According to the official biographies, Skitch Henderson was born in England. Don't you believe it. Skitch Henderson, as we have come to know him over the years, was born in Hollywood. Beginning with his nickname.
"That came from Bing Crosby," the goateed maestro recalled in a telephone interview from San Francisco, where he was in town to conduct the San Francisco Symphony and throw out the first ball at that afternoon's Giants game."My name was Cedric - Lyle Russell Cedric Henderson - and they called me `the sketch kid' because as a rehearsal pianist I would make the orchestral sketches that would then go to the orchestrator. Well, Bing always talked to me about nicknames. He said when he was Harry nobody knew who the hell he was. He even got me to go to the passport bureau and change my name. It was wonderful advice, obviously."
That was in the 1940s, after World War II, during which Henderson flew for both England's Royal Air Force and, after becoming an American citizen, the U.S. Air Force. Earlier he had been brought from England to Minnesota at age 12, making his way to Hollywood in 1937. There he was hired by MGM, where he played piano for Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and made arrangements.
This week he brings some of that stardust with him for a pair of Hollywood-themed concerts with the Utah Symphony, Friday, July 30, at 8 p.m. in Abravanel Hall and Saturday, July 31, at 7:30 p.m. at Deer Valley. Included will be music of Gus Kahn, Vincent Youmans, Richard Rodgers and Henderson himself, including his score for the 1963 Moss Hart biopic, "Act One."
It's a unique program, Henderson insists, and "personalized in that it really emanates from the pens of guys I've worked with all my life. After the war, the world slowed down a bit and I went on to New York. But I always kept my connections with the Hollywood music factory, and those men remained my friends, men like Max Steiner and Alfred Newman and the other studio music directors."
Henderson's fame as a music director, however, came not through movies but through television. "I had been conducting the Lucky Strike Show with Frank Sinatra on radio," he explains, "and when that came to an end the vice president of NBC walked up and said, `Why don't you stay here?' It was that simple."
While at NBC, Henderson was invited by Arturo Toscanini to guest conduct the NBC Symphony, "the beginning of my so-called symphonic conducting career." (Earlier he had studied conducting with Albert Coates and Fritz Reiner and theory with Arnold Schoenberg and Ernest Toch.) Later he was made the network's music chief and oversaw the music for both the "Today" and "Tonight" programs, becoming a familiar fixture on the latter under both Steve Allen and Johnny Carson.
"I took a leave of absence during the Jack Paar years," Henderson says of the sometimes-controversial "Tonight" show host who came in between. "I had started conducting in Europe and felt if I was going to make a thrust I had better do it then." During that time he worked with a number of German radio orchestras, "but I found it wasn't the world of love and admiration I had had in the U.S. You couldn't really walk in from the top; you had to come in from the bottom, and I didn't feel I had the time to do that."
Back in the States, Henderson was invited by Leonard Bernstein to launch a Boston Pops-style series of concerts with the New York Philharmonic in the early '60s. "Lenny felt that was good not only for the orchestra, because musically it's very healthy to play all kinds of music, but they were also looking for work in the summertime.
"Well, we previewed it in Carnegie Hall and it was an utter disaster. We outnumbered the audience, and that has a strangely deteriorating effect. It was three years of total misery."
The lesson was a valuable one. Not only was Henderson canny enough to hang onto the name, the New York Pops, but when he revived the idea 10 years ago with a different bunch of musicians he deliberately avoided the Boston concept of a running summer season.
"Instead," he says, "we do it once a month from September to May, a Friday-night concert and a Saturday matinee, both at Carnegie. And we're sold, sold, sold."
And not just in America. Three years ago the group's first EMI CD, "From Berlin to Bernstein," was released in Japan - a year ahead of its U.S. release - and they've toured that country every year since.
"Most of our strings come from the Mostly Mozart Festival," Henderson explains, pointing out that former Utah Symphony violinist Robert Chaussow is his concertmaster. "The woodwinds are the alternate team at the Met, and the brass and percussion are a mix of variety and symphonic players."
Musically, Henderson himself still varies the mix. Last year he conducted at Scotland's Glasgow Festival and this year, in addition to celebrating his 75th birthday, led the London Symphony at Daytona and the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga before opening the San Francisco Symphony's summer festival.
Three years ago he and his wife, Ruth, had the first of two lifestyle-and-recipe books published. (The second, "Christmas in the Country," is due this fall.) But the recipe he values most is the one for happiness.
"The life of being a personality wasn't really for me," he states. "I was comfortable with it on the `Tonight' show because I was part of a family. But when that stopped I found out I wasn't that. For a while I toyed with the idea of being an actor, and even did a club act on the road. But a musician is a musician is a musician, and I think you have to take care of what your main line is and not go drifting off into other areas."
And Skitch Henderson's main line?
"Middlebrow. The light orchestral repertoire. Let's face it, I've lived a middlebrow life, and maybe that's lucky. Dick Rodgers used to say, `Your breakfast plate will always be full if you can live in the world of the middlebrow. I shunned that for years, but it's probably given me a longevity I wouldn't have had, and I'm happier than I've ever been musically.
"I don't have the sheer terror I had all my life as a conductor - I'm still nervous as a cat but approach it as a profession I enjoy and am lucky to be in. And I still love music, where so many of my colleagues get so disgusted. I mean, how many times can you do the Beethoven Fifth and still keep it fresh inside you?
"As I say, if you can play `Stardust' you'll always get fed, or maybe a song of the Beatles. But `Stardust' still holds up pretty well. I was with the Buffalo Philharmonic last week and they listed some of the optional encores I do, including `Stardust.' Well, I didn't do it and some guy shouted at me from the audience. And I figure that's a good sign, for me and Hoagy Carmichael."
Tickets to Friday's concert are priced from $13 to $19, or $16 to $31 for Deer Valley ($18 the day of the concert). For information call 533-NOTE.