Jazz album episode 159 – Scott Henderson Discography review

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#ScottHenderson

Welcome to a special edition of the jazz album reviews series and today i am going to be taking a look at the amazing and impressive catalogue of one of the greatest and most iconic guitar players of all time, a musician who i’ve been wanting to talk about on this series for a long time and has been a major in the guitar world for over 4 decades, the one and only, legendary guitarist, composer and bandleader, Scott Henderson.

The first time that i became aware of Scott Henderson was through his work with Tribal Tech and his guitar playing completely blew me away, it made my jaw drop, he was playing jazz but cranked up to 10 with a rockier approach and lots of blues influences. From his speed to his technique to his sound, everything about Henderson’s playing completely blew me away. Although Holdsworth and Gambale both played in the legato style, they had their own identity, Holdsworth played more towards jazz and Gambale played with a rockier tone, whereas Henderson was in the middle between jazz and rock but leaned heavily towards the blues. If you were to combine Allan Holdsworth, Jimi Henderix and Jeff Beck, you would get Scott Henderson but he is no copycat and is very much his own man.

I found out much later on that Henderson played with the Elektric Band in their early days and was blown away when i saw him mixing it up with Chick Corea, Dave Weckl & John Patitucci. Even back in 1986, he was still playing like a monster and played an important role in helping to define the band’s early sound before leaving shortly after. When you hear Henderson play, you know straight away it’s him as he has a distinct and recongisable sound as there are not many musicians who sound quite like him.

Since bursting onto the scene in the early 80s, Scott Henderson has played and collaborated with everyone from Steve Bailey to Gregg Bisonette to Virgil Donati to Jeff Berlin to Tom Coster to Sandeep Chowta to Billy Childs to Carl Verheyen to Gerald Gradwohl to Bernie Williams to Gerald Gradwohl to the Chick Corea Elektric Band to Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate to Players with Steve Smith, Jeff Berlin and T. Lavitz to H.B.C with Jeff Berlin and Dennis Chambers. Scott Henderson is best known for his long association as the founder of legendary jazz fusion band Tribal Tech as part of the classic lineup with Gary Willis, Scott Kinsey and Kirk Covington

For today’s special edition, i am going to be taking a look at the amazing and impressive solo catalogue of Scott Henderson which is comprised a total of 7 albums, 6 studio albums and 1 live recording. You will find as you go through Henderson’s catalogue, you will hear how much his guitar playing has evolved. As always, i will be talking about each album individually and choosing which one i think is the best. Not an easy challenge especially as there are no bad albums in his catalogue and they are all incredibly strong.