Bill Henderson (1926-2016) could sing with equal grace and conviction a tender ballad, a stomping blues, a semi R&B tune, a showtune, a novelty tune, or whatever he liked. At medium to up tempos, Henderson often injects humor into his laid back but spirited singing. But it’s in the ballads that Henderson shows his stature as an artist. His voice, normally hoarse, grows even darker and thicker, his vibrato more expressive as it becomes enveloped in feeling.

A native of Chicago, he had no church background but said. “My father liked to sing old songs.” Bill got his first show business experience there at the age of 4 when accordionist Phil Baker used him in a show, after auditioning various youngster swho could sing and dance. “My dressing room was a trunk,” Henderson said, “and I had two changes, both sailor suits.” And while still a toddler, he was appearing with Phil Baker in “Artists and Models.”

When the show left town, Bill’s mother put a crimp in his career. “She thought I should go to school,” he said. In high school, Henderson appeared in amateur plays and musicals, and did some radio work, while following with interest the career of his brother, Finis Henderson, a fine dancer. Thinking that he should acquire a trade, he transferred to a vocational school. But even the vocational school had its amateur musicals, and Bill kept appearing in them.

“We had a group doing instrumental and vocal stuff together,” he said. “We thought we were unique. Then we found out that Charlie Ventura had already been doing it.” Bill left the group because it was interfering with his studies, but he still had the bug. Henderson then went into the military, enlisted in a special service unit, and toured the US and Europe as an entertainer. Singer Vic Damone was in the same group, as was tenor saxophonist Seldon Powell.

“When I came out of service in 1952,” Henderson said, “the whole scene had changed. There was a great blues influx. I started looking around to find where I could fit myself in. But the good people, even Joe Williams, were being buried under rock and roll. “Joe and I have been dear friends for many years, and he was just being taken for granted then. Everybody knew he was a good singer. But good singers weren’t making it. He should have made it years ago.

“My early idols were Dick Haymes and Joe Williams. In those days I was singing in lounges around Chicago. For a long time I had a variety of jobs in and out of music, like, for a while both Ramsey Lewis and I were working in a store by day and playing the Sutherland Lounge at night.”

Slow but surely, Bill’s rich singing voice and personality conquered the hearts of the audiences at Chicago’s Blue Note and lounges around the city. He was on the right track, and in the tough field of jazz vocalists, he gradually emerged from the pack.

In 1955, pianist Billy Taylor played in Chicago and heard Henderson sing. He was impressed, and told him that if he ever got to New York, he should look him up. In 1957, on Taylor’s advice, he did go to New York. There, Taylor tried to help him and took him to see executives from various record companies.

“He spent a lot of time on it,” Henderson said. “He would get up early in the morning to make calls for me. He was wonderful.” Through Taylor, Henderson made many connections with prominent people in the record business. Meanwhile, he took day jobs to pay the rent.

“There were some funny ones,” he said. “For a while I was a shrimp picker at the Gaslight club in New York. The job was created for me. I told the owner how badly I needed a job, so he made room for me. He said I’d get to know a lot of important people, and I really did begin to be mentioned in some of the columns.

“I was a chimney sweep for a while. The guy told me that he cleaned the chimneys and furnaces in a lot of celebrities’ homes and I could sing on the job and maybe get heard by somebody. I took the job—not to sing, but because I needed a job. I had to clean inside furnaces. “I did try singing once, though!” he recalled. “We were cleaning the furnace in the home of Duke Ellington’s mother. The guy I was working with told me to go ahead and sing—the sound would go up through the house—because Duke was supposed to be visiting. So I did. Then he came down and told me that Duke wasn’t there, so I might as well not waste my time and get back to cleaning.”

It was shortly later that he received his first sanction as a singer. “I was singing at the Village Vanguard and Sonny Rollins was backstage with his sax. Before I knew it, he was on stage, sitting and playing behind me. What a thrill!”

Finally the first recording opportunity he was looking for came to him. It was producer Orrin Keepnews who invited Bill to record a single (R-45-612) for his Riverside label. At a session held inApril 1958, Bill, backed by a quintet led by tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, sang “Busy Signal”, a hard punchingmid-tempo original tune by Henderson. In the Gershwin ballad “How Long Has This Been Going On”, an emotionally executed piece, Bill received sensitive support from Wilbur Ware on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums.

Shortly thereafter, Henderson met Horace Silver and one day sang for him. Silver told Bill that he had written the words to his song, “Señor Blues”, and that he thought he was the man to sing it. “And that’s when it all began,” Bill recalled. The tune was recorded by Bill with the Horace Silver quintet, and issued on a Blue Note single (45-1710-A). Shortly after, Henderson crashed the Cash Box columns with his slick rendition of Silver’s tune. It was a jukebox hit and remains one of the biggest-selling singles in the label’s history.

As a result of the success of “Señor Blues,” Silver got him more work in shows. Bill emceed various dates at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, New York’s Town Hall, and Atlantic City’s Cotton Club. He later worked at the Howard Theater in Washington and appeared several times on television, alongside Randy Weston, Roy Eldridge, Maxine Sullivan, Georgie Auld, Billie Holiday, and in January 1959 he appeared with Sonny Rollins at the Village Vanguard.

A recording contract with Chicago’s growing VeeJay Records put the icing on the cake. Joined by the Ramsey Lewis trio on some tracks and by an octet led by Benny Golson on others, his 1959 album Bill Henderson Sings (LP 1015), featuring such soulful performances as “Joey,” “Moanin’,” “Bad Luck,” or “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” was at last heading to the best-seller lists.

The label’s producer, Sid McCoy wrote in the album liner notes: “Bill Henderson is one of the most significant male singers to appear on the American scene in the past decade. He has already earned the respect and admiration of the foremost singers and musicians in the business. Bill is a wonderfully warm and sensitive human being that has been blessed with the ability to project, in song, awide variety of human emotions with a sharp quality of dramatic believability. This you will realize as he invites you to relive the tender moments of a treasured ballad—or while giving a soulful reading of a plaintive blues—or as he crams with swinging happiness, that which is bright and sprightly. The voice of Bill Henderson possesses that intangible spark that ignites the imagination and pulls one gently, by the ear, along the musical highways and by ways of life. Bill is no newcomer. He has “been around,” as the saying goes. He’s been around gathering both musical and human experience—those requisites which are the stock and trade of The Great Singer. If you have not had the pleasure—reach inside and meet Bill Henderson. I am sure that you and he shall become very good friends!”

Billboard said in its review: “A singer with ability to get inside the feeling of a tune, not merely sing the words, has won him the title of ‘Most Promising Jazz Singer-1960’ in Billboard’s recent Jazz Poll. Additional evidence of his vocal ability is displayed on the new VeeJay album, Bill Henderson Sings.”

In June 1960, Louise Davis Stone in the The Citizen Call, praised Henderson with these words: “One night at the Half Note, Bill Henderson took the mike with the Cannonball Adderley Quintet and set the place a fire with “Moanin’’ —I’ve been a fan ever since. There’s a naked sexuality, plus an element of sincerity, that makes his voice one of the most significant voices in the business.”

In August 1960, Henderson was the New Star Award-winning singer in Down Beat magazine’s International Jazz Critics Poll, ahead of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Witherspoon.

Once he had his first breaks, his career expanded quietly but steadily. He had fewer and fewer weeks open in his bookings, and his Vee Jay LP was playing frequently on the air (particularly the “Joey” track).

In October he was voted “most promising jazz vocalist” in Billboard’s jazz deejay poll. During 1960 and early 1961 VeeJay scheduled several recording sessions in Chicago, where Bill sang accompanied by groups, such as the Bobby Bryant Octet, the MJT+3, the Tommy Flanagan Quartet, a string orchestra conducted by Jimmy Jones, Richard Evans’ Orchestra; and a big band arranged and conducted by Thad Jones.

In January 1961, Bill, at the height of his fame, traveled to Japan as a featured singer with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The group opened their tourwith a four-day engagement at Sankei Hall on January 2, and later played at Osaka Festival Hall, as well as the cities of Kobe and Nagoya. Thanks to these performances, Henderson’s popularity among Japanese fans was firmly cemented.

After his return to New York, Bill was recruited to performin the best jazz clubs in the country, and by VeeJay to make more recordings, this time with an orchestra conducted by Riley Hampton including Eddie Harris, and with the Eddie Higgins Trio. At the same in February, he had joined Eddie Harris’s Quartet at the New York’s Empire Room. During March he performed at the Playboy Key Club in Chicago. In May he appeared at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, with the Frank Strozier Quartet.

In the summer of 1961, a second VeeJay album (LP-1031), using eleven tracks from the above mentioned sessions was released with the title Bill Henderson. Producer’s Sid Mcoy wrote in the liner notes: “To those who participated in the production of this album, contributed vastly, worked tirelessly, and share our belief that Bill Henderson is one of the greatest singers in America today. To Jimmy Jones, who’s wonderful arrangements, conducting and painstaking care we owe a debt of gratitude; To Thad Jones who arranged and conducted “My How the Time Goes By”; To the many excellent musicians who appear here with Bill, our sincerest thank you.”

In April 1962 he shared the stage at New York’s Jazz Gallery with the Sonny Rollins Quartet and the James Moody Sextet. In June 1962, he returned to his native Chicago to perform for three weeks at the Archway lounge, where Henderson was backed by John Young’s Trio.

In August 1962, Bill Henderson signed with MGM Records, recording a couple of pop songs with the support of an orchestra arranged and conducted by Sammy Lowe, which were released on a single in the fall.

In 1963 he recorded Bill Henderson with the Oscar Peterson Trio, on the Verve Records label. “Working with Oscar and Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen was just a ball,” Bill said. “You see, Oscar is a singer, himself, and he knows. He’s like a full orchestra. Whenever he plays, he plays all of the piano. You can hear all the changes, and he makes it a simple thing for you to just lay back and sing. He’s listening to you all the time, and while he’s listening, he’s playing all the right things for you.”

Also for Verve, in 1965, Bill would record amore commercial album, When My Dream Boat Comes Home. That year at the recommendation of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Henderson joined Count Basie’s band. He remained two years with the band, and recorded a version of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” included in the Basie’s Beatle Bag album.

In 1967, he moved to Los Angeles, where at the suggestion of his friend Bill Cosby, Henderson pursued a new career as an actor. But he continued to sing and record when the occasion arose, and he became a familiar name in the local jazz scene. Beginning in the mid 1970’s, he frequently appeared on television in supporting, usually one-time roles. His film roles followed a similar trend.

Henderson was a fixture on the Playboy circuit in the 1970’s and appeared often at many festivals including Playboy Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl, Monterey Jazz, and the Litchfield Jazz Festival in Connecticut. He subsequently performed at the Kennedy Center and in New York at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room and at Lincoln Center.

In 1974 VeeJay International released an LP titled Please Send Me Someone to Love, including eleven of the songs previously recorded between 1960 and 1961. In 1975, Bill with a quartet made up of friends, including pianist Joyce Collins and organist and Fender Rhodes player Dave Mackay, kicked off a season of summer performances at the busy Times Restaurant on Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Bill’s enormous success led to Albert Marx of Discovery Records signing him to a three-album deal, Live at The Times (1975), the Grammy-nominated Street of Dreams (1979), and A Tribute to Johnny Mercer (1981).

His style remained essentially unchanged through the years. Leonard Feather said “Henderson’s phrasing is virtually his own copyright.”

Bill Henderson, who lived in Valencia, CA, died Sunday, April 3, 2016, of natural causes, two weeks after his 90th birthday.

—Jordi Pujol (From the inside liner notes of FSRCD 1127)