Jazz guitarist Mel Henderson is an affable cat with a smile a mile wide. Hespeaks in an excited, inquisitive cadence that threatens at any moment to break stride and tumble into laughter. It's contagious.

But it ain't all fun and games. Henderson's playing is tight and deadly serious. It's lush and lean, sweet and clean. Clearly a Wes Montgomery disciple (and perhaps even a little Charlie Christian, whether he's aware of it or not), Henderson covers the bases from contemporary to classic. We're talking the kind of classic that once permeated the type of jazz joints that are now on the endangered list, if not flat-out extinct; smoky, romantic, cool clubs where music was key.

"When I play a gig now, I miss the smoke," Henderson says. "I like to hear the glasses clinking and the people laughing and the ebb and flow of when you got 'em, before the din goes back up again."

Henderson is the go-to guitar guy in Rochester. He's backed up such legendary notables as Fat Head Newman, Fred Wesley, and Monty Alexander with his group Paradigm Shift. And he's worked (along with drummer Ulysses Owens) with that B-3 bigwig in a turban, Dr. Lonnie Smith. Not bad for a kid growing up in the projects who got started on the squeezebox in the early 1960's.

The accordion wasn't exactly his idea."Yeah, it was thrust upon me because we couldn't afford a piano," Henderson says. "At least it had a keyboard. It was fun at first, because it was a neat instrument; it was big, it was red, it had buttons that did things."

But big, red, and button-y didn't float his boat. Young Henderson wanted to beat the drums. "I was like 7 or 8," he says. "And I remember seeing this band called The Entertainers play a block party. It was a jazz/r&b type thing. The drummer really got to me. Drums were what was happening for me at the time, and I wanted to play drums."

The band's performance - especially the drummer's - inspired Henderson. "He was a midget," he says. "But he played his behind off, man. I went back and told my parents but they said, ‘No drums. But you can play the guitar.'"

Guitar was cool. His pops had spun Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, and Ed Sullivan brought in a steady post-Beatles parade of guitars into his living room. Henderson dove in. But whereas a lot of guitar-playing Romeos learn by ear or by just fooling around, Henderson immediately enrolled in Hochstein School of Music.

A few years went by and some musicians were hanging around outside and heard Henderson play. They were laid waaaaaaay back and cool, almost to the point of being a bit sinister.

"They were cats from the East side," says Henderson, as he affects his voice to a Miles Davis rasp. ‘"Hey man, you wanna join a band?'" Henderson then modulates his voice to the nervous pubescent squeak he replied in. ‘"Uh, yeah. Sure.'"

Henderson had never really jammed. But then again, the new group had no theory behind them. They knew how to groove, but only Henderson could read the dots. He would have to let go of some of the scholastic to in order to feel the groove.

But Henderson couldn't let go of the jazz. Playing his first steady gig backing up vocal group Ferguson, Davis, and Jones at The Psychedelic Shack on Joseph Avenue  in the early '70s he wasn't hearing what he wanted to hear. He wasn't there yet.

"It was cool, but nerve-wracking," he says. "For me, I wasn't assimilating all the things I wanted to. I wasn't hearing the sound I wanted. I was playing with these guys who were into James Brown and I was listening to Wes - and Wes I felt more. I was taking my hollow body guitar and trying to play these funk riffs."

It finally clicked when he hit Berklee College of Music in Bean Town in the late 70's, where he roamed the same halls and jammed at the same sessions as John Scofield, Pat Metheny, and Kevin Eubanks.

He spent two years in Hawaii after he finished Berklee, and even crossed over to the dark side to open a nightclub when he returned to Rochester in the early 80's. Indigos, on the corner of University and Union, brought high-end jazz talent to Rochester, like Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Mel Torme, Jimmy McGriff, Barney Kessel, Joe Locke, Terrence Blanchard, and Bill Frisell to name a few. Henderson 86'd the joint after he realized the work involved got in the way of his music. He never played his own club.

Now, whether it's fronting Paradigm Shift, The Mel Henderson Group, backing up a big name passing through, teaching guitar, or rockin' the joint with Dr. Lonnie Smith, it's all about the playing. Henderson is cool, engaging, proficient, but not flashy. What you hear is there; there aren't any stunts. He plays as slick and clean as his cabeza . And though he's an entertainer by trade, he prefers to get lost in the music. He invites the listener to come along. They just gotta listen.

"If I notice them watching me too much, I'm not doing my job," he says. "The same goes for me. The magic happens when I'm not focusing on the audience and they're not focusing on me. You don't always see, but there's got to be that feel, that toe-tap." 

Mel Henderson

2008 Exodus To Jazz Opener w/Paradigm Shift, Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Printup, and Gray Mayfield

Friday, September 5

Clarion Riverside Hotel, 120 E Main St

8 & 10 p.m. | $20-$25 | 733-7685