Realization

by Richard S. Ginell Although the electric Herbie Hancock Sextet (and septet) left only a slim three-album discography on Warner Bros. and Columbia, you can expand it considerably by adding the two LPs that Eddie Henderson made as a leader on Capricorn -- a Georgia rock label known mostly for recording the Allman Brothers. Henderson's band is, in fact, the Hancock Septet minus Julian Priester with a second drummer (Lenny White) added, and they play the same brand of fantastic, electronically charged, intergalactic jazz-rock. Henderson extends and develops the Hancock approach, sputtering and moving laconically about in a manner greatly affected by Miles Davis but more ebullient in tone. There are five compositions here, most of them by Henderson, with a contribution from Hancock (the subtly beautiful "Revelation") and the delicately textured "Anua" from Bennie Maupin. The drumming (from White and Billy Hart) is brilliantly propulsive; Hancock logs a lot of solo time and gets to play with his Echoplex, while Patrick Gleeson slips in mind-blowing streaks and whooshes of sound from his Moog and ARP synthesizers. This is one of the great lost treasures of the jazz-rock era; the music is a bit looser than that of the Hancock records yet every bit as invigorating and forward-thrusting. [In 2005 the British Soul Brother label combined Realization and Inside Out, Eddie Henderson's second Capricorn album, onto a single-disc CD compilation entitled Anthology, Vol. 2: The Capricorn Years: Realization/Inside Out.]