hypersongs

Dorris Henderson

An American singer and autoharp player from Los Angeles who moved to London in the mid-1960s and made two albums of folk and blues with the guitarist John Renbourn, There You Go (1965) and Watch the Stars (recorded 1966).

Los Angeles to Greenwich Village

Dorris Henderson was born Dorris Celia Hankerson and grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a clergyman. Sources disagree on the year: Wikipedia gives February 2, 1933 and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry is headed 1929. She worked as a civil servant until she saw Odetta at the Ash Grove and turned to music, playing autoharp arrangements of songs from Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America on Sunset Boulevard. The comedian and monologist Lord Buckley took her into his Hollywood stage shows, calling her the Lady Dorris, and she sings "Rock of Ages" on his live album In Concert.

She then moved to New York during the Greenwich Village folk boom, where she knew Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, was among the first to record Simon's "Leaves That Are Green", and has a brief appearance in Dylan's film Dont Look Back.

London and John Renbourn

On her brother's urging she moved to London in 1965, settled in Hampstead and became a regular at the Troubadour. She told an interviewer that she sang folk ballads rather than blues because she was a city girl. At the Roundhouse she met John Renbourn; they appeared together on the BBC2 show Gadzooks! It's All Happening, and made There You Go (Columbia, 1965) and Watch the Stars, recorded in January 1966 and released in 1967 on Fontana. After meeting the Dutch singer Cobi Schreijer she toured thirteen European countries and lived for a time in the Netherlands.

In 1968 she formed Tintagel with Ian McDonald, later of King Crimson, which was poorly received and soon disbanded, and then replaced Kerrilee Male as the singer of Eclection, playing the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969 and later fronting Dorris Henderson's Eclection with her son Eric Jones on guitar. She married Mac McGann, settled in Twickenham, and largely retired except for jingle work and appearances with Bob Kerr, returning to music regularly after There You Go was reissued in 1999. Her last record, Here I Go Again (Market Square, 2003), is billed as her musical autobiography. She died in London in 2005; Wikipedia gives March 3 and PopMatters says May.

Albums

  • Watch the Stars 1967 · Fontana

    Her second album with John Renbourn: fifteen short folk and blues songs recorded in London in January 1966 and released in 1967.

Songs

  • Watch the Stars Watch the Stars · 1967

    The title track: a traditional song, track five of the album, at just over two minutes.

Sources

  1. Dorris Henderson, Wikipedia
  2. Dorris Henderson: Watch the Stars, Mainly Norfolk
  3. Dorris Henderson: Watch the Stars, PopMatters (2005-11-28)
  4. Dorris Henderson, MusicBrainz