Arguably the most intriguing candidate in the crowded City Council race is the tall and stately Dr. Luther Henderson because he has spent his fascinating life far afield from politics. The gleaming portfolio of accomplishment he brings to the campaign defies easy categorization.
Even though he has been on the faculty of Los Angeles City College for 26 years — and he looks the professorial part — his more spectacular accomplishments have been essayed in the world of music.
He has performed on renowned American stages — including Carnegie Hall — and at the White House.
[img]105|left|||no_popup[/img]
L.A. City Councilman Herb Wesson, right, is the latest to endorse Dr. Henderson
Safe to say, he is the only one of the eight or nine candidates who can make such an ambitious claim going into the April 8 election.
One of Dr. Henderson’s challenges this election season has been to trade off his pristine image as a cultural impresario for a slightly rougher, tougher concept as a politician where the discourse tilts far more toward coarseness than white gloved treatment.
His Personality
Although Dr. Henderson has been a regular for the last seven years around City Hall, the main address for politics in Culver City, he still has not been seen as a political player. The centerpiece of his civic participation has been his very active involvement with the Cultural Affairs Commission, which he twice has chaired.
Although his life has been lived quite publicly, Dr. Henderson’s personality is reserved and understated, hardly the image of a politician. Not for many politicians do you have to hunch forward to catch the pearls of enlightenment they are spreading.
It remains to be seen whether Dr. Henderson’s campaign message of family primacy, balanced development and preservation of neighborhood tranquility will resonate with voters who are confronted with a potentially confusing calendar of choices.
“I am an educator, I am a realtor and I am a musician,” Dr. Henderson says. “I also am a family man and a good person.
“I am one who truly believes you are put on this earth to do some good. One person can really make a difference. You can make a difference in other peoples’ lives.
“I have a love of music first of all because of my dad being a Broadway musical arranger and conductor.”
Following more generally than specifically in his father’s melodious footsteps, Dr. Henderson has soared through the loftiest environs of classical and jazz music.
Cross-Country Move
Born in New York City, young Luther was 8 years old when his parents divorced, and he moved to the West Coast, in 1958, with his learning disabled older brother, Denson, and their mother, who had relatives here. To this day, Dr. Henderson fulfills a pledge to his mother and grandmother to care closely for his brother, handicapped — including deafness — since birth.
And so the Henderson family produced a remarkable contrast — one uncommonly sensitive son blessed with perfect musical pitch and one son without any capacity for hearing.
Their father, Luther Henderson Jr., provided a prolific legacy. He was musical director for the singer Lena Horne, and was involved in such Broadway plays as “Funny Girl,” starring Barbra Streisand, “Ain’t Misbehavin,” “Flower Drum Song” — the biggest stars and stage productions of his day. For more than 30 years, the senior Mr. Henderson also did arranging for the Canadian Brass Quintet, which recently appeared recently in City Hall’s “Music in the Chambers” series.
The linkage between father and son is undeniable, even if they didn’t live in the same home. In the genes.
Dr. Henderson is perhaps most at home as an impresario, presenting refined entertainment that appeals to the mind at least as much as to the emotional side.
Refining His Choices
“My first love,” he says, “is to be able to present excellence to people. The message is that you bring your children, senior citizens and everyone in between to see excellence.
“People don’t have to actually have been educated to appreciate what they are seeing. They can recognize quality, something that is absolutely first rate. They recognize class. The message is, ‘If they can do that, if they can be a world-class person in that area, then maybe I can be a world-class person in something else.’”
The very notion of refinement being elected to the City Council strikes some Culver City observers as the clash of rival worlds that probably never will make peace.
“Refinement” is a charge the present City Council successfully has evaded for the last six years.
The Whole Family
His father’s strong influence notwithstanding, it was Dr. Henderson’s grandmother, his mother’s mother, he says, who actually launched him into music when he was growing up in the neighborhood of 52nd Street and Western Avenue.
In words unadorned, he recalls the opening scenes.
“My grandmother had a piano in her house,” he said. “For me to be able to go out and play, I had to practice (classical) piano every day for at least 30 minutes.”
But young Luther did not remain exclusively with the piano. “At Dorsey High, I took up the trumpet,” he says, “because I wanted to go to the football games.”
Question: How much of your early involvement with music was by desire and how much was obligatory?
“I was in about the sixth grade, and I remember my first concert vividly, at Western Avenue School, at 54th and Western. I played the piano, and I got some applause. So I said to myself, ‘Oh, this must be good.’ And it was.”
A graduate of the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, he made it clear during his student days that he will not wilt in the face of competition with strong credentials.
When he returned to the East Coast, he discovered some Eastman School classmates had received more sophisticated training. “They were playing (compositions) way, way over my head,” Dr. Henderson said. “They had the Liszt Piano Concerto, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, all of this repertoire under their sleeves.
“It seems it could be intimidating if you have a classmate who would say, ‘I studied with Van Cliburn’s mother in Texas.’ It gives you a feeling of ‘Well, all right…’ You just say you are going to find your niche. Importantly, I never doubted myself that I was going to find my niche in music.”
Finding the Inspiration
As the son of a 1942 graduate of the Julliard School of Music, Dr. Henderson said he wanted to aim high and become a complete musician.
“A musician is not only an educator and a scholar, he also is a practitioner of his art, one who can be an advocate for the arts.”
He learned early that talent alone would not propel him through life. “My father, my mother and my grandmother all motivated me,” says Dr. Henderson.
Digging deeper, he recalls an afternoon 40 years ago when his father drove him to the campus of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. “When we got to the dormitory, he sat me down and said, ‘Okay, it’s on you now. Give ‘em hell. It’s up to you. We have gotten you this far. Your job is to get your education and move forward. Make it so that when you get out, you can earn a living.”
(To be continued)
