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Widely hailed as a pianist and vocalist both as a solo artist and with a variety of groups – considered by many to be the premier exponent of the great New Orleans jazz and blues piano tradition – Henry Butler is equally respected for his versatile work as a composer and arranger in a broad range of genres, and as a speaker and educator in high demand on conference programs and college campuses around the country.
Born blind in New Orleans, Louisiana, the second son of working class parents, Henry was admitted to the Louisiana School for the Blind in Baton Rouge when he was only five years old, largely on account of the efforts of his mother, who thought that was his only chance.
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His musical ability was noticed almost immediately and by the age of 12, he was not only performing regularly but arranging and composing for the groups with whom he worked. He attended Southern University, Baton Rouge, coming under the masterful tutelage of the late clarinetist Alvin Batiste, mentor to many influential jazz and blues musicians. He won a scholarship and earned his Master’s degree at Michigan State University at a time when jazz and blues was undeniably the neglected step child in many academic departments of music. Two notable fellowships allowed him to study with Sir Roland Hanna, and to work with Cannonball Adderley and his pianist, George Duke. He also spent time with Harold Mabern in New York City, had a private lesson at the home of New Orleans’ original piano genius, Henry Roeland Byrd, better known as Professor Longhair, and played co-bills with James Booker often enough to absorb Booker’s unique ideas and technique. After a brief stint teaching at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) he headed west to Los Angeles, where he worked both for the Stevie Wonder organization and as a vocal consultant for Hal Davis, a Motown producer. His first recording, Fivin’ Around, featuring Charlie Haden, the late Billy Higgins, and the late Freddie Hubbard in addition to other outstanding artists, was extremely well received. To enhance his visibility, he moved to New York shortly after recording his double album, The Village.
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From the moment he settled into New York, things began to happen: he had coveted attention in industry publications like Downbeat and Jazz Times. And he was busy, playing clubs like The Village Gate, The Blue Note, Sweet Basil’s and Birdland in New York City in addition to appearing at major festivals around the country and abroad. When the State Department organized a tour to Russia headlined by Grover Washington, Henry was invited.
As much as he enjoyed traveling and performing, his intellectual side wanted expression, so he accepted a position at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois and spent six years immersed in the rough-and-tumble work of molding young talent, including musicians who are now featured performers in major jazz orchestras, like Wynton Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Yet he never forgot the enormous debt he owed his teachers and mentors. Acutely aware of the largely un-met needs of gifted blind/visually impaired teen musicians of all backgrounds, he developed a concept for an intensive music and industry-related summer Camp where these talented young people were given first-class instruction in performance skills and introduced to adaptive technology which allowed them to keep up with their sighted peers. He has held these camps at several locations around the country, most recently at the University of New Orleans in 2003 and 2005. The first is the subject of a highly anticipated documentary slated to be aired within the year on PBS. The second took place barely two weeks before Katrina struck and significantly damaged the facilities.
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Leaving Illinois, he returned home to New Orleans, the fertile home turf on which he developed his musical personae: as a soloist, in various groups, trios, quartets and full bands. There was, quite literally, no genre of music which Henry left untouched; the raw power of his blues group, Henry Butler and the Game Band, matching the elegance of his traditional jazz band, Papa Henry and the Steamin’ Syncopators. There was groundbreaking work with bluesman Corey Harris (later a recipient of a MacArthur genius grant) leading to an important duo-album, Vu-Du Menz, and a long, successful international tour. (How fitting that one of Henry’s triumphant performances in New York City after Katrina took place at Carnegie Hall in May of 2006 with Corey sharing the program. The other two notable New York appearances marking his return were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, first as a solo artist and later with The Steamin’ Syncopators.)
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He has always been interested in collaborating across time. Deeply inspired by Paul Robeson’s revealing approach to the traditional music of the spirituals, he has twice reworked that material, taking into account the needs of an audience listening with “new ears”. He first incorporated a chamber music approach with a string quartet to mount performances of “An Evening with Henry Butler” in the New York area. And he’s about to do it again. A second program based on the tradition of the spirituals and paying tribute to Robeson’s seminal work is likely to be offered within the next year.
Even Katrina couldn’t stop him. Within days of learning that he had lost not only valuable instruments and equipment but most of his life’s work – unpublished compositions, reel-to-reel recordings of work in progress, and an enormous library of musical material in Braille – Henry was in Austin, Texas, congregating with a core group of preeminent New Orleans musicians (including George Porter and Leo Nocentelli of the Meters and guests Irma Thomas, Dr. John and others) who came to be known as The New Orleans Social Club. Together, these artists did what highly creative people do in the midst of catastrophe: they used the power of music to transform their grief and anger into a rallying call for solidarity that went out to grieving New Orleanians all over the country. The product was “Sing Me Back Home”, among the first and certainly among the most powerful of the post-Katrina recordings. Extensive touring followed almost immediately.
After Katrina, he released his first live solo recording, PiaNOLA LIVE, earning rave reviews in major publications across the country. He established a home base in Colorado, but now spends most of his time in New York City where he is an active presence in the music scene. He tours extensively both with other well-known musicians and with his own groups or as a solo artist. In 2011, he began work on a new recording, spent two weeks at the prestigious Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, and was featured in The Wall Street Journal right before he brought an all-star blues group, Henry Butler and Jambalaya, to Manhattan’s premier music venue, The Jazz Standard, playing to packed houses for four nights in November. In 2012, he will spend two nights at Lincoln Center presenting a program he created on the great New Orleans piano tradition, sharing the stage with patriarch Ellis Marsalis and rising pianist Jonathan Battiste, one of his former students.
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