"I recorded with Sinatra, but the recording business is a very strange strata right now"
About this Quote
Name-dropping Sinatra is the kind of credential that’s supposed to end the conversation. Skitch Henderson drops it, then immediately undercuts its power: “but the recording business is a very strange strata right now.” The move is telling. He’s not flexing; he’s flagging that even a resume with Frank Sinatra on it doesn’t stabilize your footing anymore.
Henderson, a bandleader and musical director who lived through the big-band ecosystem, network TV’s golden age, and the long slide into corporate consolidation, is speaking like a working musician watching the ground tilt. “Recording business” isn’t romantic here; it’s an industry, and “business” does the heavy lifting. He’s pointing at the machinery: label politics, shifting formats, new gatekeepers, the way careers get sorted less by musicianship than by market logic.
The phrase “very strange strata” is an old pro’s way of describing a hierarchy that has stopped behaving like one. Strata implies layers you can understand and climb: session work, touring, radio, records, reputation. “Strange” suggests those layers have become scrambled or porous, with prestige decoupled from pay, and visibility decoupled from craft. It’s also a subtle generational shrug: the rules that once made sense (good charts, tight bands, the right rooms) don’t map cleanly onto whatever “right now” demands.
The subtext is both wary and practical: Henderson isn’t mourning purity; he’s diagnosing instability. Even legacy, even Sinatra, can’t guarantee clarity when the market keeps rewriting the score.
Henderson, a bandleader and musical director who lived through the big-band ecosystem, network TV’s golden age, and the long slide into corporate consolidation, is speaking like a working musician watching the ground tilt. “Recording business” isn’t romantic here; it’s an industry, and “business” does the heavy lifting. He’s pointing at the machinery: label politics, shifting formats, new gatekeepers, the way careers get sorted less by musicianship than by market logic.
The phrase “very strange strata” is an old pro’s way of describing a hierarchy that has stopped behaving like one. Strata implies layers you can understand and climb: session work, touring, radio, records, reputation. “Strange” suggests those layers have become scrambled or porous, with prestige decoupled from pay, and visibility decoupled from craft. It’s also a subtle generational shrug: the rules that once made sense (good charts, tight bands, the right rooms) don’t map cleanly onto whatever “right now” demands.
The subtext is both wary and practical: Henderson isn’t mourning purity; he’s diagnosing instability. Even legacy, even Sinatra, can’t guarantee clarity when the market keeps rewriting the score.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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