Artist: Fletcher Henderson
Genre(s):
Jazz
Blues
Retro
Discography:
1924-1938
Year: 1938
Tracks: 22
1936-37
Year: 1937
Tracks: 9
1927-34
Year: 1934
Tracks: 16
Ken Burns Jazz
Year:
Tracks: 25
Fletcher Henderson was very important to early jazz as leader of the low gear smashing jazz vainglorious banding, as an arranger and composer in the thirties, and as a masterly endowment scout. Between 1923-1939, rather an all-star draw of summit pres Young pitch-dark jazz musicians passed through his orchestra, including trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith, Tommy Ladnier, Rex Stewart, Bobby Stark, Cootie Williams, Red Allen, and Roy Eldridge; trombonists Charlie Green, Benny Morton, Jimmy Harrison, Sandy Williams, J.C. Higginbottham, and Dickie Wells; clarinettist Buster Bailey; tenors Coleman Hawkins (1924-1934), Ben Webster, Lester Young (whose brief stint was non recorded), and Chu Berry; altoists Benny Carter, Russell Procope, and Hilton Jefferson; bassists John Kirby and Israel Crosby; drummers Kaiser Marshall, Walter Johnson, and Sid Catlett; invitee pianist Fats Waller; and such arrangers as Don Redman, Benny Carter, Edgar Sampson, and Fletcher's jr. brother Horace Henderson. And yet, at the height of the swing geological era, Henderson's band was little-known.
John Fletcher Henderson had a degree in alchemy and maths, merely when he came to New York in 1920 with hopes of decent a chemist, the only job he could detect (due to the racial discrimination of the times) was as a sung demonstrator with the Pace-Handy music company. Harry Pace before long founded the Black Swan label, and Henderson, a various only jolly canonic pianist, became an important contributor behind the scenes, organizing bands and funding vapors vocalists. Although he started transcription as a leader in 1921, it was non until January 1924 that he set up together his first permanent bad band. Using Don Redman's innovative arrangements, he was presently at the top of his field. His early recordings (Henderson made many records during 1923-1924) tend to be both futuristic and awkward, with strong musicianship merely disconnected diction. However, after Louis Armstrong coupled up in late 1924 and Don Redman started contributing more swinging arrangements, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra had no close competitors artistically until the move up of Duke Ellington in 1927. By then, Henderson's band (after a period at the Club Alabam) was playing regularly at the Roseland Ballroom simply, due to the bandleader organism a very deaf businessman, the all-star kit recorded comparatively little during its tip (1927-1930).
With the departure of Redman in 1927, and the end of meanwhile periods when Benny Carter and Horace Henderson wrote the bulk of the arrangements, Fletcher himself developed into a teetotum adapter by the early '30s. However, the Depression took its toll on the band, and the increased contest from other orchestras (along with some high-risk business decisions and the loss of Coleman Hawkins) resulted in Henderson breakage up the bighearted band in early 1935. Starting in 1934, he began contributing versions of his better arrangements to Benny Goodman's new orchestra (including "Queen Porter Stomp," "Sometimes I'm Happy," and "Dispirited South Camp Meeting"), and ironically Goodman's recordings were immense hits at a clock time when Fletcher Henderson's name was not known to the general world. In 1936, he set up together a young orchestra and immediately had a hit in "Saint Christopher Columbus," simply after three years he had to disband again in 1939. Henderson worked as a stave organiser for Goodman and tied played in B.G.'s Sextet for a few months (although his skills on the pianoforte never did develop a good deal). He struggled through the forties, preeminent episodic bands (including one in the mid-'40s that utilized some arrangements by the whitney Young Sun Ra). In 1950, Henderson had a fine sextuplet with Lucky Thompson, simply a stroke concluded his career and light-emitting diode to his death in 1952. Virtually all of Fletcher Henderson's recordings as a drawing card (and many ar quite exciting) are presently usable on the Classics label and in more bit-by-bit fashion domestically.
