Marian Henderson


Marian Henderson was an Australian folk and jazz singer later referred to as "the queen of the 1960s folk revival". She worked extensively in Australian folk and jazz clubs during the 1960s and 1970s and appeared on television and a number of Australian folk music recordings, though recorded only one album under her own name.

Life and career

Henderson was born Marian Grossman in Melbourne, Australia, to an air force family which moved frequently with her father's job, resulting in her attending 13 schools.
Her first musical instrument was piano, which she played by ear in her early teens. From age 18 she commenced singing jazz and then gravitated towards folk music, learning the guitar with which to accompany her own singing in the style of other popular performers of the early 1960s.
For several years she had been dating ex-schoolmate and fellow musician/songwriter Don Henderson, with whom she formed a rock and roll band, the Thunderbirds, before she lost interest and turned to jazz singing. The couple married in 1958. Don encouraged her career and wrote songs for her to sing but the marriage lasted only until 1962. Marian, however, kept the surname Henderson as a performing name for the remainder of her career.
From 1961 to 1962, Henderson joined with the Australian folk singer Alex Hood and international jazz guitarist/ commercial artist Chris Daw, recently arrived in Sydney, in the trio "Daw, Hood And Henderson" which released an EP of "workers' songs", Oh Pay Me, in 1962.
From 1963 onwards she was featured as a solo performer at popular Sydney folk music club "the Troubadour" three or four nights a week, performing a mix of British, American and Australian traditional material, and in 1964 was recruited by Pix magazine to record a series of EPs of folk songs for its readers. She performed on ABC Television show including "Jazz Meets Folk" from 1964 onwards alongside jazz musician Don Burrows and others, whose backing also featured on her Pix recordings, plus an episode of the folk music show Dave's Place in 1965. Her own album, Cameo, was released on MCA in 1970; in addition to touring in Australia, she also performed overseas including in New Guinea, Fiji and Ireland. In 1971 she took the female lead on two tracks on fellow Australian singer Harry Robertson's seminal album of whaling songs, Whale Chasing Men, singing lead on "Norfolk Whalers" and "Whaling Wife". Henderson was also the host and featured singer in a new contemporary music show on Australian television, Sit Yourself Down, Take A Look Round, that premiered in 1974.
Henderson was an attraction in the Australian folk and contemporary/more popular music scene up till the late 1970s, when she effectively retired from music to bring up her son, first in Lismore then in the small village of Nimbin, New South Wales. In 1978 she participated in a one-off progressive jazz rock recording by a group entitled First Light for the independent Music Farm Studios, a small label operating out of the Byron Bay hinterland. She made her final recorded appearance at a live concert by the latter recorded in Nimbin in 1988.
In her later years Henderson lived quietly in an artistic environment, enjoying camping, the beach, and creating a beautiful garden. She died in 2015 aged 78, after suffering from cancer from several years; her ashes were scattered at the small New South Wales coastal town of Brunswick Heads.
She married twice, first to Don Henderson and then to Tom Baker with whom she had a son. Baker died in 1970.
On her death, the Australian folk music promoter and commentator Warren Fahey noted:
An extended reissue of Henderson's 1970 album Cameo was released in 2016 on the Stoned Circle label, incorporating all known additional tracks from her hard-to-find earlier EPs plus other material.

Discography and filmography