Joe Henry

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Joe Henry

Country	U.S.A.
Years active	1986–present
Genres	Alt-Country, Folk, Jazz, Soul
Labels	Profile Records (1986–88) Mammoth Records (1989–2001) ANTI- (2003–present)

Joe Henry is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer.

Henry's first few albums were country or alt-country affairs, and earned mostly positive reviews.

1996's Trampoline saw Henry stretching out a bit, employing metal guitarist Page Hamilton (who demonstrated his own eagerness to stretch by collaborating on the album) and sounding less like country or folk music. One review noted the album's "idiosyncratic broadmindedness." [1]

Fuse (1999) continued Henry's experimentalism with its trip hop shadings. One review of the album states that Fuse has "real weight, emotion and beauty that is both unmistakable and unforgettable." [2]

Scar, released in 2001, was seen as a breakthrough: Henry's evocative songs had only traces of his early career's country sound, and the band on the record consisted mainly of jazz musicians (Marc Ribot, Brian Blade and Brad Mehldau among others), including an appearance by saxophonist Ornette Coleman — in a very rare cameo — who steals the show on "Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation."

Scar earned very positive reviews, including one by Thom Jurek, who wrote that Henry "has moved into a space that only he and Tom Waits inhabit in that they are songwriters who have created deep archetypal characters that are composites — metaphorical, allegorical, and 'real' — of the world around them and have created new sonic universes for them to both explore and express themselves in. Scar is a triumph not only for Henry — who has set a new watermark for himself — but for American popular music, which so desperately needed something else to make it sing again." [3]

2003's self-produced Tiny Voices was another masterstroke, inspiring more praise from reviewers, including the typically verbose Jurek, who described the album as "the sound of Hemingway contemplating the Cuban Revolution with William Gaddis, the sound of Buddy DeFranco and Jimmy Giuffre trying to talk to Miles Davis about electric guitars in an abandoned yet fully furnished Tiki bar in Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles." [4]

Henry produced Teddy Thompson's 2000 album Teddy Thompson, a critically acclaimed album from the son of British folk legends, Linda Thompson and Richard Thompson. Henry also produced Solomon Burke's 2002 album Don't Give Up On Me, which won Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 2003 Grammy Awards. 2005 releases produced by Henry include Ani DiFranco's Knuckle Down, Aimee Mann's '70s concept album The Forgotten Arm, and Bettye LaVette's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise.

He also produced the multi-artist I Believe To My Soul, which featured Allen Toussaint, Mavis Staples, Ann Peebles, Irma Thomas and Billy Preston.

In 2006, Henry reteamed with Toussaint, producing his collaborative album with Elvis Costello, The River in Reverse.

In September of 2006, Joe Henry and his longtime hero Loudon Wainwright III began composing the music for the upcoming Judd Apatow movie Knocked Up.

[edit] Trivia

Henry has been married to Madonna's sister Melanie Ciccone since at least 1985. [5] Henry's wife talked him into letting her send Madonna a demo of his song "Stop", which was reworked and recorded as "Don't Tell Me" (from Madonna's 2000 album Music). Henry's own tango-tinged version of the song appeared on Scar. Henry and his sister-in-law recorded a duet, "Guilty By Association", on the charity album Sweet Relief II, and collaborated on the song "Jump" on her latest album Confessions on a Dance Floor.