Jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson dies at 64.(Chicago Tribune)

Joe Henderson, one of the most intelligent improvisers ever to pick up a tenor saxophone, died Saturday in San Francisco of heart failure after an extended battle with emphysema. He was 64.

Henderson, a three-time Grammy Award winner who had been based in San Francisco for more than 20 years and belonged to that city's jazz royalty, had not played publicly in more than a year because of his failing health.

If Henderson had disappeared from the jazz scene a decade earlier, he would have been regarded as a connoisseur's favorite who never attained the broad recognition he deserved. But in 1991, New York-based Verve Records signed Henderson and gave him the financial and marketing support his talent merited.

In so doing, the label helped transform an unusually gifted but generally obscure soloist into a leading force in jazz during the last decade.

On the strength of such superior Verve albums as "Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" (1992), "Big Band" (1996) and "Double Rainbow: The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim" (1995), Henderson found himself suddenly in demand at festivals and in concert halls around the world. Newspaper and magazine articles showered praise on a musician who long ago had learned to go without it, and major jazz polls consistently placed Henderson in the top berths.

But Henderson felt ambivalent about the late-in-life accolades, knowing how many years he had toiled in the shadows.

"I haven't spent a lot of time regretting not being (widely) acknowledged all this time," Henderson said in a 1992 Tribune interview.