Just to close this thing out. After the new head gasket, and it still leaking, suddenly there was a 20/20 hindsight like clarity and the smell seemed obvious.. it was oil, not coolant.
I pulled the intake off and found a dent along the back end of the valley pan gasket, where in the past I'd noticed and remembered to put extra RTV and I purposefully positioned that dent up front. The leak started after putting it all back together after having the heads off to replace bent valves, I had forgot about that valley pan dent thing and stuck it on without any extra RTV in that area. By chance it ended up in the back corner that time.
So it seems it was leaking oil from that area, and/or the corner, down the side of the head/gasket area, and onto the thick boss then onto the header.
So I took it all off, cleaned the intake gasket, cleaned the head, started with a fresh coat of black RTV, extra by the dent (which I put up front this time) and extra on the corners. Let it cure all day Sunday, fired it tonight and NO LEAK, no smoking header, hooray.