When
Scott Henderson recorded his second album with
Tribal Tech,
Dr. Hee, in 1987, commercial "quiet storm" and "smooth jazz" stations had found quite a niche for themselves by spotlighting bland, uninteresting (but commercially successful) fluff. But that type of muzak held no interest whatsoever for
Henderson, who stuck to his guns and continued to triumph by offering gutsy, challenging fusion.
Henderson isn't one to shy away from abstraction, and some of the songs on
Dr. Hee (most written by either
Henderson himself or his long-time partner, bassist
Gary Willis) aren't always terribly easy to absorb. Like so much of the bebop, post-bop and free jazz that came before it, this CD (first released on Passport, then reissued by Relativity in 1990) reveals more and more of its richness with repeated listenings. ~ Alex Henderson