Artist: Eddie Henderson

Eddie Henderson is an American jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player.

He came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of pianist Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band, going on to lead his own electric/fusion groups through the decade. Henderson earned his medical degree and worked a parallel career as a psychiatrist and musician, turning back to acoustic jazz by the 1990s. 

Henderson was born in New York City on October 26, 1940. At the age of nine he was given an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong, and he continued to study the instrument as a teenager in San Francisco at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. 

Henderson was influenced by the early fusion work of jazz musician Miles Davis, who was a friend of his parents. They met in 1957 when Henderson was aged seventeen. 

After three years in the Air Force, Henderson enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a B.S. in zoology in 1964. He then studied medicine at Howard University in Washington D.C., graduating in 1968. Though he undertook his residency in psychiatry, he practiced general medicine. 

After completing his medical education, Henderson went back to the Bay area for his medical internship and residency. It was a week-long gig with Herbie Hancock's  Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job, lasting from 1970 to 1973. In addition to the three albums recorded by the group under Hancock's name, Henderson recorded his first two albums,  Realization (1972) and Inside Out (1973), with Hancock and the Mwandishi group.