CITY BEAT: STILL TOPS IN POPS
Maestro put his stamp on American music

A question for Hollywood: Where's the movie about Skitch Henderson?

The New York Pops conductor's career is a history of modern American entertainment, from the vaudeville circuit to the emergence of radio and television to post-World War II Hollywood and the present day.

New York Pops conductor Skitch Henderson, who will turn 87 on Jan. 27, still works five days a week in his Carnegie Hall office.

He toured the country with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and counted Bob Hope, Cary Grant and Bing Crosby among his closest friends.

It was Crosby who helped him pick a nickname, explaining that real names like Lyle Russell Cedric Henderson are soon forgotten. Friends called the conductor Skitch because he could sketch out an arrangement in minutes.

Henderson has worked with Arturo Toscanini and studied music philosophy with composer Arnold Schoenberg. Elvis Presley's manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, once urged his young charge to ask the clotheshorse Henderson for wardrobe tips.

"I gave him the name of my tailor," Henderson said. "I don't think he ever called him. We didn't have the same sense of style."

During World War II, Henderson, who was born in England, piloted planes for both the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces. He has written movie scores, and was Frank Sinatra's musical director both on tour and for Sinatra's "Lucky Strike" radio show.

He had the same title when Steve Allen created "The Tonight Show," and kept it after Johnny Carson took over as host.

When he marks his 87th birthday Jan. 27, Henderson will have conducted orchestras around the world to greater acclaim than can be listed on this page of newsprint.

And he's getting another honor. Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington have been ensconced at Henderson's Connecticut estate, Hunt Hill Farms, cataloguing his papers.

Henderson said he and his wife, Ruth, who is New York Pops president, decided to leave the estate to the Smithsonian.

Yet to hear him tell it, you'd think he was just another juke joint pianist working for tips.

"I was lucky," Henderson said in his Carnegie Hall office, which used to be Marlon Brando's living room back when Brando was still a struggling actor. "I was in the right place and things happened to me.

"Crosby and Sinatra were very good to me. It was a different kind of help in those days. Then, people helped you to help you. Today, everyone who helps you wants to take a bow.

"Maybe it comes from the scars of life and working in this business," he said. "Mistakes are not forgiven. People are quick to praise you, but make a mistake, and they just walk away and don't say anything."

He learned early that in the "gypsy world" of entertainment, you follow the work like a migrant farm worker follows the seasons.

"The 'Lucky Strike' show was a big hit on radio, and then we were canceled," he said. "A friend asked me what I was going to do, and I told him I guessed I was going to go back to Hollywood. He told me to stick around [New York], and then I was conducting the NBC Orchestra.

"I didn't know if it would be a hit," he said. "I was just glad for the work and hoped it would continue to exist."

Seated at his overburdened desk in an office that would be spacious if not for the racks of musical scores catalogued under names like Wagner, Kern, Loesser, Tannhauser, Bernstein and Stern, Henderson recalled how his first attempt at creating the Pops, in the mid-1950s, failed miserably.

"I had a bunch of my Hollywood friends, Cary Grant and Tyrone Pow-er in to sing," he grinned. "There were about six other people in the audience. Nobody wanted to hear them."

Fortunately, Ruth Henderson had the prescience to trademark the name. When they were ready to try again in 1983, it was still theirs.

Henderson also credits former Daily News Editor James Hoge with helping the Pops attract the audience that has made the orchestra's season a series of sold-out events.

"Jim said, 'You have something I maybe can use, and you definitely need me,' " Henderson recalled. "We started a relationship with The News that gave us exposure to the middlebrow, if you will, audience that we needed."

Henderson still gets to the office early, puts in a five-day week and plans the Pops schedule two years in advance. And he's still apt to cop seats to listen to performers he admires, most of them people who have been in the business for some time.

The Hendersons, who once ran a popular East Side restaurant, still maintain a cooking school at Hunt Hill Farms, and Skitch even teaches an occasional class in barbecuing.

"I'm the standby act if one of the other instructors can't make it," he said.

Henderson said he plans to "get a cup of coffee" to mark his birthday.

STRIKE UP THE BAND
Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops Orchestra, with guest artists trumpeter Gary Guthman and percussionist Sherrie Maricle and her all-female DIVA Jazz Orchestra, will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30, at Carnegie Hall. Tickets are available at the Carnegie Hall box office, 57th St. and Seventh Ave., or by calling CarnegieCharge at (212) 247-7800.