Fletcher Henderson

Today we're going to be going back to the 1920s, to 1925, specifically November of 1925.

Louis had spent the early years of the 20s in Chicago where he played with King Oliver's band, but in October of 1924 he went to New York and started playing with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band in the country at the time, and he really set the jazz world on its ear.

That's not an overstatement.

He was with them for about a year and he came back at the behest of his wife, Lil Hardin, who had organized a gig in Chicago starting in November of 1925 and she wanted him back and so back he came.

To me, Chick was really foundational to what we think of as the Swing era.

But, you know, along with some of the other great black bands of his day, including Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson...

Calloway, Count Basie's fame came up a little bit later, you know, but I think the other thing we have to remember in context is Chick actually, you know, started his career earlier, you know, kind of out of the Baltimore fabulous musical, very fertile scene that was more like ragtime and orchestrated ragtime, you know, these little dance bands that would play in a variety of places.

And then he moved to Harlem during the height of the Harlem Renaissance when jazz wasn't even quite being called jazz yet.

But that's the music that people like Duke Ellington and his band and Fletcher Henderson and all these bands in New York.

were playing with kind of pre-swing, but headed, you know, as we get towards the 30s, the beat was shifting from what I think of as more of a Charleston-type two-step or a medium foxtrot into kind of a forward-moving, propulsive thing that Ellington, of course, personifies with, you know, don't mean a thing if you can't do that swing.

And Webb, as a drummer, you know, he really... crafted the sound with his band that just, I think, is so emblematic of the music that we know of as great swing music of the swing era.

And then by the time we really think of it, here we are, this is really swing music as played for the zillions of dancers that went to the Savoy Ballroom and other places, you know, like 15 to 17 piece big bands.

blowing away the local bands with his slickly arranged pieces.

Fletcher Henderson did the same.

And then people like Benny Moten actually go to New York and are pretty successful.

Yeah, well, you know, there was a string

of bought, the Theater Owners Booking Association was a string of movie theaters and concert halls stretched from Harlem to Kansas City and then it was a turn around point and then we go back to some 8080 theaters in that circuit.

And so Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington came to Kansas City.

Fletcher came before Duke and this was a revelation for Benny Moten because you know these are very polished bands that are very highly arranged.

They're using risk, but the more restrained manner and so they inspired.

Other notable figures included Fats Waller, Ethel Waters, and Adelaide Hall.

Band leaders like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Fletcher Henderson also played a vital role in establishing the foundation of the genre.

Duke Ellington in particular became very popular during this period.

He was described as a gifted composer and leader who remained focused on his music despite his growing fame.

We dug up some cuts from the jazz vaults.

You heard a cut by Fletcher Henderson, one of the greatest composers in the history of jazz.

"Sugar Foot Stomp" is the name of the cut.

And, uh, Fletcher Henderson was a guy who wrote for Benny Goodman.

Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young were his sidemen.

And you heard music from the godfather of the tenor saxophone, and the name of the cut is entitled "Dinah." That is Coleman Hawkins with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

Gardner being a very prominent pianist.

Refined under the tutelage of swing pioneer Mr. Chick Webb, Blakey spent the 1940s anchoring the elite big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstein.

Following a late 1940s trip to Africa, he adopted the Islamic name Abdullah ibn Buhaynah.

In 1955, he co-founded his definitive vessel known as the Jazz Messengers, alongside pianist Horace Silver, taking sole ownership the next year.

The battle over what jazz could become started right there, with white club owners wanting a danceable, sanitized version, while black musicians were pushing for authenticity, complexity, and the expression of that same, raw, vocal language we heard from the fields.

You can hear it in the difference between a swing band like Fletcher Henderson's Big Band and an early New Orleans group led by Louis Armstrong.

The former was all about arranging for brass sections.

The latter still carried that call and response feel that echoes hollers.

He was a structural engineer for jazz, taking the ragged brass of New Orleans and turning it into a disciplined, dance-ready machine that still left room for improvisation.

What makes his story so fascinating is that he operated in the same cramped clubs, where club owners were trying to sanitize the music for white audiences, while black musicians fought to keep their vernacular intact.

His first big break came when he joined Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, and there he introduced voicings that let saxes float over tight rhythm sections.

This was a new vocabulary, born of migration, technology, and sheer necessity.