Biography
Born on 6 August 1947 in Bristol, England, Henderson first absorbed the styles of Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Pete Seeger during the early 1960s, though Johnny Cash’s album Rid This Train left the deepest mark. While working across Europe he busked on city streets, met his future wife Britta and cut two albums for Polydor Records in Sweden. Returning to Britain in the mid-1970s, he and his band earned notice both on their own and as backing musicians for visiting Americans such as Vernon Oxford, Red Sovine, Dick Feller, Jimmy Payne and Slim Whitman. His single Slow Movin’ Outlaw, issued on the supermarket label Windmill, eventually sold around 100,000 copies. Although versatile, Henderson excels at deep-voiced story songs, among them ‘Pamela Brown’, ‘Saginaw, Michigan’ and ‘Hello In There’. His singing, markedly different from his Bristol accent, blends Derroll Adams’ low register with Waylon Jennings’ sharp edge; ironically, he cut both ‘He Went To Paris’ and ‘Clyde’ before Jennings did. The television series Country Comes West, which he hosted, suffered from modest funding, yet his BBC radio programme My Style Of Country remains one of the southwest region’s most popular syndicated shows. He also organises acoustic-country concerts and, in 1991, accompanied US singer Joey Davis on a UK tour. A skilled interpreter of contemporary country material, Henderson delivers his own numbers—‘Big Wheel’ and ‘Scarlet Woman’ among them—without being overshadowed by the company they keep.