Joe Henderson was born April 24, 1937, in Lima, Ohio, into a family of fifteen children, and started saxophone at eight, encouraged by an older brother who admired Lester Young. He attended the University of Kentucky before moving to Detroit in 1956 to study at Wayne University, playing the city's clubs alongside fellow students Yusef Lateef and Donald Byrd. Drafted into the Army in 1960, he remained until 1962, leading an award-winning quartet while stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.

After his military service he worked with Jack McDuff and Kenny Dorham before signing with Blue Note in 1963, joining Horace Silver's quintet for two years starting in 1964. His Blue Note output, including Page One, Our Thing, and Mode for Joe, yielded classic compositions like "Recorda Me" and "Inner Urge." Broader critical and commercial acclaim didn't arrive until the 1980s: his 1985 live album The State of the Tenor, recorded at the Village Vanguard, was both a critical and commercial success. In 1991 he signed with Verve, and his first album for the label, Lush Life (1992), became a major commercial success that propelled him to the forefront of the music scene late in his career.

Henderson stopped performing in 1998 after suffering a stroke and died of heart failure June 30, 2001, in San Francisco, at age 64. He left behind an extensive, often-overlooked body of sideman work on some of the 1960s' most influential jazz recordings.

Henderson's tenor playing, harmonically adventurous but never abandoning a hard-bop foundation, made him one of the most respected saxophonists of his generation among musicians well before wider commercial recognition finally arrived late in his career.