Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1923 - 1939)
The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra was the
most popular African American band of the
1920s. The smooth, carefully arranged sound
of Henderson's orchestra was a huge influence
on the Swing style of the next decade. The
Orchestra played at the Club Alabam on West
44th Street in New York from 1922 to July of
1924 and then moved to the Roseland
Ballroom when Armand J. Piron's Orchestra
vacanted the job and returned to New Orleans. In 1924 Henderson hired Louis
Armstrong to replace Joe Smith on trumpet. Armstrong's thirteen months in the band
caused quite a stir among New York Jazz musicians who had never heard anything
like him. The orchestra also featured Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone, Buster
Bailey on clarinet, and Don Redman on alto saxophone and also contributing
arrangements. When Armstrong left the band to return to Chicago to join Erskine
Tate's Vendome Orchestra a succession of fine cornet and trumpet players played in
the band, they included Rex Stewart, Tommy Ladnier, and June Clark. The orchestra
recorded with dozens of record companies under a number of different names and
pseudonyms including, Henderson's Dance Orchestra, Henderson's Club Alabam
Orchestra, The Dixie Stompers, Henderson's Happy Six Orchestra, Fletcher
Henderson and his Sawin' Six, Louisiana Stompers, and the Connie's Inn Orchestra.
In 1929 the band travelled to Philadelphia to play the music in a musical revue called
Horseshoes. During rehersals for the show a dispute over White musicians role in the
production fractured the band and half of the orchestra quit. Henderson put together
another version of the band, but things were never the same and the band never
resumed the level of popularity that it had enjoyed throughout the 1920s.
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