Creativity Quote by Skitch Henderson

There is a whole industry history packed into Skitch Henderson's offhand cadence, delivered like a shrug that still manages to sting. The line walks forward in two casual steps: first, personal ambition ("I went into television"); then, inevitability ("television moved"). That grammar matters. Henderson frames himself not as a visionary riding a wave, but as a working musician swept along by a medium that kept reinventing its ZIP code.

The subtext is about power relocating. Early TV was an East Coast business: live broadcasts, union orchestras, variety shows, the leftover prestige of radio and Broadway. For a bandleader and composer, New York meant proximity to the networks and to an ecosystem where musicians were infrastructure, not decoration. When television "moved...to Hollywood", it wasn't just geography - it was a creative regime change. Film-town logic rewarded packaging, star systems, and production value; music shifted from being a live engine to being one component in a bigger, camera-led machine. The sentence quietly records that demotion.

Henderson also gives us a generational mood: adaptability as a survival skill, not a motivational poster. His tone suggests the professional who can do the job anywhere, but knows exactly what gets lost when the center of gravity changes - the spontaneity of live performance, the East Coast's emphasis on craft, the musicians' leverage. It's a memoir in miniature: not nostalgia, not bitterness, just the clear-eyed recognition that in show business, you don't only choose your medium. Sometimes your medium chooses its town.