How He Hears It

“I’m not an egomaniac,” says musician Joe Henry, opening the door of his tiny backyard studio, an oasis of cool darkness amid a sun-blasted South Pasadena afternoon. Along with a rush of chilled air, strains of his heartbreaking blues tune “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation” escape into the overheated ether. Pointing to a newspaper photographer inside, the singer-songwriter says, “He made me play this.”

Indeed, Henry, 40, hardly seems full of himself. On this rare day off between tour dates, the 11-year L.A. resident would probably prefer to just spend quality time with his wife of 14 years, Melanie Ciccone, and their children, Levon, 10, and Lulu, 3. Yet he juggles that desire with a photo session, interview and other business.

Given recent events, he could be justified in puffing up his ego a bit.

For most of his 15-year recording career, the eclectic artist has occupied the rarefied niche reserved for the critically acclaimed but commercially nonviable. He’s the kind of guy a company like his label, Disney-owned Mammoth Records, might keep around purely for prestige rather than in hopes of scoring a hit. His 1999 album, “Fuse,” by far his biggest seller, has sold a modest 24,000 in the U.S., and the new “Scar” has yet to reach that mark after three months in stores.

So imagine the surprise rippling through the executive suites earlier this year when one of Henry’s songs was turned into the Top 5 pop hit “Don’t Tell Me” by none other than Madonna, who just happens to be his sister-in-law.

Despite the gorgeous darkness of such “Scar” tracks as the wry, Tom Waits-esque “Mean Flower” and the sweeping, futile “Edgar Bergen,” Henry comes across as a determined optimist, open to even the remotest possibilities.

Acknowledging his good fortune, he notes, “It’s my job to work hard enough that, when I do invariably get lucky, I can make something out of it.” This attitude--combined with the mysteriously cosmic influence of producer pal T Bone Burnett--has led Henry to such unique experiences as befriending Pryor and playing in Bob Dylan’s band for an episode of TV’s “Dharma & Greg.”

Hugest of all, however, was his once-in-a-lifetime collaboration with controversial free-jazz giant Ornette Coleman, whose saxophone evokes Pryor’s confrontational truth-telling during an expansive solo on “Tearful Nation.”

“I didn’t really expect him to say yes,” confesses Henry, who had heard that Coleman routinely turns down such overtures. But the singer persevered, and Coleman had a change of heart after playing “Fuse.” “He just heard something in my singing, and the way I wrote, that he was really engaged by,” Henry says.

In the recording studio, Coleman, 71, proved admirably dedicated. “He had broken his wrist in the last year, and his hand was really bothering him,” Henry recalls. “As he kept playing, his hand was swollen like half again as large as normal.”

Yet, he says, the living legend went nine takes, insisting on perfection. When it came, Henry says, “we all knew. I was on the edge of my seat. I had tears in my eyes. He said, ‘That’s the one,’ and certainly it was.”

Henry’s whole career has been a creative odyssey, leading the restless musician from the hushed country-folk of such works as 1993’s “Kindness of the World” to the loop-laden electro-jazz cabaret of “Scar,” a twist that began two albums ago with 1996’s “Trampoline.”

His nomadic early life may have made him especially unafraid to try different things. Born in Charlotte, N.C., he moved to Atlanta with his family at age 4, then to Ohio, and finally to Michigan, where the teenage Henry befriended the entire Ciccone family. After attending college in Ann Arbor, he moved to New York City in 1985, a year before releasing his debut album, “Talk of Heaven.”

His subsequent seven collections attracted a variety of talented cohorts, including members of country-rock band the Jayhawks, the late jazzman Don Cherry, and such “Scar” participants as R&B; innovator Meshell Ndegeocello, guitar adventurer Marc Ribot and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.

“Joe is interesting to work with because he’s so borderless,” says Craig Street, who co-produced “Scar” with the singer and has also worked with such artists as k.d. lang and Cassandra Wilson. “He picks people who can help him get the sound out of his head. And good musicians are attracted to environments in which they are allowed to be themselves. The people we chose for ‘Scar’ knew they could just do what they do, without being told to do something [specific].”

Naturally, his stylistic hopping consternated some fans. “I hear it every day on the road,” says Henry, occupying a chair in front of his studio’s mixing board, which is adorned with postcards depicting such heroes as Malcolm X, the Marx Brothers and Frank Sinatra. “People stand around backstage after, or send you a note, or yell something out to express that ‘I liked your earlier, funny movies,”’ he says, referring to Woody Allen with a small laugh.

More irksome has been the tendency of listeners to consider his songs autobiographical. He’s not even too thrilled with being labeled a singer-songwriter, because to him the phrase implies confessional material. “It never occurs to me that my life, as a subject, would be that interesting to anybody,” he says.

Perhaps the literal-minded are misled by Henry’s ability to inject emotional authenticity into imagined scenarios. But to him, songwriters should have the same freedom as other writers, to relate whatever wildly different tales they feel like telling, without necessarily having the stories come from within.

“You can be completely devoted to the emotional core of a song without being devoted to the character,” he says. “The character is a tool to let you know about whatever the emotional content of a song is. But it is not the content.”

If he had it to do over, says Henry, who’s scheduled to perform Thursday on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” he would adopt a band alias for himself rather than use his own name. “I mean, nobody ever called Mick Jagger a singer-songwriter,” Henry says. “He was smart enough to work under the banner of a band. If you’re foolish enough to give your real name, then they think you’re writing about yourself.”

Unless, perhaps, you write a tune about another person, which in the case of “Richard Pryor” led to separate hassles.

“Disney insisted that if I were to use his name in a song title, I had to get his permission,” Henry says.

He believed he was covered by the 1st Amendment, but the track does make a startlingly intimate assumption about Pryor’s mind-set.

Henry’s raspy, first-person vocal ruminates on where the man and America now stand--after Pryor’s often harrowing journey from incendiary comedian attacking the racial divide to beloved survivor of self-inflicted travails--and whether he really changed the country’s attitudes toward anything, even himself.

“It’s a dark song, but it came from the right place,” Henry says. Still, he was essentially stonewalled by the iconic comedian’s lawyers. Enter Burnett, who just happened to be longtime friends with Jennifer Lee, Pryor’s former wife and current manager.

“T Bone called me and said, ‘Have a messenger take a copy of the song to her right now. She’s expecting it,”’ Henry says. “She called back probably an hour and 10 minutes after the messenger picked it up from my house, and she said, ‘How can we help you?’ I talk to her probably twice a week now.”

Dominating one dark wood wall, a giant, autographed photo of a younger Pryor provides an imposing testament to their friendship.

On the album, “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation” fades into the obsessive-love tango “Stop,” which is the song Madonna made into “Don’t Tell Me” by giving it her own electronically hiccuping vocal treatment and an intensified lyrical hook. Henry’s wife, who previously managed producer-musician Daniel Lanois and now is booking acts for October’s star-studded Seattle benefit concerts for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, is the one who suggested giving her sister the tune.

“Although she’s never had this thought based on one of my songs in the past, [Melanie said], ‘I can really hear Madonna do this,”’ Henry says.

Although skeptical, he handed his wife a copy to send their superstar relative, who at the time was working on material for her 2000 album “Music.” “[Madonna] asked if I would mind her changing the music so that it kind of fit what she was doing,” Henry says. “I gave her my blessing to do whatever she wanted. I was wildly curious.”

Hearing the result, he says, “was fantastic. It was a gas.” Besides making the two artists’ mutual publishing company, Warner Bros. Music, very happy, Henry says, the hit version of “Stop” served as a lesson for Mammoth on his own non-market-driven sensibilities.

“Here’s an example of me having written something that is a hit song, and what I would do with it is not going to be a hit,” he says. “That’s just not how I hear it.”

It’s not stubbornness that keeps him from exploiting his commercial potential, he insists, but merely his natural inclination.

“Pursuing celebrity is different than pursuing being a musician,” he says. “Sometimes they go hand in hand, but they are not the same occupation.”

Even now, Henry doesn’t hope to parlay his success into broader fame. Rather, he’d like an opportunity to endure, to refine his art as Ellington did.

“The whole gag in the pop business right now is, if you’re not a mainstream artist selling multi-platinum, how do you survive long enough to actually get good?” he says. “I don’t think of myself as not being good yet, but I know enough now to know what ‘good’ might be for me. I certainly don’t think I’ve done my best work. It’s not in my interest to operate under that assumption.”

Still, he knows people don’t always get this distinction. He realized that around the time he got married. “The only other professional musician my father-in-law knew was my sister-in-law,” he remembers. “I think it took him awhile to realize that my ambitions are not the same [as hers]. It’s not like that’s what I’m trying to do, and I’m just not coming very close to it.”

His tone remains serious, but his eyes twinkle faintly in the dim light. “I don’t expect to be at the Staples Center in a bustier, you know?”