Michael Henderson’s “Wide Receiver” was a new pursuit for him, and it proved that he could make a certified dance-floor hit. Co-written with Randall Jacobs and supported by a powerhouse group of backing vocalists—including Broadway star Roz Ryan, P-Funk singers Jeanette McGruder and Sheila Horne, and session singers Kathy Kosins, Carol Hall, Cheryl Norton, and Venna Keith—”Wide Receiver” sounded like a party in the studio. A true funk workout, the title was a football reference reinforced by the sound of electronic blips from a Mattel handheld football game. There were other pop-culture citations as well, such as a nod to the commercial jingle for the Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars, and a shoutout to Garrett Morris’s Saturday Night Live character, Chico Escuela, repeating the iconic line, “Baseball’s been very, very good to me.”
Before this, Henderson was best known as a bass prodigy who anchored Miles Davis’s electric fusion era on seminal albums like Jack Johnson and Live-Evil. As a solo artist, his biggest hits had been squarely in the Quiet Storm vein, and he was widely recognized for his dreamy lead vocal on Norman Connors’ “You Are My Starship.” “Wide Receiver” marked the first time he cut loose with a pure party record, and the gamble paid off, becoming the highest-charting solo single of his career. Henderson passed away in 2022, just two weeks after his 71st birthday.
