If it hadn’t already been used for a 1950s television series, I Led Three Lives might have been an ideal title for the upcoming documentary about Eddie Henderson, who would be a fascinating subject in any one of those lives: as a medical doctor, as a pioneering figure skater, and of course as a legendary jazz musician.

As it is, the film is scheduled to premiere on PBS in 2024 under the equally apt title of Dr. Eddie Henderson: Uncommon Genius.

If the process of making the documentary has forced Henderson to look back over the impressive scope of his own life, it’s also led him to ruminate on the broad sweep of momentous events and influential figures that he’s encountered over the course of his nearly 83 years on the planet.Witness to History, due out September 15th, 2023 via Smoke Sessions Records, Henderson has assembled a collection of musicians and material that represent key points along that consequential timeline.

“My first trumpet teacher, way back in 1949, was Louis Armstrong,” recalls Henderson, who met the trumpet icon through his mother, a dancer at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club.

“From that point on, I witnessed the evolution in music through Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Woody Shaw, John Coltrane, up to the present. I lived through the turmoil of the ’60s and ’70s and the rise of Black Power in this country. I was also fortunate to come into contact with people like Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, and Willie Mays. So, I have been a witness to history, and inevitably that rubbed off on me musically.”

The stellar quintet on this album bridges that half-century of music: lifelong collaborator George Cables returns once again to the piano bench. Henderson’s colleague in The Cookers, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, and his more recent collaborator, bassist Gerald Cannon, have also appeared on the trumpeter’s recent string of releases for Smoke Sessions.

They’re joined by legendary drummer Lenny White, who has reunited with Henderson in the studio for the first time since Realization 50 years ago.

1. Scorpio Rising
2. Why Not?
3. Sweet and Lovely
4. It Never Entered My Mind
5. Freedom Jazz Dance
6. I Am Going to Miss You, My Darling
7. Totem Pole
8. Born to Be Blue

The release of Witness to History arrives on the 50th anniversary of Henderson’s debut as a leader, 1973’s Realization, and opens on the low slung crawl of Scorpio Rising (which revisits Scorpio-Libra from that album, and which also here features a guest appearance by drummer Mike Clark, who, like Henderson, was an integral part of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking fusion groups) and then comes the quieter, laid back affair Why Not? (the title tune from Cables’ own 1975 leader debut), the reimagined once melancholy ballad now a sumptuous finger-snapper Sweet and Lovely, and a yearning ache within It Never Entered My Mind; of which, as a teenager, Henderson had been inspired by Miles Davis’ rendition.

Produced by Paul Stache and Damon Smith, and recorded live in New York at Sear Sound’s Studio C on a Sear-Avalon custom console at 96KHz/24bit and mixed to 1/2″ analog tape, along next is Eddie Harris’ upbeat and playful Freedom Jazz Dance, another cut inspired by Miles, and that is followed by the opulent ballad It Never Entered My Mind (written by his wife, Natsuko), the recording rounding out on the bossa nova-imbibed Totem Pole (itself culled from Lee Morgan’s immortal The Sidewinder), coming to a close on the luxuriant, mid-tempo swing of Born to Be Blue.

Three lives, eight decades, more than fifty years of incredible music. Witness to History traces Eddie Henderson’s evolution through a remarkable span of time but listening to this captivating album, it’s abundantly clear that he’s done more than watch from the sidelines as history unfolds. Dr. Henderson has made his own indelible mark on history, and this vital music reveals that he’s far from writing his final chapter.

Eddie Henderson @ Facebook

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