Carlos Henderson – Bass

I couldn’t find an image of this guy that I was sure was him as there is a football player with the same name and all my searches came up with incorrect material (ridiculous). So I went with the album cover. I have most of the albums Claudia Acuña has recorded and they are all really strong performances as she uses proper Jazz players an not just sidemen who are ‘playing the songs’. The arrangements on this recording are done by Henderson and this one is no exception but it has a nice little hook and a great little bass solo which I have tried to get onto paper but which is quite slippery – a couple of licks playing 5 over 2 are sweet as a nut.

The tune is the Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke standard ‘But Beautiful’ but Henderson has come up with an interesting approach using a 4:4 groove that breaks into 3:3:2 beats rather than even 2s or 4s. It ends up sounding exotic in spite of the fact that it is in 4:4.