Sadly, I was spurred to shine the spotlight on Michael Henderson by his recent passing. He died on July 19, 2022, aged 71. Fortunately, I didn’t need his death to know all about the great music he’d made decades earlier.
(Pitchfork has a nice remambrance and overview of his career.)
I first got to know Henderson’s music, unknowingly, by hearing my dad play “You Are My Starship” by Norman Connors.
I can’t remember the first time I heard that song, but it’s one of my dad’s favorites, so it’s basically baked into my early memory. Kinda like how you can’t recall the first time you watched TV. It was just there.
Henderson was the featured vocalist, writer, bassist, and co-producer on “You Are My Starship” (10/10), but I didn’t find that out till years later in high school. During those same high school years, I also happened to start listening to my dad’s vinyl collection, which included a couple of Henderson LPs.
Eventually, I got around to listening to most of Henderson’s catalog by the time I finished college thanks to the wonders of the internet… and it’s some good shit.
The albums Solid, In The Night-Time, and Wide Receiver are particlarly noteworthy for fans of the funk. But funk was not Henderson’s beginning.
His bass playing actually started out in rock music, then shifted to R&B, but his big break came playing bass for Miles Davis in the early 1970s. Davis at this point in his career melding together jazz, rock, and R&B, so getting Henderson as bassist made plenty of sense.
By 1975, at age 24, Henderson started dabbling in soul music writing songs for vocal quintet the Dramatics. This was the same time he hooked up with jazz drummer Norman Connors, who was also moving into a more “commercial” R&B direction.
After those collaborations, Henderson released his solo debut Solid in 1976. Through 1981’s Slingshot, he released albums that were generally successful commercially despite not having very many hit singles. He only had one—ONE—song crack the Billboard Hot 100. That was 1978’s “Take Me I’m Yours” which rocketed all the way up to #88. Even on Billboard’s R&B singles chart, only three of his songs cracked the top 15: the aforementioned “Take Me I’m Yours” (#3), “Wide Receiver” (#4), and “In The Night-Time” (#15).
So how did he have hit albums?
By making unique, good albums that blended jazz fusion, funk, soul, and eventually the synthesized revolution of new wave.
Henderson wrote almost every song on his own during the period from 1976 to 1981. He produced all the songs. And he played his wicked bass guitar on all of them too. Basically the kind of artist that music critics love to love.
The love came to a halt with 1981’s Slingshot. It was an average album with some good stuff, but also some really weak material. Then Henderson completely lost his moorings on his final albums: Fickle in 1983 and 1986’s Bedtime Stories. Those LPs suck and were nothing more than generic R&B of the time.
ALBUM REVIEWS
For the jazz/jazz-fusion fans amongst you, Solid is your best bet for a good time. For those of you who can generally get down with jazz, funk, and soul, Henderson’s first five albums all have meritorious material. And those of you y’all with a more rock or new wave bent will probably like Wide Receiver the best.
In the end, though, every one of those first five albums has heaps of funk and soul.
Solid: B+
Goin’ Places: B-
Do It All: C+
Slingshot: C
Fickle: F