For those unaware, in the midst of reflecting on his long and varied career for his acclaimed memoir Chasing the Masters: First Takes of a Modern Drumming Artist, drummer/composer Phil Haynes lingered on revisiting the music he’d made with his audacious quintet 4 Horns & What? during the early 1990s.

The band featured a shifting but always stellar line-up including key Haynes collaborator/mentor Paul Smoker on trumpet and multi-reedist Andy Laster alongside a rotating cast that included tenor saxophonists John Tchicai and Ellery Eskelin and brass players Herb Robertson and Joe Daley, but has been largely forgotten due to its brief tenure and record industry misfortunes.

“Revisiting this music, this band became a great joy for me,” Haynes shares. “Maybe we weren’t as far off as we thought. It turns out this was quite a striking ensemble, we just never quite received the attention I thought we warranted in America.”

Due out June 14th, 2024 via Haynes’ Corner Store Jazz imprint, The Complete American Recordings compiles the two studio albums that 4 Horns & What? released during its lifetime along with a previously unheard live recording from Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Alternative Jazz” series in October 1995.

The set is revelatory, each session an unbridled and joyous exploration of jazz’s history-spanning possibilities, evoking the buoyant polyphony of early New Orleans styles as readily as the contemporary avant-garde of the era.

4 HORNS & WHAT? (1989)
1. A’lil Iowa Get-Down
2. El-Smoke
3. Ballad For Heike
4. Point Period
5. Atmospheres
6. Corner Store Strut
7. Alone
8. Blues for Israel
Originally recorded January 1989, Nov. 24th, 1991 & October 13th, 1995, the new recording opens on the 4 Horns & What? album from 1989, and we first get the excitable A’lil Iowa Get-Down and the avant-garde El-Smoke and then we get the dutiful Ballad For Heike, the dulcet Point Period, the veritably shimmering brilliance that drives Atmospheres, the album rounding out on the drum/horn led Corner Store Strut, the all-encompassing Alone, coming to a close with the euphoric Blues for Israel.

4 HORN LORE (1991)
9. Holler 4 Horns
9. Out of the Bowels-OTB
10. Sweep
11. Goofus’ Step
12. Some Sick Slick
13. Where Now?
14. Adrienne’s Jazzmarchrag
15. Phantoms
16. Eclipse

The next album is the 4 Horn Lore from 1991 which opens on the aching, sometimes even cartoonish yearn of Holler 4 Horns and the frenetically upbeat Out of the Bowels-OTB, and they are then backed seamlessly by the atmospheric Sweep, the inventiveness of Goofus’ Step, and then come the playfulness of Some Sick Slick, the impassioned Where Now?, the album rounding out on the regimented Adrienne’s Jazzmarchrag, the ethereally-hued Phantoms, closing on the harmonically sophisticated Eclipse.

LIVE AT B.A.M. (1995)
17. Don Byron (intro)
18. Holler4Horns
19. A Little Iowa Get-Down
20. Phil Speaks
21. Goofus’ Step
22. Saeta
23. Phil Speaks 2
24. West Virginian Blues
25. Waltz for Gerry (Last Dance)
26. Phil Speaks 3
27. Eclipse

Live at BAM is the most astounding discovery of this set, however. Not only had Haynes not heard the music in 30 years, let alone anyone else – he had long since forgotten that he’d even asked engineer John Rosenberg to record the date.

With Eskelin having left the band to focus on his leader career in Europe (one among many inspirations for Haynes’ above-cited lament). the bandleader invited the Danish saxophonist John Tchicai into the ranks, having discovered a thrilling chemistry during their one prior meeting, on a gig at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Tchicai proves a perfect fit, deftly infusing his bristling energy into Haynes’ off-kilter themes and igniting the band with his elusive, quicksilver soloing. “He absolutely inspired the band, as you can hear,” Haynes exults. “He surely inspired me.”

For proof, just check out the album’s closer, “Eclipse,” as blistering a sprint to the finish line as any band can claim. If 4 Horns or What? had to come to such a premature end, at least it arrived with this most gleeful of self-immolations.

The Complete American Recordings implies that there are further discoveries to be made from beyond these shores, and in fact Haynes knows of long-shelved recordings made during European festival dates. The trick now is to track them down, but if the jazz detectives out there need the proper incentive to set them on the hunt, it’s surely contained within this captivating collection.

www.philhaynes.com

Phil Haynes @ Bandcamp