Hendersonia: Sun Ra Performs Fletcher Henderson is another gem of a release from Bandcamp. In the vein of the two recent Ellingtonia releases, this one is digital-only. As is well known, Ra worked for Henderson in the 1940s, and he celebrated this legacy by featuring several songs associated with Henderson over the years, almost all of them featured here. Several of these (especially "Big John's Special," "Blue Lou," and "Yeah Man!") remained in the book for years and were actually played more often than Ellington tunes--not surprising, given the personal connection. The versions here are well-chosen and repesentative of the arrangements, which for the most part do not stray far from Fletcher's (and his brother Horace's) own. All of the tracks are live, and only two of them come from previously released CDs ("Big John's Special," from the Utrecht Love in Outer Space and "Can You Take It?" from Live at Pit-Inn). As with the Ellingtonia sets, it'd have been nice if they had included the exact performance dates when available. Some of these selections are quite rare, especially "Great Caesar's Ghost"--there is no record of this in RLC's discography. As Irwin Chusid points out in his liner notes, there's a great John Gilmore solo on "Rose Room," and there are generous helpings of Gilmore in other tracks too, on both tenor sax and clarinet. It's great to have curated collections like this--I wonder what's next in store?
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