces Of Nature : Live At Slugs’, 1966

I was never much of a live album guy. Growing up I had a few that stood out and I would listen to more than once, as opposed to relegating it to the shoebox of shame in my closet. The shoebox was where unloved albums went to die, making room for the bangers and regular rotation jams.

The handful of live albums I did listen to on a semi-regular basis were AC/DC If You Want Blood You’ve Got It, Judas Priest’s Live In Japan(for “The Green Manalishi” alone), Ozzy’s Tribute, and Dokken’s Beast From The East. I did dig Yngwie Malmsteen’s Trial By Fire : Live In Leningrad but mostly watched that on VHS. It was a Christmas gift in 1988, and was a rare occasion where I could see Malmsteen’s bluesy side with his smoking cover of Hendrix’ “Spanish Castle Magic”. The War On Drugs, Causa Sui, and Papir have put out more recent live bangers.

Over the years I’ve warmed up to the live record. Hendrix has some great ones, including his Live At Woodstock set, the Band of Gypsies album, and his Live in Maui album that came out four years ago. But pound for pound the best live records I’ve discovered are jazz albums. Miles of course has some amazing live albums, Live Evil, Live At The Fillmore East, and In Concert are nothing short of brilliant. But in the last couple of years there have been some killer Jeff Parker records, a whole series of Bill Evans concerts, Herbie Hancock’s V.S.O.P., Art Blakey’s First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings, Elvin Jones’ Live At Pookie’s Pub, as well as a bunch of great Coltrane sets.

The latest is a recent reissue from Blue Note Records called McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson’s Forces of Nature : Live At Slugs’. It’s a double LP with 5 smoking tracks from two of the most prolific jazz artists of the 60s and 70s. Recorded in 1966, Tyner’s piano and Henderson’s saxophone paint wild, esoteric melodies throughout the 86-minute runtime, while percussion wizard Jack DeJohnette and the amazing Henry Grimes bring up the rear with some truly inspired drumming and upright bass. I can’t imagine how mind-blowing this would have been to see it in such a small club. Like, you could have just walked in for a bourbon neat on some random week night and heard these guys absolutely destroying on stage. Seems unheard of nowadays.

“In ‘N Out” opens this album and is an absolute firestorm of a track. Breakneck rhythm, the chaos blooming from Henderson’s horn like some magical spell, and the always tasteful and classy McCoy Tyner hammering out a mixture of post bop chordings and bluesy swagger on his piano. It’s nearly 27-minute runtime opens the door to some serious improvisational interplay.

“We’ll Be Together Again” is a stunning ballad, acting as a breather from what came before. Henderson and Tyner are no strangers to the jazz ballad and they do them eloquently. If the chaos of what came before isn’t your cup of tea, then this gorgeous piece of music surely will be.

I would call “Taking Off” the centerpiece of this album. Clocking in at over 28-minutes, “Taking Off” has the frenetic pace of “In ‘N Out”, but with more focus on melody. Tyner lays out a solid piano melody, allowing Henderson to blow fire from that horn. Everybody gets the limelight in this track, with some truly stunning drum work courtesy of DeJohnette. DeJohnette would go on to make a name for himself in the fusion world and on the great ECM Records in the next decade.

“The Believer” swings with acrobatic glee. It’s reminiscent of Coltrane’s work late in his melody-driven run in the early 60s, just on the cusp of blowing minds with his more freeform late-era work. I love the swing of this one, bringing together what jazz was and the sound of what was to come.

This amazing set ended on Henderson’ “Isotope”, off his 1966 album Inner Urge. It’s kind of the perfect closer of this frenetic and boisterous night of music. Groovy swing and blues-y swagger all around, it’s the exclamation point on a night of truly forward-thinking music.

I’ve been a fan of both Joe Henderson and McCoy Tyner individually since I first began my jazz journey nearly 20 years ago. Both have played on stellar and iconic albums -including each others albums- both as band members and band leaders, so finally having this singular night of jazz music come to life on vinyl for the first time is something to behold. When it comes to live records, this is how it’s done.

This will not be going into the shoebox of shame.