Sweet Georgia Brown - Bill Henderson with the Count Basie Orchestra

Bill Henderson was a jazz singer and actor from my hometown, Chicago. He never got the attention that he deserved. He had such a great singing voice and marvelous stage presence that it just confirms my theory that talent alone doesn’t ensure success in any business. A lot of it is just pure blind luck. As much as we’d like to think that hard work and perseverance wins out in the end, there are just too many stories like Bill’s that gives the lie to that notion. Not that Bill’s story was a sad one. On the contrary, he sang with and acted with some of his generation’s greatest and most revered people. That is something that most of us won’t get to claim. Here he is with the Basie Band, an outfit he was with for roughly about a year. In 1966, he and the band were performing live and from that performance, thankfully, we have this recording. Basie had been a natural fit for many popular jazz singers of their day. People like Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, Joe Williams, and even Frank Sinatra. So, it was logical that Bill would try his luck in the singer’s chair. Lineup: Bill Henderson - vocals Count Basie and his Orchestra