Pub - The Uncrowned King of Swing Fletcher Henderson and PDF
Pub - The Uncrowned King of Swing Fletcher Henderson and PDF
Jeffrey Magee
Jeffrey Magee
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CONTENTS
Notes 273
Bibliography 293
Discography 301
Acknowledgments 305
Credits 309
Index 311
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PREFACE
Crossing the Tracks in Cuthbert
Y
ou’re not likely to pass through Cuthbert, Georgia, on the
way to somewhere else. To see the town and its modest memorials to
a famous native son you must decide to go there. Following Interstate
75 from Michigan to Florida in the summer of 1992, I took a long detour
south from Atlanta through Columbus to Cuthbert, which lies just twenty-
five miles east of the Alabama state line formed by the Chattahoochee River.
Route 27, the two-laner leading down to Cuthbert, is a dream of a road on
a bright summer day. The road is dark, smooth, and sparkling, its broad
shoulders orange-red with rich Georgia clay, and the foliage beyond thick
and green. Along the way stands a sign that says “Westville—Where it’s
always 1850,” and the traveler crosses many creeks—the Upatoi, the
Hitchitee, the Pataula, and other tributaries of the Chattahoochee—on the
way to the quiet town where Fletcher Henderson was born more than a
century ago.
Having devoted years of research on Henderson, his career, and his
music, I was now able to ground my perspective in a sense of place. It
occurred to me that the resonance I felt in that town might begin to match
what my colleagues in European music studies experience in places like Eise-
nach, Salzburg, and Bonn, the birthplaces of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Yet those hallowed grounds lack one particular dynamic that strikes a visitor
in Cuthbert. Like many small southern towns, and some farther north,
Cuthbert is divided literally and symbolically by railroad tracks. On one
side lies downtown Cuthbert, anchored by the town square with its tall
statue of a Confederate soldier and Andrew College, a small, two-year
Methodist college, founded in 1854 and named after Bishop James O.
Andrew. On the other side lies Cuthbert’s black community, which used to
be called “Andrewville,” with Andrew Street, its main street, running at a
right angle away from the college. As one resident avows, the neighborhood
“suffers from benign neglect.” Walking down Andrew Street on a searing
August afternoon, I sensed an eerie calm in the neighborhood. Hardly any
cars drove the streets. A few residents sat on their front porches or on metal
chairs in their yards of hard clay. They stared silently at me, a white
passerby. A couple of young boys chattered something (of which I discerned
only the words “beat you up”), and I walked on with the sharp impression
that Cuthbert’s whites do not, as a rule, cross the tracks.
x Preface
HENDERSON HOME
Fletcher H. Henderson (1857–1943), pioneer Georgia
educator, built this home in 1888 and lived here
until his death. Principal of nearby Howard Normal-
Randolph School 1880–1942, his contributions to
education won professional recognition and enriched
the lives of a multitude of students. Fletcher
Henderson, Jr. (1897–1952), born here, developed
one of the earliest “Big Bands.” A pianist and
composer, he was a pioneer in “swing” music.
He was Down Beat Magazine Arranger of the Year
in 1938 and 1940. The Hendersons are buried
near here in Greenwood Cemetery.
For a jazz aficionado the sign is a minor revelation. Clearly, Cuthbert values
the contributions of the founder and principal of its black school as much
as, and perhaps more than, those of his more famous and influential
musical son.
Enticed by the sign’s last line, I found nearby Greenwood Cemetery
ensconced obscurely along an alley just off Andrew Street. The entire
Henderson family now rests there, except for Fletcher’s younger brother,
Horace, a fine arranger and bandleader in his own right who died in 1989
and is buried in Denver. Henderson’s headstone refers only to his modest
military service, not his major musical contributions:
FLETCHER H.
HENDERSON
JR
GEORGIA PVT
STU ARMY
TNG CORPS
WORLD WAR I
To the right are the graves of his mother and father respectively. And
several feet beyond them is the stone of Charlotte Boozer, the mother of
Fletcher, Sr., who supposedly covered some two hundred miles on foot with
her son to ensure his education. The ashes of Leora, Fletcher’s wife, are also
said to be buried in the family plot, though their presence remains
unmarked.
A helpful clerk at the post office had referred me to a Mr. Muse as a
source of information on the Henderson family. Muse, himself a resident of
Andrew Street, had played a large role in getting the plaque erected. He is
a retired U.S. State Department employee, a former Randolph County
commissioner and self-described “minority historical preservationist” who
has been ineluctably linked to the two Henderson men since birth by his
Christian names: Fletcher Henderson. Born in 1920, the year young Fletcher,
Jr., went to New York City to seek his musical fortune, Fletcher Henderson
Muse was named after Fletcher, Sr., the pillar of Cuthbert’s Negro commu-
nity for over half a century. Although I hadn’t even called in advance, he
welcomed me into his house that day, sat me down in his living room, and
asked me what I was “about.” After I told him a little about my research,
Muse produced a file of clippings he had compiled over the years, including
programs of the “Annual Fletcher Henderson, Jr., Jazz Festival” held
at Andrew College in 1987, 1988, and 1989. I noted that one of the festi-
vals had featured Lionel Hampton, the great vibraphonist with whom
Henderson played in Benny Goodman’s sextet a half-century earlier. Muse
also shared memories of his namesakes, particularly of his former teacher,
Fletcher Henderson, Sr. His observations have filtered into my narrative of
Fletcher, Jr.’s, early years, in chapter 1 of this book.
At the end of the day, Muse drove me in his pickup back to campus,
where I had parked the car. As I got out he gave me his business card. It
read, in part: “Fletcher Henderson Muse, Sr. ‘The Commish’—Culinary
Consultant, Political Analyst and ’sociation Member.” “Next time you’re
in town, stop in,” he said. Then with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “We
even sleep on white sheets,” which reminded me that in walking across the
railroad tracks and down Andrew Street, I had covered a good distance
that day.
Since my visit, Fletcher Muse has passed away. But his legacy lives
through ongoing efforts to establish a Fletcher Henderson Museum and a
historic trail that will lead other visitors to cross the tracks.
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The Uncrowned King of Swing
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Introduction
Out of the Jazz Tradition
In the ’20s, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra was musically the most
advanced in the land, but it was revered by a very limited public. He
developed musicians who went on to much greater fame on their own,
and devised the arranging formula that made Benny Goodman the “King
of Swing” in the ’30s and ’40s. He made great recordings of his own
compositions which sold a minimal number, only to have the same tunes
and arrangements cut by Benny Goodman with astronomical sales. No
question about it; he was frustrated.4
This study may fill a gap that Martin Williams perceived in his own book,
but it is intended to be more than a monograph on a key figure in the “jazz
tradition.” It aims to redefine Henderson’s role in American music through
an analysis of the primary source materials embedded in the historical
circumstances of their creation, including the Great Migration of African
Americans from the rural South to the urban North, the Harlem
Renaissance, the dissemination of jazz and dance music through radio,
records, and touring, the consolidation of the music industry in the hands
of white agents and bookers, and American popular music and culture of the
1920s and 1930s.
Several writings and interpretive approaches proved indispensable for my
work. Among them, Gunther Schuller’s magisterial studies of Early Jazz and
The Swing Era, for example, laid the foundation for any musical study of the
period, and my account frequently addresses issues and details that Schuller
raised. But there is one book without which this study would never even
have been undertaken: Walter C. Allen’s Hendersonia: The Music of Fletcher
Henderson and His Musicians: A Bio-Discography. Self-published in 1973,
Allen’s work is still regarded with respect, even awe, by scholars, enthusiasts,
and musicians. The 651 pages of Allen’s work comprise a portable archive,
listing all of the records on which Henderson ever appeared, the personnel
involved, and complete information from the record labels. It also includes
lists of known public appearances by the band. Together, the lists of
10 The Uncrowned King of Swing
recordings and live performances provide an almost daily log of the band’s
activities, imparting an unparalleled intimacy with the professional lives of
one ensemble of musicians. The lists appear between longer segments of
narrative, highlighting the band’s activities and providing extensive
quotations from the contemporary press. Along the way, Allen furnishes
much information about publishers, songwriters, record companies, and
many other aspects of the music business in the 1920s. As Allen concedes,
however, his book is neither musically analytical nor interpretive. In his
preface, Allen writes that “perhaps others will find here the necessary facts
for a more interpretive book in times to come.”20 Three decades after the
publication of Hendersonia, my work attempts to answer Allen’s invitation.
A Note on Transcriptions
Much of this book relies on musical transcriptions from recordings, which
are scattered liberally throughout the text. Although musical examples may
make a book appear forbidding to nonmusicians, many of them help to
make a point at a glance. These transcriptions are descriptive, not pre-
scriptive, to use a distinction sometimes made in the jazz literature. In other
words, most of the examples include only voices and indications that I have
deemed necessary to illustrate a point; they cannot be played with the
expectation of recreating the original sound.
Transcribing the music of large dance and jazz orchestras in the 1920s
and early 1930s presents a special set of problems. Inner voices of chords
are often difficult to hear below the ubiquitous surface noise of old disks
and their reissues. As a result, I include only the full voicing of multiple-
voice examples when I deemed it essential to the point under discussion, or
when it was relatively straightforward. Otherwise, and more frequently, I
offer the top line of the ensemble and the underlying chord symbols.
Another problem that faces a transcriber, however, is that recordings
often distort the tempo and pitch of the performances. James Dapogny first
warned me that early jazz recordings tend to play (or be reissued as) fast
and sharp. A comparison of stock arrangements and recordings often
confirmed the warning. To cite just one example of this phenomenon, “T. N.
T.” is in a key that matches D (A=440) on the reissues I have heard of this
1925 recording. Yet the stock arrangement, which the Henderson band
clearly used, is in the key of C. Reduced to C on a variable speed cassette
player, the performance slows about ten beats per minute, from ca. 234 to
224, a change that alters the character of the performance.
I have found plenty of exceptions to the “fast-and-sharp” tendency, and
many recordings deliver the actual tempo and pitch of the performance.
There was one case, however, in which a recording was slow and flat—the
October 1927 recording of “Hop Off ” by the pseudonymous “Louisiana
Stompers.” In this case, a performance read from an A stock arrangement
sounded as if it were in the key of G.
How does one determine pitch and tempo when there are no printed
sources to consult? Because no definitive answers exist, common sense must
be a guide. If a recording, checked against a tuning fork, appeared to be in
an unusual key such as B or F major, the choice was simple: the actual key
was almost certainly a half-step lower. Indeed, the fact that guided most of
my choices was that to musicians playing E alto saxophones, B trumpets
Out of the Jazz Tradition 11
and tenor saxophones, and trombones as well, pieces in flat keys were easier
to play than those in sharp keys. Therefore, keys sharper than D major were
immediately suspect. Of course, that assumption creates problems because
of Henderson’s well-documented penchant for arranging in unusually sharp
keys during the 1930s. The 1920s, however, appear to tell a different story.
That Henderson entitled one of his pieces “ ‘D’ Natural Blues” (1928)
suggests that D major, even with only two sharps, was unusual for its time.
1.
A New Negro
from the Old South
F
LETCHER H ENDERSON CAME TO N EW YORK in the summer of 1920
intending to earn a master’s degree in chemistry at Columbia Univer-
sity. When he stepped off the train from Atlanta at Pennsylvania
Station, he was met by the young clarinetist Garvin Bushell and a woman
Bushell later described as Henderson’s aunt, who rented a room on the top
floor of the Bushell’s townhouse on West 136th Street in Harlem. Although
far from his Georgia home, the city offered prospects familiar to Henderson:
an urban university environment, continued academic emphasis in the
sciences, and a family friend only fifteen blocks north of the campus.1
As a young black man seeking graduate education, Henderson stands
out as a virtual anomaly in the story of the Great Migration, yet the journey
from his home town to the big city traced a well-worn path from the rural
South to the urban North. Henderson arrived in New York at an auspicious
moment. Northern cities had witnessed an unprecedented influx of black
migrants from the South between 1890 and 1914, a quarter century marking
the “formative years” of urban black communities. By 1920 those commu-
nities had solidified, and Harlem had become the site of the largest and
most concentrated black urban population in the country, the “Mecca” of
New York’s black residents. Only thirty years earlier, Harlem had been a
“genteel community” for “older and wealthier New Yorkers” of European
extraction; by the time Henderson arrived there, Harlem was a “neighbor-
hood transformed.”2
The population influx created the conditions for a cultural transformation
as well. In 1920, Harlem’s new residents were redefining the place of African
Americans in American life. W. E. B. DuBois believed that a “Talented
Tenth” of the black population would guide the rest “into a higher civiliza-
tion”; seeing the growing number of educated men and women gathering
around him in Harlem during the second decade of the twentieth century,
he must have sensed that his vision had come to pass. These cosmopolitan
men and women embodied the “New Negro,” as Alain Locke referred to
them in the title of his landmark anthology published in 1925. Young
Fletcher Henderson, with his college education, middle-class background,
and cultivated mien, embodied key traits of the New Negro.3
Redefining black American cultural identity necessarily affected—and
was shaped by—the response of New York whites. Henry F. May and Ann
Douglas have shown how many whites, restless with the cultural ideals of
A New Negro from the Old South 13
Victorianism, embraced black culture as one means of both resisting the old
ways and celebrating a new and distinctively American identity. The
Harlem Renaissance, as it came to be known, was not just an isolated
development within black culture, then; it also stands as a historical episode
that irrevocably shaped America. As Douglas has written, “the 1920s were
the decade in which the Negroization of American culture became some-
thing like a recognized phenomenon.” That phenomenon opened up
unprecedented opportunities for African Americans with ambition and
talent.4
In music, the city offered more opportunities than Fletcher Henderson
had ever known. For as a young black pianist, Henderson could hardly have
chosen a better time to arrive in the city. Black achievements in music were
growing ever more conspicuous, as two events in 1919 and 1920 symbol-
ized. The first, in 1919, was the celebrated march of the 369th (“Hell
Fighters”) Regiment—with its band led by James Reese Europe—up Fifth
Avenue from downtown Manhattan to Harlem. With their many successes
in the war, the men in his all black infantry had shown exceptional courage
and talent. The band itself had become a crack, disciplined outfit under its
leader, and its solid reading ability could be supplemented by unusual instru-
mental effects and syncopated paraphrase, when Europe allowed it.
The march, however, was just one of Europe’s most conspicuous feats as
a musical leader and organizer. A decade earlier, Europe had practically
invented the structure of black professional music making in New York, a
system whose beneficiaries would include Fletcher Henderson and many of
his early sidemen. In 1910 Europe had become founding president of the
Clef Club, an employment and booking agency for black musicians in New
York. Over the next decade, the Clef Club, promoted most notably through
concerts led by Europe himself at Carnegie Hall, extended opportunities
and raised the prestige of black musicians throughout the city. Testimony
from people who knew Europe suggests the extent of his influence. Tom
Fletcher, a traveling entertainer based in New York, recalled that in the
1920s black orchestras with ten to twenty musicians, led by such men as Tim
Brymn, William Tyers, Ford Dabney, and Europe himself, played in “all of
the big hotels, restaurants, clubs, private homes and resorts” thanks to the
Clef Club’s connections. In the view of composer-pianist Eubie Blake, who
had played in Europe’s band, “he did as much for [black musicians] as
Martin Luther King did for the rest of the Negro people. He set up a way to
get them jobs—the Clef Club—and he made them get paid more. . . . And
all the rich white people loved him.” Linking Europe and King, Blake
conjures an image of Europe as the figurehead of a musical civil rights move-
ment, and it’s tempting to view the Clef Club as an outgrowth of the same
organizational impulse that led to the founding, a year earlier, of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Thanks to his
performances and organizational enterprises, Europe instilled widespread
respect for the professionalism of black musicians. Stabbed to death by a
troubled band member in 1919, Europe did not live to see all the fruits of
his labor, but other leaders such as Brymn, Dabney, Tyers, Will Vodery, and
Europe’s assistant, Eugene Mikell, continued on. Henderson and many of his
musicians benefited from their influence and collective achievements.5
The second development in black music that shaped Henderson’s future
was Mamie Smith’s recording of “Crazy Blues,” on August 10, 1920—within
14 The Uncrowned King of Swing
weeks after Henderson’s arrival in New York. Before this recording, record
company executives doubted the potential of black music on disk. But
“Crazy Blues,” backed with “It’s Right Here for You,” sold 75,000 copies
within the first month of its release in November and became the “first
record to find a chiefly black audience.” When it sold over a million copies
within seven months, the bottom line began to change some minds. Young
Fletcher Henderson unquestionably knew of the success of “Crazy Blues,”
for the publishing company that employed him brought out the song. Yet he
could have hardly realized the full implications of the “Crazy Blues”
phenomenon for his own career. The countless black women singers who
quickly found their way to New York recording studios—whose white exec-
utives were now anxiously searching for “race” talent — would need a
pianist, and dozens would sing to Henderson’s accompaniment. Almost acci-
dentally, Henderson would find himself a key figure in the “blues craze.” It
was not quite what his parents had hoped for him when they bid him
goodbye after his college graduation. To understand that Henderson’s new
line of work was both inevitable, given his musical talent, and unlikely,
given his upbringing, one needs to know more about the family from which
he came.
Up From Slavery
Henderson’s parents were unusually well educated and respected for a black
family in late nineteenth-century Georgia after Emancipation. His grandfa-
ther, James Anderson Henderson, and his father, Fletcher Hamilton
Henderson, were both prominent public servants. The story of James
(1816–ca. 1885) is especially remarkable for a man who lived most of his
life in slavery. A farmer and carpenter, he became well known in Newberry
County, South Carolina, for his “strong personality and reputation as an
accomplished craftsman.” These qualities—and probably his light skin—
recommended him for the job of delegate to the South Carolina
Constitutional Convention in 1868. He then served for two terms as the
county’s representative in the state legislature. He was later elected county
coroner and before his death had accumulated 373 acres of land.6
In his memoir Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote that two
ambitions “were constantly agitating the minds of colored people” during
Reconstruction: to hold political office and to master Greek and Latin
learning. The Henderson men were unusual in realizing these precious goals.
The father held office; the son learned Greek and Latin. James’s son Fletcher
Hamilton Henderson (1857–1943) became a widely noted educator, serving
for over sixty years as teacher and principal of Howard Normal School
(renamed Randolph Training School in 1919) in Cuthbert, Georgia.
Henderson also became a church leader who held local and state positions
in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.7
Cuthbert was a good place for Henderson, Sr., to apply the full range of
his training and talent. After the Civil War, Cuthbert had blossomed into a
progressive community of upstanding citizens where children could get a
solid education. It would become what a local historian has called “a
cultural anomaly—a well-educated, middle-class area within a tiny black
community in the early 1900s.” The black community had benefited consid-
erably from Henderson’s predecessor, Richard Robert Wright. An 1876
A New Negro from the Old South 15
churches but adopting many white religious practices, it was thought, the
A. M. E. Church would accomplish a great deal for racial equality. Such
ideals suited the temperament of Fletcher Henderson, Sr., who served as a
deacon and superintendent of Sunday school in Cuthbert’s Payne Chapel
and was appointed “State Education Evangelist” by the A. M. E. Church.10
In his dual role as educational and religious leader, Henderson embodied
what W. E. B. DuBois would later call an “ideal maker” in the black commu-
nity: a model of upright living. Born within a year of Booker T. Washington,
Henderson absorbed and taught the same values of thrift, industry, self-
reliance, and Christian living that Washington promoted from the founding
of Tuskegee Institute in 1881 until his death in 1915. Henderson’s towering
presence in Cuthbert even led one visitor, trombonist J.C. Higginbotham, to
believe that Henderson was the mayor. “He was the boss of everything,”
Higginbotham recalled.11
Henderson’s namesake, Fletcher Henderson Muse, attended Randolph
Training School in the 1930s and evokes a more nuanced and vivid picture
of its principal. In the black community, Henderson was known as “Fess,”
for professor. “Anybody who thought Latin was a dead language changed
their minds when Fess walked into the classroom speaking it fluently,” said
Muse. Henderson’s model of learning and discipline inspired generations of
students, many of whom went on to college and became teachers them-
selves. At many state colleges and universities in Georgia, “when you told
them you graduated from Randolph they knew you could cut it, and you
were exempted from certain courses.” Muse grew up in a house on Andrew
Street between the Henderson home and the A. M. E. Church. Every
Sunday, Muse could look out his window and see “Fess” walk past. He
always wore a crisp suit. “I never saw him in what people would call ‘work
clothes’—never ever.”12
Just as Muse had been named after a community “ideal maker,” so too
had Henderson named his own sons: James Fletcher (1897–1952), after
Henderson’s father and himself; and Horace Ware (1904–89), most likely
after the great nineteenth-century educational reformer, Horace Mann (or
perhaps after the great Roman poet), and the Atlanta University president,
Edmund Ware. The Hendersons also had a daughter, Irma Belle (1907–76),
who became a school teacher. Their mother, Ozie Lena Chapman
(1865–1937), had graduated from Howard Normal School, married
Henderson, and began teaching in the school in 1883. If the parents were
to have their way, the children were destined for success through education.
hood, destroying property and attacking black residents. DuBois cut short
a trip to return to his family and “bought a Winchester double-barrelled
shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot” in case the
mob reached campus. It did not, but the riot gained national attention. A
sociological study in its aftermath focused more on the black community
than the white mob, dramatizing the discrepancy between “negroes of the
criminal type” and the “best class” of Negroes. Such sharp distinctions
separated the black community as much as they shaped white perceptions.
With such a vivid line drawn between social categories, no wonder
Henderson’s parents did all they could to guide their children to the right
side of it. Sending their elder son to Atlanta, despite the city’s occasional
troubles, must have seemed like the best guarantee of his future.15
For a glimpse of the other side of the divide, one need only consider the
case of the influential gospel composer, Thomas A. Dorsey (1899–1993).
Like Henderson, Dorsey was born in a small Georgia town (Villa Rica) just
before the turn of the century and spent several years of his youth in
Atlanta. Yet the two young black musicians could hardly have had more
dissimilar experiences in the city. Michael W. Harris poignantly conveys the
Dorsey family’s dislocation there and how a cruel black caste system sepa-
rated the black community socially, economically, geographically, and
musically. Harris argues that Dorsey’s parents “represented archetypal black
Atlantan immigrants,” living “in the squalor of the side streets of the West
Side” and performing “domestic and personal services for whites,” the kind
of jobs held by almost one-third of Georgia’s black workers. Young Thomas,
unable to adjust to his new surroundings, dropped out of school by the age
of twelve. He began to make his way in the world only when he learned to
play the piano blues by ear. Yet even then, as Harris points out, “his
accomplishment meant playing mainly on the rent-party circuit and in
Atlanta’s red-light district, places most professional pianists avoided.”
Finding little opportunity to sustain a living in such conditions, Dorsey
went north in 1916, working in the Gary, Indiana, steel mills and as a rail-
road dining-car cook in the warm months and returning to Atlanta in the
winter. He finally settled in Chicago in 1919.16
While Dorsey shuttled between Atlanta and Chicago to pick up work,
Henderson finished prep school, entered Atlanta University, and thrived.
The first thing he did upon matriculation in 1916 was change his name.
Such an act by a young man beginning college might be regarded as a
personal declaration of independence. But for Henderson, who from now on
would be known as Fletcher Hamilton Henderson Jr., the change allied him
more strongly with his father. James carried for him the connotation of
domestic service. He used his name throughout college; yet the news was
apparently slow to circulate beyond the campus, or at least to the family
friend with whom Bushell met Henderson at Penn Station. Recalling
Henderson’s arrival in New York, Garvin Bushell said, “At the time his name
was James, and we called him Jimmy. When people first started talking
about Fletcher Henderson, I didn’t know who they meant.”17
Having been “brought up in the small-town tradition of taking part in all
activities of the community,” as Margery P. Dews has put it, Fletcher made
the most of his college experience. He majored in chemistry, played football
and baseball, acted in theatrical productions, and joined the debate team.
According to Horace, Fletcher also “had a little band” in which he probably
A New Negro from the Old South 19
got his first extensive exposure to popular music. Horace looked forward to
Fletcher’s return home “about twice a month,” because “he would just sit
down and play, and we would have selections to call, and he would just play
anything—anything that we asked for . . . this just amused me to no end.”18
Atlanta opened up musical and social opportunities that Cuthbert did not
offer. For four years, Henderson served as university organist and played for
“the mandatory-attendance chapel services.” He studied music under
Professor Kemper Harreld, a violinist and conductor who stood among the
leading black classical musicians of the city. Under Harreld’s direction,
university musical groups combined to present a pageant tracing black
history called The Open Door, which Henderson accompanied on the piano.
Such programs and other formal recitals offered Henderson the chance to
display his training, but parties allowed him to combine his musical and
social interests. Henderson was always willing to play upon request at social
functions. “He was a naturally friendly and accommodating person, very,
very popular,” a close friend later recalled. His musical skills and social
grace made him the center of attention. Another friend noted that
Henderson “used to have eight or ten of the most beautiful girls . . . at his
beck and call.” In the senior yearbook, Henderson was noted above all for
his musical ability and his potential for a great musical career. “He is
destined . . . to become an eminent authority,” a classmate wrote in 1920,
“classed with Rachmaninoff and other noted musicians.”19
consumers. Pace and Handy had published “Crazy Blues,” so when Mamie
Smith’s record soared in popularity in late 1920, Henderson would have
been among the first to hear the sheet music being plugged for prospective
buyers. As a piano accompanist, Henderson also made his first record in the
wake of Mamie Smith’s success, on October 11, 1920, on a tune called
“Dallas Blues” with Lucille Hegamin, a singer with a pretty, refined voice
who would become known as “Harlem’s Favorite.” The record, an audition
for Victor records, was never issued and only the Victor files document its
existence.24
By this time, perhaps, Harry Pace had begun planning his new business,
the Pace Phonograph Corporation. Anxious to capitalize on the growing
race-record market, he left the publishing firm in Handy’s care, and, in
January 1921, took Henderson with him as music director. The company
started operating the next month. Commercial success had changed attitudes
toward black music making so markedly that Pace confidently stressed the
company’s uniqueness as the first black-owned record company. Its label,
“Black Swan,” borrowed the elegant nickname of the famous nineteenth-
century concert singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield. The company’s
advertising slogan—“The Only Genuine Colored Record. Others Are Only
Passing for Colored”—signified an ironic reversal of the familiar notion
that light-skinned blacks could “pass” as white to get ahead in society.
Pace assembled a board of directors that reflects the prestige and
respectability that he wanted to impart to the company. The most renowned
board member was Pace’s former teacher, W. E. B. DuBois, who had left
Atlanta in 1910 to become cofounder of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. In the third volume of his Atlanta Univer-
sity Publications, DuBois had written that racism created the need for the
black community to take “the responsibility of evolving its own methods
and organs of civilization.” Pace must have believed that, in founding Black
Swan Records, he had personally fulfilled his mentor’s directive.25
Pace’s board also included at least three other prominent black leaders:
John Nail, Emmett J. Scott, and Lester Walton. Nail (ca. 1884–1947),
brother-in-law of the multitalented and omnipresent James Weldon
Johnson, had been perhaps the most successful businessman in Harlem—
and “one of the few black men to profit from the creation of black
Harlem”— since opening his real estate office in 1907. Emmett Scott
(1873–1957), a close associate of Booker T. Washington until Washington’s
death in 1915, had been secretary of Tuskegee Institute since 1912, and
served as assistant to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Scott sat among
the notables on the official reviewing stand on Sixtieth Street when the
369th (“Hell Fighters”) Regiment marched through Manhattan to Harlem
on February 17, 1919.26
Lester Walton (1882–1965), another influential associate of Pace, was a
prominent Harlem journalist and theater manager and, as such, knew more
about performing than the other board members. According to Garvin
Bushell, who played on some of the early Black Swan recordings: “I never
saw Pace; he had nothing to do with recording. But Lester Walton used to
come in all the time.” William Grant Still, Black Swan’s arranger, recalled
that Pace played a more active role in musical decisions, coming to the studio
“to listen to the singers and pass on the choice of music for recordings . . .
though he did not ride herd on his employees in a restrictive way.”27
22 The Uncrowned King of Swing
“Crazy Blues,” would also reject Bessie, who finally signed with the more
prestigious Columbia and began making records for it in early 1923.) Never-
theless, with its ample supply of singers, Black Swan made more blues
records than anything else. And in spite of Pace’s hopes, the blues recordings
far outsold the other repertories. Revella Hughes, a conservatory-trained
concert singer who went into musical comedy soon after coming to New
York, made four or five records for Black Swan in early 1921. She recalled
that “the Black Swan company hoped to give colored artists who sang clas-
sical music as much opportunity to record as the blues singers had been
given by the white companies. But the classical artists did not sell well.”30
The blues singers sold more. Ethel Waters’s recording of “Down Home
Blues” and “Oh Daddy” became Black Swan’s biggest hit. “It proved a great
success and a best seller among the white and colored,” Waters noted later.
Waters’s account of the recording session reveals a telling incident. “There
was much discussion of whether I should sing popular or ‘cultural’
numbers,” she recalled. Apparently, Pace’s ideals had instilled a dilemma in
Henderson and his associates who chose the repertory. On one hand, the
Black Swan staff wanted to do whatever it took to sustain its pioneering
enterprise, which stood as a symbol of black achievement. On the other
hand, recording “popular” numbers and the blues would link Black Swan to
the very musical styles that it was trying to rise above by promoting “clas-
sical artists,” as Revella Hughes had put it.31
Not surprisingly, Waters and Henderson had to work hard to develop
some personal and musical affinity. The strong-willed cabaret singer and the
gentle college-educated pianist stood on opposite poles of the social and
musical spectrum in New York. Waters seems to have recognized this imme-
diately. “Remember those class distinctions in Harlem,” she writes, “which
had its Park Avenue crowd, a middle-class, and its Tenth Avenue. That was
me, then, low-down Tenth Avenue.” If Waters saw herself as “low-down,”
she must have considered Henderson to be at least middle class, or maybe
even “Park Avenue.” Entering the Black Swan studio for the first time, she
recalled, “I found Fletcher Henderson sitting behind a desk and looking
very prissy and important.” At this point, Henderson held much more in
common with classically trained musicians like Clark and Harreld. But
circumstances would lead him away from that “respectable” milieu; he
would have to begin to embrace the other side of the black social divide. To
capitalize on the success of “Down Home Blues,” Ethel Waters and her “Jazz
Masters,” with Henderson on piano, went on tour. But, as Waters recalled in
her autobiography, “Fletcher Henderson wasn’t sure it would be dignified
enough for him . . . to be the piano player for a girl who sang the blues in a
cellar. Before he would go out [on tour] Fletcher had his whole family come
up from Georgia to look me over.”32
The collaboration of Fletcher and Ethel Waters ultimately received the
family’s “stamp of approval,” as Waters called it, but an intriguing document
from this period written by Henderson Sr. suggests that the trip may not
have allayed all of his worries. In it, one may read a father’s hope, if not his
expectations. Titled “Silas Green in the Kid Glove Church,” the document
exists in a file labeled “Speeches” in the Fletcher Henderson Family Papers
in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.33 Yet it lacks the func-
tional tone of direct address that mark the other speeches in the file. It tells
the story of a young man who leaves his family farm to take a job in the big
24 The Uncrowned King of Swing
city. Once there, Silas seeks membership in a church and, despite his humble
“rube” appearance and dialect, ends up teaching the minister and “richly
dressed congregation” about being “pure in heart,” including abstinence
from card-playing, dancing, and drinking—“because you just can’t do them
things and be like Jesus wants you to be.” But Silas is not welcomed into the
church, where the minister tacitly accepts such behavior. Having held his
principles, Silas accepts his fate philosophically. The parable is dated “Jan.
26, 1922,” just two or three months after Henderson’s parents came to New
York to “approve” Fletcher’s new enterprise.
Fletcher may have won his father’s stoic “approval,” but Waters proved
even tougher to please, and for entirely different reasons. “I kept having
arguments with Fletcher Henderson about the way he was playing my
accompaniments,” Waters wrote. She urged him to learn from the great
stride pianist James P. Johnson. Her colorful observations on young Fletcher
dramatize better than any other first-hand account that, for Henderson,
playing jazz was an awkwardly acquired ability. They also reveal some-
thing usually overlooked, something that would serve Henderson well in his
musical career: that he was a quick study.
exuberant abandon, or at least the impression of it, and sheer volume. Even
through the scratches of a worn record, a listener can imagine why the group
chose to end its tour performances with “Down Home Blues,” night after
night. The finale became so familiar even a dog could recognize it: Waters
recounts how her Pekinese, Bubbles, would hear the song and “know it was
time for me to come off. He’d trot out of the dressing room and onto the
stage, pawing at my dress to be picked up.”36
The tour proved to be very successful. The Black Swan Troubadours, as
they were known, covered eighteen states in seven months and went as far
afield as Texas. Although touring black performers experienced daily hard-
ships, the young troupe didn’t seem to mind. “Conditions of traveling didn’t
bother us too much,” clarinetist Garvin Bushell recalled. “If you had to
walk the streets all night or sleep in a church, you did it.” Sometimes they’d
find a black hotel or an accommodating local family to stay with, but
“accommodations in Negro neighborhoods could be lousy—with bad food
and a lot of bedbugs. But being young, we didn’t care.” They played in
black theaters for black audiences, and the black press paid close attention
to the tour. Thanks to reports from Lester Walton, the group’s advance man,
the Chicago Defender seems to have recorded the Troubadours’ every move
with pride.37
For Henderson, the tour did more than confer money and notoriety. It
also led him to meet a few men who would later join the band. In Chicago,
his future clarinetist William “Buster” Bailey substituted for Bushell, who
had gotten jailed on dubious charges. Then, just before the group headed
south, four musicians quit. Bushell was one of them. “In those days you went
South at the risk of your life,” Bushell later explained. “It would be very
uncomfortable, very miserable . . . So many incidents occurred; you weren’t
even treated as a human being.” One replacement turned out to be another
future Henderson sideman, trumpet player Joe Smith. “Fletcher Henderson
was very impressed with Joe’s sound,” Bushell recalled, “and he never forgot
it.” In New Orleans, Henderson met another trumpet player. As he recalled
in Down Beat magazine years later, “I heard this young man playing trumpet
in a little dance hall . . . [who] would be great in our act. I asked him his
name and found he was Louis Armstrong.” But Armstrong wouldn’t go on
tour without his drummer, Zutty Singleton. “The next day,” Henderson
continued, “Louis was backstage at the theater to tell me that he’d have to
be excused, much as he would love to go with us, because the drummer
wouldn’t leave New Orleans.” Two years later, in 1924, Armstrong would
join Henderson in New York—without his drummer.38
Upon his return to New York in July 1922, Henderson gained a name as
organizer of recording sessions and as an able accompanist to blues and
popular singers. Although Black Swan was about to go out of business,
Henderson had gained valuable contacts as part of Pace’s enterprise. By
1923 he was the most widely recorded accompanist in New York, playing
regularly with such leading black singers as Waters, Bessie Smith, Clara
Smith, and many others for a variety of record companies. In a little less than
three years—from early 1921 to late 1923—Henderson played on more
than 150 records as an accompanist for singers. By 1923, he had already
appeared on more sides than any other black musician in the short history
of recorded sound. Meanwhile, Henderson continued to earn work among
Clef Club musicians. In early 1923, the eminent black composer-conductor
26 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Will Marion Cook formed the “Clef Club Orchestra,” including “F.
Henderson, Paramount Recording Wizard, At the Piano,” as one advertise-
ment noted. The orchestra performed a potpourri of black show tunes,
spirituals, and concert pieces, with a number of guest performers, including
the young actor-singer Paul Robeson.39
Within three years of his arrival in New York, then, Henderson had
formed connections among musicians and within the blossoming record
industry that put him in a promising professional position. At this point
Henderson was not a jazz musician; as an organizer of recording sessions,
however, he had already begun to surround himself with a group of musi-
cians who could play jazz. Some of these musicians would form the core of
Henderson’s first regular band. He had come a long way from Georgia. Two
years in Harlem and seven months on the road had enlarged his social and
musical purview. A “respectable,” middle-class, college-educated young man
had absorbed elements of black culture that had existed outside his privi-
leged domains in Cuthbert and Atlanta.
In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James Weldon
Johnson tells the story of a light-skinned black musician who decides to
“pass” as white, ultimately renouncing his background as a ragtime pianist
and his interest in the music of ordinary southern black folk. In some ways,
Fletcher Henderson’s early years tell the story in reverse. Raised and
educated in a milieu that cherished concert music, Fletcher Henderson had
to be forced to study and practice the musical idioms that many whites
assumed to be the Negro’s natural heritage. As Ethel Waters had said, that
kind of music “isn’t his kind at all.”
Yet in an important way, Henderson’s story does not represent Johnson’s
novel in “reverse,” for Henderson never passed. It is a more complex story
than that, one that illuminates a world in which the term black culture
connotes a multifaceted, and even contradictory, culture that both absorbs
and reshapes elements of white culture, and that is no less “authentically”
black for doing so. Like Scott Joplin, Will Marion Cook, and James Reese
Europe before him, Henderson was wrestling to bridge a respectable but
restricted past with a more cosmopolitan and liberated outlook. And like his
contemporary Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, two years his junior,
Henderson faced both advantages and setbacks in his effort to parlay a
cultivated upbringing into a musical career. Meanwhile, Henderson’s feet
remained firmly in a world created by black citizens from a variety of back-
grounds, whether he was studying Latin at prep school or playing blues in
Harlem. He grew up in Cuthbert’s black community, attended its black
school, graduated from a black university in Atlanta, and then moved to
black Manhattan. Moreover, many of his important models and contacts
were black “ideal makers”: Fletcher Sr., Kemper Harreld, Deacon Johnson,
W. C. Handy, and Harry Pace. He would not have considered his formative
years to have been in emulation of white culture. Nor did coming to Harlem
and learning blues represent his passing over into an “authentic” black
culture. Rather, living in Harlem helped Henderson begin to integrate his
identity as an American musician.
2.
The “Paul Whiteman of the Race”
Renaissance Men
A survey of the backgrounds of the musicians in Henderson’s first band
reveals strong connections between them and the emerging New Negro of
The “Paul Whiteman of the Race” 29
He was a very strict leader. Every night you had to . . . stand inspection.
He’d look at your hair, your face, see if you shaved, your shoes, see if
they’re shined. You had to be perfect to suit him. . . . He was strict and nice
and exact in everything he did.8
That careful concern for appearance reflects a larger impulse to see music
making as a dignified profession. Cultural historians such as Hsio Wen Shih
and Thomas J. Hennessey have argued that, in its professional approach to
music making, the Henderson band comprised the vanguard of a new gener-
ation of jazz musicians. Shih has suggested that in the early years of
big-band jazz, a kind of selection pressure favored well-educated musicians
born around the turn of the century and raised in middle-class families.
Music making in the popular music idioms of which jazz was a part had
30 The Uncrowned King of Swing
all-black musical comedy Shuffle Along. In early 1923, he played in the pit
of the Howard Theater in Washington, DC, and performed in a week-long
engagement under the popular clarinetist-bandleader Wilbur Sweatman in
a band that included Duke Ellington and his cohorts Sonny Greer and Otto
Hardwick. Back in New York by late 1923, Escudero joined Happy Rhone,
a major figure among Clef Club bandleaders who had opened an elite, inte-
grated Harlem nightclub the previous year. When Escudero joined
Henderson’s band in January 1924, few black brass players could rival him
in the range of his professional experience and contacts.
If Escudero had the best resumé, trumpet player Howard Scott had the
most compelling story, linking him to the Clef Club’s founding father. In
fact, as Scott himself recalled, the course of his musical life became clear on
the day in 1919 when James Reese Europe’s band, just home from the war,
paraded through New York City with the renowned 369th Regiment. Scott
recalled that, in the excitement of watching these famous uniformed musi-
cians, he walked all the way to Harlem with the band. Eventually he got to
know Cecil Smith, a saxophone player in that band who helped Scott get a
job in an ensemble led by a pianist named Honey Potter. Potter, according
to Scott, “had most of the work out there in Long Island,” suggesting that
Potter enjoyed high status in the community of black musicians. Having
learned to read music as a boy, Scott could also pick up tunes quickly from
sound recordings—“new records from the shows and things”—and he
became a valuable sideman, impressing his leader by learning the songs
before Potter’s band even got the music sheets. When Henderson hired Scott
in late 1923, then, he got a talented, experienced young musician of twenty
who could read and play by ear with equal facility.12
Coleman Hawkins’s tours with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds in 1922–23
placed him high in Stewart’s second tier. In 1921, at seventeen, Hawkins was
already an excellent reader and improviser who knew his own worth.
According to clarinetist Garvin Bushell, who heard him as early as 1921,
Hawkins was “a cocky youngster who realized he was head and shoulders
above anyone of his age, anywhere. But he was a very knowledgeable young
man, highly intelligent, with none of the common ways that some touring
musicians had.”13
Perhaps Hawkins did not seem “common” because he had been raised in
a family similar to Henderson’s. Biographer John Chilton stresses several
aspects of Hawkins’s background in St. Joseph, Missouri, that reflect the
Henderson-model musician that Shih and Hennessey noted: he grew up in
a middle-class family, had thorough musical training from an early age, was
exposed to a wide variety of music, and developed a broad musical taste.
Hawkins’s parents, like Henderson’s, emphasized musical education and
began his piano lessons at age five. With the encouragement and discipline
of his mother, Hawkins also studied cello. His recollection of being locked
up in a backyard shed for practice sessions recalls Horace Henderson’s story
of how his parents enforced Fletcher’s early piano studies. Moreover, both
Henderson and Hawkins faced a pivotal professional moment when they
went on tour with a female singer in the face of parental worry. For
Hawkins, a tour with a headliner such as Mamie Smith proved irresistible,
especially when the singer gave him special billing as “Saxophone Boy.”
Henderson first heard Hawkins play in 1923 at Connie’s Inn, then a sophis-
ticated new Harlem club. Later that year, when Hawkins joined Henderson
32 The Uncrowned King of Swing
at age nineteen, he already enjoyed renown and prestige among New York’s
black musicians.
Several other sidemen in Henderson’s first band had experience in the
third stratum in Stewart’s hierarchy: the large bands whose leaders
comprised “the newer members of that select fraternity.” Charlie Dixon
and trumpet player Elmer Chambers, for example, both served as sidemen
in the orchestra of Sam Wooding before joining Henderson. In Wooding’s
seven- or eight-piece orchestra, both musicians tasted the life of an elite
black musician playing in a prestigious venue. From 1920 until early 1923,
Wooding’s base was Harlem’s posh Barron’s club, where a musician could
make important professional connections in a sophisticated milieu.
Two outsiders completed the band: Don Redman and Charlie Green.
Don Redman, the multi-reed player and sometime singer who would serve
as Henderson’s principal arranger from 1923 to 1927, was a newcomer to
New York when he joined Henderson. In the early 1920s the West Virginia
native joined Billy Paige’s Broadway Syncopators, a Pittsburgh-based band
in which Redman played reeds and did some arranging. In early 1923,
Paige’s band went to New York. By late February, Redman was making
records with Henderson. Redman, in the words of Rex Stewart, “played a
most important role in the Henderson band,” which “assumed another
dimension” with his arrangements, which will be explored in the next
chapter.14
One additional musician played a key role in Henderson’s early band:
trombonist Charlie Green, who was hired in July 1924 about the time
Henderson began playing at the Roseland Ballroom. Nothing about Green
recommended him for work at the Roseland, and he certainly cut a distinc-
tive figure among Henderson’s elite sidemen. “Big Green,” as the musicians
called him, was a formidable fellow from Omaha, Nebraska. In his home
town he had played in brass bands; he had left at the age of twenty with a
traveling carnival show. Rex Stewart has written a vivid portrait of Green,
having suffered the trombonist’s “devilish tricks” and threats as an eighteen-
year-old replacement for Louis Armstrong in 1925:
Now Big Green was a big bruiser and it took some courage to joke with
him. He was 6 foot plus, his manner was rough and loud, and he always
appeared ready for a fight at the drop of a wrong word. Charlie was
slightly cockeyed, and the more saturated he was with his bathtub gin, the
more his eye seemed to move all around in his head. He became even
more frightening when he’d brandish his six shooter, which kept company
with his gin in his trombone case.
had been working with Henderson for almost a year. Ralph Escudero, the
tuba player, was apparently the only musician drafted especially for the
Club Alabam opening in January 1924. Most of the others (including
Coleman Hawkins, Kaiser Marshall, and Howard Scott) had been hired for
studio work since late spring 1924, and Green joined them around the time
the band became the Roseland’s house orchestra.
By 1925, black critics were pointing to Henderson’s band as a model for
the future of jazz. From his powerful base in Chicago, Dave Peyton, for
example, praised Henderson for developing a cultivated strain of jazz.
Peyton’s voice carried authority. He led a dance orchestra that played for
Chicago’s white society; he was an influential member of the musicians’
union Local 208; and he wrote a column on music for the Chicago
Defender, the city’s leading black periodical. One of the recurring themes in
Peyton’s column, “The Musical Bunch,” was that black musicians should
project a sophisticated personal manner that countered the primitive stereo-
type held by whites. Henderson’s sidemen embodied Peyton’s image of the
ideal jazzmen.16
Peyton’s attitude reflected the assimilationist, achievement-oriented
outlook voiced in Alain Locke’s The New Negro. In the essay “Jazz at
Home,” J. A. Rogers defends jazz against critics who hear the music as
morally suspect. Rogers echoes their concerns but concludes that jazz “has
come to stay, and they are wise, who instead of protesting against it, try to
lift and divert it into nobler channels.” Rogers names several bandleaders
whom he believes to be exerting this ennobling force: “famous jazz orches-
tras like those of Will Marion Cook, Paul Whiteman, Sissle and Blake, Sam
Stewart, Fletcher Henderson, Vincent Lopez, and the Clef Club units,” which
have expunged the “vulgarities and crudities” from jazz. These writings
name only bands and bandleaders, not improvising soloists. Peyton, Rogers,
and other members of the black press and intelligentsia were not interested
in improvised solos; they cared about arrangements, which revealed the
values such critics promoted: discipline, order, sophistication, and music
literacy. In later decades, white jazz critics, listening back through the legacy
of Louis Armstrong, did not appreciate these qualities. There’s an obvious
paradox here: the qualities of the Henderson band that black critics tended
to praise in the mid-1920s were precisely the qualities that later white critics
would condemn. But in their image and their musical style, Henderson and
his musicians showed that, in the musical world, the New Negro ideal had
become reality.17
established black orchestras led by such men as James Reese Europe, Tim
Brymn, Ford Dabney, and W. C. Handy—leaders who made their mark on
the music world chiefly through public performances, composing, and
publishing. Likewise, by the end of 1923, small groups of jazz musicians led
by Johnny Dunn, Edward “Kid” Ory, King Oliver, and Jelly Roll Morton
had made a few recordings, but their fame too lay chiefly in public
performing. Henderson, in contrast, was at first known primarily as a
recording musician. The 1923 Henderson band was the first black orchestra
to make recording the central focus of its work.
A combination of factors made this activity possible. One well-docu-
mented factor was that the music business was just beginning to realize the
commercial potential of recording. Until the early 1920s, the industry
measured the success of a song primarily by the sales of its sheet music. But
the combined force of a printers’ strike, a paper shortage, and the resulting
price rise, followed by the phenomenal success of such recordings as Ben
Selvin’s “Dardanella” (1919) and Paul Whiteman’s “Whispering” and
“Japanese Sandman” (1920) caused music publishers to shift their focus
from sheet music sales to “mechanical royalties.” Meanwhile, the wave of
interest in black music following Mamie Smith’s first recordings made the
early 1920s an especially good time to be a black musician making records.
The recording studio therefore had become a lightning rod for currents in
popular music, and Henderson’s band stood in a prominent position to
transmit those currents.18
Despite Henderson’s uniqueness as the leader of a black recording band,
evidence suggests that record companies suppressed the racial aspect of his
instrumental recordings. Most black musicians in the early 1920s made
“race records,” that is, black music in which racial difference was empha-
sized—indeed, advertised—in order to appeal to black consumers. Exotic
band names, such as the Creole Jazz Band and the Jazz Hounds, highlighted
their racialized appeal. But while Henderson and his sidemen made many
race records as accompanists to blues singers, they were also making instru-
mental records under the dignified name “Fletcher Henderson and His
Orchestra” marketed as part of the “general” series of several record compa-
nies, that is, records designed to appeal to white listeners.
Indeed, the amount and nature of the Henderson band’s recording
activity suggests that, far from competing with other black musicians in the
race record market, Henderson sought to appeal across racial boundaries.
The sheer quantity of his band’s recorded work in 1923–24 put it in a
league with major white dance bands of the day, those of Paul Whiteman,
Vincent Lopez, Sam Lanin, and the California Ramblers. All of these bands
were well established before Henderson. They had been recording regularly
since at least 1921, and except for Lopez’s orchestra, their recorded output
had exceeded two hundred sides each by the end of 1924. By making
approximately one hundred records in an eighteen-month period of
1923–24, Henderson’s band maintained a similar pace. No other black band
came close.19
Like most dance orchestras the group made records for several compa-
nies. (Whiteman’s was unusual for working exclusively with one company,
Victor.) The variety of record companies reflected the diversity and commer-
cial potential of the Henderson band’s early style and repertory. In 1923 and
1924 the band made at least a dozen sides each for Vocalion, Columbia,
Plaza, Pathé, and Ajax, plus a few for other companies. The disks for
The “Paul Whiteman of the Race” 35
Vocalion and Columbia signify the band’s early success. Both were estab-
lished major companies issuing everything from opera to blues by an equally
wide range of musicians. Vocalion released at least twenty-six sides by
Henderson’s band in this period, far more than any other company.
Columbia was, and would remain, a particularly prestigious company. Don
Redman later spoke of having “graduated to Columbia” in 1923. Vocalion
and Columbia fostered variety in the band’s style and repertory, recording
blues and jazz-oriented material as well as straitlaced dance arrangements
of Tin Pan Alley songs. In contrast, Plaza and Pathé released mainly the
latter. Banner and Regal (subsidiaries of Plaza) and Pathé Actuelle and
Perfect (of Pathé) were synchronized labels, that is, they issued identical
material, usually the same “take” of a record, for different prices and
markets. The cheaper label tended to be geared for chain or department
stores. (Perfect, for example, sold for fifty cents against Pathé Actuelle’s
seventy-five-cent disks.) The companies competed for a share of the same
market. Although Pathé had a wider range of artists and repertory, both
firms had popular music series with hundreds of dance records designed to
appeal to a broad general audience. Meanwhile, among the companies for
which the early Henderson band recorded regularly, Ajax was an anomaly.
It was one of a handful of small, race-record series that perished with the
end of the blues craze and the advent of electrical recording in 1925.
Through these various outlets, most of the Henderson orchestra’s records
reached a larger audience than its accompaniments for blues singers, which
came out mainly on race records, such as Columbia’s 14000 series. The
range and number of its disks show that the band competed well in the
general, mainly white, market.20
The sheer quantity of recordings by Henderson’s band, and the record
labels for which it recorded, reveal that Henderson’s brand of dance music
was a commercially viable product. That a black band could make dozens
of recordings outside the domain of “race records” marks a major achieve-
ment in the early 1920s. The early recordings of Henderson’s band are
usually interpreted on stylistic grounds alone and found lacking jazz interest.
Seen collectively as a rare feat for a black band, however, they stand as an
important legacy of the possibilities of black culture in the period.
Before Louis Armstrong began playing in the band in the fall of 1924,
Henderson already enjoyed an unusually high profile among black musicians
in New York. While black musicals had enjoyed success in Broadway
theaters since the turn of the century, black orchestras were just beginning
to find steady work in the lucrative downtown musical scene. And it was
indeed lucrative for Henderson—at least by comparison to other black
bands—as the band’s weekly pay in April 1925 won a headline in the New
York Age: “From $300 to $1,200 per week in less than 2 years for
orchestra.” Only a few other black orchestras — those of Leroy Smith,
Armand J. Piron, and Elmer Snowden (soon to be taken over by Duke
Ellington)—were regularly appearing in downtown venues in the early
1920s, and none of them made that kind of money.26
W
HEN THE DOUGH-FACED, pencil-mustached, baton-wielding “King of
Jazz” Paul Whiteman proclaimed that “the new demand is for
change and novelty” in his 1926 book, Jazz, he offered this
rather conservative view of actual practice: “after the tune is set the
instrumentation shall be changed for each half chorus.” Whiteman’s own
arranger, Ferde Grofé, had paved the way more than a decade earlier by
shifting instrumentation for every chorus of dance-band arrangements
for Art Hickman in San Francisco. Grofé came east and joined Whiteman
in 1919, introducing countermelodies and more timbral contrast to his
charts. He helped Whiteman’s orchestra become the premier dance band
in New York, a position it solidified—and attempted to transcend—on
February 12, 1924, when Whiteman presented his “Experiment in
Modern Music,” culminating in the world premiere of a piece he had
commissioned for the occasion: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue,
orchestrated by Grofé.1
Whiteman’s dictum may sound amusingly ordinary today, but 1920s
listeners and dancers relished the opulent colors that arrangers for the
“modern dance orchestra” applied to the period’s popular songs. By 1923,
however, a few arrangers had already taken another step and regularly
changed instrumentation much more frequently than Whiteman suggested.
It was a technique some referred to as arranging “inside the strain,” and it
wasn’t something that just any musician could master. When Sam
Wooding’s orchestra succeeded Henderson’s at the Club Alabam in 1924,
for example, Wooding was still a novice. “At that time,” he recalled, “I was
only making introductions and endings. But inside the strain I wasn’t doing
it, you see.”2
Don Redman, Henderson’s principal arranger, was doing it—and he did
it more regularly and creatively than any other arranger of the period.
Recognized as “the first master of jazz orchestration” and the first among
“the most outstanding and influential pioneer arrangers” in 1920s jazz,
Redman revealed the full range of his talent in his work in Henderson’s
band from 1923 to 1927. Henderson could hardly have found a more apt
partner than Redman, whose “no-nonsense” approach to band leadership
matched Henderson’s desire for strict discipline. (Henderson’s infamous
“lassitude,” as John Hammond called it, would not begin to appear until the
late 1920s.) Recent scholars have questioned Redman’s primacy, since other
40 The Uncrowned King of Swing
arrangers such as Grofé had already demonstrated the techniques for which
Redman regularly gets credit: separating the brass and reeds into distinct,
independent sections and writing call-and-response patterns that antici-
pated big-band arranging—including Henderson’s style—in the swing era.
This chapter makes no attempt to challenge that point. It argues instead that
Redman has been hailed for the wrong reasons.3
Coming to terms with Redman’s significance means recognizing that an
arranger can be as much a creative force in jazz as a composer or an impro-
vising soloist. Like a composer, an arranger gives an original shape to a
piece of music, creating unity and contrast through a variety of musical
elements, including melody, harmony, rhythm, form, tempo, texture, and
timbre. Like an improvising soloist, an arranger takes existing material—in
Redman’s case, usually a popular song or blues piece—and uses it as the
framework for a fresh, new conception.
From that perspective, the Henderson band’s first four years must be
construed as the “Redman period,” even though it encompasses Louis
Armstrong’s brief but influential tenure in the band. Gunther Schuller called
Don Redman the “architect” of the Henderson band’s distinctive style in the
1920s. And Schuller’s notion that the 1920s were a decade of “restless
curiosity” sums up Redman’s work in particular, including: his ability to
rethink a song’s rhythm, melody, harmony, orchestration, and form to make
it fresh; his penchant for tailoring accompaniments to suit different soloists;
his fascination with instruments, both conventional ones and novelties; and,
not least, his musical sense of humor. Redman’s early arrangements with
Henderson often aim to dazzle the listener (and challenge the dancer) with a
barrage of contrasting colors and patterns.4
Even as he gets praised as a “pioneer,” Redman’s early efforts have been
dismissed as “overwritten arrangement” and “baroque doodling.” Coming
to terms with Henderson’s early band, however, calls for reassessing how the
arrangements not only reflect the arranging techniques of white bands but
also exhibit distinctively African-derived approaches to music making.
Indeed, it is possible to hear in Redman’s arrangements some tendencies in
African-American music described by Olly Wilson: first, “a tendency to
create a high density of musical events within a relatively short musical
time frame, or to fill up all the musical space,” and second, to introduce “a
kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound
(timbre)”—otherwise known as the “ ‘heterogeneous sound tendency.’” A
“density” of musical events, “kaleidoscopic” contrasts, and a “heteroge-
neous” ideal: Redman began to develop all of these tendencies in the period
when Henderson was the “Paul Whiteman of the Race.”5
Those points lead suggestively to the notion that Redman’s work reflects
another widespread practice in African-American music and culture, that of
“signifying.” Although often used to describe improvisatory practices, the
concept applies equally well to the written or planned elements in
Henderson’s recordings, for they fit Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s, description of
signifying as “resemblance . . . by dissemblance.” Gates developed this
concept to open a door to understanding African-American literature, but
the concept’s applications to music have been widely recognized and
explored, and I believe it provides a key to going beyond the confining “Paul
Whiteman of the Race” trope that has governed Henderson’s reputation in
the crucial early years of his bandleading career. From this new perspective,
Inside the Strain 41
Doctoring Stocks
Stock arrangements of popular songs of the early 1920s usually had a four-
to eight-bar introduction, followed by the song’s verse and two or three
statements of the song’s refrain, also known as the “chorus.” Each section
featured one predominant texture and timbre—whether played by the full
ensemble, a section of the band, or, more rarely, a soloist—from beginning
to end. Many stocks offered a choice of instrumentation by aligning two
staves on each part. An occasional duet or trio break might be inserted for
color. Largely, however, instrumentation on stocks tended to change more
between chorus statements than within them. Although stocks would
become more intricate through the 1920s, the publishers’ in-house arrangers
of stocks generally aimed more for maximum accessibility than for ingenuity
“inside the strain.” Redman took these generic works and gave them a
distinctive twist. A comparison of printed and recorded sources shows how
a fledgling orchestra of the early 1920s went about the process.
As a benchmark for comparison, we can begin with a recording that
reflects several changes to a stock, but that contains few changes inside the
strain. The tune is “Oh! Sister, Ain’t That Hot,” a typical Tin Pan Alley
attempt to package the new excitement of jazz in sheet-music form. The
whole context shows the band’s tight links to Tin Pan Alley publishing.
Both “Oh! Sister” and another song on that day’s recording session,
“Mamma’s Gonna Slow You Down,” were published by the firm of Stark
and Cowan in late 1923, and both were arranged by Ted Eastwood, prob-
ably one of the publisher’s in-house arrangers. The stocks also reveal the
publisher’s address, at 234 West Forty-sixth Street, to be only a couple of
blocks from the Club Alabam. The recording for the Emerson company
dates from early January 1924 and thus has the added advantage of
capturing the band just about the time it began playing at the Club Alabam.
The recording clearly derives several elements from the stock, including
its key, much of its form, and several specific passages (fig. 3.1).
42 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Fig. 3.1. “Oh! Sister, Ain’t That Hot,” stock arrangement and Henderson recording
Stock arrangement (1923) Henderson recording (early January 1924)
Moderato =ca. 180
key of B major key of B major
For example, the band plays the stock’s introduction, a version of the
macabre theme frequently encountered in popular songs and silent-film
accompaniments (ex. 3.1).7
Ex. 3.1.“Oh! Sister, Ain’t That Hot,” introduction from stock arrangement
by Ted Eastwood (1923), piano part
Ex. 3.3.“He’s the Hottest Man in Town,” intro. from Henderson recording (September
8, 1924), partial transcription
Inside the Strain 45
A further look at the stock, however, reveals that the introduction did not
entirely spring from Redman’s imagination. Polla’s arrangement supplies a
coda, called an “optional break” in the stock. Its last two bars, with chro-
matic ascent and cadence, are the source of the opening phrase of the
Henderson band’s introduction (ex. 3.4). Redman has lopped off the tail to
create the head.
Ex. 3.4.“He’s the Hottest Man in Town,” last two bars of “optional break” from stock
arrangement, piano part
The Henderson recording, rather than using the “optional break” supplied
by Polla, plays a coda that picks up where its introduction left off by contin-
uing the additive rhythmic pattern begun there (ex. 3.5)
The recording alters the stock in other ways. Where Polla’s arrangement
supplies the piece’s full thirty-two-bar chorus, Henderson’s band consis-
tently truncates the chorus to thirty bars, eliding its final cadence with the
next section. The device, a hallmark of 1920s jazz and dance music, rein-
forces the tune’s restless energy.
Most unusual of all, however, are several entirely new passages, including
a new strain, several breaks, and bridge (the “B” section of the AABA form)
added between choruses 2 and 3 (indented and boldfaced in fig. 3.3),
resulting in a much more complicated routine than the straightforward stock
version.
The new strain—with its moseying trumpet-trombone duet and tuba-
banjo boom-chick accompaniment filling an irregular nineteen-bar
section—seems oddly out of character with the rest of the piece. Its relaxed,
countrified air contrasts sharply with the peppy syncopation that prevails in
the choruses. Yet that contrast points to a key feature of Redman’s emerging
style. Here, two years before Whiteman would publish his call for “change
and novelty,” we can hear Redman taking a stock arrangement, opening it
up, rearranging its parts, and creating kaleidoscopic juxtapositions inside the
strain.
46 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Soft-Shoe Stoptime
Rex Stewart once wrote that “When Smack heard Louis Armstrong, in
Chicago, playing licks that emphasized the dancing of a team called Dave
48 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Fig. 3.4. “I’m Gonna See You”
and Tressie, this was quickly orchestrated in the Redman way. The new
concept (featuring figures made by the brass that paralleled the syncopation
of the dancers) was copied immediately by other bands.” Indeed, dancing
inspired arranging, and no technique reveals that more clearly than soft-shoe
stoptime. In this device, we hear the melody played staccato, creating lots of
gaps for instrumental fills — and for soft-shoe dancing. On record,
Henderson’s musicians fill the gaps with runs, chords, or a sandblock playing
a shuffling pattern.10
The device represents another of Redman’s typical variations, which
preserves the melody while allowing room for the arranger’s whim. Here,
Inside the Strain 49
one section of the band plays the melody staccato, leaving plenty of room
for another section or soloist to provide filler in the gaps between the
melodic notes, especially where the original melody had long tones.
The device appears early in the band’s recordings. In chorus 2 of Irving
Berlin’s “When You Walked Out Someone Else Walked Right In,” the
trumpets play a skeletal melody (ex. 3.7) that functions as a stoptime accom-
paniment to an active banjo solo by Charlie Dixon.11
Ex. 3.7.“When You Walked Out Someone Else Walked Right In” (mid-May 1923),
chorus 2, beginning
The chorus 2 bridge of “Chicago Blues” also sets the melody in staccato
brass, while a sandblock shuffles like a dancer on the beats between the
melodic notes (ex. 3.8).
Melodic Interception
In soft-shoe stoptime passages, musicians play in rapid dialogue, but the
melodic line remains in only one section or instrument. Other arrange-
ments go a step further by actually breaking up the melodic line among two
or more soloists or sections of the band, in a device that might be described
as melodic interception. Here, Redman shifts the instrumentation in
the middle of a phrase, as if tossing the tune around among the band
members. Henderson’s first recorded example of this device appears in an
52 The Uncrowned King of Swing
arrangement of a new song written for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 called
“Shake Your Feet,” composed by the longtime Follies songwriters Dave
Stamper and Gene Buck. The show opened on October 20, the song’s copy-
right was claimed on November 8, 1923, by T. B. Harms, and Henderson’s
band made its first recording of the song later that month, on November
27— illustrating a typical sequence of events leading to a Henderson
recording.
The recording shows how Redman deployed a major soloist in service
of an arranging concept. In the arrangement’s second chorus, Coleman
Hawkins, on tenor saxophone, trades snippets of melody with muted
trumpets, and the bass saxophone inserts quick breaks during the rests
(ex. 3.12.)
= ca. 228
Original
Melody
wah
Tpts.
(muted)
T. Sax
B. Sax
wah wah
The isolated trumpet “wah” adds comic spark to each phrase. The whole
passage has the character of musical sleight of hand, with its sudden leaps
between registers and quick shifts among instruments. Yet the melody
remains in the foreground throughout. For early 1920s listeners, musi-
cians, and critics who saw the future of jazz in arrangement, Henderson’s
version of “Shake Your Feet” was hardly a commercial “concession” but a
way of putting theory into practice, so to speak. Meanwhile, although Paul
Inside the Strain 53
Ex. 3.13.“I Wish I Could Make You Cry” (March 1924), chorus 4
“Say! Say! Sadie” contains a similar passage (ex. 3.14). In the last eight
bars of chorus 2, Nixon again carries the melody, which is interrupted by the
trumpets (m. 29), then resumes the phrase (m. 30) only to relinquish its
resolution to the saxophones (mm. 31–32).
I Do.” This brief showcase for brass — played at nearly 200 beats per
minute, must have demanded more rehearsal than usual; judging from the
recording, it could have used even more (ex. 3.15).
Ex. 3.15.“Feelin’ the Way I Do” (May 1924), chorus 2, mm. 15–16
Cymbal Punctuation
When Kaiser Marshall began to record with Henderson in fall 1923, the
band acquired its first drummer and a new timbre for Redman’s increas-
ingly colorful arrangements. In fact, on recordings, Marshall’s chief role
lay not in his background beat on drums, which could not be successfully
recorded before the microphone era launched two years later, but in
various choked and open cymbal hits at the beginnings, middles, and ends
of phrases. Marshall proved indispensable in Redman’s constant search
for variety. In the last two weeks of June 1924, Marshall made two
notable recordings with Henderson, “Jimminy Gee!” and “Jealous.” In
the first, he (with the brass) provides punctuation and a musical punch-
line, complete with a broad “wah-wah” from the brass (ex. 3.16), and, in
the second, his choked cymbal crashes fragment the previously flowing
line (ex. 3.17).
Rhythmic Variation
Another kind of playful variation on the original melody involved rhythmic
recasting. While leaving the tune recognizable, Redman sometimes altered
its rhythm in a way that could trip up a dancer as quickly as the timbral
refraction in arrangements like “Jimminy Gee!” or “Jealous.”
An up-tempo dance arrangement of “Lots O’ Mamma” is a case in point.
Chorus 2 presents the melody in its clearest form (ex. 3.19a); chorus 4
shows its rhythmic variation (ex. 3.19b).
In chorus 4, Redman alters the original theme in two fundamental ways:
he begins the tune on the downbeat, one beat earlier than in chorus 2; and
he augments the rhythm from its basic syncopated pattern of dotted quarter
notes (in chorus 2) to a sequence of quarter and half notes, resulting in an
irregular 3 + 3 + 2 pattern of accents (in chorus 4). Textural differences high-
light the contrast between the two choruses. Chorus 2 is an informal,
overlapping dialogue between the trumpets and trombone; chorus 4 is a
chordal setting in which all the instruments—including piano and banjo—
move together in two-bar phrases separated by cymbal hits.
Inside the Strain 57
Similar rhythmic tricks transform “Say! Say! Sadie” from a lyric senti-
mental song into a peppy dance number. Chorus 1 presents the melody
clearly and sweetly in the saxophones (ex. 3.21a). Chorus 2 combines
timbral variety and rhythmic variation; Teddy Nixon’s “straight” rendition
of the melody is interrupted by syncopated variations (and saxophone inter-
jections) in mm. 3–4 and 7–8 (ex. 3.21b). Chorus 3, in contrast, varies the
parts of the melody left “straight” in the previous chorus. Here, the brass
play a syncopated version of the melody in mm. 1–2 and 5–6, punctuated
by a sharp cymbal jab at the end of each phrase (ex. 3.21c).
58 The Uncrowned King of Swing
= ca. 216
Saxes 1, 2
Tpts.
Woodblock
& Tbn.
Bb7 Eb9
Novelty
Train whistles, horse whinnies, baby cries, sobbing, laughs, and sneezes:
1923 marked a peak in the fad for musical novelty. Publishers issued how-
to books revealing the secrets of novelty playing: Louis Panico’s The
Novelty Cornetist and Zez Confrey’s Modern Course in Novelty Piano
Playing both appeared that year. And as Mark Tucker points out, even
after Paul Whiteman’s much-publicized attempt to “reform” jazz with his
“Experiment in Modern Music” at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924,
“many bands continued their imitation animal noises, solos on slide whistle
and goofus, and good old-fashioned hokum.” Piano novelty style contains
a strong streak of parody (of ragtime and player-piano music), and
Inside the Strain 59
Redman’s novelty effects would certainly seem to extend that to the realm
of the dance orchestra. Indeed, novelty’s parodistic thrust forms a natural
bridge to the signifying impulse.15
For Redman and other arrangers, songs with place names in their
titles served as invitations to feature the sounds of railroad travel. Such
sounds made their first modest appearance in the Henderson band’s
recordings in late November 1923 with “31st Street Blues,” a song that
became popular in the Charleston-marked show Runnin’ Wild, which
had opened on Broadway just a month earlier. Redman’s introduction
begins with a heraldic brass phrase that simulates the call of a train
whistle (ex. 3.22).
Ex. 3.22.“31st Street Blues” (late November 1923), introduction, mm. 1–2
Toward the end of chorus 2, the trombone and saxophones join together
for a train-whistle phrase reminiscent of the introduction to “31st Street
Blues” (ex. 3.24).
60 The Uncrowned King of Swing
technique in the domain of novelty, its effect chiefly arising from humor
and surprise.
Late summer 1924 marked the entrance of a funny little instrument
that, like the hokum on “Somebody Stole My Gal,” would cast an air of
parody on the conventional sentiments of popular songs. The goofus, or
couesnaphone, was a wind instrument with an outcropping of keyboard
and a reed for each key; it sounds like a harmonica, but with a thinner,
reedier tone. Redman must have been listening closely to the competition,
for his use of the goofus on recordings came less than two months after
Adrian Rollini had unveiled the instrument in recordings with the Little
Ramblers, a small spin-off group from the California Ramblers, a popular
white orchestra. Over the next month, from late August to late September,
Redman played goofus on three recordings: “You’ll Never Get to Heaven
With Those Eyes,” “A New Kind of Man (With a New Kind of Love for
Me),” and “Cold Mammas (Burn Me Up).”20
The band boasted yet another novelty instrument reflecting Redman’s
fascination with unusual sounds. In “Forsaken Blues” (recorded September
24, 1924), a Klaxon — the loud horn used on motor vehicles of the
period—makes its first appearance on a Henderson recording. “Forsaken
Blues” (in 32-bar popular song form, not 12-bar blues) had what a popular
“blues” needed for instant success: novelty, humor, surprise, and dance-
ability. The heavy-handed bass saxophone vamp in the introduction sets a
tongue-in-cheek mood, which is sustained by the wah-wah trumpets in
chorus 1. The Klaxon intrudes in the middle of the chorus, with a unique
sound that seems to combine a horse’s neigh and a cough.
“Forsaken Blues” features another element of early 1920s dance band
novelty: quotation. For the past year, Henderson’s recordings would occa-
sionally surprise the listener with a knowing allusion to a popular song. A
brief transitional passage in “Dicty Blues” makes clear reference to “Royal
Garden Blues,” a hit by Clarence Williams and Spencer Williams published
in 1919. Toward the end of “After the Storm,” Redman plays the pastoral
melody from Rossini’s William Tell on oboe, the first time this instrument
appears on Henderson’s recordings. In “Wait’ll You See My Gal,” Coleman
Hawkins plays conspicuous quotations of the familiar wedding march
from Wagner’s Lohengrin.
The novelty craze also saw a rash of “doodle” tunes: “Deedle-Deedle-
Dum,” “Doodle-Doo-Doo,” “Doo Wacka Doo,” and “Doodle-Um Blues,”
and Henderson’s own “Do Doodle Oom.” As in other pieces of this ilk,
Henderson’s title represents a phonetic analogue to the music’s predomi-
nant rhythm. The rhythm itself was widely heard around New York in the
early 1920s, as in Irving Berlin’s “Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil,”
a new tune for the Music Box Revue of 1922 (ex. 3.25).
having accompanied Ethel Waters in its first recording some three months
earlier, and Hannah Sylvester—known as “Harlem’s Mae West” for her
buxom figure and bawdy routines—on another recording of it just a few
weeks before. The tempos are telling. The band plays the tune at about 120
beats per minute, certainly faster than Sylvester (at ca. 86 beats per minute)
and Bessie Smith (at a glacial ca. 74 beats per minute), who sang the tune
just four days later with Henderson at the piano.22
A typical recording session with a blues or popular singer involved ad
hoc planning but little, if any, written music. “You didn’t have written
music to back singers in those days,” recalled Garvin Bushell. With its
straightforward blues form and semi-improvised polyphony behind the
singer, the band’s routine on “Midnight Blues” with Hannah Sylvester could
easily have been worked up in the studio and played without much
rehearsal or written music. But the band’s instrumental version of
“Midnight Blues” reflects more planning, writing, and rehearsal. The two-
bar vamp in the introduction, for example, reappears at the end of a ten-bar
transition. The heavy emphasis on beats one and four in the vamp then
becomes the accompanimental rhythm for solos in the two choruses
following the transition. Recycled introductory material would become a
Don Redman trademark.23
Unison duets reveal another Redman fingerprint: melodic variation
written in a soloistic style, as in chorus 4 featuring Redman (on clarinet)
and Chambers (on trumpet) (ex. 3.26)
Ex. 3.27.“Gulf Coast Blues” (June 7, 1923), Elmer Chambers solo, mm. 7–8; “Hawaiian
Blues” (August 18, 1922), Johnny Dunn’s Original Jazz Hounds, Johnny Dunn solo,
mm. 7–8
“Down Hearted Blues” reveals an even more obvious source for blues
playing. Bessie Smith’s version of this popular blues was a bona fide hit.
Recorded in February, it was released in June, between the two dates on
which the Henderson band recorded the piece—in mid-May and again on
June 28. Bessie Smith’s approach to the melody must have made a strong
impression on at least two members of the band. Smith’s melody contrasts
markedly with the tune on the sheet music (see ex. 3.28). Although the
written melody falls from the third degree, Smith stretches the tune’s range
and descends from the fifth, G—a prime instance of her tendency to use a
“center tone.” Following her lead, an unknown tenor saxophonist and Elmer
Chambers also start on the fifth, use her phrases, and, in the case of Cham-
bers, play her version nearly note for note. (All lines are transcribed in C
major, the key of Smith’s recording. The sheet music is in E ; the original key
of the Henderson recording is A .)25
Inside the Strain 65
Ex. 3.28. Melody of “Down Hearted Blues”: as published by Alberta Hunter and Lovie
Austin (1923); as sung by Bessie Smith (February 15, 1923); as played by Fletcher
Henderson’s musicians (June 28, 1923), tenor saxophone and trumpet solos
(choruses 1 and 3, respectively)
Ex. 3.29.“Lonesome Journey Blues.” Top line: Howard Scott solo with Henderson
(December 1923); bottom line: Thomas Morris Past Jazz Masters (April 1923),
Morris solo
“Chime Blues,” and recorded it as such in a rare solo session in early 1923.
The work offers an unusual perspective on the blues. The “dicty”—or high-
class—element of the piece is the four-bar chimes break that initiates the
twelve-bar blues choruses.
There is something deliberately ironic—and perhaps self-effacing—in
the sound of chimes within a blues by Henderson. The piece perhaps
suggests a gentle mockery toward black migration—the rural rube (blues)
dressing up as an urban sophisticate (chimes). If so, the mockery was rather
reflexive, for in a period when Henderson was known as “one of the best
informed among contemporary ‘blues’ specialists,” he took up residence in
one of Harlem’s most “dicty” neighborhoods, the exclusive stretch of West
139th Street known as “Striver’s Row.” Writer Carl Van Vechten even
referred to Henderson by name as one of the Row’s “rich negroes” in Nigger
Heaven, his popular novel of black Harlem life published in 1926.26
The piece also fits perfectly within the band’s aesthetic of kaleidoscopic
juxtaposition, although in this case Don Redman seems to have little or
nothing to do with its conception or arrangement. In the first chorus of an
arrangement credited to Raymond Mathews and published by Down South
(the race firm nominally headed by Henderson) the four-bar chimes break
segues directly into an eight-bar passage of rambunctious ensemble
heterophony a la New Orleans jazz. Again we hear the Henderson band
negotiating musical tensions inside the strain. Above all, the piece may also
be heard as a savvy demonstration of musical versatility: an effort to gesture
toward a conventional racial marker (the blues) while undercutting it with
material far outside the stereotype.
Whatever the attitude behind its conception, “Dicty Blues” was a blues
carefully tailored for New York tastes. The fact that it was recorded by three
different companies, including the prestigious Columbia label, suggests that
record company managers considered it a potential hit. By importing the
“dicty” sound of chimes into a traditional African-American idiom with a
southern pedigree, Henderson lightheartedly captures the unique tensions in
black Manhattan in the early 1920s, where aspiring New Negroes sought to
refashion traditional cultural forms.
Hot Soloists
An arranging aesthetic that depended so much on variety and contrast
required a cadre of distinctive soloists. Henderson had three key figures,
each with a unique sound and style: trumpeter Howard Scott, saxophonist
Coleman Hawkins, and trombonist Charlie Green.
Scott, whose work with Henderson would be all but eclipsed by the
arrival of Louis Armstrong, stood out as the band’s first hot trumpet. His
plunger-muted style—now chattering, now growling—owed a lot to Johnny
Dunn, once again, the first cornetist to use a plunger on record. One of his
more striking solos occurs in the first chorus of “Lots O’ Mamma.” Over
stoptime accompaniment, his impish sound projects an almost speech-like
quality (ex. 3.30).
Henderson relied on Scott to cook up a little excitement with a solo or a
lively obbligato line, but the dominant solo voice in the band belonged to
Coleman Hawkins. When Hawkins joined the Henderson band in early
68 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 3.30.“Lots O’ Mamma,” Howard Scott solo (with trombone line of stoptime
chords), mm. 1–4
Hawkins brought his big sound and his flair for the dramatic to the
Henderson band, and the bandleader and his chief arranger made sure he
was heard. His first extended solos appear on recordings of Henderson’s
“Dicty Blues” and “Do Doodle Oom.” Hawkins’s solos stand out as the
expression of the strongest single voice on the records. Each of the solos
features the traits of Hawkins’s early style that Schuller has identified so
precisely: the wide range; the clipped, slap-tongue articulation; the
“harmonic” rather than “linear/melodic” choice of notes; the rhythmic
“stiffness”; the “forceful attack”; and the full-bodied tone and “dynamic
energy.”28
Although recorded within two months of one another, the “Dicty Blues”
solos are notably dissimilar. Even the two Vocalion takes, with nearly iden-
tical beginnings and endings, are almost entirely different in their middle
eight bars. The first Vocalion solo (ex. 3.31) has a distinctively undulant
contour. About every four measures Hawkins reaches a stressed high pitch,
a melodic peak, balanced by regular dips down to low E . Hawkins
connects the peaks and valleys with the bald arpeggios that characterize
many of his early solos. In short, he is “running the changes”—as jazz
musicians describe playing the chords unimaginatively—while showing a
sense of musical drama.
Today, such a solo may seem to have the drama of a seesaw. But in
1923, a solo imparted excitement less through ingenious melodic nuance
than through more overt qualities like a distinctive tone and incessant
rhythmic activity, two traits that were surely the most appealing qualities
of Howard Scott’s style as well.
Meanwhile, Hawkins was occasionally out-of-sync harmonically with
the band. A few details can serve to explain this to a listener with access to
the recordings. On the downbeat of the last full measure of the Columbia
solo, for example, Hawkins lands hard on the fourth degree, making for a
dissonance with his accompaniment’s tonic chord. In the Ajax solo, the
discrepancy is more obvious and systematic. For six measures (mm. 3–8),
Hawkins is two beats ahead of the band. He finally realigns himself in
Inside the Strain 69
At about the same time the band began playing at the Roseland Ball-
room, Henderson acquired a new trombonist, Charlie Green. “Big Green,”
as Rex Stewart referred to him (see chap. 2), could play with a sound as
broad and raucous as his behavior. Although usually celebrated as one of
the first hot jazz trombone players, Green made a mark in his first few
recordings with the band as a versatile player. On sweet popular song
arrangements and hot dance numbers, he could play a melody as clearly
and straight as Teddy Nixon, whom he replaced. On blues tunes and other
slower numbers, he exhibits a roaring, gritty style. Frequently, he tears off
a startling hot break that soars above most of his fellow band members.
The highlight of Green’s first six weeks in the band was a mammoth solo
that forms the centerpiece of “The Gouge of Armour Avenue.”
Over a shuffling F-minor vamp, Green constructs a heaving, monstrous
rhapsody coarsened by growls and smears (ex. 3.32). Much of the solo’s
expressive tension arises from Green’s blues-drenched blurring of C (the 5th
degree) and B (the flatted 5th), which exerts a strong pull to the tonic. The
force of his tone against a mute adds to the palpable strain. Although he
remains within a fifth in the beginning, Green leaps to the top of his range in
m. 8 and closes (m. 27) in the murky low register, ultimately encompassing
70 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 3.32.“The Gouge of Armour Avenue” (July 31, 1924), Charlie Green solo
H
e was big and fat, and wore high top shoes with hooks in them
and long underwear down to his socks. When I got a load of that, I said
to myself, who in the hell is this guy? It can’t be Louis Armstrong. But
when he got on the bandstand, it was a different story.”1 Don Redman’s
recollection of his first encounter with Louis Armstrong offers a vivid image
of the twenty-three-year-old trumpet player. It also projects the self-image
of Henderson’s band in 1924, in which sartorial dash paired with polished
music making to create a sophisticated aura. Armstrong’s rube-like appear-
ance clashed with the band’s urbanity, and it took some time for the young
trumpet player from New Orleans via Chicago to be accepted into the New
York band. Storyville had met Striver’s Row and found little common
ground. In Armstrong’s first rehearsal with Henderson, the band was playing
through “an intricate, well-marked arrangement” (either a “medley of Irish
waltzes” or the sentimental ballad “By the Waters of Minnetonka,”
depending on the source), and, as Henderson told it:
One passage began triple fortissimo, and then it suddenly softened down
on the next passage to double pianissimo. The score was properly marked
“pp” to indicate the pianissimo, but when everybody else softened down,
there was Louis, still blowing as hard as he could. I stopped the band, and
told him—pretty sharply, I guess—that in this band we read the marks as
well as the notes. I asked him if he could read the marks and he said he
could. But then I asked him: “What about ‘pp’?” and he answered, “Why,
it means pound plenty!”2
On the surface, the story shows that Armstrong struggled with music
reading, a point some historians have emphasized. Kaiser Marshall, however,
recalled that Armstrong was already “a good reader” by the time he joined
the band. He did know what “pp” meant, so his comment was not made in
ignorance but in humor — as an attempt to break up the tension that
Henderson created by pointing out the mistake. Nevertheless, upon his
arrival in New York, Armstrong neither looked the part—nor quite played
the part—of a downtown dance musician. The disparity between Armstrong
and the rest of the band, at first an apparent liability, became a rich source
of creative tension, ultimately pitting Redman’s arranging concept against
the solo improvisational approach that Armstrong presented. Redman
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 73
claimed that, “Louis, his style, and his feeling, changed our whole idea about
the band musically.” Redman’s statement sums up the standard interpreta-
tion, which involves tracing how Armstrong changed Henderson’s
band—but there is more to it than that.3
No doubt Armstrong’s brief but influential tenure in Fletcher Henderson’s
band in the mid-1920s forms a crucial moment in the history of jazz. It
started on the bandstand. Howard Scott, sitting next to Armstrong in the
trumpet section, watched the reaction of listeners and dancers:
shown in chapter 2. Henderson and his sidemen were praised because they
quietly challenged the primitivist stereotype. They challenged it not with hot
solos but with their refined image, reading ability, difficult arrangements,
and prestigious jobs. If Armstrong later became the first hero of jazz history,
he was clearly not a Renaissance man. Indeed, Locke’s New Negro makes
no mention of Louis Armstrong.
Finally, the Great Man approach has obscured another key point. At
most, Armstrong’s powerful presence accelerated a process that had already
begun. Each new reed and brass player that Henderson hired since 1923
gave a new jazz voice to the band: Coleman Hawkins (August 1923),
Howard Scott (November 1923), Charlie Green (July 1924), Armstrong and
clarinetist Buster Bailey (October 1924), and, soon thereafter, the smooth-
toned trumpeter Joe Smith (April 1925). These additions had a cumulative
effect: by mid-1925 musicians who could play “hot” dominated the brass
and reed sections. Behind them stood a rhythm section (Henderson, Dixon,
Marshall, and Escudero) that had crystallized into a unified group after
more than a year of active public performing and recording. No wonder the
whole ensemble brought a new sense of drive to its expert reading of
arrangements.
An added stimulus came from outside the band. Changes in songwriting
and publication play a significant, though underestimated, role in stoking
how bands played. By 1923 the Melrose Brothers Music Co. in Chicago,
for example, had begun to inspire jazz-based songwriting, with pieces by
such jazz musicians as Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton. The publishing
equivalent of “race records,” Melrose billed itself as “the House that Blues
Built” with the “World’s Greatest Collection of Blues-Stomps and Rags.”
It launched a “syncopation series” in 1923, and two of its publications
served as the basis for the most frequently mentioned Henderson record-
ings made during the Armstrong year: “Copenhagen” and “Sugar Foot
Stomp.” Meanwhile, the Gershwin musical Lady Be Good!, which opened
in New York barely two months after Armstrong’s arrival, drove a nail in
the coffin of operetta and moved Broadway toward more rhythmic, jazz-
inflected scores. About the same time, in the November 12, 1924, edition
of Variety, columnist Abel Green noted that “the current disk recording
vogue in dance numbers is for the ‘hot’ order.” Henderson, whom Allen
suggests made “a conscious effort to maintain good relations with the
music publishers,” stayed abreast of these trends in songwriting and sheet-
music publication. Something had changed in those domains, and the
Great Man theory alone cannot explain it.8
Links between style and repertory explain something else about
Henderson’s “Armstrong year.” What may seem like an unwonted variety in
performing styles is better understood as a consistent approach to repertory.
The band’s style depended on the piece. Armstrong’s solos “cause the listener
to make an aural shift,” as Schuller has written, partly because Armstrong
made no such adaptation. Hired as the band’s chief hot soloist, he
approached every piece as raw material for hot improvisation.9
Tuning our ears to the 1920s, then, we hear Armstrong not as a “solitary
star” in the night sky but as a strong streak of color in a crazy quilt. That
is the only way to hear the band’s rendition of a new popular song called
“Words,” for example. The arrangement, recorded on October 30, 1924, pits
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 75
symphonic gestures against hot jazz in the spirit of Paul Whiteman’s “Exper-
iment in Modern Music” earlier that year. Introductions, interludes, and
endings invited the most elaborate symphonic effects. For example, the
arrangement opens with a heraldic fanfare worthy of a concert overture—
or is it a parody of such a piece? Modulating interludes further cast a formal
air on the whole score. The brief but dramatic coda intercepts the melody
and accents a device that Redman used frequently in 1924–25: secondary
rag, a rhythmic effect that superimposes a repeated three-beat pattern over
a four-beat meter, so that the pattern begins on a different beat in each reit-
eration (ex. 4.1).
early years of jazz scholarship), Gunther Schuller implies that the tug-of-war
is unintentional, an inevitable outcome of a disparity between Armstrong’s
advanced improvisational style and the band’s backward sensibility. Actu-
ally, the backwardness resides entirely in the song itself, which harks back
to minstrelsy, with dialect lyrics (omitted by Henderson’s band), simple
harmony, and small-range melody. The archaic style invites a generous
helping of parodistic novelty: animal imitations, a solo on a saxophone
mouthpiece, and a “doo-wacka” brass trio. These “deliberately banal
figures” frame Armstrong’s solo and make it “wholly out of keeping with the
comic tone of the rest of the piece.”11
Indeed, Redman plays up the contrast by giving Armstrong a spare
accompaniment, setting a precedent for the entire Armstrong year. That
accompaniment had a name: “western” style. Trumpeter Louis Metcalf
recalled that “the controversy about the two different styles of playing,
Eastern and Western, came to a head when Louis Armstrong joined Fletcher
Henderson.” Rex Stewart describes “western style” in his memoir Boy
Meets Horn, as “a heavy accented back beat on the second and fourth bars.
When you soloed, it was called ‘taking a Boston.’ ” He also emphasizes
that, “about 1923,” very few New York musicians soloed in this manner
because it had only just begun to come east through Oliver and Armstrong.
Although Stewart does not explain why the name of an eastern city
denoted a solo backed by a “western” style accompaniment, the essence of
his description — an accented backbeat — sums up the kind of support
Armstrong enjoyed as Henderson’s chief hot soloist. We can hear that kind
of accompaniment behind a few solos in the band’s pre-Armstrong period,
but once Armstrong came on board, it was reserved almost exclusively for
him. In “Go ’Long Mule,” the “western” style accompaniment helps
Armstrong stand apart from the rest of the band.12
More than that, however, the band streamlines the song’s already simple
harmonic foundation further to stress Armstrong’s difference. The modified
harmony comes from a language Armstrong knew well: the last eight bars
of the twelve-bar blues (see fig. 4.1).
Fig. 4.1.“Go ’Long Mule,” showing modified harmony under Armstrong’s solo
With another soloist, the western style accompaniment and altered chords
might have created little distinction from the surrounding musical context,
but here they frame a spectacular solo—an early instance of the new coher-
ence Armstrong brought to solo improvisation.13 In other words, beyond the
considerable surface appeal of his sheer power and range, Armstrong also
built solos that make melodic sense, that “tell a story,” to use a common
metaphor for jazz improvisation after Armstrong. Armstrong’s solo can be
said to tell a story because it features the elements that all storytellers need:
statement, contrast, development, climax, and return (ex. 4.2).
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 77
Ex. 4.2.“Go ’Long Mule” (October 7, 1924), Armstrong solo and original melody
To carry the metaphor further, Armstrong uses two basic melodic figures,
or “characters,” in his story: a syncopated figure (emphasizing upbeats) and
an unsyncopated figure (emphasizing downbeats). The figures tend to appear
in pairs that form larger phrases: the syncopated figure in even-numbered
measures (for example, the pickup and mm. 4, 6, 12), and the unsyncopated
figure in odd-numbered measures (for example, mm. 1, 3, 5, 9). By pairing
them in this way, Armstrong creates a dialogic effect that usually demands
at least two players; that is, he creates call-and-response. The climax appears
just before the midpoint in the two-bar arpeggiated break of measures 7–8,
with its peak on a high G. The climactic break features another crucial
pitch: D (m. 8). With that pitch, Armstrong creates a strong harmonic thrust
toward the second half of the solo. In musical terms, he tonicizes the
subdominant, so that musical material that repeats in the original song now
sounds like a logical continuation of the story, rather than a rehash. The two
figures, in various guises, continue their call-and-response dialogue to the
78 The Uncrowned King of Swing
denouement in the last five measures, where the syncopated figure takes
over for two consecutive bars (mm. 12–13), creating unprecedented tension
before the final resolution in the solo’s last note, which brings the listener full
circle back to the note (E ) with which Armstrong began. Given two consec-
utive eight-bar refrains, Armstrong effectively constructs a continuous
sixteen-bar statement dramatized by dialogue between two contrasting
musical figures. He has told a short story in music. “He was backin’ up
everything I had been trying to tell,” said Louis Metcalf, “only he made
them understand.”14
Don Redman understood. In “Go ’Long Mule,” we catch a glimpse of
how he began to cope with Armstrong’s impact. The whole arrangement
derives from a heavily doctored stock (fig. 4.2).
Redman restructures the piece by (1) omitting its vamp, (2) using the verse
as a bridge, to create a thirty-two bar AABA song form in the arrangement’s
first section, (3) making sixteen-bar strains by repeating the eight-bar chorus,
(4) emphasizing color changes and novelty, including breaks, and, as we’ve
seen, (5) streamlining the harmony for Armstrong’s solo. In short, Redman’s
changes emphasize both contrast and continuity. They also create an effect
that will become a Redman trademark: formal symmetry. The hot solos of
Charlie Green and Louis Armstrong stand like two pillars framing the
arrangement’s novelty centerpiece, the C-minor trio (labeled C in the dia-
gram). There, in contrast to the uneventful stock, the regular pulse shifts to
stoptime and the soloists (first a clarinet then a bass saxophone) volley two-
bar phrases with the brass section. In sum, Redman’s tendencies toward vari-
ety, contrast, novelty, and parody remain in tact, but he also reveals an
this arrangement is RED HOT as written. Play what you see and the
horns will start smoking. Take it from us as publishers of the “World’s
Greatest Collection of Blues-Stomps and Rags”—COPENHAGEN is red
hot and then some!
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 81
A habitual stock doctor, Redman could not allow the Henderson band
simply to play “Copenhagen” as Melrose published it, no matter how “red
hot” it appeared to be “as written.” Figure 4.3 shows how much of the
structure and solos of the Wolverines’s recording found their way into the
Melrose stock arrangement, and how Redman then rearranged the stock for
Henderson’s band within a month of its publication.
How can we know that Redman used the stock and not the Wolverines
recording as his model, and why does it matter? Schuller’s focus on record-
ings leads him to the conclusion that Redman’s arrangement “reveals some
parallels” to the Wolverines version. Indeed it does, but Schuller’s analysis,
like much early jazz criticism, omits the mediation of published music in the
process of transmission and therefore underestimates the importance
Henderson placed on reading music. We can see and hear that in two partic-
ularly revealing passages identified in the diagram as the first “B” strain and
Fig. 4.3.“Copenhagen”
Wolverines Stock Henderson
May 6, 1924 ©October 1, 1924 October 30, 1924
A(16) ens. A(16) ens. C(16) brass (4)
ens. (4)
clars. (4)
ens. (4)
B(12) clar. solo B(12) clar. solo [:B12:] clars.
B(12) tenor sax solo B(12) tenor sax solo B(12) tpt. solo
A(16) ens. A(16) ens. A(16) ens.
D(16) cor. solo (8) D(16) cor. solo D(16) tpt. trio
ens. (8)
C(16) brass/reeds (4) C(16) brass/reeds (4) C(16) clars. (4)
ens. (4) ens. (4) brass (4)
brass/reeds (4) brass/reeds (4) saxes (4)
ens. (4) ens. (4) brass (4)
[:E12:] tuba (4) [:E12:] bass (4) [:E12:] tbn. (4)
ens. (8) ens. (8) ens. (8)
D(16) ens. F(16) ens. F(16) clar./brass
C(10) ens. C(10) ens. C(7) brass/reeds (4)
ens.(3)
Coda (14) brass (4) [A]
clars. (4) [C]
ens. (2) [A/C]
ens. (4) [C]
82 The Uncrowned King of Swing
the “F” strain. The “F” strain, a syncopated full-ensemble passage did not
appear in the Wolverines version. It only appears in the stock (ex. 4.4) and
in other recordings based on it such as Henderson’s.
Even more telling is the first “B” strain (ex. 4.5). Here, the Wolverines
feature a clarinet solo in E , and the stock arrangement alters it slightly and
transposes it to B . From there, Redman takes the stock’s version of the clar-
inet solo and harmonizes it in block voicing for his clarinet trio: Bailey,
Hawkins, and himself. Clearly, Redman has adapted the printed version,
not the earlier recorded version. Significantly, the trio gets a western style
accompaniment, with just a light backbeat tick from Marshall, as if he were
supporting a hot solo.
To make room for Armstrong, Redman transfers the stock’s tenor saxo-
phone solo (the other “B” section) to him. What did the proud Coleman
Hawkins, Henderson’s tenor star, think of that? We’ll never know, but it was
a reasonable choice. The “B” section is a twelve-bar blues, and despite his
exhibition on “Dicty Blues” a year earlier, Hawkins was not a fluent blues
interpreter. Armstrong was, and the results are powerful. Armstrong once
again delivers an authoritative solo with an audible “storyline” (ex. 4.6).
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 83
Like a singer, Armstrong parses this blues into three four-bar phrases.
And, as in a blues vocal, the first two phrases begin similarly, with a five-note
figure (cf. the pickup and m. 1, and mm. 4–5), and the last phrase begins
with a climactic contrast (mm. 8–9). Armstrong further shapes his solo into
a coherent, story-like statement by creating three types of figures in each
phrase: a two-part call-and-response pattern followed by a brief tag. Each
figure lasts two measures or less and typically straddles the barline. The
final phrase provides a final summing up, encompassing the solo’s entire
almost two-octave range. The whole thing sounds improvised, but by the
time he recorded it, at least, Armstrong had set the solo as firmly as if he had
written it down. The alternate take reveals that Armstrong made only three
slight changes in pitch or rhythm to his original effort (see footnotes 1, 2,
and 3 in ex. 4.6). When Armstrong played the solo in public, it struck
listeners as new and unusual. Louis Metcalf recalled a midnight show at
Harlem’s Apollo Theater featuring Armstrong with Henderson’s band. “The
first number they played was ‘Copenhagen.’ And Louis’ solo was so good.
But different, and the audience didn’t know about how much to applaud.”16
Part of the reason Armstrong sounded “different” was the contrasting
sound coming from the horn of the man who replaced Howard Scott in
April 1925: Joe Smith. Joe was the youngest of three trumpet-playing Smith
brothers—including Russell and Luke—from Ripley, Ohio, all of whom
played in Henderson’s band. Born in 1902 (and thus a year younger than
Armstrong), he had initially joined Henderson briefly on tour with Ethel
Waters and the Black Swan Troubadours in February 1922. Back in New
York a few months later, he played in dance and theater orchestras and with
blues singers such as Mamie Smith (no relation) before rejoining Henderson
in 1925. Joe Smith’s place in the band had probably been cleared by
Fletcher’s wife Leora, who seems to have been particularly involved with the
fortunes of the trumpet section and has been generally underestimated as a
force in Henderson’s career. In her recollections published in Shapiro and
Hentoff ’s Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya, Leora gives particular attention to her
memories of Joe, whom she called “Toots” and knew “before he could even
84 The Uncrowned King of Swing
play trumpet.” She reserved special praise for Joe’s “big soft beautiful tone.”
Joe seems to have served as a kind of surrogate younger brother for Leora.
Before marrying Henderson, after all, she had been the wife of Joe’s eldest
brother, Russell, who would replace Armstrong in late 1925 and serve as
Henderson’s lead trumpet player well into the 1930s. Coleman Hawkins,
who also had classical training, also appreciated Joe, “a very sensitive
player” with a “very pretty tone.” Unlike Armstrong, Smith “played quiet,”
as Hawkins put it. Louis Metcalf summed up the difference this way: “Louis
represented the Western style of jazz, while Joe Smith was the Eastern.”
Even at the end of 1925, just before Armstrong’s return to Chicago, Variety
reported “a considerable discussion among colored musicians as to who
ranks the highest in the east as cornetists. It is claimed by many that the best
two are Joe Smith and Louis Armstrong.” Bessie Smith (no relation) sang
with both, but she preferred Joe’s modest clarity to Armstrong’s boldness.
“Bessie Smith was just crazy about his playing,” recalled Leora. Henderson
himself called Joe Smith “the most soulful trumpeter I ever knew.”17
No wonder, then, that soon after he joined Henderson, Joe Smith earned
some prominent solo spots, most notably in a new tune called “What-Cha-
Call-’Em Blues.” Here again, the band plays an adapted stock, this time by
Elmer Schoebel, a “key figure” in 1920s jazz. A white pianist, composer, and
arranger, Schoebel was a talented and versatile musician who collaborated
as songwriter on tunes that became early jazz standards (such as “Farewell
Blues,” “Bugle Call Rag,” and “Nobody’s Sweetheart”) and had led the
Chicago-based New Orleans Rhythm Kings in a manner similar to the way
Henderson and Redman ran their own band: with discipline and an effort
to balance crisp arrangements and improvised solos.18
Predictably, Redman’s adaptation of the stock features an entirely new
introduction featuring call-and-response between saxophones and brass, a
passage played with startling combination of ensemble precision and relax-
ation rarely heard from the band before now. The saxophones’ bluesy, fading
glissando break in mm. 7–8 stands out as a perfectly unified effect (see ex.
4.7), echoing a similar break the clarinet trio had featured in “Copenhagen.”
Smith then enters with a syncopated, Armstrong-like pickup, but his solo’s
bell-like clarity immediately sets him apart from the band’s star. The solo
sets the mood of relaxed energy that pervades the entire recording. Yet Smith
is not improvising here, nor would he have been expected to in the first
chorus, where arranging convention calls for unadorned melody. Smith para-
phrases the melody, embellishing here and there with syncopations and
neighbor notes but largely respecting the pitches and overall contour as
printed in the stock (ex. 4.8).
The recording’s most remarkable quality lies not in solos, however, but in
the way the entire ensemble imparts a loose-limbed improvisatory quality to
written music. The performance did not even require an Armstrong solo. But
like “Copenhagen,” “What-Cha-Call-’Em Blues” had come to Henderson’s
band with jazz credentials; and this time it did not come from Chicago but
from much closer to Henderson’s home base at the Roseland Ballroom.
Indeed, the piece was published by Triangle Music Publishing Company,
housed inside the Roseland Building itself. To get this piece, Henderson
didn’t even have to leave the building.
“Sugar Foot Stomp” came from an even more proximate source: Arm-
strong. Originally titled “Dipper Mouth Blues,” it had been written by him
and King Oliver in 1923 and recorded twice by Oliver’s band. Don Redman’s
story of the tune’s transmission is well known among jazz musicians and
86 The Uncrowned King of Swing
The piece would become a keystone in the swing era repertoire, with
recordings by Benny Goodman (in Henderson’s revision of Redman’s 1925
arrangement), Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, and Chick Webb, among others.
Beginning with Armstrong in Henderson’s band, a tradition developed in
which trumpet players imitated or paraphrased King Oliver’s famous solo
on “Dipper Mouth Blues.” In Redman’s words, “[‘Sugar Foot Stomp’] was
the record that made Fletcher Henderson nationally known.” It ranked
among the best-selling records of late 1925. Henderson himself later
referred to it as his favorite recording among the hundreds he had made as
a bandleader.20
Gunther Schuller, however, would have none of it. “The whole associa-
tion with Oliver’s ‘Dipper Mouth Blues,’ the fact that Armstrong is supposed
to have brought the music with him from Chicago, is the kind of ‘legendary’
material jazz writers have frequently pounced upon in lieu of criteria based
on musical analysis.” Cutting through the crust of legend, Schuller went
back to the source and pronounced Henderson’s recording of it to be of
“very mixed quality.” Schuller holds that “Redman is responsible for the
negative elements. . . . The shrill and badly played clarinet-trio choruses and
the later sustained ‘symphonic’ sections are out of place next to the solos or
semi-improvised passages.” The passages certainly stand out to any listener
who knows Oliver’s original “Dipper Mouth Blues,” where ensemble
polyphony is the textural norm, even in Oliver’s famous “solo,” around
which the clarinet and trombone weave independent lines. Perhaps we can
hear the “problem” passages differently, however, with ears more finely
tuned to Redman’s tendencies in the early 1920s. Indeed, in light of the
willful variety in his pre-Armstrong arrangements, the anomaly of the clar-
inet trio and the “sustained ‘symphonic’ sections” seem precisely to the
point: the more contrast they provided, the better they fulfilled Redman’s
aims. The “mixed quality” of the arrangement is more aptly heard as delib-
erately mixed styles.21
A closer look at those “sustained ‘symphonic’ sections” gives a clue to
what Redman was up to. The first of them directly follows the vaudevillian
vocal break, “oh play that thing!” borrowed from Oliver’s version. In the
Oliver recording, the break flows directly into a boisterous New Orleans-
style out-chorus, all musicians blowing independent lines in harmonious
counterpoint. In the Henderson recording, however, the break leads to the
enriched blues chords that Schuller calls “symphonic.” Another scholar has
argued that, far from “symphonic,” the sustained chords actually serve to
imitate “old-time gospel music” as played on a “country harmonium.”
(There might be something to that: Fred Longshaw had played such an
instrument to accompany Bessie Smith and Armstrong in their famous
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 87
recording of “St. Louis Blues” just four months earlier.) Whether Redman
was tapping an “old-time gospel” or a “symphonic” sound here may be
debatable. But one thing is clear: Redman intends a sharp, even comic,
contrast between the semi-improvised passages (a la Oliver) and the
sustained-chord passages.22
The same can be said for the clarinet trio. The passage may be, as
Schuller states, “shrill and badly played” (the early recordings reveal many
instances where the musicians could not play—or did not have time to per-
fect—the material Redman gave them). But the artistic goal behind the pas-
sage remains a familiar one from Redman’s other efforts: startling variety.
The passage stands out in a number of ways: timbre (as a clarinet trio
between brass statements), harmony (as the only nonblues section in an oth-
erwise straightforward twelve-bar blues piece), and length (as the only six-
teen-bar strain). In its good-natured aimlessness and harmonic simplicity,
the passage recalls the brass duet in “He’s the Hottest Man in Town” and the
muted “doo-wacka” brass trio in “Go ’Long Mule,” both of which were
tongue-in-cheek additions to stock arrangements. Moreover, like the chimes
in “Dicty Blues,” the clarinet trio functions as a novelty effect that helps dis-
tance Redman’s revision from the piece’s southern blues folk roots.
Other signs that Redman was playfully signifying on Oliver’s version lie
in the framing passages: the introduction and the brief tag ending. Oliver
had begun his version with a dramatic arpeggiated diminished chord: a
tense harmonic effect resolved just before the first chorus. Redman retains
the diminished-chord phrase but then introduces a new harmonic twist. In
mm. 3 and 4, instead of arriving emphatically on the dominant (F) as in
“Dipper Mouth Blues,” the band plays a series of descending parallel chords
in the “wrong” key, C minor, as follows: Cmin / B / A / G. Finally, the alto
saxophone steps down to the dominant at the last possible moment (the last
beat of m. 4), and the tonic arrives “on time” at the downbeat of the first
chorus (ex. 4.9). The effect is a harmonic sleight-of-hand, delaying and
obscuring the tonic key (B).
The tag ending also features a surprise. Throughout the arrangement, the
band plays many more breaks than Oliver had featured, adding to the score’s
textural and timbral variety. Many of them are linked by a common
rhythmic figure derived from the “oh-play-that-thing” vocal break. The tag
ending for saxophones uses the same figure (ex. 4.10), which actually begins
in the twelfth bar of the final chorus, as if it were just another break based
on the same rhythm.
88 The Uncrowned King of Swing
It could have acted as the final cadence, too, for it is a root position tonic
chord. But Redman’s ending, extending the pattern two more bars and
dropping the root a half-step for each reiteration, recalls the deceptive
descending chord effect from the introduction. The piece ends indecisively,
on a seventh chord, a cliffhanger. Ending a performance on a tonic-seventh
chord was common in the 1920s, but voicing the chord with the seventh on
the bottom was much more unusual in 1925. To the very last note,
Redman’s “Sugar Foot Stomp” transforms the stylistically consistent
“Dipper Mouth Blues” into a colorful prism of New York jazz.
For all its clever spin on Oliver’s version, Henderson’s recording
preserves a key feature of the original: the three-chorus showcase for the
trumpet soloist. Armstrong plays Oliver’s solo nearly note for note,
departing from his mentor’s approach less in pitch than in tone quality. In
contrast to Oliver’s quasi-vocal, plunger-softened wah-wah effects,
Armstrong’s tone slices through the band, stands far above its accompani-
ment, whereas Oliver’s — still rooted in New Orleans collectivity — is
merely the most prominent thread in a polyphonic knit. Once again, the
accompaniment helps to foreground Armstrong’s solo with a strong
western-style backbeat from Kaiser Marshall’s cymbal. On top of that,
another accompanimental layer appears in the form of riffs in the saxo-
phones: short, repeated humming figures that provide both harmonic and
rhythmic support. In Armstrong’s first chorus, in particular, we hear the
kind of texture that would become formulaic a decade later: a soloist
soaring over a charged network of riffs played by the opposite section of
the band (in this case, a brass soloist accompanied by reed riffs), grounded
on a solid rhythmic groove. After setting the groove and riffs, the accom-
paniment then proceeds through a variety of irregular stoptime patterns,
playfully interacting with the solo in a way that anticipates Redman’s last
arrangements before Armstrong left.
The whole process—including the central placement and textures of
Armstrong’s solo passage—resembled the Redman stock-doctoring touch.
Yet in this case, Redman did not work from a stock. In fact, the usual
process was reversed. Instead of adapting published music, Redman’s
arrangement itself got adapted and published by none other than the
Melrose Brothers. The copyright card for “Sugar Foot Stomp” at the
Library of Congress gives joint credit for the Melrose arrangement to
Redman and Elmer Schoebel, but only Schoebel’s name appears on the
stock. The card also shows the first copyright claim date as August 15,
1925, eleven weeks after Henderson’s band recorded the piece for
Columbia. Schoebel’s stock actually conflates ideas from Henderson’s and
Oliver’s recordings. (In fig. 4.4, letters A–F denote changes in instrumen-
tation, harmony, or texture, even though all but one chorus is in twelve-bar
blues form.)
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 89
The arrows point from the source of materials published in the stock. In the case of
the cornet/trumpet solo, arrows stem from both sides because, although Armstrong
played Oliver’s solo, the stock is lifted from Henderson’s record. Yet in some cases,
Schoebel bypassed “Sugar Foot Stomp” in favor of “Dipper Mouth Blues.” In the
introduction, he replaced Redman’s deceptive C-minor twist with Oliver’s straight-
forward move to the dominant. Schoebel also omitted Redman’s whole-note
“symphonic” (or gospelized harmonium) brass choir strain and the sixteen-bar clar-
inet trio. But elements of these two strains coalesce in the stock’s third strain: a reed
trio composed over the enriched blues progression Redman used in the “symphonic”
chorus (labeled [E] in the diagram). The stock also borrows the final chorus and coda
of Oliver’s version. Henderson’s final chorus restates the opening chorus in full
ensemble; Oliver’s changes it. In “Dipper Mouth Blues” Armstrong (as lead trumpet
player) plays a line different from that of the opening choruses, while Honoré Dutrey
restates his trombone line. The stock reflects this alteration, preserving Armstrong’s
new line and Dutrey’s old one for the final chorus. Neither line, however, can be
heard in Henderson’s recording. The stock’s debt to Redman is further revealed in
its separation of the saxophones and brass in the first two choruses. Clinching the
case that Schoebel worked from Henderson’s recording, the stock includes a literal
transcription of Charlie Green’s solo.
90 The Uncrowned King of Swing
revisit “Sugar Foot Stomp” several times, taking a fleeter tempo but
preserving the substance of the popular 1925 version to a remarkable
degree. The piece, in Henderson’s adaptation of Redman’s revision, would
also become a standard in Benny Goodman’s repertoire from 1935
onward.23
Given the legendary and canonical aura surrounding “Copenhagen”
and “Sugar Foot Stomp,” it may be easy to agree with Schuller that
Henderson’s recordings in the period directly after “Sugar Foot Stomp” “do
not represent any significant steps forward.” In many ways, in fact,
“T.N.T.” matches “Copenhagen,” recorded almost exactly a year earlier.
Both pieces are instrumentals with multiple sixteen-bar strains. Both were
composed by white jazz bandleaders. Both arrangements subdivide the
strains into smaller segments of instrumentation and, moreover, alternate
almost seamlessly between composed and improvisatory passages. Both
begin immediately with the first strain, foregoing the complex introduc-
tions and interludes heard in many of the band’s recordings of 1924–25.
“T.N.T.” does display a sophisticated design, yet all of the sudden shifts
and startling variety of orchestration and rhythmic underpinning, not to
mention the frequent interactions between soloists, never inhibit the
surging flow of the band’s performance. Finally, “T.N.T.” also reveals a
symmetrical design, another feature that Redman had already brought to
his arrangements. And its composer-arranger, Elmer Schoebel, was already
a familiar figure in Henderson’s book of “hot” dance tunes.
Yet “T.N.T.” exhibits two qualities that Redman had not yet explored:
(1) subtle changes to the main melody that may be aptly termed “motivic
variation” and (2) the integration of Armstrong’s solo inside the strain.
“T.N.T.” thus reveals a new direction that Redman might have explored
further had Armstrong remained in Henderson’s band. It reveals that even
as Redman strove to integrate Armstrong, he retained his interest in sophis-
ticated, even symphonic, arranging devices.
“T. N.T.” was an apt vehicle for Henderson’s band. Like “Copenhagen”
and “Sugar Foot Stomp,” it is an instrumental number written by a jazz
musician—in this case, Elmer Schoebel. Instead of the conventional verse-
chorus form of a Tin Pan Alley song, “T.N.T.” contains three sixteen-bar
strains, deployed in a modified ragtime structure and, like ragtime, distin-
guished more by rhythmic vitality and harmonic character than by melody.
The title carried a clever double meaning: TNT forms the abbreviation of
a chemical compound used for explosives—a recent coinage in 1925. The
Library of Congress copyright card also reveals another meaning, one not
given on the published arrangement, but which accounts for the title’s
punctuation: “the nifty tune.”
The title’s resonance becomes clear in the first strain, which opens
with a series of tense, surging full-ensemble block chords and cymbal
crashes. No imitative novelty device, this beginning makes a powerful
musical effect when played by the confident, well-rehearsed ensemble that
the Henderson orchestra proves to be on this record. “T.N.T.” fits the
Henderson band in another way. The second strain of Schoebel’s stock
arrangement features a call-and-response passage, a device that would
soon become associated with the band, and with Henderson’s arranging
style in the 1930s (ex. 4.11). (Redman replaced saxophones with clarinets.)
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 91
The instrumentation used for these variations are: Ensemble (first and last
choruses and A''), Ensemble with Armstrong (trumpet solo trading four-bar
phrases: A''), Ensemble with Green (trombone solo trading four-bar phrases:
A''), and Smith (trumpet solo leading ensemble: A'''). No combination of
instrumentation and rhythmic pattern recurs, thus Redman achieves the
most variety with a minimum of actual variations (fig. 4.5)
Ex. 4.13.“Carolina Stomp” (October 21, 1925), Armstrong with low brass
Shifts in the rhythm section’s underlying beat enhance the crispness of this
interaction. Under Armstrong, the rhythm section taps the beat; under the
saxophones it lays out, giving the lead line the quality of a break.
The “hot” dialogues in “Carolina Stomp” and “T.N.T.” suggest that
Redman had new confidence in the band’s ensemble playing. Armstrong’s
solos no longer had to be granted an independent chorus; they could be
included among the contrasting elements inside the strain. Exploited since the
band’s earliest recordings, the principle of strain subdivision remained. Now,
however, the ensemble playing was charged with the vibrancy of hot jazz.
As Redman had said, Armstrong “changed our whole idea about the
band musically.” Recordings such as “Copenhagen,” “Sugar Foot Stomp,”
and “T.N.T.” chart a qualitative change in the band’s playing. In a word, the
style sounds more “horizontal,” more linear, more driving; whereas, in the
pre-Armstrong recordings, the style is comparatively “vertical,” more
choppy, less continuous and flowing. Yet Redman’s fundamental conception
of arranging had not changed. The foundation of that conception lay in
taking existing tunes and arrangements and “doctoring” them to create
A New Orleans Trumpeter in a New York Band 95
to put a band in, I want to bring my husband back from New York, and I
want him to be featured, I want $75 a week for him, and I want his name
out there in front. . . .’ I had him make a sign —‘Louis Armstrong, the
World’s Greatest Trumpet Player.’ ” Having arranged that, she continued to
urge Louis to return home, but he resisted. As she recalled, she then issued
an ultimatum—“if you’re not here by this date, then don’t come at all”—
and Armstrong relented. But even Lil conceded that Louis “kind of liked
playing with Fletcher. He wasn’t anxious to be a star.” Armstrong appears
to have seen the situation as less a career choice than a cut-and-dried
personal matter. As he later wrote, “I had to choose between—My Wife +
Fletcher’s Band. After all—I chose’d being with my wife.”27
The night before Armstrong left for Chicago, Henderson threw a farewell
party at Small’s Paradise in Harlem. Thanks to Thomas Brothers’s publica-
tion of selected writings that reveal Armstrong’s unedited, unvarnished voice,
we can now read the story of that party as written by its guest of honor, com-
plete with Armstrong’s inimitably playful syntax, punctuation, and capital-
ization style as performed on his second favorite instrument, the typewriter:
All the boys in the Band hated to see me leave—And I hated like hell to
leave them too. . . . We all had a wonderful time. We had a Special reserved
Table—And the Place was packed + Jammed. And after Fletcher made his
‘Speech and I made my little ‘Speech—most of my ‘Speech’ was Thanks to
Fletcher for the wonders he had done for me—etc. Then the whole Band
sat in and played several fine arrangements for the Folks —Another
Thrilling moment for me.—After we finished playing we went back to our
table and started drinking some more ‘liquor.—I gotten so ‘Drunk until
Buster Bailey and I decided to go home. And just as I went to tell Fletcher
Henderson Goodbye as I was leaving New York for Chicago the next
morning, I said—“Fletcher ‘Thanks for being so kind to me.” And—er—
wer—er—wer—And before I knew it—I had “Vomit” (“Puked”) directly
into Fletchers’ “Bosom.” All over his Nice Clean ‘Tuxedo Shirt. ‘Oh—I’d
gotten so sick all of a sudden—I was afraid Fletcher would get sore at me,
but all he said—“Aw—that’s allright ‘Dip’ ” (my nick name at that time
[short for “Dipper Mouth”]). Fletcher told Buster Bailey to take me home
and put me to ‘bed, so Buster did. The next morning—‘my ‘Headache
and all—Boarded the Train for Chicago.28
F
ROM ONE POINT OF VIEW, Armstrong’s departure left his former colleagues—
and all other aspiring solo improvisers—with the “problem” of how to
develop a personal style out of Armstrong’s powerful model of what a
jazz solo could be. From this perspective, Henderson’s post-Armstrong band
has tended to be seen as a group of musicians struggling to make the para-
digm shift, but sometimes failing the aesthetic challenge because of severe
commercial demands that led to lapses in taste and integrity. Many of
Henderson’s musicians were indeed trying to absorb Armstrong’s ideas, and
they had to do it “on the job” during a period of intense demand for their
music, but how they did it comprises only part of the story of Henderson
after Armstrong. That perspective fails to take into account the multiple
musical currents that Henderson’s band was both absorbing and defining,
and, in particular, the increasing power of the Paul Whiteman paradigm,
which cannot be dismissed as merely a transient commercial alternative. By
1926 the Whiteman approach encompassed a whole mode of performance,
in what has been called a “revue-derived variety entertainment format.”
Whiteman defined the project broadly as the development of “Modern
American Music,” which included self-conscious fusions starting to be
known as “symphonic jazz.”1
For many, such efforts constituted not just the wave of the future for jazz
but the only kind of jazz there was. This was a point on which white
commentators intersected with the New Negro press and intelligentsia—
such as Dave Peyton and J. A. Rogers—noted in chapter 2. Arthur Lange’s
Arranging for the Modern Dance Orchestra, serialized in sections through
1925, was published in 1926, as was Paul Whiteman’s autobiographical
Jazz. In the same year, the first book-length effort to define the nature and
scope of jazz appeared in Henry O. Osgood’s So This Is Jazz. Osgood’s
book developed one part of the agenda advanced by the maverick cultural
critic Gilbert Seldes, whose 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts bundled jazz
with comic strips, vaudeville, musical theater, and film in an effort to bring
serious attention to popular, indigenous American art forms. For Osgood,
as for Seldes, jazz’s present and future lay chiefly in arranged, written-down,
stylized dance music, and its leading exponents were white: Paul Whiteman
and his arranger Ferde Grofé; other orchestra leaders such as Vincent Lopez,
Ben Bernie, and Isham Jones; composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin;
plus novelty piano wizard Zez Confrey and clarinet hokum specialist Ted
98 The Uncrowned King of Swing
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two
warring ideals in one dark body.” DuBois claimed that “The history of the
American Negro is the history of this strife.” But every generation, and
every individual within each generation, manifests its double consciousness
differently, according to particular conditions of time, place, and culture.
Henderson’s double consciousness in the later 1920s might be described as
a unique negotiation between Armstrong and Whiteman, between orality
and written expression. The question remains, does that negotiation reflect
DuBois’s “unreconciled strivings”? Or can it be viewed as a more deliberate
strategy, a deft balancing act, a set of apparent contradictions with an under-
lying consistency?4
The questions come to a head from 1926 onward, marking a watershed
for the direction of the various musics dubbed “jazz” and for Henderson’s
band, which found itself in the vanguard of musical change and at a new
pinnacle of popularity and prestige.
In an influential book built on a powerfully linear conception of the jazz
tradition, the French jazz critic André Hodeir identified 1926–27 as a “tran-
sitional period” between the “oldtime” New Orleans style of collective
improvisation and the “pre-classical” style of big-band swing. He claims
Ellington, “and to a lesser extent” Henderson and Redman, as the transition’s
key figures, responsible for “the replacement of spontaneous collective music
by a worked-out orchestral language.”5
Henderson’s work in the years around 1926 suggests that Hodeir’s evolu-
tionary scenario needs some adjustment. A change was in the air, but the
“transitional” style of 1926–27 is not so much a matter of big-band swing
“replacing” small-band collective improvisation as of large-orchestra dance
music absorbing some of the New Orleans style, especially the impact of
Armstrong, and becoming more Armstrong-inflected — or, as later jazz
commentators might simply put it, more jazz-inflected. Before Armstrong,
the band attached a hot out-chorus to most arrangements like so much
appliqué, an exciting effect that proved a dance orchestra’s versatility. After
Armstrong, we can hear Armstrong’s rhythmic conception—his “swing”—
pervade the entire band in a deeper way. In other words, Henderson’s
approach combined two coexisting streams, one flowing from New Orleans
and the other from New York.
of jazz in “true form,” so that the ultimate refinement of jazz presented at the
end of the program—in the form of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—might
be thrown more powerfully into relief. In his effort to raise jazz’s social status,
Whiteman first had to define it as music with a history.
Henderson’s increasing adoption of old tunes reflects that phenomenon—
a strong sense that jazz not only had a past, but that it had crossed over into
a new era. Indeed, rather than presenting these tunes in anything like their
original form, Henderson’s band adapted and updated them, following
Redman’s penchant for doctoring preexisting musical material. In just one
obvious respect do the band’s revisions honor their models: speed. Except
for the two true “blues” pieces (“Wang Wang” was a blues tune in name
only), these recordings stand out by sporting faster tempos than the band
had ever played on record. “Panama,” “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Fidgety
Feet,” “Sensation,” and “The Wang Wang Blues” all clock in at over 240
beats per minute. Speed was fundamental to this repertoire; it was certainly
one of the attractions of the ODJB, which burst onto the New York jazz
scene in 1917 with ferocious energy. The Henderson band recaptured some
of the original spirit of the pieces; with twice as many musicians, its visceral
impact exceeds that of the band that created them.
In other ways, Henderson’s recordings pour new wine into old bottles.
Compared to the ODJB’s unrelenting polyphony, Redman’s arrangements
sound colorful and varied. Even when the band was not actually “reviving”
such older numbers — some had received several recordings between
the ODJB and the Henderson versions—it was unmistakably playing fresh
interpretations.
For example, in “Clarinet Marmalade” (recorded December 8, 1926),
the band offered listeners a new encounter with this already familiar piece,
transforming it from an ensemble number into a vehicle for soloists. Three
earlier recordings of the tune—by the ODJB (1918), James Reese Europe’s
369th Infantry Band (1919), and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (1923)—
had featured the whole ensemble, including only a few solo breaks and
closely following the piece as it appeared in published (sheet music) form.
In those recordings “Clarinet Marmalade”’s ragtime roots remain clear.
Henderson’s version told another story. It began with a new, off-tonic
introduction (in D minor, rather than the F-major one played by other
bands), followed by a series of solos over riff accompaniments. The
arrangement also includes two new ensemble riff-choruses that Redman
liked enough to reuse in later recordings (one in “Stockholm Stomp;” the
other—the out-chorus—in “Sensation”). After the Henderson recording,
“Clarinet Marmalade” became a big-band standard, with a dozen record-
ings in the period 1927–29, and many more in the 1930s and 1940s. Most
of them featured a string of solos and ensemble riffs. As a result, “Clarinet
Marmalade” represents one of several older pieces, such as “King Porter
Stomp” and “Chinatown, My Chinatown” in the years to come, that
Henderson’s band virtually reinvented, in effect showing other bands how
to make them sound new.6
The band also made of “Fidgety Feet” an exuberant parade of soloists:
Bailey, Hawkins, Joe Smith, Jimmy Harrison, and Tommy Ladnier.
Arranging nuances along the way reveals the care with which Redman
rethought the piece. He doubled the length of the introduction, interspersing
Marshall’s cymbal work and a torrid trombone break by Harrison between
A Paradox of the Race? 101
the original ensemble phrases. In the second strain, the original theme, with
its on-the-beat block chords, becomes a stoptime accompaniment for solos
by Hawkins and Bailey. The firm chords anchor Bailey’s flowing line of
eighth notes, which peaks at the solo’s midpoint with a high G whole-note
(ex. 5.1).
Ex. 5.1.“Fidgety Feet” (March 19, 1927), Bailey solo and stoptime accompaniment
Henderson versions of older repertory, by the ODJB and others, sound like
fresh and inspired efforts to blend conflicting currents in the shifting New
York jazz scene. Curiously among this older repertory, the slower-paced
“Wabash Blues,” “Livery Stable Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues” sound almost
perfunctory — suggesting an ongoing ambivalence about the blues. To
understand Henderson’s relation to the blues more clearly, we need to turn
to pieces by Henderson himself.
Ex. 5.3.“The Wang Wang Blues” (March 23, 1927), chorus 1, Ladnier solo and
saxophone melody
104 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 5.4.“Wang Wang Blues,” original patter theme and coda in Henderson recording
Henderson’s Blues
Although Henderson continued to accompany Bessie Smith and other
singers throughout the 1920s, the blues craze had faded by mid-decade.
That he continued to play blues accompaniments might seem rather remark-
able. An urban, Striver’s-Row sensibility typically either held the blues at
arm’s length through stylization or ignored it entirely as an irrelevant legacy
of the rural South—a phenomenon that stands at the foundation of Amiri
Baraka’s classic critique of the New Negro. Accordingly, the blues—that is,
the twelve-bar blues with its arsenal of expressive growls, slides, and
thumping bass — have a shrinking role in Henderson’s repertory. Yet
Henderson continued to explore the idiom through a striking series of orig-
A Paradox of the Race? 105
Additional details further stylize the approach. For example, the arrange-
ment adds variety by suspending the rhythm section to create a break-like
effect, a device that appears in many of his recordings around this time. The
piece’s texture is chock full of such rhythmic “holes,” especially in the second
and third strains. The piece ends away from the home key, on the minor
subdominant.
To balance all this variety and surprise, the arrangement has an overall
design marked by roundedness and symmetry, with the return of the initial
(A) strain in its original key and orchestration at the end. (In fig. 5.1, the two
twelve-bar strains differ in harmony, melody, and orchestration, and are
thus labeled A and B, although both are recognizable variations on the
blues.) It remains unclear who did the arrangement. It seems likely at this
point that Henderson was still following the procedure by which “Dicty
106 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Fig.5.1.“Hot Mustard”
Intro.
Chorus 1 ens.
Chorus 2 tpt. solo
Chorus 3 clar. trio with tbn.
Chorus 4 as above
Chorus 5 clar. trio, syncopated variation
Chorus 6 brass, cymbal
Chorus 7 ens., cymbal
Chorus 8 ens., with high brass, low brass, clar.,
and cymbal playing independently
Coda
108 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Yet “ ‘D’ Natural Blues” survived the 1920s and, at a faster tempo,
became a musical calling card for the band. Horace Henderson recalled a
battle with the Casa Loma Orchestra, probably in the early 1930s, when
Henderson called out his “special” arrangements, and the crowd “ran across
the floor . . . and man they started swinging . . . to things like “ ‘D’ Natural
Blues.”’ In 1936 Henderson dubbed the tune “Grand Terrace Rhythm”—
after the Chicago’s Grand Terrace Café, where the band had an extended
run—and made another record under the new title. Henderson’s sidemen
relished the piece. Two decades later, at the Second Great South Bay Jazz
Festival on Long Island in 1958, Rex Stewart led “The Fletcher Henderson
Alumni” in a set that included just two titles from the 1920s: “What-Cha-
Call-’Em Blues” and “ ‘D’ Natural Blues.”9
Even as the symphonic jazz vogue faded in the late 1920s, Henderson
continued to write in his “dicty blues” idiom. The modestly titled “Just
Blues” (1931), however, presents a much more straightforward approach,
and, lacking credit to the contrary, and given Henderson’s increasing involve-
ment in arranging in the early 1930s, it seems likely that he did the
orchestrating himself. The title is apt. “Just Blues” comprises a series of
seven twelve-bar blues choruses ending with a brief tag. The tempo is typi-
cally slow (about 116 beats per minute), and there are no modulations. The
key remains in A , reinforcing the title’s suggestion of simplicity. Even the
first section, which sounds like an elaborate introduction, actually turns
out to be the first chorus, that is, it is “just blues.”
Yet while the piece’s overall structure merits the title, the contents do
not, because in this piece Henderson does a truly remarkable thing for the
period: he separates the brass into three distinct units of trumpets, trom-
bones, and tuba. From the perspective of scoring, the first chorus is the
most compelling section of the piece (ex. 5.6).
The band presents a sequence of five distinct figures in turn: a piano tremolo,
a two-bar trumpet motif on an A chord, a two-note saxophone cry, a short
syncopated figure in the trombones, and a single grunt from the tuba. Thus,
not only are the brass instruments treated separately, the piano and tuba are
freed from their conventional rhythm-section roles and play distinctive
figures in an interlocking sequence of textural and timbral effects. (Only the
guitar performs the usual role of a blues rhythm section, strumming every
beat.)
The rest of the piece consists of a sequence of solo and ensemble choruses
with the full rhythm section grinding out chords on every beat—the conven-
tional commercialized blues accompaniment of the twenties. The whole
performance sounds immaculately well rehearsed. Unlike “Hot Mustard”
and “ ‘D’ Natural Blues,” the piece incorporates a variety of hot solos, by
Hawkins, trombonist Benny Morton, and trumpeter Bobby Stark, whose
rapid-fire obbligato playing animates much of the recording. Toward the
end, the full band forges a kind of riffing symphonic-blues out-chorus where,
once again, the saxophones, trumpets, and trombones present layers of
distinct material.
Variety columnist Abel Green, a close and opinionated observer of
Henderson’s band since early 1924, dubbed Henderson “a paradox for one
of his race” in a brief article entitled “Fletcher Henderson’s ‘Blues,’ ”
published in January 1927.
The whites do their darndest to simulate the native negro ‘blues’ and
suceed [sic] indifferently with but occasional exceptions. Henderson on the
other hands [sic] ‘cleans up’ his music with the result he delivers a white
man’s blues style that is not at all faithful, coming as it does from a crack
negro aggregation. Henderson is a scholar and of the advanced type of
negro. His erudite discussions while pounding the piano are refreshingly
fetching, and most impressive. The contrast of jazz and erudition is what
makes for the effect, but on the indigo music delivery Henderson reflects
the Caucasian compromises very plainly.
“Song at Twilight” [“Love’s Old Sweet Song”], “Swanee River” [“Old Folks
at Home”], and “Old Black Joe” in “symphonic arrangement.” A week
earlier, Peyton had reported that Henderson and his band played both “soft,
sweet and perfect” and “ ‘hot,’ too,” although he hastened to add, in a way
that Osgood might have, that Henderson’s “hot” style was “not the sloppy
New Orleans hokum, but real peppy blue syncopation.” Peyton relished
Henderson’s ability to draw appreciative crowds both on the South Side for
chiefly black audiences and downtown, in the Loop, for whites. He was
particularly hopeful, after Henderson’s appearance at the Congress Hotel,
that Henderson would “redeem us in the Loop”—meaning that Henderson
would more responsibly and elegantly represent The Race than local black
bands and their “rotten blues songs,” as Peyton called them. Where Green
hears compromise, Peyton hears versatility.10
In a climate where music was so explicitly racialized, no wonder
Henderson strove to foil easy generalizations. “Henderson’s blues” thus
represent another savvy effort to challenge the stereotypes, a delicate and
knowing balance between sleek arrangement and gutty improvisation,
between creative control and collaboration, between “southern” musical
tradition and “northern” reinterpretation. It anticipates the kind of effort
that Scott DeVeaux identifies in the emerging bebop generation: “to incor-
porate elements of what the white world respected as musical knowledge
and literacy into the cultural practices that fueled the stereotype. A form of
swing that was both earthy and erudite . . . that was a goal worth reaching
for.” That perspective grants Henderson more authority over his musical
course, and indeed, ample evidence exists to support it.11
While maintaining his home base downtown at the Roseland,
Henderson’s ballroom work now ranged across a remarkable array of
venues. From 1927 on, for example, the band became a perennial favorite
at college proms and fraternity parties, especially at elite northeastern
schools such as Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, and Amherst,
but also as far afield as the University of Kansas. A sampling of eyewitness
accounts suggests the breadth of Henderson’s appeal. At Kansas, at the
“Senior Cakewalk,” a student reporter observed “something in the jungle
beat of Fletcher Henderson’s rhythm that did things to our supposedly civi-
lized university students.” At Yale, the Defender reported that Henderson
continued to cast a longstanding spell, as “Students and their ‘girls’ crowd
the bandstand with Henderson.” Far from evoking the primitivist strain
that caught the Kansas reporter’s ear, however, the Defender assumed its
familiar uplift-the-race style and proposed that Henderson’s Ivy League
appeal might have something to do with the “scholarly and gentlemanly
background and intellect of the suave, tasteful Atlanta University alumnus,
the son of two of the educational pioneers in the Colored race.” Contem-
porary press reports reveal more about the writer’s perspective than about
Henderson’s music, but together they suggest that Henderson’s band had not
only mastered but even expanded the difficult art of connecting with a wide
range of dancers and listeners. For further examples of how Henderson’s
band tailored its music for contrasting purposes, we turn now to three of its
most remarkable specials of the late 1920s, the first for dancing, and the
other two for listening. They reveal that the aesthetic opposition of
Armstrong and Whiteman is to some extent grounded in a practical contrast
in venues and functions.12
A Paradox of the Race? 111
Intro. (16)
piano + saxes + tpt. + ens. (4)
Stewart solo (4)
piano + saxes + tpt. + ens. (4)
Stewart solo (4)
A(32) ens.
A(32) Hawkins solo
Transition saxes (2) + ens. (2)
B(32) Smith solo (piano break)
Transition ens. (2)
B(32) clar. trio (Stewart break)
A(24) Stewart solo (12) + ens. break (4) + ens. (8)
Coda ens. [= last 8 bars of B strain]
Whiteman Stomp
Far from disappearing, however, the band’s richly textured mosaics grew
more complex. Two specials from early 1927—“Rocky Mountain Blues”
and “Whiteman Stomp”—illustrate an intensive exploration of symphonic
jazz, intricately orchestrated pieces placing the burden much more on well-
rehearsed ensemble performance than on improvised solos.
Despite its title, “Rocky Mountain Blues” (recorded January 21, 1927)
had no links to the mood, style, or structure of a blues (and bears no rela-
tion to the identically titled piece that Duke Ellington recorded in 1930). The
title simply hides what the piece really is: a paradox of old structure and
progressive content. The form, in fact, is a throwback: an old da-capo march
structure with nineteenth-century roots that even John Philip Sousa had
largely abandoned by the early 1890s, including five sixteen-bar strains,
several brief interludes, a modulation to the subdominant for the trio (or
“C”) strain, and a return to the opening strain (da capo, “from the top”) to
A Paradox of the Race? 115
round off the arrangement. The content has all the hallmarks of what by
now was widely known as Redman-Henderson style in its darting style of
orchestration, made up of a tightly woven collage of one-, two-, four-, and
six-bar units—including seventeen two-bar breaks. Adding to the festive
color is Kaiser Marshall’s arsenal of percussive effects, from familiar choked
cymbal hits to the more unusual sounds of a woodblock, a slapstick, and a
“hiss,” produced by some kind of noisemaker (novelty sounds still held
appeal in 1927).
From the off-tonic whole-tone introduction to the final, rather inconclu-
sively chattering woodblock break that ends the recording, every section of
the arrangement brims with well-played ideas. Schuller has noted “Redman’s
prophetic ensemble background” in the third strain—a six-voice reed/brass
harmonization that anticipates big-band writing of a decade later. In addi-
tion, the band once again invokes the break texture (with the rhythm section
dropping out) for points of structural contrast inside the strain, not only for
conventional end-of-strain solo flourishes. (Boxes highlight these break
passages in fig. 5.4.) The penultimate strain (E), for example, alternates
B : Intro(2) ens.
A(16) ens. (2) + piano break (2) + ens. (4) twice
Transition(4) brass
B(16) saxes w/brass riff (6) + brass break (2) + saxes (8)
Transition(4) cymbal and tpts.
E: C(16) [:tpt. solo over reed/brass harmony (6):]
1st ending breaks: tpts. (1) + clars. (1)
2nd ending break: tpt. break (2)
C(16) [:tbn./piano/celeste over clars. riff (6):]
1st ending break: clars. (2)
2nd ending break: tpts. (2)
C(16) tuba/piano lead over brass and saxes (6) + piano break (2) +
brass (6) + tenor sax break (2)
D(16) [:brass/tenor sax dialogue (6):]
1st ending: “hiss” break (2)
2nd ending: slapstick break (2)
D(16) [:Saxes/tpt. dialogue (6):]
1st ending: tpts. break (2)
2nd ending: cymbal break (2)
E(16) saxes (4) + tbn. (4) + saxes (4) + tbn. (2) + tpts. (2)
Transition(2) saxes and tbn.
B: A(16) ens. (2) + piano break (2) + ens. (4), twice
Coda(4) brass and woodblock
116 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 5.8.“Rocky Mountain Blues” (January 21, 1927), strain 3, clarinet trio break
The rapid-fire dialogue between the brass and Coleman Hawkins in the
fourth strain (D) provides another good example of how the musicians
maintain momentum through the thicket of scoring (ex. 5.9).
At a tempo of well over 220 beats a minute, the recording evokes the
feeling of trying to focus on nearby images from a high-speed train. Every
phrase, break, cymbal shot, and trombone blat is perfectly timed in a feat
of circus-like exuberance and disciplined precision. “Rocky Mountain
Blues,” unlike “Stampede,” keeps a tight leash on solo improvisation; the
performance remains uninhibited and controlled, a mix of uptown and
downtown. It would seem, at least, that Forrest S. Chilton, publisher of the
stock arrangement, believed the piece would hold broad appeal. The stock’s
title page announces that the music inside appears “as Played on Columbia
Records by FLETCHER HENDERSON AND HIS ORCHESTRA.” The
stock, however, whose credits read “arranged by Don Redmond [sic]” and
“edited by Ken Macomber,” does not deliver as advertised. Macomber’s
“edition” omits many of the breaks and much of the dialogue between
sections and soloists (including Marshall’s sparkling cymbal work) that
marked the colorful original. As with “The Stampede,” the stock publisher
knew that no band could match what Henderson had played on record.
If “Rocky Mountain Blues” shows Henderson’s symphonic leanings,
“Whiteman Stomp” stands as an apotheosis of symphonic jazz. Recorded on
May 11, 1927, some three months before Redman left the band for good,
it also seems to mark the end of an era. In 1927 it was recognized as new
territory for Henderson’s band, something far from the kind of hot jazz
material expected from most black bands. “After a lot of top level discus-
sion,” writes Rex Stewart, “it was decided that Henderson would record
something musical and beautiful . . . for this momentous break with tradi-
tion in recording, we set out to prove something, and that is what we did.
It was on this date that Don Redman’s ‘Whiteman Stomp’ was produced.”
Stewart’s comment about “this momentous break with tradition” refers not
so much to musical innovation per se as to a “break” between musical style
and racial stereotype. Nothing about “Whiteman Stomp”—not least its
title—suggests its origins in a black band. (Is that why the difficult terrain
of “Rocky Mountain” needed to be dubbed a “Blues”—that succinct signi-
A Paradox of the Race? 117
Ex. 5.9.“Rocky Mountain Blues,” strain 4, Hawkins and brass (top line only)
mark of his arranging style. As we’ve seen, after the statement of melody
in the first chorus, each later chorus—when not an improvised solo—
usually drew from Redman a new rhythmic or orchestrational twist. But
in previous arrangements, the written variation of an AABA chorus
remained the same in each of the three “A” phrases. The basis of variation
changed between choruses. In “Whiteman Stomp,” however, variation
occurs within each chorus, so that every “A” phrase heard after the first
chorus’s melody statement is unique. The process resembles the technique
of motivic development in a symphonic score and results in a more fluid
conception—one that Henderson would later use selectively in his arrange-
ments for Benny Goodman. As a result of this new approach, Redman
introduces five variants of the main phrase in just one-and-a-half choruses,
including chromatic and whole-tone harmonic enrichments as well as
rhythmic alterations (ex. 5.10).
Ex. 5.10.“Whiteman Stomp” (May 11, 1927), original melody and subsequent variations
In the last variation, we hear the phrase augmented to five bars, thus
producing another familiar Redman trademark—the “extra” bar. Other
typical traits of Redman’s arranging appear, such as subdividing eight-bar
phrases into two halves, one for the ensemble or a section of the band, and
the other for a soloist. In the second strain, a dialogue is created by one-bar
alternations. Another effect with a precedent lies in the third strain. Here the
orchestrational subdivision occurs within the measure, resulting in a quick,
obviously well-rehearsed exchange between the brass and reeds, similar to
an effect heard as far back as the 1924 recording of “Driftwood” (ex. 5.11).
A Paradox of the Race? 119
I
F THE INTRICATE SCORING of pieces such as “Rocky Mountain Blues” and
“Whiteman Stomp” places them in a different stylistic world than stream-
lined arrangements such as “The Stampede,” the explanation lies not just
in aesthetic matters but in practical ones: Henderson’s symphonic jazz reper-
toire was not for dancers but for listeners. Whiteman himself regularly
played such works in concert halls, but most bands—black and white—
tended to cultivate listeners in another venue: the theater. In the later 1920s
and early 1930s, Henderson played in many theaters—the Harlem Opera
House, and the Lafayette, Lincoln, Alhambra, and Public Theaters in New
York; the Howard Theater in Washington, DC; and the Pearl Theater in
Philadelphia, among others. And Henderson’s work in these venues covered
the spectrum of popular genres, from vaudeville to revues to musical come-
dies. Henderson’s band was better for dances than for theaters, and indeed
Henderson had mixed success in this realm, including a notorious failure that
briefly dissolved the band.
A band could still play a varied repertoire in the theater. After all,
theatrical performance included a great deal of dancing, and bands could
even include a few hot solos in their accompaniments and features. But
theater work did not encourage a band to stretch out a number indefinitely
in response to the crowd, as at the Savoy. In Bushell’s words, the theater
required a bandleader to “be more particular in choosing a program . . . A
smart bandleader would change things for a theater gig: he would cut down
the time, use spectacular stuff.” “Rocky Mountain Blues” and “Whiteman
Stomp” count among the most “spectacular stuff ” that Henderson ever
recorded, and although no report exists to confirm it, those pieces—and
other “symphonic” repertoire in Henderson’s book—would have been well-
suited for performance in a theater.1
For black bands, theater work increased in the 1920s, in part, because
Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along (1921) had sparked a resur-
gence of interest in all-black shows. In the fall of 1928, for example, the
band played for a revue called Jazz Fantasy at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre.
Dancers, singers, comedians, and chorus girls appeared “and through it all
Henderson’s master musicians wove a spell of wonderful music—dance
music, jazz music, classical airs!” Later that year, Henderson’s band substi-
tuted for Allie Ross’s orchestra in the pit for the Blackbirds of 1928, with
songs by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields. In 1932, the band played
Beyond the Ballroom 121
one-week stints in revues called Big House Blues (at the Lafayette Theatre)
and Harlem Highsteppers (at the Public Theater in lower Manhattan), where
most of the band routinely showed up late and ultimately lost the job. All
of these engagements reveal Henderson to be well connected, if sometimes
indifferent, to the thriving black musical theater scene.2
Such experiences help create a context for the band’s most infamous
brush with the theater: Vincent Youmans’s Broadway-bound Great Day in
1929. Many theater jobs allowed a band to play its own book; a Broadway
show did not. Youmans conceived the show as a grand mixed-race pageant
of the South, tapping a vein that had been so successful for Jerome Kern and
Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat, which by summer 1929 had just closed
after a spectacular run of 572 performances. The musical would include a
substantial cast, announced as 150 performers in the Pittsburgh Courier,
which along with other black newspapers covered the show’s preparation
because it involved a large cadre of African-American talent, including
vaudeville headliners (Flournoy) Miller and (Aubrey) Lyles and a chorus of
some forty “jubilee singers.” The chorus was to be directed by Will Marion
Cook, by now a legendary composer and arranger prominent in musical
theater for three decades. The pit orchestra was intended to feature equally
illustrious black musicians: Duke Ellington and his orchestra. But after a
conflict between Youmans and Ellington’s agent, Irving Mills, Ellington had
to be replaced, and the solution appeared to be Henderson’s band. Playing
in the pit orchestra of what promised to be a major production by a leading
Broadway composer even enticed Louis Armstrong to move back east to
participate.3
Within a month, however, things fell apart. Youmans hired several white
musicians to augment the orchestra and eliminated six members of
Henderson’s band. Henderson, still in position as the orchestra leader, appar-
ently had difficulty coordinating the expanded ensemble. The New York
Age claimed that there was “no race conductor on the horizon capable of
conducting this large show,” and soon Henderson himself got fired, and his
remaining sidemen either quit or also got fired. (Armstrong quit too, but he
nevertheless found his way to Broadway by way of Harlem’s Connie’s Inn.
There, he starred in Fats Waller’s revue, Hot Chocolates, the platform from
which he would help make Waller and Andy Razaf ’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” a
popular song.) Although the experience was almost entirely negative for
Henderson, it did lead to an unusual publication: his composition called
“Water Boy Serenade (A Pianistic Spiritual),” brought out by Youmans’s
publishing house and possibly intended for Great Day, but not used. With
its chromatic harmony and accented syncopations in a black spiritual
context, the piece reveals obvious links to the stylized vocal arrangements
recently published by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson in
their two Books of American Negro Spirituals (1925–26), part of the renais-
sancist impulse to preserve black oral tradition in written forms.
At first glance, there may seem to be nothing remarkable about the Great
Day incident. Bands got hired and fired all the time; it was a rough business.
But the experience amounted to an embarrassing failure for Henderson.
Covered closely by the black press, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering
publicly transformed the show from a model of racial integration into
another case study in racial inequity. Moreover, Henderson was hurt by
lack of agency. Mills had fought for Ellington; but Henderson had no one
122 The Uncrowned King of Swing
to back him up. So when six of his sidemen got fired, Henderson continued
on the job with half his band, augmented by several white substitutes. His
action—and more importantly, his inaction—lost him credibility with his
sidemen, a pattern that would haunt him for the rest of his career. Great
Day itself went on to Broadway for a paltry run of thirty-six performances.
The band, temporarily dissolved, would not make another record for well
over a year. Soon, however, Henderson was able to pull together an
ensemble of new and old sidemen and embark on a promising new venture.
Oddly enough, in the early years of the Depression, two years of instability
would resolve for Henderson into a brief period of stability and prosperity
at a Harlem nightclub called Connie’s Inn. In the meantime, Henderson’s
prestige grew from an increasingly demanding schedule on the road.
Speed Men
By the late 1920s, the band’s reputation had spread far from its New York
hub thanks to radio and records. Rex Stewart reported, “we went further
and further afield on our summer tours.” Walter C. Allen’s itinerary of the
band’s “known playing engagements” for the period from July 1927 to
September 1930 confirms Stewart’s memory of the tours. It lists appear-
ances by the band in more different venues and in a wider geographical
range—possibly extending as far as Tulsa, Oklahoma—than any earlier
period.4
Life on the road was grinding and even dangerous, but Henderson’s band
sustained an aggressive touring schedule from 1926 until the band dissolved
in late 1934. The roads were generally uneven, or at least unpredictable.
“[T]he highways were bad in those days,” recalled trombonist Sandy
Williams, who joined Henderson’s band in January 1932. “You might have
to make a detour, get stuck in muddy roads, or make a stop at one of those
dinky gas stations.” And traveling posed a greater risk of racial incidents,
ranging from mild annoyances to “ugly” comments or worse. In at least one
instance (in Pennsylvania), Henderson requested and received a police escort
out of town. At another time, Rex Stewart recalled that Leora, acting as
straw boss when Fletcher was committed to appear elsewhere, was forced
to wait on the bus while the proprietor of a “nice, clean looking place”
argued with his wife about whether light-skinned Leora should use the
“white” or “colored” facilities. Leora finally resolved the dilemma by
declaring herself “a Negro . . . and proud of it.” Out of self-defense, “In
those days, everybody would have his own gun,” Williams explained. “You
could buy a gun as easy as a pack of cigarettes.” Dicky Wells claimed that
“the cats started to carry firearms” around the time “when the Charleston
first came out” (1923–24), after hearing about a drummer who got castrated
and killed in Florida.5
In spite of all the struggles and threats, Henderson and his men greeted
the prospect of tours like kids out of school for summer vacation. The musi-
cians enjoyed traveling, and they lived life on the road with reckless
abandon. “All the restraint broke down when we had to leave to go on
tour,” noted Stewart. As its prestige grew, the band became a closed, mascu-
line, and hierarchical social system with a clear “pecking order” and a
penchant for organized vice. Stewart recalled the band as “crazy with
Beyond the Ballroom 123
gambling fever.” J. C. Higginbotham, who joined the band in late 1931, said
that “[e]verybody in the band drank. If you didn’t drink you weren’t a
member of that band.” Higginbotham would later rue his image as a hard-
drinking hell-raiser because it attracted what he called “liberal” whites who
liked to “prove” their tolerance by “getting drunk with us or asking us to
share a stick of marijuana with them . . . but we soon learn that they rarely
want normal, ‘respectable’ relationships with us.”6
Alcohol intake was ameliorated by plenty of food. In Stewart’s memo-
rable phrase, “Smack’s band was the eatingest band I’ve ever known,” with
macho competitions between band members, especially Jimmy Harrison
and Coleman Hawkins. “A typical meal after work,” Stewart recalled,
“would consist of half a dozen eggs, a triple order of ham or bacon, a
toasted loaf of bread, plus fried potatoes, jelly, coffee, pie, and perhaps a
meat sandwich—just to keep the sweet taste of the pie out of his mouth, as
Jimmy used to explain.” Harrison overindulged his passion for ice cream
during a stint in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1930 and landed in the
hospital with an exacerbated ulcer. He died the following year. Despite the
hazards, the rest of the band tried to keep up, and Stewart, as a result,
gained twenty-five pounds in one summer. Dicky Wells recalled similar
eating contests between Redman, Carter, and Hawkins. For many band
members, prodigious appetites extended to the opposite sex, and, as Wells
wryly put it, “If you own a boarding house, you have to be on the ball to
prevent your family being larger after the band leaves.” Henderson himself
enjoyed playing pool and gradually developed his reputation as a ladies
man, but he generally remained aloof from the informal social club that his
band had become. Higginbotham noted that Henderson drank, but only
after a performance; and clarinetist Russell Procope described Henderson as
not much of a “mixer.” But one thing that Henderson did indulge was his
love of fast cars.7
At a time when many bands rode in buses, guaranteeing that everyone
arrived in the right place at the same time, Henderson and his sidemen often
took automobiles. The practice was remarkable enough to merit comment
from Duke Ellington, who noted that the Henderson band took “cars,
instead of buses.” In the 1920s, car buying had risen to an all-time high, and
a boom in road construction in New York City itself enhanced the appeal
of the power and beauty of automobiles. In the 1920s “modern New York
. . . with its skyscrapers, tunnels, bridges, and adjacent speedways, was under
noisy and, it seemed, perpetual construction.” That headlong, “noisy” rush
into modernity suited the hard, fast lifestyle of Henderson and his sidemen.8
Cars opened up personal opportunities that a bus could not, including the
chance to drive fast and to “linger” in the previous town, as trombonist
Benny Morton suggests:
in the early years [probably around 1926–27] there were four regular car
owners: Fletcher, Russell Smith, Joe Smith, and Kaiser Marshall. Don
Redman sometimes had a car. Coleman Hawkins came along later with
his, and he was a speed man. But Fletcher was the fastest driver, and he
belonged on the Indianapolis Speedway! Because he was the fastest, he
would linger longer in a town, and anything might happen. He would
start late, and he might have the key players in his car, so those who got
124 The Uncrowned King of Swing
there earlier couldn’t get started. Maybe he was speeding and a cop took
him back twenty miles to a judge, and he came in an hour or so late . . .
then Fletcher would walk in like nothing had happened.9
Henderson might have maintained his advantageous position but the cards
were stacked against him. This was mainly due to his own temperament
which was basically not competitive enough even to seek out a manager
like Ellington’s, who had the connections to all of the important outlets for
work. The good engagements were concentrated in the white theaters and
the big white clubs. Since Henderson was never able to get a manager
with effective ties to the scene where the real money was, he became a
victim of the times.13
Managers and agents began getting into the act just as Henderson felt
more competition from other bands, black and white. In the late 1920s,
many large black orchestras began to make recordings that rivaled
Henderson’s. Ellington’s orchestra, now in residence at the Cotton Club,
had hit stride with its distinctive style (in such pieces as “East St. Louis
Toodle-Oo,”“Black and Tan Fantasy,” and “The Mooche”) and was turning
out more recordings than ever. McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, the Missourians,
and bands led by Charlie Johnson, Bennie Moten, and Luis Russell all began
competing for a share of the market that Henderson’s band had played a
large role in creating. The multifaceted Clarence Williams, always attuned
to the latest musical trends, also formed a large orchestra in the late 1920s.
Moreover, all but Russell and Williams were recording extensively on the
prestigious (and sonically beautiful) Victor label. Meanwhile, Paul
Whiteman, who shifted his allegiance from Victor to Columbia between
1928 and 1930, had begun to focus his band upon a greater jazz orientation,
with the crucial addition in 1927 of two key jazzmen from Jean Goldkette’s
band: arranger Bill Challis and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Goldkette himself
continued to manage one of the period’s hotter white bands, which also
recorded for Victor.
Henderson’s inability to shift with the rise of agency, then, forms the
larger context for viewing two events that many accounts of the Henderson
band point to as reasons for a temporary decline in its quality in the late
1920s: Don Redman’s departure in July 1927 and Henderson’s car accident
in late August 1928, and his supposed subsequent lack of ambition and
discipline. These claims have some merit but tend to be overexaggerated.
The main reason usually given for the band’s apparent decline is the
departure of Don Redman. During the band’s summer tour in the Midwest,
Redman parted ways with Henderson in Detroit and joined McKinney’s
Cotton Pickers, a band he helped transform into a leading dance and jazz
ensemble of the late 1920s and early 1930s. (The band’s racialized name
reflects the same impulse for plantation exotica that charged some of Duke
Ellington’s Cotton Club shows.) Henderson was able to replace the vacancy
in the reed section with Jerome “Don” Pasquall, whose operatic nickname,
after Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, tagged his classical training. Pasquall had
ideal qualifications for the job: he had played in Doc Cook’s orchestra
(considered by Rex Stewart “the Chicago counterpart of Fletcher
126 The Uncrowned King of Swing
didn’t hear the Henderson band in person are misled by listening to the
records.” John Hammond published an article making the same point:
“Don’t let yourself be impressed by the records of Fletcher Henderson,” he
wrote in September 1934, “because they don’t do him justice.” White jazz
critic Wilder Hobson heard the Henderson band perform in public in 1927
and 1928, and his memory of the experience inspired poetic encomiums.
Few of the band’s recordings, he noted, “give anything like the golden,
seething spirit of a Fletcher Henderson occasion.” Although Hobson offers
the usual criticism of Redman’s “fussy and fancy” arrangements, he writes
that “in the relaxation of the dance hall they came off with much more ease
and swing.”
In Hobson’s view, recordings fail to capture both the quality and length
of the Henderson band’s live performances in the late 1920s.
Streamlined Stocks
A few recordings, however, give at least a glimpse of that “dionysiac heat,”
especially when heard in the context of other contemporary sources, in
print and on record. These show the post-Redman band in action, revealing
new twists on an old approach—the thorough renovation of stock arrange-
ments. Now, however, instead of chopping up the material into quickly
shifting phrases and colors, the music receives a streamlined treatment
comparable to “The Stampede.”
“Hop Off ” has been celebrated as one of Henderson’s best recordings of
the late 1920s. For Schuller and Williams, the solos, which are said to illus-
trate “how far the soloists had gone in absorbing Armstrong,” hold the
primary appeal. The arrangement, on the other hand, is “not quite so well
balanced.” Yet when observed from other perspectives, the arrangement
seems every bit as impressive as the solos it incorporates. Considered
together, the stock arrangement and two recordings, from October (for
Paramount) and November 1927 (for Columbia), throw into relief the
dramatic revision that the later recording represents.19
There is some question whether the first “Hop Off ” recording, in
October 1927, was Henderson’s, since it was made under the pseudonym
“Louisiana Stompers.” At least a few Henderson sidemen played in this
band. Buster Bailey’s fluid style, tinged with a little shrillness in the upper
register, marks the clarinet solo. More telling are the trombone (Harrison)
and bass saxophone (Hawkins) stoptime breaks; they provide glimpses of
passages that reappear more vividly—especially in the case of Hawkins,
who transfers to tenor sax—on the more famous recording of a month
later (ex. 6.1).20
128 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Despite the presence of at least three of the same soloists on both versions
of “Hop Off,” it is still possible that the “Louisiana Stompers” recording was
made by a pick-up band led by Clarence Williams, the composer of the
piece. Several Clarence Williams recording sessions in late 1927 and early
1928 included both Buster Bailey and Coleman Hawkins.
The record label itself supports claims for either band. This “Hop Off ”
and its reverse side, “Rough House Blues,” appeared on Paramount’s 12000
“race” series. Although Henderson’s nonvocal recordings almost always
came out on general series, there is precedent: Henderson’s band did make
two sides for Paramount’s race series in the spring of 1927. Meanwhile,
Clarence Williams also recorded for Paramount’s race series in January, July,
and October, the last date including Bailey and Hawkins as sidemen.
Whether the band that first recorded “Hop Off ” performed under
Henderson’s or Williams’s leadership, it delivered the piece essentially as it
appears in the stock arrangement, published by Williams’s own company in
1927. The performance follows the format and orchestration of the stock,
adding two choruses of the last strain for the clarinet and trumpet solos, a tran-
sition, and the two solo breaks in the ensuing ensemble choruses (fig. 6.1).21
Henderson’s Columbia recording the next month (November 4, 1927)
kept this overall design, with only slight alterations, but fills it with many
new ideas, and changes entirely the character of the piece. Far from the
jovial, relaxed bounce of the earlier recording, the Columbia version trans-
forms “Hop Off ” into a searing, aggressive stomp—without significantly
increasing the tempo. The Columbia version replaces the original introduc-
tion—and its rigidly martial secondary rag rhythm—with an explosive solo
by Tommy Ladnier over sustained ensemble chords (ex. 6.2).
= ca. 220
Ab Eb7
The first strain of the Columbia recording completes a process of trans-
formation that had begun modestly in the Paramount version. Example 6.3
shows the first four bars of melody in the stock. In the Paramount recording,
the saxophones divide the melody’s whole notes (in mm. 1 and 3) into three
quarter notes and a rest, while a trumpet and trombone weave obbligato
lines around it.
f
Ex. 6.4.“Hop Off,” Ladnier solo, first strain, mm. 1–4, 9–12
Only in the third appearance of this phrase (the “A” part of an AABA
chorus) does the band play the original melody (as shown in ex. 6.3),
dramatizing it with hairpin crescendos on the whole notes. When the phrase
(shown as A[8] in fig. 6.1) returns again after the third strain, Coleman
Hawkins bursts in a bar early with a powerful solo that erases all signs of
the original melody (ex. 6.5).
The Columbia “Hop Off ” seethes with tidal power and inevitability. The
ensemble playing combines polish and drive, from the theme statement in
the second half of the first strain, through the surging saxophone-section
passage in the second strain, to the final, improvisatory ensemble choruses
and coda, topped off by Buster Bailey’s wailing clarinet. And the two
ensemble out-choruses build on the intensity that flows out of a series of hot
solos—by Harrison, Bailey, Ladnier, and Smith. Who holds responsibility
for structuring such an accumulation of musical energy? Redman usually
gets credit as the arranger, but, since he no longer played in the band, on
what basis is that credit earned? Most likely, “Hop Off ” resulted from the
band’s collective reworking of the stock arrangement. Its solution lay chiefly
in letting the star soloists take the spotlight.22
“Hop Off ” represents what we might call the “liquidation” of a stock
arrangement. Instead of introducing complications inside the strain,
Beyond the Ballroom 131
Redman style, the band simplifies the piece, emphasizing horizontal flow and
continuity instead of surprise and textured contrast. This is precisely what
the band does even more vividly in the piece that became closely associated
with it in this period and beyond: “King Porter Stomp.”
Composed by Jelly Roll Morton in the peak decade of ragtime, “King
Porter Stomp” ranks among the oldest pieces in Henderson’s repertoire, yet,
in the band’s revision, it became one of the most influential arrangements in
the swing era. Henderson had first recorded the piece in 1925, when
Armstrong was in the band, but the recording was never released. Soon
thereafter, the piece seems to have dropped out of the dance-band reper-
toire. When Henderson’s band revisited the piece in 1928, it became the
main conduit through which “King Porter Stomp” passed from the jazz age
to the swing era. Henderson made three different recordings of the piece: the
revised version recorded in 1928, the so-called “New King Porter Stomp” of
1932, and another revised version of 1933. In these recordings we hear his
band transform the piece from a stock to a head arrangement, that is, an
arrangement developed through discussion and demonstration with little or
no written music. In the process, “King Porter Stomp” changed from a multi-
strain rag-based piece to a streamlined “jamming” piece for improvising
soloists, a shift graphically revealed in figure 6.2.
The 1928 recording occupies a pivot point in the piece’s biography; it can
be heard in at least two contrasting ways. Retrospectively, it marks the
earliest documented stage of Henderson’s transformation of the piece. So it
I = Introduction
A = first strain
B = second strain
X = interlude
C = Trio
Cx = Stomp 1
Cx' = Stomp 2
T = Tag ending
132 The Uncrowned King of Swing
stands as a rough early version of the arrangement that evolved in the early
1930s to become a national hit for Benny Goodman in 1935 and a big-band
standard thereafter. As I’ve written elsewhere, listening to Henderson’s
recordings of 1928–33 “from a classicized perspective on musical composi-
tion is like hearing a sketch develop into a finished score.”
Yet the “sketch” analogy, however apt in retrospect, obscures the arrange-
ment’s basis in aural, not written, music-making, and the exciting, even
radical nature of Henderson’s revision. So it takes some effort to hear the
arrangement from the contrasting perspective of the 1920s. The band
announces its distinctive approach from the opening bars, with a new eight-
bar introduction featuring a fiery trumpet solo by Bobby Stark that
resonated into the swing era and beyond (ex. 6.6).
Ex. 6.6.“King Porter Stomp,” introduction. Top line: Bobby Stark solo (March 14,
1928). Bottom line: solo on 1936 published arrangement by Fletcher Henderson.
The solo’s tone, figuration, and structure further suggest Louis Armstrong
as a kind of “missing link” in the piece’s evolution. Armstrong’s trademarks
permeate the solo, including the syncopated leaps of a fourth at the opening,
characteristic of Armstrong’s solos with Henderson three years earlier, and
the big, blaring tone throughout. The whole eight-bar unit parses clearly
into a pair of parallel four-bar phrases, with the rhythm of mm. 5–6 nearly
identical to that of mm. 1–2. That reveals a new sense of the importance of
linking and relating phrases of a solo, of the coherence that Armstrong had
brought to the jazz solo since his early days with Henderson.
The overall form of the arrangement throws greater emphasis on the trio
and stomp than ever before, beginning a pattern that would extend into the
swing era. Henderson’s band omits the repeats of the first and second
strains, setting another trend that would become standardized in the 1930s.
The first trio hews close to Morton’s original melody; subsequent choruses
of the trio are used for solos backed by riffs. The stomp, on the other
hand, becomes the place for the whole band to shine. In the 1928
recording, the band runs through the stomp just once, but that chorus
would become the most famous of all: the call-and-response chorus that
Schuller has termed “the single most influential ensemble idea in the entire
swing era” (ex. 6.7).23
Beyond the Ballroom 133
Ex. 6.7.“King Porter Stomp,” beginning of final strain (1928) (from Fred Sturm,
Changes Over Time, 63)
By 1933 the riff foundation has become more pronounced. Now, the
recording balance shifts so that the solos interact with the riffs rather than
soaring above them. The band retains the basic structure from 1932 while
changing some of its contents. Henry “Red” Allen’s trumpet solo fills the
two-chorus slot, previously taken by J. C. Higginbotham, preceding the
ensemble out-choruses. Morton’s original trio melody, suggested in the saxo-
phones’ variation of it under Stark’s solo, comes to the fore in a clarinet in
the next trio strain A transcription and analysis of the 1933 recording by
Dave Jones and James Dapogny allow for a closer look at it, revealing
several things. First, they notate and discuss the exceptional solos of
Coleman Hawkins and Red Allen. Both soloists demonstrate an uncanny
ability to “float against the rhythm,” to create and sustain “motivic coher-
ence” apart from the original melody, and, in general, they reveal
“improvisers thinking compositionally.” All of this suggests the ongoing
impact of Armstrong. Second, they reveal “many small disagreements
among members of the band about what notes and rhythms to play and
how to play them,” reinforcing the notion that even five years after his band’s
first issued recording of the piece, Henderson’s “King Porter Stomp”
remained unnotated, a “head” arrangement “made collectively by the band
members and played from memory.”24
By then, public performance practice had departed from recording prac-
tice, which had to fit the arrangement into the three to three-and-a-half
minute limit of a 78 rpm record. “King Porter Stomp” provides yet another
example. According to Sandy Williams, who would soon be playing the
piece with Bobby Stark in Chick Webb’s band, on Christmas night at the
Apollo Theater, “I counted the choruses I played on ‘King Porter Stomp’—
twenty-three. Bobby Stark and I could play as many choruses as we felt like
on that, so long as each chorus was a little more exciting. That was our
tune.” The piece also became an exhibition for the whole ensemble. In
public, the call-and-response chorus developed a visual analog. Rex Stewart
recalled that, in a battle of bands with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in
Detroit, Horace Henderson’s Collegians, led by Benny Carter, played “King
Porter Stomp” “bobbing in rhythm on the two out-choruses . . . the combi-
nation of motion, screaming brass and pulsating saxophones tore up the
Graystone Ballroom. The crowd roared, whistled and demanded more,
more, more. So we had to repeat the out-choruses four times!” Accounts like
Williams’s and Stewart’s are reminders that part of “King Porter”’s appeal
came from things that were never captured on a printed page, a sound
recording, or any other media.25
In retrospect, it appears that “Hop Off ” shaped the band’s approach to
“King Porter Stomp.” Indeed, the two recordings are so similar in approach
that “King Porter Stomp” sounds like an attempt to revisit the musical
method of the earlier piece. Both pieces have old-fashioned multistrain
forms, and their arrangements use the final strain as the basis for a series of
solos culminating in a climactic ensemble passage. Coincidentally, both
tunes also have identical key schemes. Both begin in A, then modulate, in
a dramatic four-bar transition, to D for the final strain. Their arrange-
ments also begin in the same way—with a blaring hot trumpet solo that
replaces the introductory melody of the stock. The approach to the final
strain choruses also link “Hop Off ” and “King Porter Stomp.” Both alter-
Beyond the Ballroom 135
nate between brass and reed solos accompanied by riffs or chords played by
the opposite section of the band.
“King Porter Stomp” was the oldest in the repertory of old jazz pieces that
the Henderson band played. It originated as one of Jelly Roll Morton’s piano
solos, before 1911, then began its second life as a band arrangement in late
1924. In response to the publication of the stock, several bands recorded the
piece in early 1925. Although Henderson’s version of February 1925 was
never issued, recordings by Lanin’s Red Heads (February 1925) and Charles
Creath’s Jazz-O-Maniacs (March 1925) follow the stock arrangement.
Between 1925 and 1928, the year Henderson revived it, “King Porter
Stomp” received only one recording, Morton’s own solo piano performance
in 1926. There exists a tantalizing hint about how Henderson may have
come to decide to re-record the piece in 1928. The four sides made in the
Columbia studio just a day before Henderson recorded “King Porter Stomp”
featured Morton at the piano. Perhaps Henderson received the piece, or the
suggestion to play it, from the composer himself. Morton did not hesitate to
take credit. According to Horace Henderson, “He [Morton] and Fletcher
were great friends. . . . Fletcher won quite a few battles of music with ‘King
Porter Stomp.’ And Jelly Roll Morton knew this, and he used to go and say,
‘I made Fletcher Henderson.’ And Fletcher used to laugh at all these things
and say, ‘You did,’ you know. He wouldn’t argue.”26 These circumstances
further support the notion that the 1928 “King Porter Stomp” is a “head”
arrangement, worked out on the spot by the band’s lead musicians.
According to Allen, the arrangement stems from Hawkins’s ideas, while
trombonist Sandy Williams credited material in the arrangement to Charlie
Dixon.27 There is no contradiction in these claims; the arrangement that
came to be known as Henderson’s “King Porter Stomp” was doubtless a
collaborative effort. It was an effort that established a pattern for developing
head arrangements of popular songs in the early 1930s, and one well suited
to a band on the move, beyond the Roseland Ballroom.
7.
Connie’s Inn Orchestra
I
N THE FALL OF 1930, Henderson’s fortunes took an upward turn after a long
hiatus from recording and the bitter experience of Great Day. His band
returned to the recording studio for the first time in almost seventeen
months, and it began a new job at a prestigious venue. For much of 1929
and 1930, the band had lived a precarious but joyfully reckless existence on
the road, driving prized automobiles and reaping the widespread popularity
that radio performances and recordings had sown. Back in New York,
however, they had to be more professional and reliable, seeking the financial
security and stability that a long run in a coveted venue could bring. With
the end of the long tenure at the Roseland (where from now on Henderson
would appear mainly as a guest), Henderson naturally sought a comparable
situation: he found it in Harlem.
Now the band had a new home base, and the labels of several records
advertised the fact by calling it the “Connie’s Inn Orchestra.” Opened in
1923 by the brothers Connie and George Immerman, Connie’s Inn was a
basement venue in a central location. At Seventh Avenue and 131st Street,
it added luster to an already hallowed ground occupied by the Lafayette
Theatre (next door) and the fabled Tree of Hope, an old elm thought to give
good luck to those who rubbed its bark (or met an agent or booker there)—
especially performers looking for work in this entertainment-rich area.
Musicians who worked there remembered the neighborhood vividly. Clar-
inetist Russell Procope, who would join Henderson in March 1931,
described it as a place where “almost every doorway you’d pass you’d hear
some music coming out.” The white clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow recalled with
particular relish the whole area along “Seventh Avenue, going north from
131st Street,” including the “dicty Connie’s Inn.”1
Nightclubs represent yet another distinct type of venue for Henderson’s
work in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike theaters and ballrooms, most night-
clubs offered intimate spaces where customers sat at tables, drank, and
sometimes ate while watching a professional floor show. In those ways,
Connie’s Inn must have reminded Henderson of his band’s first job at the
Club Alabam. Meanwhile, like the nearby Cotton Club, where Duke
Ellington would soon end his long run, it offered all-black entertainment to
a mostly white crowd from about 10 P.M. until 3 A.M. Although next door
to the famed Lafayette Theatre, “Connie’s Inn was in a different bracket
entirely,” said Procope, who played at both venues. By the early 1930s, the
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 137
populist Lafayette staged mostly variety and vaudeville for large crowds of
black Harlemites, known to be vocal in expressing their critique of the
talent. The exclusive Connie’s Inn, charging a steep cover of fifteen dollars,
offered a more intimate atmosphere in a smaller space, and “[m]ost of the
people came from downtown,” Procope said. Blacks were generally not
admitted unless they were light-skinned enough to pass—or else they were
entertainers or waiters.2
Celebrities enhanced the venue’s aura. “I remember seeing Clara Bow
and Harry Richman. They were big stars . . . and they came up there in an
aluminum-bodied Rolls Royce,” recalled Procope. Thinking back on it nearly
a half century later, he marveled at how Connie’s Inn offered an oasis of
plenty in the early Depression years. By early 1931, unemployment was
much more severe in Harlem than in other parts of the city. “Well, no
Depression for the movie people,” Procope noted, and “there were some
bands that just kept rolling, like Fletcher Henderson.” Procope also fondly
recalled how “in those days nobody was afraid to go anywhere. You’d see the
people from downtown with high silk hats and the ladies in diamonds and
furs and things, and just strolling down the street, you know, three or four
o’clock in the morning.” The night before joining Henderson, Procope had
been playing in Chick Webb’s band at the Roseland Ballroom—the cream
of the downtown jobs. But at Connie’s Inn “I almost doubled my salary. . . .
Connie’s Inn was one of the top nightclubs.” Vaudevillian Jimmy Durante
thought Connie’s Inn was the “swankiest” Harlem nightclub. He might have
been right from an observer’s standpoint, but musicians saw it differently.
Guitarist Lawrence Lucie, who joined Henderson a few years later, recalled
simply that the Cotton Club was “the Number One job,” and Connie’s Inn
was “Number Two.”3
The Connie’s Inn job offered not only a choice location, better pay, and
a more elite clientele than most venues, it also presented live broadcasts on
network radio. Henderson had gotten radio exposure through the 1920s
over local station WGN from the Roseland, of course, but network broad-
casts on the Columbia Broadcasting System’s WABC from Connie’s Inn held
out the promise of making Henderson a national presence on the airwaves.
The black press observed that Henderson’s was the “only colored band”
featured on WABC. Such radio appearances sparked recording activity, so
that in 1931 Henderson’s band released far more recordings than it had in
the whole three-year period of 1928–30. Now, with regular recording
sessions complementing the Connie’s Inn gig and its radio wire, Henderson
had a “good deal,” as Allen writes, “especially at a time when the entertain-
ment business was dropping to its low ebb.” Allen goes on to claim the
Connie’s Inn Orchestra as “a great one . . . one of Fletcher’s best.”4
Other jazz historians assessing the Connie’s Inn Orchestra through its
recorded legacy have been considerably less enthusiastic. Gunther Schuller
has argued that Henderson’s band had “some severe artistic lapses” in the
early 1930s, revealed in “desperate maneuvers” to transform Tin Pan Alley
songs into jazz. Similarly, John Chilton notes that Henderson’s band appears
to “backtrack” during this time, “producing dull recordings of the indifferent
commercial songs of the day.” As a result, by 1931, Henderson “had failed
to consolidate the position he had gained as the foremost black bandleader
of the era.” At least some of the blame, Chilton continues, may be placed on
recording executives, “who were quite aware that a record packed with
138 The Uncrowned King of Swing
improvisation (no matter how brilliant) was unlikely to achieve high sales
figures.” The critical response to Henderson’s Connie’s Inn legacy echoes the
prevailing interpretation of Henderson’s pre-Armstrong band of 1923–24.
On one hand, the band enjoyed a high-prestige job and widespread admi-
ration. On the other hand, it fails to make consistent progress toward the
swing era, as revealed in its recordings, and thus comes up short in the
assessment of later commentators.5
Again, resolving the conflicting views begins with looking at the venue,
not the recording studio, and seeing the extent to which recordings manifest
one by-product of the band’s professional activity, not its chief focus. Like
the Club Alabam and the Roseland, Connie’s Inn required a versatile band
with the stylistic dexterity to shift quickly among numbers in a disparate
repertory. Russell Procope recalled that the band played “tangos, waltzes,
foxtrots, college songs, current hits, excerpts from the classics in dance
tempos, just about everything,” and for Procope, that kind of versatility
marked success. Benny Carter, who was “traded” for Procope in March
1931, concurred. “I don’t recall any ‘desperation’ while I was in the band,”
Carter explained. “I felt it was always at a high musical level—just look at
the personnel! . . . We played a wide variety of material, as I think all bands
tried to, because that’s what people wanted to hear . . . the band was doing
quite well and seemed to be working regularly.”6
In the early 1930s, then, the job—rather than a desperate need for one—
led Henderson’s band to make records of current pop tunes among many
other kinds of pieces. Recordings of Tin Pan Alley fare that sound like
“severe artistic lapses” or “backtracking,” then, simply reflect part of the
varied repertory demanded by the job. In fact, the recorded legacy is less
lamentable for mixed artistic success than for its highly selective view of the
band’s repertory and style. Among the records there are no tangos, no
waltzes, no college songs, no dance arrangements of the classics. Together,
the records comprise a detail from a broad canvas that we will never see.
That phenomenon is a reminder of something several black musicians
have pointed out about the period from the mid-1920s to at least the mid-
1930s. It was the “pop” material, not hot jazz, that record producers often
discouraged (or forbade) black bands from recording because it neutralized
their exotic, racial appeal. In the mid-1920s, Elmer Snowden’s early band
played soft, muted music instead of “growling stuff,” but Victor did not issue
it on record because “our music wasn’t the kind of Negro music they
wanted” (emphasis original). Rex Stewart, one of several Henderson side-
men who had been associated with Snowden in the 1920s, noted that “there
was an unwritten custom among record people that no negro orchestra
should be allowed to record anything that wasn’t blues or hot stuff.” Band-
leader Andy Kirk had a similar experience in the early 1930s. “All the time
we were making race records we were playing our pop tunes, romantic bal-
lads, and waltzes for the dancing public. . . . But the people who controlled
the output and distribution for Brunswick and Vocalion never gave a
thought to that side of our band. . . . It was all part of the racial setup and
climate of the times.” Such observations, considered along with Henderson’s
activity in the period, reveal the ongoing resonance of musical renaissancism,
where black musicians prized versatility—not just the ability to improvise
hot jazz—as the ultimate mark of mastery because it challenged stereotypes
that the white-controlled music industry had reified.7
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 139
Bass Kirby_____________________________________________________________________James________
Drums Johnson_______________________________________________________________________________
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 141
for more than five years (beginning late 1927), finally getting fired for good
after setting off firecrackers with Sandy Williams during a dance in Pelham,
New York, on July 4, 1933.11
Unlike the steadfast trumpets, the trombone section was in flux. Until his
death in July 1931 Jimmy Harrison continued as the section’s leading soloist
and an occasional singer, emerging as one of the most influential improvisers
of the era; after appearing in a few more remarkable recordings, he went
with Benny Carter to Chick Webb’s band in “The Big Trade.” Benny Morton,
who acknowledged Harrison’s influence, summed up his importance in what
might have been as apt epitaph: “Jimmy had soul and drive, and everybody
was crazy about him. He had the warmth of a good Baptist preacher, and
he made other people happy. And it all came out in his music.”12
Harrison was paired with Claude Jones, who had joined Henderson to
play in the Great Day pit orchestra in May 1929, remained until the end of
1931, and returned sporadically thereafter. Born in Boley, Oklahoma, Jones
had spent several years under the disciplined leadership of William
McKinney, beginning in 1921 or 1922 and continuing through the band’s
legendary period of the late 1920s as McKinney’s Cotton Pickers with Don
Redman. In his early years he showed the influence of white trombonist
Miff Mole, but:
by the time he was with Henderson he had a big, velvety tone and a refined
sense of melody; his solos were propulsive and inventive, and, unlike most
of his contemporaries, he frequently employed the upper register of the
instrument. He could handle changes of pace in a deft manner . . . and his
use of upward rips became something of a trademark.13
Such qualities stand out in his “Sugar Foot Stomp” solo. As a product of
McKinney’s band, Jones was also a crack reader. He can be heard playing
straight melody and refined section work in Henderson’s Connie’s Inn band
recordings.
The Connie’s Inn reed section fluctuated with the trombones. It began
with Hawkins, Carter, and Harvey Boone, all of whom had been with
Henderson in the late 1920s. Hawkins remained the undisputed star. Even
with Stark, Harrison, and others playing spectacular improvised solos,
Hawkins stood out. With some residual frustration, Rex Stewart recalled
that “[y]ou could play a solo that was created with every ounce of your
ability and no one on the bandstand would even bother to listen. Yet the
minute Coleman Hawkins started playing, all the guys would start nodding
their heads in approval.” To keep his increasingly impatient star happy,
Henderson soon began to resort to giving Hawkins special billing during
tours.14
By March the reed section began to change. Benny Carter went to
Chick Webb in the trade for Russell Procope, who would remain with
Henderson until the band dissolved in late 1934. In June, Boone would be
replaced by the multifaceted Edgar Sampson. A few words on these figures
are in order.
Harvey Boone appears to have been hired mainly to play lead and
featured little or no solo work. He had attended a New Haven music school
in the early 1920s.15 Like several of Henderson’s reedmen (Carter, Redman,
Sampson), he had played with Duke Ellington briefly in that band’s pre-
142 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Cotton Club days. He was among many Henderson sidemen whom Carter
described as a “gentlemen.”
Edgar Sampson played reeds and violin, and later became better known
as a composer and arranger. His bluesy violin playing may be heard on a few
Henderson recordings in 1931, including “House of David Blues.” He had
come up through several key bands of the 1920s, including the band of the
refined and savvy Billy Fowler and the gritty Charlie Johnson band. His
quiet gentleness earned him the nickname “the Lamb,” but he would be
heard loud and clear later in the 1930s through his two compositions played
by Chick Webb and popularized by Benny Goodman: “Stompin’ at the
Savoy” and “Don’t Be That Way.”
Russell Procope was another key figure for his dependability and compar-
ative longevity in the band, staying more than three and a half years. And,
besides Stewart, no other musician in Henderson’s Connie’s Inn band left a
more vivid account of the period. He played professionally in at least ten
different bands in the six years leading up to his tenure with Henderson.
That was the longest period he spent with any band until landing his final
long-term job in 1946 with Duke Ellington, with whom he stayed until
Ellington’s death in 1974. Procope cut an impressive profile similar to those
of Henderson’s early 1920s musicians, and thanks to his valuable oral
history, we have more detailed information on his career than on almost any
other Henderson sideman of the early 1930s.16
Born in New York City, Procope had grown up in a black middle-class
family that, like Henderson’s family, took classical music seriously—in itself
and as a symbol of respectability. He remembered listening to everything
from opera singers (Alma Gluck, Luisa Tetrazzini, and Ernestine Schumann-
Heink) to early jazz and blues musicians such as Ted Lewis, the Original
Dixieland Jazz Band, and Mamie Smith on “an old Victrola.” He also
recalled his father, a violinist, and his mother, a pianist, playing at home
popular classics such as the “Poet and Peasant.” These musical experiences
at home instilled a taste for musical diversity and versatility that clearly
shaped his attitudes as a professional musician and his memories of jobs. He
would later admire Henderson in particular for the unusual range of his
repertoire at the Roseland and at Connie’s Inn. He called Henderson “more
advanced” than other bandleaders because “at Roseland you have to play all
types of music, not only jazz.”
Thanks to his father’s model of diligence (“he studied and studied and
played at home”) and guidance, he began his musical studies on the violin,
and “I took to it” and “loved it.” Like many talented young black musicians
in early 1920s New York (including Bobby Stark), he then took up studies
with Eugene Mikell (which he pronounced like “Michael”), the former asso-
ciate of James Reese Europe, and played in the 369th Cadet Band. He also
played violin in the high school orchestra, which won first prize among
comparable groups in New York. His life took a turn when he became fasci-
nated with reed instruments, taking up the clarinet then alto saxophone,
both of which were purchased by his mother over the objections of his “old
school” father, Procope recalled.
Procope remembers hearing Louis Armstrong in Henderson’s band as a
life-changing experience. Saving up $1.10 to go to the Roseland, Procope
“stood there with my mouth open all night. I didn’t move away from the
front of the bandstand. . . . And I think right then I decided what I was
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 143
Marshall briefly, only to rehire Johnson for more money soon thereafter.
Johnson’s drumming seems to have “sonically enveloped the band,” in
Schuller’s words, especially through his use of cymbals, to create, like only
a handful of his contemporaries, a “more linear conception of playing jazz
drums.” Words such as “flow” and “line” described Johnson’s playing,
capturing the uncanny “horizontal” momentum and drive a drummer can
create beyond the simple ability to mark beats. All of these qualities are
clearly heard on Henderson’s recording of “Business in F” from late 1931.
Lawrence Lucie, who would join Johnson in Henderson’s band in 1934,
said: “They used to call Walter ‘Stick and Brush’. . . . .He used brushes a lot
on the cymbal, and he was a great cymbal player, a smooth cymbal player,”
comparable to Count Basie’s great drummer Jo Jones, Lucie noted, in his
light yet intense time-keeping.19
John Kirby formed the other half of Henderson’s unique rhythm combi-
nation. Born in Baltimore, he was orphaned as a young boy. The first
musical instrument he learned was trombone. After moving to New York
about 1925, his trombone was stolen, and he briefly worked at odd jobs,
including a stint as a Pullman train porter, to earn money to buy a new
instrument. With the money, he now turned his sights on a tuba, a funda-
mental feature of a typical dance-band rhythm section in the 1920s. While
playing in a band called Bill Brown and His Brownies in 1928–30, he began
learning the string bass under the auspices of two the instrument’s leading
exponents: Wellman Braud, a key Ellington sideman, and Pops Foster, a
New Orleans native and veteran musician who had played a major role in
sparking the wholesale shift from tuba to string bass in the late 1920s New
York jazz, thanks to his impact in Luis Russell’s band. When Kirby walked
into his first rehearsal with Henderson’s band, his rube-like ways inspired
derision in the band. With exaggerated precision, Stewart called Kirby “nine-
tenths Caucasian,” and Kirby learned to affect an ignorant white
country-boy routine that got the band out a tight situation when it was low
on gasoline while touring through Virginia.20
In Henderson’s Connie’s Inn period, Kirby alternated between tuba and
string bass, sometimes on the same recording session. His string bass at the
time was made from aluminum, which gives off a powerful resonance in
recordings such as Henderson’s “Chinatown, My Chinatown.” By 1933, he
had switched from aluminum to a more conventional wooden instrument
and rarely played tuba. Kirby also imparted a powerfully linear feeling to
Henderson’s performances, which are especially vivid when he plays the
more modern four-beat style of the early 1930s, which he could blow on the
tuba as well as he could pluck on the bass. Kirby would stay with Henderson
from April 1930 to March 1934, almost as long as Johnson did. With Kirby
and Johnson together for four solid years, Henderson had “one of the finest
rhythm teams of the thirties.”21
Although the Connie’s Inn Orchestra had never existed as such before,
most of the musicians knew each other, and many had worked together. In
the “fast and furious” business described by Procope—and with the Harlem
neighborhood around Connie’s Inn already established as a favorite gath-
ering place for musicians—most of Henderson’s sidemen had crossed paths
before and felt entirely at home playing music together in an elite Harlem
nightclub and in a variety of Manhattan recording studios.
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 145
arrangers with whom Henderson worked during this period. They too
became a key force in shaping Henderson’s later work.
“Fletcher used all sorts of arrangers” at Connie’s Inn, recalled Procope.
Yet it is also precisely this period when Henderson himself took over some
arranging chores. For his part, Benny Carter had no recollection of Hender-
son’s arranging activity when he was in the band in 1930 and early 1931. “I
don’t recall him ever working on an arrangement or modifying one at a
rehearsal,” although Carter acknowledges that “I was never that close to
Fletcher and had very little contact with him off the bandstand.” Before
Carter left, clearly, Henderson did not rely only on himself to create his
band’s book. After the “Big Trade,” however, he does seem to have exerted
more creative control. Horace Henderson, who played in his brother’s band
intermittently in the early 1930s, recalled that Fletcher “would write skele-
ton things . . . and he would explain where to jump, and ‘I want to insert this,
but I didn’t have time to do this,’ and so on, because he was always busy.”
But Horace also recalled Fletcher as “pretty thorough at rehearsals.”
Horace’s remarks suggest that Henderson’s early arranging activity com-
prised ad hoc efforts that combined elements of written and head arrange-
ments, so that rehearsing amounted to an extension of arranging.23
That, then, forms the key point in understanding the Connie’s Inn
period’s role in shaping big-band jazz. What Schuller has termed “Hender-
sonese”—the basic style of Goodman’s arrangements from 1935 onward,
and by extension the standardized style of the swing era—began to coalesce
in the early 1930s from such informal activity plus the specials of a variety
of arrangers, including John Nesbitt and Benny Carter, then Bill Challis,
Nat Leslie, Archie Bleyer, Horace Henderson, and Fletcher Henderson
himself.
Jimmy Harrison and Bobby Stark had also played), Billy Paige (Don
Redman, Joe Smith, Rex Stewart), Horace Henderson (Rex Stewart), Billy
Fowler (Jimmy Harrison, Tommy Ladnier, Benny Morton, Rex Stewart),
and Charlie Johnson (Jimmy Harrison). These experiences helped make
Carter a natural addition to Henderson’s orchestra. He had played in taxi-
dance halls, an informal rookie league for future jazz musicians; and he had
had plenty of opportunities to improvise in Harlem, especially with Charlie
Johnson’s band, and to play more staid, arranged music on Broadway under
Billy Fowler, whose band he remembered as playing “popular music, mostly
bland stock arrangements, with a ten- to twelve-piece orchestra.” Charlie
Johnson also gave Carter the chance to hear his own arrangements, two of
which appeared on disk in January 1928.28
Carter’s truly distinctive work with Henderson—the recordings on which
his style and sensibility pervades the entire arrangement—begins to appear
before the Connie’s Inn year, on three sides made in the band’s last two
Columbia sessions in the 1920s: “Come On, Baby!” and “Easy Money”
(December 12, 1928), and “The Wang Wang Blues” (May 16, 1929).
Carter’s writing resonates in Henderson’s later arrangements for Goodman,
so it’s worth exploring in some detail.
“Easy Money” is drenched in the sultry elegance of Carter’s writing for
saxophones. If “Stark’s brief but spectacular trumpet solo” and “Kaiser
Marshall’s smart, inventive cymbal work” stand out as the most immediately
exciting features of the performance, Carter’s accompanimental back-
grounds and his writing for saxophones do more than anything to shape the
arrangement’s mood and continuity. A different accompaniment backs each
of the four soloists. A simple boom-chick tuba/banjo pattern prods Buster
Bailey; placid brass long tones support Charlie Green; and saxophone and
brass riffs stroke the active solo lines of Stark and Hawkins. The saxo-
phones, topped by Carter’s sweet-toned alto, rise here and there in gentle
waves. In the last chorus, they emerge to play the melody with a rich, full
choir of sound (ex. 7.1). The melody gradually rises to a bursting trill at its
peak in m. 4, then slowly ebbs. Set off against this smooth flow of block
voicing, the brass play between-the-beats staccato notes paced by June Cole’s
firm tuba notes on beats one and three. The whole performance proceeds at
an unusually relaxed, flowing tempo.29
Recorded on the same day, “Come On, Baby!” reveals Carter’s arranging
as an extension of his solo style. Comparing the “Easy Money” saxophone
choir and the “Come On, Baby!” solo (ex. 7.2), one sees the importance of
ornament, especially trills, in both approaches.
Ex. 7.1.“Easy Money” (December 12, 1928), last chorus, saxophone choir
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 151
Ex. 7.2.“Come On, Baby!” (December 12, 1928), chorus 2, mm. 8–16, Benny Carter solo
The trills in both passages often occur at the peaks of phrases, in mm. 4,
12, and 15 of “Easy Money” and in m. 9 (attempted) and 11 in “Come On,
Baby!”
Carter’s arranged variation in “Come On, Baby!” shows soloistic quali-
ties as well (ex. 7.3), with its angular, darting melodic line, its ghosted notes
(mm. 4 and 16), its minor-third dips (mm. 8 and 11), and perhaps, too, in
its Armstrong-like tendency to favor a stabilizing three-note figure (or slight
variant of it) at the beginning of each four-bar phrase (mm. 1, 5, 9, and 13).
Ex. 7.3.“Come On, Baby!” chorus 3, trumpet line of arranged variation with
saxophones
The band’s last recording of the 1920s indicates the breadth of Carter’s
arranging talent: “The Wang Wang Blues.” Henderson’s 1927 version of this
piece represented a new departure from the established conventions of
playing the tune since Whiteman’s orchestra recorded it in 1920 (see chap.
5, ex. 5.3). For the first time, the original melody formed the backdrop for
a series of hot solos. Carter’s arrangement departs even more dramatically
from the original tune. Carter signals the uniqueness of his arrangement in
the introduction, which opens with parallel tritones—in a spiky palindromic
rhythm—resolving to octaves in m. 5 (ex. 7.4).
152 The Uncrowned King of Swing
= ca. 216
Tpts.
cymb.
tuba
Tpt.
Saxes
Tuba cymb.
Ex. 7.5.“The Wang Wang Blues,” melody, and Benny Carter's ensemble variations
(top line only)
Unlike the variations in ex. 7.5, the third chorus, for saxophones, makes
no allusion to the original melody (see ex. 7.6).
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 153
Ex. 7.6.“The Wang Wang Blues,” chorus 3, beginning, saxophones variation (two of
three lines shown)
playing the increasingly passé tuba instead of string bass, Kirby often plays
on all four beats of the measure and avoids the two-beat bounce typical of
the 1920s. Above that explicit four-beat feel, Carter writes several passages
featuring extended syncopation, creating a tug-of-war effect between the
melody and accompaniment. Here Schuller finds in Carter’s melodic varia-
tions “the final key to the ‘Henderson style’ . . . and the solution for making
a section swing: . . . syncopation.” More specifically, what Carter explores in
this arrangement is a device that Henderson would use with great ingenuity
and variety in his work for Benny Goodman to the point where it became
a hallmark of his style and, by extension, of the swing era: the chain of
syncopation, an uninterrupted sequence of offbeat notes (ex. 7.7).31
presenting Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet solo in the second chorus. Both solos
were becoming legendary. Lester Young reportedly carried around a copy of
the Trumbauer recording in his horn case, and once told an interviewer,
“Ever hear him [Trumbauer] play ‘Singin’ the Blues’? That tricked me right
there, that’s where I went.”“Everybody memorized that solo,” recalled Budd
Johnson. “Frankie Trumbauer was the baddest cat around.” In playing a
harmonized version of Trumbauer’s solo, Henderson’s lead alto player
(Procope or Boone) even adopted the sweet, sensuous tone of the model.33
In many ways beyond that, the Henderson version, recorded twice in
April 1931, goes directly back to the original recording, not to Challis’s
arrangement. For example, Henderson omits the third chorus for trombones
to preserve the three-chorus structure of Trumbauer’s recorded version. In
addition, Henderson’s solo clarinetist, probably Procope, plays Jimmy
Dorsey’s 1927 recorded solo, note-for-note. Moreover, Henderson’s band,
instead of playing the syncopated brass arrangement that Challis wrote in
the last sixteen bars, steers a course somewhere between Challis’s and Trum-
bauer’s versions, with an early 1930s dance band’s adaptation of a New
Orleans-style out chorus, featuring trumpets in the lead (three trumpets
here instead of Beiderbecke’s single lead). In other ways, Henderson’s version
goes its own way, as in the saxophone chords that accompany Stewart’s
Beiderbecke imitation.
Stewart’s presentation of Beiderbecke’s solo has been a source of much
commentary among historians of early jazz, since he plays nearly note-for-
note what Beiderbecke played in 1927, and thus provides a particularly
clear early instance of a black musician paying musical tribute to a white
musician. Sudhalter, in his unique position as historian and trumpeter,
156 The Uncrowned King of Swing
claims that Stewart plays the solo “in the inflections and accents of his own
style.” Indeed, there’s no mistaking the Armstrong-inspired Stewart for
Beiderbecke, but here Stewart also imposes restraint to emulate what Hoagy
Carmichael called Bix’s mallet-on-chimes tone. Stewart himself commented
on his solo in a 1967 interview, claiming that his own taste fell in line with
the record company’s directions: “Admiring Bix as I did, it was not difficult
for me to attempt to copy his memorable solo on ‘Singin’ the Blues,’ espe-
cially since the phonograph company for which Fletcher recorded the
number wanted my solos as close to the original as possible.”34
Although Henderson’s version follows the form and solos, and attempts
to simulate its tone quality, it does not quite capture the lacy lightness of its
model. The opening chorus for three reeds is a case in point. Trumbauer’s
famous 1927 “solo” really should be heard as a duet: Eddie Lang’s guitar
weaves a delicate counterpoint against Trumbauer’s melody; whereas in the
Henderson version the three saxophones have a more conventional rhythm
section accompaniment that cannot match the quality of crystalline
chamber music of Trumbauer and Lang.
Typically, records were released about two to three months after the
recording date. Bix Beiderbecke died on August 6, 1931, soon after
Henderson’s homage would have begun appearing in stores. The record
became an apt, if accidental, memorial.
The tendency to single out Henderson’s remarkable emulation of “Singin’
the Blues” has obscured the other Challis arrangement that Henderson’s
band recorded a month earlier, on March 19, 1931—in the first recording
session after “the Big Trade.” The recording history of “Clarinet Marma-
lade” was now more than a decade old, and the piece had already developed
the kind of complex identity of a standard—instantly recognizable but ever
changing. It had begun in 1918, with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, as a
small-combo ensemble piece with strong links to the march tradition. (The
following year, James Reese Europe’s band played it, preserving the ensem-
ble emphasis.) In 1926, Henderson’s first recording of the tune had trans-
formed it into a vehicle for hot soloists and ensemble riffs, including a new
introduction and the streamlining omission of several transitional passages.
In a burst of recordings that Henderson’s band seems to have inspired for
many pieces (e.g., “Sugar Foot Stomp,” “King Porter Stomp”), several white
bands adopted the piece in 1927–29, following Henderson’s model to some
extent, including groups led by Phil Napolean, Berlyn Baylor, Ted Lewis, Lud
Gluskin, and Bill Carlsen, and most notably, by Frankie Trumbauer. As figure
7.4 shows, Trumbauer, like Henderson, used the piece’s second strain as the
basis for a sequence of solos but also introduces a new ensemble variation
on the second strain’s tune. Unlike Henderson, however, Trumbauer’s band
retains the tune’s original introduction and reiterates the four- and twelve-
bar transitional passages, which Henderson had minimized in 1926.
Once again using a Challis arrangement ostensibly based on a Trum-
bauer recording, Henderson’s March 1931 recording follows the format of
the piece played by Trumbauer, not the innovative revision recorded by his
own band in 1926. Henderson’s 1931 recording returns to the tune’s orig-
inal introduction, and follows almost exactly the same pattern of “B”
strains, transitions, and solos that appeared in Trumbauer’s version. More-
over, Henderson’s “new” version omits the riffs it had played in 1926 and
includes an ensemble variation that Trumbauer’s band had introduced as the
second “B” strain in its 1927 recording.
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 157
Fig. 7.4.“Clarinet Marmalade”
Henderson (December 1926) Trumbauer (February 1927) Henderson (March 1931)
( = ca. 240–50) ( = ca. 250–60) ( = ca. 230–40)
F major F major F major
Intro(8) new, D minor Intro(8) original Intro(8) original
A(32) tpt. solo A(32) ens., cor. lead A(32) ens., tpt. lead
X(4) ens. X(4) ens. X(4) ens.
B(16) clar. melody B(16) tbn. solo B(16) tbn. solo
B(16) tpts. riff B(16) piano solo
X(12) ens. X(12) ens.
B(16) clar. solo B(16) ens. variation, (12) ens. variation, tpt.
cor. lead lead
B(16) tpt. solo X(4) ens. X(4) ens.
B(16) tenor sax solo B(16) C-melody sax solo B(16) tenor sax solo
(Trumbauer) (Hawkins)
X(12) ens., with high clar. B(16) cor. solo B(16) tpt. solo
(Beiderbecke)
B(16) clar. solo X(12) ens. X(12) ens.
B(16) ens. riff chorus B(16) clar. solo B(16) clar. solo
(breaks by clar.
and tenor sax)
B(16) ens. (breaks by B(16) ens. (b. sax break)
cor. and tenor sax)
B(16) ens. B(16) ens.
with Redman. For Redman—still with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and soon
to form a band under his own name—now stood in direct competition with
Henderson. Yet Henderson had many other sources to draw from, including
one of the more elusive figures of the early 1930s.
called jungle style that Duke Ellington developed during his Cotton Club
stint, which had ended just a few months earlier in February 1931. The
knowledge of Leslie’s link to Mills reinforces a sense that his music was
partly inspired by Mills’s flagship band.
Henderson’s recording of “Radio Rhythm” (July 17, 1931) is an excep-
tional performance of a unique piece. The arrangement recalls the restless-
ness of 1920s orchestration, but the performance brims with the fiery energy
of an early swing band. Like many Redman arrangements of the 1920s, the
piece is mostly built from two- and four-bar motifs and melodic fragments
tossed among several soloists and sections of the band. Only alto saxophon-
ist Russell Procope is allowed to stretch out, with a full-chorus solo after the
theme statement. From there, the arrangement proceeds in cut-and-paste
style.
“Radio Rhythm” sparkles with refreshing weirdness, again more in the
spirit of the experimental 1920s than of the swing era. The introduction sets
the tone with a menacing mood rare for big-band jazz—a churning, insis-
tently repeated saxophone triplet figure, the primal beat of the tom-tom, the
minor mode, and the sustained-tone growl trombone break that swells into
the first chorus.
Meanwhile, the piece’s harmonic and melodic basis could hardly be
simpler. Harmonically, it is strung together from oscillations between chord
pairs with strong gravitational attraction: C dim7 and D minor, Edim7 and
F, D minor and E 9, and A7 and D minor. Melodically, Leslie built the piece
on a basic two-bar motif first stated by saxes and trumpets, and punctuated
by a growling trombone exclamation.
The exclamation undergoes a metamorphosis. In the first section of the
first chorus it appears in the trombone as a stinging tritone dissonance—
G against a D minor chord—rearing its head in two different registers
(See ex. 7.8).
Ex. 7.8.“Radio Rhythm” (July 31, 1931), chorus 1, beginning (transcribed by Frank Davis)
160 The Uncrowned King of Swing
In the last section of the same chorus, the note, also coarsened by a
growl, appears in a plunger-muted trumpet part. Before the first chorus
ends, this one-note interjection has expanded into two accented high notes,
quickly articulated by an unmuted trumpet. The first chorus’s rise in heat
and tension owes much to the way this little interjecting figure gets trans-
formed as it appears in three registers, each higher than the preceding one.
“Radio Rhythm” also features a formal anomaly. Although the main
chorus comprises a conventional thirty-two bars, it has an atypical ABA
structure with two twelve-bar phrases (A) framing an eight-bar bridge (B).
The A sections combine to offer fully twelve statements of the syncopated
main motif. In another twenties-style gesture, the ensemble forces the key up
a half step to E minor for an extended coda, which ends off of the tonic,
on an A major triad, a tritone away from the original key.
The soloists contribute their share of surprises. Procope’s solo, for
example, does not end so much as it dissolves at the bottom of a modal
cascade of notes. A trumpeter (either Stark or Stewart) fills the last bridge
with a long, tense chromatic ascent to high D. All of this might produce an
amusingly offbeat novelty in an ordinary dance orchestra, but Henderson’s
band makes it a seething hot number propelled by menacing growls and a
brisk tempo.
Before and after the vamp’s reappearance Horace distributes ideas among
the band in a series of abrupt early-twenties-style shifts from solo trumpet to
saxes, then to a brief alto saxophone solo by Procope. Thereafter the piece
becomes all blues, with riff-backed solos by Morton (twelve bars) and Stark
(ten bars). The third blues chorus (also ten bars) begins with another
sequence of quick-shifting orchestration—from piano to brass to saxes and
back to piano—followed by another brief solo by Morton. In the final
chorus, Horace himself takes a four-bar solo and the ensemble continues
with a sultry chromatic figure that segues directly into a coda for saxo-
phones, who repeat the figure as they taper off into a quiet cadence. Again,
as in “Hot and Anxious,” unusual shifts of timbre and texture obscure formal
seams and the piece closes in a “fade out” ending based on a repeated riff.
Less than a month later, Fletcher himself contributed his own “Just
Blues.” Yet of all the blues Henderson’s band developed in 1931, the one to
which it devoted the most attention was not a new composition, but a
revised version of an arrangement of its greatest hit from the twenties:
“Sugar Foot Stomp.”
Battling
After the Connie’s Inn job ended in September 1931, the band continued to
find a steady stream of high-profile appearances, including a return to the
Roseland Ballroom and performances in Philadelphia, Washington, DC,
and Pittsburgh, where its arrival was “the biggest and most outstanding
dance attraction this city has ever witnessed.” Radio had paved the way.
Riding on its East Coast successes, the band continued west, playing a series
of dates in a variety of venues—including hotels, a college prom, and a
naval armory—in Cleveland, Columbus, St. Louis, Kansas City, Toledo,
Detroit, Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, and Champaign, Illinois, logging
some six thousand miles and returning east “highly elated.”39
It may have been on this tour that Henderson faced off against an up-
and-coming white band in a great battle. By mid-1931 the Casa Loma
Orchestra, led by saxophonist Glen Gray, had emerged as a popular dance
Connie’s Inn Orchestra 165
band that played hot and cultivated a youthful audience—a model for
Benny Goodman four years later. One night at Detroit’s renowned Gray-
stone Ballroom, charged by the competition with the country’s leading black
band, the Casa Loma offered a stiff challenge to Henderson’s supremacy.
Horace’s account of the event amounts to the anatomy of a band battle, and
shows how his brother’s apparent passivity and “easygoing” nature could
help him wage musical war. The Graystone’s vast dance floor featured two
bandstands, with the Casa Loma on one side, and the Henderson band on
the other. The Casa Loma started off and “play[ed] like mad . . . swinging
the whole crowd [of] four or five thousand people.” Henderson, however,
held his guns. “Fletcher started calling . . . those stocks, simple things . . .
And man, he was building up something. The guys in the band knew they
weren’t the best arrangements, [but] he did this . . . for two sets.” By the
second set, the crowd, which typically moved back and forth between the
bands, stayed with the Casa Loma band. “Okay,” Horace continued, “the
Casa Loma band played the third set, played like madmen.” Meanwhile,
Fletcher’s sidemen were growing angry at their leader’s apparent reluctance
to compete. “They had their heads down,” Horace recalled, “and Rex
Stewart was so mad, just fuming.” But then Fletcher did the unexpected. He
started calling out “special” arrangements, the kind of charts that his
sidemen all knew would excite the crowd. “And the people . . . ran across the
floor . . . and man they started swinging.” Glen Gray “was played out,”
Horace said, but “Fletcher went on from there all night long, and when Glen
Gray got back to start again, the people didn’t move. They stayed there with
Fletcher’s band.” Horace concluded that Fletcher “was great at that . . . and
he won many a battle like that.”40
Traveling six thousand miles would not have conjured feelings of
“elation” in most people of the period. But J. C. Higginbotham, with
Henderson by late 1931, explained that Henderson’s band had “nothing but
plain fun.” The bandleader himself may not have always condoned it but he
allowed it to happen. Henderson would “let you do like you want,” said
Higginbotham. It was a far cry from the Club Alabam and early Roseland
days when Henderson was the strict leader checking for shaven faces and
shined shoes. Band members continued to be chronically late for jobs. Hard
experience taught Henderson some tricks, which had mixed results. “If
Fletcher wanted you to start playing at nine o’clock, he’ll tell you about 7:30
or 8.”41 Once the men showed up for a gig, they were not always there in
spirit. In this, the Henderson band was hardly unusual, but it set a promi-
nent example, and for their recklessness, the musicians would pay in money
and work as the Depression settled in and managers increasingly controlled
and disciplined the band business. As a result, by 1932, Henderson found
himself engaged in a larger battle that he would ultimately lose.
8.
Playing in the Mud
O
N FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1932, Henderson’s orchestra had a remarkable
recording session for Columbia Records. For over a year, the band had
worked one-nighters and week-long engagements in theaters and ball-
rooms in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and New England, but it no
longer had a home base like Roseland or Connie’s Inn. And it had not made
a single record since March. The record business was at a low ebb, and
Columbia was bankrupt. Yet the young jazz promoter John Hammond, just
six days shy of twenty-two, had brokered an agreement between Henderson
and Columbia to produce a standard four-tune recording session lasting
three hours, beginning at 10 A.M. At the appointed time, however, only “two
musicians were in the studio,” Hammond recalled. More than two hours
later, at 12:15 P.M., “John Kirby showed up with his bass, followed shortly
by the rest of the band. We cut three sides in less than forty-five minutes.”
Yet, remarkably, “the session was one of the most satisfying I have ever had
anything to do with,” Hammond claimed more than four decades later. The
Columbia session may stand as a microcosm of the fortunes, repertoire, and
style of Henderson’s orchestra in the period between Connie’s Inn and the
band’s dissolution in late 1934. It was this period when John Hammond
walked into Henderson’s life and tried to steer him toward a more visible and
influential role in big-band jazz, leading ultimately to Henderson’s collabo-
ration with Benny Goodman.1
Hammond. “To bring recognition to the Negro’s supremacy in jazz was the
most effective and constructive form of social protest I could think of.”2
As a white New Yorker eager to stretch beyond what he saw as the
confines of his privileged Upper East Side background, Hammond had
explored Harlem’s nightlife by the late 1920s, but 1931 marks the beginning
of his public advocacy for its musicians. As David W. Stowe has pointed out,
an “aura of noblesse oblige” suffused that advocacy, and Hammond himself
admitted to “playing Pygmalion” in his effort to win respect for jazz in
mainstream American culture. Fletcher Henderson’s band became his most
cherished project. “Fletcher Henderson was one of my earliest enthusiasms,”
Hammond later wrote in his autobiography, and his was “the greatest band
in the country.”3
With cash, connections, and unshakeable confidence, Hammond began
finding work for Henderson’s band in the increasingly spartan economic
climate of 1932. In April, he arranged for an extended engagement at the
Public Theater in downtown Manhattan. In December, he organized the
Columbia session that produced what would become two of Henderson’s
most prized jazz recordings: “Honeysuckle Rose” and “King Porter Stomp.”
It appeared that Henderson had found just what he needed in the unstable
period after the post-Connie’s Inn tour. Hammond could do for Henderson
what Irving Mills had been doing for Ellington: acting as a powerful white
agent who opened doors to prestige and financial stability. The old business
paradigm in which Fletcher and Leora patched together tours with a flurry
of letters, telegrams, and phone calls had become inefficient in a milieu
where more bands competed in a smaller pool of jobs and money. Therefore,
Hammond — a rich white man with a passion for jazz — might have
appeared as a dream come true in the darkest years of the Depression.
The trouble was that Henderson and his proud sidemen did not particu-
larly relish the role of being Hammond’s pet project. The “problem with
Fletcher” first manifested itself at the outset of the Public Theater gig.
“[N]ever were there more than one or two of the band members in the pit
on time,” Hammond recalled. “There were something like 60 violations of
the show schedule during the week’s 28 shows.” The job might have lasted
much longer, but by the end of the week, Henderson’s band had been
replaced by Luis Russell’s Orchestra, whose every musician showed up on
time.4
Hammond’s accounts of the Public Theater job and Columbia recording
session address a pair of recurring themes: the band acts irresponsibly, then
makes “superb” music under difficult conditions. At the Public Theater,
Hammond wrote, “the men were incapable of making time. . . . But the
music was nothing less than superb.” At the Columbia session, despite their
“casual behavior” (or perhaps to “make amends” for it), the musicians once
again produced “superb” music, resulting in “one of the most satisfying”
recording sessions in his illustrious career.5
Another theme arises in Hammond’s reflections on Henderson: that the
disparity between indifferent professional behavior and passionate music
making may be explained by systemic racism beyond individual control.
His description of the Public Theater experience leads to the observation
that “Fletcher was letting me down and hurting himself as well. . . . In part
I believe it was the discouragement Negroes felt as economic victims of the
times, and perhaps it was also a small and self-defeating exercise of inde-
168 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Bankruptcy Blues
Hammond’s experiences with Henderson were not unique, lending weight
to his view that the band’s passive resistance to his advocacy went beyond
individual personality to more systemic problems at the crossroads of race
and commerce. From 1932 to 1934, indeed, the band’s fortunes were mixed,
partly due to circumstances beyond Henderson’s control, and partly due to
the band’s increasingly casual approach to securing and keeping employ-
ment. On one hand, Henderson continued to get bookings and attract
legions of fans. A “throng” greeted him at Atlantic City’s Garden Pier
Danceland (with its three hundred dance hostesses) in July 1932, for
example. An unprecedented crowd of forty-six hundred attended a “break-
fast dance” featuring the bands of Henderson, Cab Calloway, and Chick
Webb, at the Savoy Ballroom. There, Henderson’s fall 1932 engagement had
been “extended indefinitely” because of the band’s “great” popularity, as
reported in the New York Amsterdam News. The band earned another
extended run and regular radio exposure at the Empire Ballroom, a large,
new ballroom in midtown Manhattan, at Forty-Eighth and Broadway, not
far from the Roseland. That job began in late February 1933 and drew
thousands on Saturday nights. For the first time since the Connie’s Inn job,
the band enjoyed stability and prominence in a choice Manhattan venue, but
the job lasted only until early June.9
Within a year, in February 1934, another potentially stabilizing situation
arose when Henderson signed a contract to perform under the auspices of
Irving Mills. Already prominent for sponsorship of the Ellington and
Calloway bands, Mills’s agency offered the hope of more bookings, greater
prestige, and financial stability. The New York Age, for one, hoped the asso-
ciation would lead to Henderson’s “Phoenix-like rise from his ashes.”
Expectations for dramatic change in Henderson’s fortunes had a solid foun-
Playing in the Mud 169
Sometimes the band’s struggles brought the leader and sidemen into
conflict. Hammond reported a time in 1933 when “Smack had been having
trouble with some of the prima donnas in his band.” It got so bad, he
continued, that Henderson “was toying with the idea of firing his whole
orchestra” and starting “a brand new band.” The trouble went both ways.
Sidemen reported that Henderson regularly missed payments to them. The
musicians stuck with the band nevertheless, because no other could match
its quality and collective spirit. As Walter Johnson put it, “[t]he band was so
good I would’ve played with them for nothing at that time.” Trombonist
Dicky Wells agreed: “That was the kind of spirit the cats had. They weren’t
always worrying about money. In Fletcher’s band, once you started playing,
once you hit the first note of those good arrangements, all that was
forgotten. It was something the music would do for you.”13
Anatomy of a Head
By the early 1930s, Henderson’s band had gradually become a loosely run
collective. Henderson was now, in Hammond’s words, “the most disorga-
nized bandleader there ever was,” and the person who seemed least bothered
by it was Henderson himself. “Easygoing” is the mantra of musicians
recalling Henderson’s leadership style in the 1930s. Hammond called him
“too phlegmatic for his own good.” Tardiness had become endemic. Instead
of a reprimand, or worse, a musician who arrived late for a job might step
right in with a solo then get an approving nod from the bandleader for his
effort. Fletcher became “part of the whole thing,” Lawrence Lucie noted,
“not like a leader, but like one of the band.” Although it annoyed some of
the musicians, for Lucie that formed part of Henderson’s appeal:
“Henderson was great as a leader,” claimed Lucie, because he simply
“enjoyed seeing the band play.”14
The comments point to a paradox. What Hammond called Henderson’s
“lassitude” seems to have brought out the fire in his sidemen. “They would
seem as if they would play harder,” recalled Horace, because Henderson did
not reprimand them. Hammond, recalling the nearly catastrophic Columbia
session, noted that “[p]erhaps to make amends for their casual behavior, the
musicians really put out in the short time available to us.” In general,
Hammond believed that because Henderson “gave his soloists more freedom
than any bandleader has ever done . . . he got the best.”15
The band’s collective spirit extended to rehearsals and arrangements.
Musically, this was the time when Henderson emerges as the band’s chief
arranger. Yet the exact nature of Henderson’s involvement remains unclear,
because “arranging” at this point must be understood not as just writing
things down, as he would do for Goodman, but in directing rehearsals in
which the band members collaborated on arrangements. A glimpse of
Henderson’s method may be assembled from evocative testimony from
Coleman Hawkins, from brother Horace, and from Dicky Wells. Hawkins
left a vivid account in which claimed that “the majority” of the band’s
arrangements were “what we call ‘heads.’ ”
Horace was more specific about Fletcher’s role. Fletcher would conduct
rehearsals of a new chart by explaining its basic structure, including cuts and
segues, while admitting he did not have time to write it all down. Horace
recalled that because the band “knew his style,” Henderson could simply
“write skeleton things,” “explain where to jump,” and describe unwritten
insertions.16
Dicky Wells called it “playing in the mud.” One of the many coming-and-
going stars who passed through Henderson’s band, Wells joined Henderson
for a spell in 1933, later becoming a mainstay in Count Basie’s orchestra.
That’s jazz. If you get too clean, too precise, you don’t swing sometimes,
and the fun goes out of the music. Like Fletcher’s arrangements—they’d
make you feel bright inside. You were having fun just riding along. You
could almost compare it to a lot of kids playing in the mud, having a big
time. When the mother calls one to wash his hands, he gets clean, but he
has to stand and just look while the others are having a ball. He’s too
clean, and he can’t go back. Same way when you clean up on that horn and
the arrangements are too clean: You get on another level. You’re looking
down on the guys, but they’re all having a good, free-going time.17
There have been glimpses of this kind of thing before 1932—in “King
Porter Stomp,” “Hop Off,” and the 1931 “Sugar Foot Stomp.” But as Rex
Stewart noted, “Fletcher had to struggle with himself to start arranging,”
mainly because he had always been able to rely on talented colleagues like
Redman and Carter. It appears, then, that Henderson-directed head arrange-
ments became a more frequent practice in 1932–34, as the bandleader was
forced to rely more on himself for his band’s arrangements.18
Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose,” recorded at the Columbia session orga-
nized by Hammond in December 1932, shows the practice in its simplest
and most common form. The recorded arrangement consists of five choruses
of a standard thirty-two-bar AABA song structure. Chorus 1 presents the
melody, harmonized in brass, close to the way Waller published it three
years earlier. Choruses 2–4 comprise a series of improvised solos over riff
accompaniments. Chorus 5 then features a new variation on the tune, a
climactic ensemble riff.
The format can be heard as both an extension of arranging conventions
of the 1920s and as an anticipation of Henderson’s approach to arranging
for Goodman three years later. Conforming to 1920s techniques, the
arrangement sets the melody of a current popular song, then introduces
variations, culminating in what amounts to an “arranger’s chorus” featuring
the whole ensemble. Unlike a typical 1920s arrangement, however, this
arrangement demands little or no written music. Indeed, it calls for little
preliminary planning beyond agreeing on the tune and working out the
riffs. (Harmonizing in thirds and sixths hardly needed rehearsal: Louis
Armstrong and King Oliver had done it in their famous duet breaks in the
early 1920s.) The order and number of solos, as well as the beginning of the
final riff chorus, could be indicated by eye contact during the performance.
The arrangement omits the song’s verse, and includes no introduction, tran-
sitions, modulations, or tag ending. Clever contrast and subdivision inside
the strain give way to a smooth, streamlined succession of choruses, each
focusing on a single musical idea. Chorus 1 sounds perfunctory, the oblig-
172 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 8.1.“Honeysuckle Rose” (December 9, 1932). Top line: original melody. Bottom
line: Henderson riff.
again, with varying degrees of planning and written music involved. The
ingredients include many, if not consistently all, of the following:
and ignite crowds of listeners and dancers night after night. If one soloist
was absent, another could fill his slot and the audience might never realize
it. Such arrangements were ideal for a band on the run. Although many were
collaborative efforts, with principal credit attaching to another band
member such as Horace Henderson, Coleman Hawkins, or Benny Carter, or
an outside arranger such as Will Hudson or Russ Morgan, it is apt to refer
to them all as helping to create a “Henderson style,” because the musicians
shared a common goal. As Horace said, Fletcher could conduct rehearsals
with minimal written music because the band knew “his style.” Dicky Wells
noted, “The guys in the band used to bring in arrangements, and they
seemed to know just what Fletcher wanted.” So, as casually collaborative as
the music making may have seemed, it did have a center of gravity, and that
was Henderson himself.22
Playing in the Mud 175
We’d play this piece like mad. Come to work next night. We’d play it:
wonderful. Maybe about two or three days later we’d go down to the
studio to record it: horrible. Never would it come out right. . . . I don’t
know what it was about that band. I’ve never understood it. Why that
band could not record . . . in person it was the stomping, pushingest band
I ever heard. Couldn’t do the record the same way; I wonder why?23
Although “Hotter than ’Ell” features the same riffs as “Yeah Man!” the
later recording shows greater precision and confidence in the band’s perfor-
mance of them. “Yeah Man!” has all the raw excitement of a classic head;
“Hotter than ’Ell” represents a more integrated ensemble revealing more
rehearsal, revision, and, probably, more music writing.
From heads and head-like arrangements we move to a Henderson compo-
sition called “Can You Take It?”, which introduces some variants to the
basic format. The piece deserves attention for several reasons. It stands out
as one of the few pieces both composed and arranged by Henderson in the
early 1930s, yet it has been overshadowed by its better-known counterparts
from 1934, “Down South Camp Meeting” and “Wrappin’ It Up.” It reveals
some of Henderson’s musical preoccupations of the period, foreshadows
elements of the two later compositions, and also shows Henderson working
out ideas that he would revisit in two arrangements he wrote for Benny
Goodman in 1935. Dicky Wells cited “Can You Take It?” among the scores
from the period showing Henderson at his best.27
The entire piece is in the key of A major, a remarkably “sharp” key that
posed special challenges for the trumpets and reeds. Henderson was
legendary for writing in sharp keys. His “ ‘D’ Natural Blues” announced the
fact in its title. “Can You Take It?” goes one sharp better, and the title may
well be more than a rhetorical question for Henderson’s trumpets and reeds.
Many musicians have commented on Henderson’s keys; Horace mentioned
Fletcher’s “weird keys.” Ben Webster, who would fill Coleman Hawkins’s
chair in the band by summer 1934, admitted to being “scared” to take the
job, because “[t]he band played in every key imaginable.” Trumpeter Jonah
Jones claimed that “you had to see around corners” to play one of
Henderson’s arrangements. According to Dicky Wells, Fletcher told him that
he preferred sharp keys because “it meant less notes and the band would
swing more.” There was more to it than that. Henderson’s penchant for
difficult keys—“oriental keys,” as some musicians called them—served as
another marker for his band’s prestige and talent, and as a means of
showing up the competition.28
Playing in the Mud 179
While the key is unusual, the overall structure reflects standard practice:
a brief introduction, a melody chorus, a series of interior solo choruses,
and a final chorus featuring variations on the melody, plus a brief tag
ending. Henderson scores the introduction and entire first chorus for clar-
inets, revealing a new preoccupation with Don Redman’s trademark device
that he would revisit in his own compositions as well as his arrangements
for Goodman. The main melody, based on a thirty-two bar AABA form,
features a series of wailing leaps that hark back to Henderson’s “Stampede”
from seven years earlier. The leaps, tracing a perfect fifth, also suggest
another familiar source, confirmed by the underlying harmony, which is
more intricate and lacks the “loop” common to many heads. That harmony
consists of a descending chromatic chord progression that takes the music
from the relative minor to the major tonic in eight bars. In other words, it’s
a contrafact of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” which Henderson would arrange
for Goodman two years later.
The solo sequence presents Hawkins, Sandy Williams, and Hilton
Jefferson, each accompanied by sustained chords or riffs from the
contrasting section (brass for Hawkins and Jefferson; saxophones, punctu-
ated by brass shouts, for Williams). Instead of improvising on the main
tune, however, Williams and Jefferson take their solos on the blues. That
suggests that perhaps only Hawkins — well known for his virtuosic
command in all keys—had mastered the chromatic chord changes in A
major, or that Henderson was pointing a unique spotlight on his star, or
most likely, both. The interior blues choruses also suggest the means by
which the piece would have been easily expandable during a dance or other
public performance—all of Henderson’s sidemen could readily solo on the
blues. The final chorus — an arranger’s chorus — alternates between
ensemble variations and brief solos by Red Allen and Henderson himself.
The last phrase, which Henderson elides with the tag ending, most clearly
points the way to his later work with Goodman. Here, the ensemble plays
a nifty soloistic variation on the main melody and then segues directly into
a tag ending that Henderson would use again in his 1935 arrangement for
Goodman of “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”
“Can You Take It?”, although structured like many other arrangements in
Henderson’s repertoire, stands apart from the standard “head” arrangement
with its difficult key and chromatic, “Blue Skies”-based chord progression,
upon which only Hawkins dared answer the title’s question with a solo on
record.
Hawkins himself composed a piece called “Queer Notions” that also
introduces a novel twist on the familiar format. Some jazz writers have
noted the self-consciously “modernistic” element of the piece: the parallel
augmented chords, which, when harmonized by the full ensemble, create
whole-tone clusters, and thereby neutralize the gravitational pull of the
tonal center (E). Yet the tune’s harmonic novelty appears in a recognizable
context. Like the other head-arrangement-type pieces “Queer Notions” is an
AABA tune featuring a two-bar riff melody over a cyclic two-bar harmonic
loop (ex. 8.7).
From that perspective, Hawkins’s piece fit squarely within the practices
Henderson’s band had been developing in its head arrangements of other
pieces.
180 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 8.7.“Queer Notions” (August 18, 1933), chorus 1, beginning (transcribed by Mark Tucker)
The first chorus arrangement takes the same approach as “Talk of the
Town”—saxes and brass trade four-bar phrases of the melody, now at a
much faster clip. Horace takes the first solo, an animated romp whose
unexpected rhythmic and textural shifts suggest jazz piano innovator
Earl Hines. The next three choruses are all Red Allen—an uninterrupted
solo sequence of a length no other Henderson sideman had ever enjoyed
on record. Allen’s singing, like so many occasional black-band singers in
the early 1930s, has several hallmarks of Armstrong’s vocal style, widely
circulating since Armstrong’s performance of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” on
record and in public in mid-1929: the rhythmic elasticity, repeated notes,
and lyric-slurring that meant to create more excitement than literal
understanding. Horace plays a bridge to the final chorus, which alter-
nates between solo and section work, and culminates in a final passage
of ensemble shouts. “Nagasaki” has all the features of a typical Hender-
son band “head” of the period; the difference, in this case, is that the
expandable sequence of interior solos throws the spotlight on a single
performer.
colors and rhythms, and the arsenal of musical chinoiserie so popular in the
heyday of the oriental foxtrot—including tom-tom beats, gong hits, and
parallel fifths. Henderson’s arrangement streamlines the piece, presenting a
driving introduction that omits all of the pseudo-Chinese effects, followed
by a single statement of the verse, and the now-customary five-chorus
sequence with arranged ensemble passages framing a sequence of solos.
Chorus 2 features a deftly played exchange of melodic snippets between the
brass and reeds that both typifies Henderson’s call-and-response patterning
while recalling Redman’s early-1920s device of melodic interception. The
final chorus features a more straight-ahead call-and-response chorus in
which the brass and saxes exchange shouting riffs. So much distinguishes the
two arrangements, recorded a decade apart, that their one point of exact
similarity seems remarkable: both clock in at about 228 beats per minute.
The early version, however, brims with the manic peppiness of 1920s
novelty dance music, while the later version rolls along in the driving but
relaxed manner of a 1930s swinger. “Fletcher had a way of writing so that
the notes just seemed to float along casually,” wrote Dicky Wells. “There was
something he seemed to have inside there.” “Shanghai Shuffle” served as a
case in point for Wells.40
The Decca sides comprise an unusually unified collection, stylistically.
Schuller heard in them a “marvelously light, finger-snapping swing,” but the
arrangements do not sustain his attention. He hears the “flawless ensemble
passages” of the Decca sides as an “aural facade” that foreshadows the
decline of vital artistry of swing, which “atrophied not long after reaching
its zenith, starved from a lack of stylistic and structural nourishment.”
Indeed, the chief appeal of the 1932–34 Henderson band for Schuller lies in
a few key individuals: Walter Johnson, Red Allen, and Coleman Hawkins.
No scholar has surpassed Schuller in analyzing the contribution to
Henderson’s band of these musicians.41
Yet the arrangements create the musical conditions in which the soloists
thrive, especially considering the band’s penchant for collective musical
creation. Heard together and in the context of the band’s repertoire and
working methods in the early 1930s, the Decca sides show that the playing-
in-the-mud quality that Dicky Wells so vividly described, and some elements
of the “head” format, had gotten distilled and perfected.
Some of the arrangements came from outside the band, yet even they
sound all of a piece with the internally developed charts. “Wild Party” has
the markings of a head arrangement, this time built on the chords of
another recent Broadway hit, Kern and Hammerstein’s “Ol’ Man River,” a
tune Henderson’s band had recorded under Horace’s direction a year earlier.
But the tune is by Will Hudson and was “reportedly arranged” by Russ
Morgan. Both Hudson and Morgan were white arrangers from the Mills
stable. In the Mills-organized Victor session in March 1934, Henderson
had played two numbers by Hudson: “Hocus Pocus” and “Tidal Wave.”
Perhaps best known as the composer of the 1930s standard “Moonglow”
(with lyricist Eddie DeLange), Hudson wrote big-band swing in a taut,
clear, riff-based style that could simply be called Hendersonian. As Stanley
Dance wrote, he “had an ear for uptown riffs,” although he probably heard
such riffs first in Detroit, where he grew up and worked with McKinney’s
Cotton Pickers and Cab Calloway, who in turn helped Hudson get a job
working for his agent, Irving Mills.42
186 The Uncrowned King of Swing
In “Wild Party,” as in “Yeah Man!”/ “Hotter Than ’Ell,” riffs again appear
as melodies, accompaniments, and as call-and-response figures. The band
states the riff-based theme in the first chorus, interior choruses present solos,
and the final section climaxes in a series of calls-and-responses. Key and
tempo shifts enhance the impact of the final shout choruses. In these final
sections, the band plays only the first half of the tune, and plays it three
times, each at a higher key than the preceding one. Beginning in F, the key
shifts to G, then again up to A . Meanwhile, the whole performance, driven
by Henderson’s powerhouse rhythm section, has been accelerating notice-
ably, from 248 to 264 beats per minute. Adding to the overall climactic
effect is the appearance of clarinetist Buster Bailey, who returned in 1934
and played animated obbligatos during the out choruses. Through the last
two half-choruses, Bailey’s clarinet obbligato grows louder, providing a kind
of sprinkling effect over the passage. All together, the call-and-response
riffs, the ratcheting stepwise modulations, the accelerating tempo, and the
high-range clarinet obbligato create a climactic effect that must have been
irresistible on the dance floor.
“Rug Cutter’s Swing,” by Horace Henderson, is a partial “I Got Rhythm”
contrafact built on a riff at first stated by the muted trumpet. Again, three
internal choruses feature mostly solos, including an ensemble/trombone call-
and-response in chorus 3, in which the ensemble’s “call” is based on its
introduction. The final chorus features a melodic variation reminiscent of
Rodgers and Hart’s 1926 hit “The Blue Room.”
“Limehouse Blues” begins with a hard-driving pulsating introduction.
The first chorus gives a straightforward presentation of the melody, with
saxes in the A sections, and the brass taking the lead for the B and C
sections. Red Allen takes the first solo, over driving saxophone riffs. Buster
Bailey takes the next solo, with brass long tones and riffs. The ensemble then
trades eights with the trombone, with the ensemble playing long, blaring
crescendo-ing tones into the solo phrases. In the next chorus, the ensemble
again plays call-and-response with a tenor saxophone soloist: Webster. The
next chorus features a series of riff-based call-and-response phrases: brass
shouts answered by scurrying saxophone phrases. Throughout the rhythm
section sounds light, integrated, and forward moving.
“Big John Special” is another Horace Henderson piece among many in
the early 1930s that Fletcher’s band played. Several remarkable things are
worth noting: The main theme features a trademark of early 1930s that
Henderson would standardize in his arrangements for Goodman: a chain of
syncopations. The piece also has a light, understated swing, a suave inter-
action of Red Allen’s trumpet solo and the saxophone riffs that accompany
it, a lithe alto solo by Hilton Jefferson, and a sequence of call-and-response
figures in the final chorus. In the middle of the arrangement there appears
an ornate, solo-like passage for the full saxophone section. The title pays
homage to a generous Harlem restaurant owner, about whom Dicky Wells
said: “Everybody loved Big John. His nickname was Meatball. If you had a
buck, okay; if you didn’t, okay.43
“Happy as the Day Is Long” begins with an introduction that alludes to
another “happy” song: “I Want to Be Happy.” That kind of referential intro-
duction would be revisited by Henderson in his arrangements for Goodman.
After the melody chorus the arrangement shifts into Carter territory with a
second chorus that features a virtuosic saxophone soli variation on the
Playing in the Mud 187
melody. Throughout, the give and take between soloists and sectional
phrases is light, easy, and effortless.
“Down South Camp Meeting” and “Wrappin’ It Up,” both from the next-
to-last Decca session, represent Henderson’s masterworks for big band. They
stand out as swing compositions as such—works conceived for big band.
Unlike the adapted popular songs that formed the backbone of Henderson’s
1932–34 repertoire, and Goodman’s repertoire thereafter, they are
Henderson originals for band, with melodies and rhythms better suited to
instruments than voices. Moreover, they are notably slower than many of the
head arrangements, both taken at about 208 beats per minute. Finally, both
recordings rely less on improvising soloists than most of the band’s other
arrangements. “Down South Camp Meeting” includes only one full-chorus
solo, by Red Allen, among its six main sections. In short, the two Henderson
pieces seem more tailored for the 78-rpm record than the head arrange-
ments and thus foreshadow Henderson’s work for Goodman that would
begin three months later.
The version of “Down South Camp Meeting” that Henderson’s band
recorded in 1934 presents the piece as it would be played by Goodman for
years. All the traits for which Henderson’s style would become well known
are here: passages that set the band’s sections in dialogue with one another,
carefully worked out background figures designed to interact with the soloist
or section, chains of syncopation in which the offbeat notes tug and push
against the solid regular pulse, and a quality of understated, relaxed swing—
powerfully present but hard to describe—that suffuses the whole. The final
strain deserves special mention for bringing together several Hendersonian
features that came to the fore in 1932–34: the looping harmonic progression,
which Schuller and Williams hear as a “cousin” of “King Porter Stomp,” the
use of clarinets as a timbral alternative to saxophones, and the call-and-
response dialogue between reeds and brass.44
While “Down South Camp Meeting” represents Henderson’s use of the
multistrain form derived from marches and ragtime, “Wrappin’ It Up”
embodies the thirty-two-bar ABAC popular-song form. The forms produce
contrasting effects. “Down South Camp Meeting” has a progressive form, in
the sense that it proceeds from one section to the next, modulates to a new
key for each new section, and never recapitulates one section after introduc-
ing another. “Wrappin’ It Up” is cyclical, presenting a single thirty-two-bar
theme with three variations. The saxophones state the theme, punctuated by
pointed brass interjections. The first two “variations” are solo choruses fea-
turing Hilton Jefferson on alto saxophone and Red Allen on trumpet. The
contrast between the soloists is remarkable enough to appear as a calculated
compositional choice. Jefferson’s elegant lyricism stands in marked opposi-
tion to Allen’s blaring, bluesy exuberance. Surrounded by a bevy of stars
with more aggressive improvisational styles, Jefferson comes off as under-
stated, but he was widely appreciated by musicians. Procope praised his
beautiful tone. Leora, always attracted to musicians with strong fundamen-
tal skills and smooth tone, singled out Jefferson with particular relish in her
memories of Fletcher’s band. “He was so good,” she recalled. “I don’t know
why people don’t appreciate him—one of the finest saxophone players I ever
heard.”45
The final chorus presents Henderson’s own orchestrated variation of the
theme—another arranger’s chorus, this one by the composer himself. The
188 The Uncrowned King of Swing
melody contains more rhythmic than melodic interest, and its darting,
syncopated line is conceived for instruments, not voices. In fact many
phrases of the melody bear a striking resemblance to figures that Louis
Armstrong played in his solos with Henderson a decade earlier. These
figures, along with the blues inflections laced throughout the melody, are
almost entirely composed, and even during the solos, the underscoring inter-
acts with the soloists and often rises up to take the lead, only to recede into
the background and allow the soloist to continue. The soloists obviously
thrive on the foundation Henderson provides. Although both “Down South
Camp Meeting” and “Wrappin’ It Up” would become swing-era standards,
the approach of “Wrappin’ It Up,” with its statement and variations on a
song form, looks ahead to later 1930s conventions more than the more old-
fashioned multistrain structure of “Down South Camp Meeting.”
Late 1934 marks a turning point in Henderson’s career. Musically, his band
was in top form, as the dozen Decca sides from September attest. Several
other black bands recruited and recorded by Jack Kapp in September made
many more Decca records in the years to come; so it seems likely that
Henderson’s band would have had a comparable opportunity for regular
recording on an established prestigious label as the recording business came
out of its early Depression-era slump. Meanwhile, by many accounts, public
performances exceeded the quality and excitement of the recordings.
Listeners and dancers had ample chance to verify Hammond’s assertion
that Henderson’s records “do not do him justice”: the band worked contin-
uously. In the late summer and fall of 1934, in addition to appearing at the
Roseland Ballroom, the band toured widely—including stints in Montreal,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Then, in early November, the band
took up residence for several days at the Graystone Ballroom in Detroit, the
scene of many great battles. The job “drew good business,” according to
Walter C. Allen, but the band did not get paid. This was the last straw, and
the band quit en masse. The sidemen had to borrow money for bus fare back
to New York, where many of them found a musical haven with Benny
Carter. Fletcher Henderson was a bandleader without a band.46
Returning to New York, Henderson soon formed a pickup band for work
in New York and New England. For a while, he stood in direct competition
with his brother Horace, who had taken many of Fletcher’s sidemen and
arrangements and begun a job at the Apollo Theatre, down the street from
the Harlem Opera House, where Fletcher himself was hired to lead a band.
Facing another professional crisis, Henderson, with Leora’s help, “did the
unbelievable thing of having a book ready for us in three days and we
opened at the Harlem Opera House on schedule for a week stand,” Louis
Metcalf recalled. Henderson fans, intrigued by the fraternal rivalry, went
back and forth between venues. “This interest drew a great crowd for us,”
Metcalf recalled. On December 1, the New York Age reported that “Fletcher
Henderson’s band this week is ‘hot.’ ” As it happened, however, Fletcher’s
future lay not in Harlem, but in midtown Manhattan, where, on the same
day, a new radio program went on the air and would require his services not
as a bandleader but as an arranger. For it was just around this time when
John Hammond, once again making things happen for Henderson, intro-
duced him to Benny Goodman.47
9.
Building the Kingdom of Swing
If anyone were to ask what was the biggest thing that has
ever happened to me, landing a place on that show was it.
—Benny Goodman, talking about his spot
on the radio show Let’s Dance.
points out, a turning point in his career and cemented the relationship of
Goodman and Hammond.2
At the same time, perhaps because it had little to lose, the record industry
began to relax its policy on segregated bands. Goodman began recording
with black musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, pianist Teddy Wilson,
and singers Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the seventeen-year-old Billie
Holiday in her first recording session. It was Hammond, Goodman avowed,
“who really put me back in touch” with the hot style developed by black
musicians. With Hammond, Goodman also visited Harlem nightclubs to
hear the bands of Fletcher Henderson and others. No record of Goodman
and Henderson’s first meeting survives, although Hammond probably made
it happen around this time. Given Goodman’s later prominence as “King of
Swing,” it is worth noting that in musical and professional terms, a vast gulf
existed in 1933 between Goodman and Henderson, who had been leading
his band continuously for a decade and accrued enormous prestige, if not
financial reward. Later accounts suggest that Goodman saw Henderson as
a father figure.3
Prohibition’s repeal in late 1933 changed the landscape of Manhattan’s
nightlife, and several new venues opened. One of them, Billy Rose’s Music
Hall, needed a band, so Goodman gathered a new one and got a job there
in June 1934. Gilded by the name of a major impresario, the place seated a
thousand people and featured variety entertainment. Goodman recalled the
Music Hall job as “some sort of a pinnacle to me,” but, behind Rose’s back,
the venue’s mobster owners abruptly fired the band in October for reasons
having nothing to do with musical quality. It was “probably the toughest
blow I ever received,” Goodman recalled. Before the blow came, however,
Goodman had already sown the seeds of his next job. A radio contractor
named Josef Bonime had visited the Music Hall on Goodman’s invitation.
Goodman had worked for Bonime as a freelance, and he knew that Bonime
was scouting bands for a new project for the NBC radio network: a three-
hour dance-music program to air weekly across the country. It was called
Let’s Dance.4
As a network radio program sponsored by the National Biscuit Company
to promote its new Ritz cracker, Let’s Dance soon stood among the music
industry’s most coveted means of disseminating its products. Network radio
was less than a decade old, and commercial sponsorship had only recently
taken hold as its chief promotional style, a phenomenon validated by the
federal Communications Act of 1934. Broadcasting live music on radio
was not new, of course. Listeners had heard Henderson himself playing
the Roseland on WHN New York as early as 1924, and radio stations
carried many other bands and singers in on-location broadcasts, or
“sustaining programs,” from hotels, ballrooms, and nightclubs through the
1920s. Such programs certainly expanded a musician’s audience in a way
that had been impossible before the advent of radio in 1920. But commer-
cially sponsored network programs guaranteed a broad national audience
on a regular basis. These were the choice jobs, bringing unprecedented pres-
tige and remuneration.5
Having polled listeners and discovered that they prized dance music
above all, NBC aimed to create a virtual ballroom where all listeners heard
the same music, as in a real ballroom, but danced in their homes. It became
the ideal format for listening and dancing to music during the Depression:
Building the Kingdom of Swing 191
the radio audience could listen and dance for several hours every week
without buying a single record or paying a cover charge. Several features
enhanced the ballroom ambience. The program aired every Saturday night
from a newly built studio with a capacity of a thousand spectators. (As a live
broadcast from NBC’s Studio 8H, Let’s Dance could be called the original
Saturday Night Live.) The large crowds and familiar sounds of applause
created the aura of an on-location broadcast. The program connected with
the listening audience even more directly through an emcee who announced
the tunes and dedicated selected numbers to listeners around the country. On
a May 4, 1935, broadcast, for example, the emcee introduced Gershwin’s “I
Got Rhythm” “for the Let’s Dance party of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Callahan
of Philadelphia.” Meanwhile, studio dancers captured the attention of the
live audience. The word “dancers” on surviving original parts, usually
notated at the end of the first chorus, indicates the precise moment when
professional dancers appeared. Even the singers danced. Helen Ward,
Goodman’s principal female vocalist “used to pair up [with tenor Ray
Hendricks] and perform for the Let’s Dance studio audience between our
song stints,” she recalled.6
The program’s format not only encouraged but required Goodman to
play jazz-oriented music. Three bands played a series of thirty-minute sets
in alternation, beginning with Kel Murray and His Orchestra playing sweet
dance music, continuing with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra playing Latin music,
and ending with Goodman’s band playing hot music. NBC’s contract with
Goodman included an allowance to commission eight new arrangements per
week at $37.50 each for the show’s thirteen-week run (reduced to four per
week when the show was renewed for its second, and last, thirteen weeks).
For a fledgling band with a small book, “this was what we needed more than
anything else,” Goodman recalled, and it proved to be “the most valuable
thing about the program.”7
Arrangements came from many sources, especially from experienced
white arrangers such as George Bassman, composer of the band’s theme
song “Let’s Dance”; Gordon Jenkins, composer of the band’s sign-off theme,
“Goodbye”; Deane Kincaide, whom Goodman singled out as “an
outstanding musician among white arrangers”; and the prolific Spud
Murphy, who was known to make as many as four arrangements per week.
Goodman also used charts from black arrangers Jimmy Mundy, from Earl
Hines’s band, and Edgar Sampson, the former Henderson sideman who
arranged for Chick Webb. All of these arrangers expanded Goodman’s
repertoire and assured his appeal on the radio in the first weeks of Let’s
Dance. After the show began, however, Goodman realized that new arrange-
ments were not enough; his band needed a distinctive sound. And that
distinctive sound, he was advised, should come from a major black jazz
arranger with fewer commitments to another band. An obvious first choice
was Benny Carter, who had written for Goodman’s Music Hall band, and
whom Goodman singled out for writing a “swell arrangement” for one of
that band’s records. Carter’s career, however, was in transition. He
disbanded his own orchestra in February 1935 and joined up with the Willie
Lewis orchestra, on the verge of departing for an extended visit to France.8
“But about the most important thing that happened then,” Goodman
noted in his 1939 autobiography The Kingdom of Swing, was that “Fletcher
Henderson was around town.” Henderson was mainly trying to keep a band
192 The Uncrowned King of Swing
flourished in his new line of work. But we need to take stock of what
Henderson was being asked to do for Goodman and remember its specific
context: the thirty-minute radio set. Henderson’s reputation as a jazz
arranger rests chiefly on arrangements with roots in his own band—espe-
cially a handful of up-tempo, hard-driving instrumental numbers by jazz
musicians, such as “King Porter Stomp” (Morton), “Sugar Foot Stomp”
(Oliver and Armstrong), and “Wrappin’ It Up” (Henderson). In swing-era
parlance, the fast jazz instrumentals, sometimes called “flag-wavers” or
“killer-dillers,” or what Goodman himself simply called Henderson’s “big
arrangements,” occupied a small but special part of a radio program: the
climactic closer. The rest of the program, which Goodman referred to
tellingly as “the regular sequence of numbers” (emphasis added), featured
more melodious popular songs from Tin Pan Alley publishers, who saw
Goodman’s new job as a major opportunity to plug their latest products. “It
was then,” Goodman writes in his autobiography, “that we made one of the
most important discoveries of all—that Fletcher Henderson, in addition to
writing the big arrangements . . . could also do a wonderful job on melodic
tunes such as ‘Can’t We Be Friends,’ ‘Sleepy Time Down South,’ ‘Blue Skies,’
‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ and above all ‘Sometimes I’m Happy.’
. . . These were the things, with their wonderful easy style and great back-
ground figures, that really set the style of the band.” Henderson flourished
because the job required him to write music based on the kind of repertoire
his first band had played: popular songs. Goodman continued, “Without
Fletcher I probably would have had a pretty good band, but it would have
been something quite different from what it eventually turned out to be.”11
Once Goodman realized the value of Henderson’s style, he wanted more
of the same and he wanted it fast. In fact, Henderson wrote so many
arrangements, and his approach became so influential, that Gunther Schuller
has lamented that the style quickly became commercialized and “ground
into a formula.” Yet the key players did not hear it that way. John
Hammond, for one, recognized Henderson’s popular-song arrangements as
marking a crucial moment when jazz preserved its integrity in the face of
commercial corruption. Henderson’s work was significant, he claimed,
because, for “the first time,” it broke “the stranglehold music publishers had
on the performance of popular songs.” Goodman likewise heard
Henderson’s work as innovative. “Fletcher’s ideas were far ahead of anybody
else’s,” he claimed. Because they represented “something that very few musi-
cians could do,” Goodman referred to Henderson’s arrangements as art.12
Perhaps the issue of whether Henderson’s work represents “formula” or
“art” may be resolved by seeing the arrangements in a tradition of other
forms, such as the Shakespearean sonnet or the blues, where artistry lies in
the flexible manipulation of highly conventionalized idiomatic features.
Henderson worked comfortably within a set of stylistic conventions but
continually found ways to refresh those conventions. For Henderson, more-
over, such conventions coalesced around the particular requirements of Let’s
Dance. If the swing era represents “the only time when jazz was completely
in phase with the social environment,” then Henderson’s arrangements for
Goodman form the perfect lens through which to understand that merger of
social and musical impulses.13
How can a musical arrangement be “in phase” with its social context?
First of all, as Goodman pointed out, “melodic tunes”—that is, popular
194 The Uncrowned King of Swing
In both, the rhythm tugs and pushes against the beat to build musical
tension that can only be resolved when the rhythm finally lands on the
beat. The rhythm forms a key means by which swing goes beyond ragtime,
which features constant syncopation but rarely in such “chains.” In ragtime,
syncopated patterns typically occur within the measure, but rarely extend
beyond the measure. Moreover, ragtime does not swing. Thus when
Goodman’s band performs chains of syncopation, the effect gets
pronounced by the uneven accents of swing rhythm, where the offbeat
pitches are played shorter than on-the-beat pitches. As a result the pitches
in a Hendersonian chain of syncopation produce a crisp, bright effect when
played in a swing style. The device dates back at least to 1930, when it
appeared in Benny Carter’s arrangement of “Keep a Song in Your Soul.”
Thus, although Henderson himself does not appear to have originated the
idea in swing arranging, his band had been its incubator. Now, as
Goodman’s arranger, Henderson uses it regularly as a means of creating
musical unity.
Two of Henderson’s early arrangements for Goodman deploy the chain
of syncopation effect as a unifying device, producing the “hung together”
quality that Goodman prized: “Blue Skies” and “Between the Devil and the
Deep Blue Sea.” Irving Berlin had composed “Blue Skies” in late 1926. The
song was introduced to the public as an interpolation in a Rodgers and
Hart show called Betsy, starring vaudeville veteran Belle Baker. The show
flopped, but the song had staying power. Berlin published it in early 1927,
and later that year it found its way into another show, the landmark “talking
picture” The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson. Thanks to the film’s success,
Jolson became closely identified with the song throughout the world. By the
time Goodman played Henderson’s arrangement of “Blue Skies” on Let’s
Dance on January 26, 1935, then, the song was well known and nearly a
decade old, but it was by no means a staple in the jazz or swing repertoire.
Goodman’s performance of Henderson’s arrangement launched the tune’s
life as a jazz standard.
Goodman’s June 25, 1935, recording captures the arrangement soon after
the Let’s Dance run ended. It begins with a dissonant full-band blast and
brass fanfare figures, far afield from Berlin’s original tune. Playing it on a
radio broadcast in September 1938, Goodman stopped the band during the
introduction and asked Henderson, “Wait a minute. Hold on. . . . Where did
that introduction come from? What’s that got to do with ‘Blue Skies’?” Since
at least the early 1920s, arrangers typically launched a chart with a unique
introduction: it staked a claim for a band’s distinctive approach to a song.
Here, however, Henderson had an expressive goal, one that both perplexed
and amused Goodman. In an obviously scripted exchange, Henderson
exclaims, “Well, Benny, I’m surprised at you. . . . That’s the storm [before the]
blue skies from now on.” Goodman relished the explanation so much that
he repeated it almost fifty years later, during a concert in October 1985 in
which he had the band play the introduction twice, just as he had done in
the 1938 broadcast.19
This kind of pictorial, or programmatic, introduction became a trade-
mark for Henderson, and to it he brought a subtle, allusive wit. Sometimes
the wit comes out in a reference to another song, as in the quotation of
Mendelssohn’s famous wedding music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream in
Building the Kingdom of Swing 197
the introduction to “Minnie the Moocher’s Wedding Day” and in the two-
bar quotation of “I Got Rhythm” in the opening bars of “Get Rhythm in
Your Feet,” a quotation later extended in chains of syncopation. On the
other hand, Henderson’s arrangement of “Lost My Rhythm” includes no
quotation but begins with a densely syncopated pattern that aptly obscures
the beat. Such gestures have precedents in the arsenal of effects that Don
Redman developed a decade earlier. Henderson’s allusive and pictorial intro-
duction to “Blue Skies,” then, forms part of the ongoing legacy of the novelty
impulse in early 1920s dance band music.
After the “stormy” introduction, the arrangement settles in and explores
“Mr. Berlin’s idea,” as Henderson called the tune in that 1938 broadcast.
The arrangement features four choruses, meaning that Henderson must
find a way to maintain musical interest while stating Berlin’s principal
melody—the “A” phrase of the song’s AABA form—twelve times. In many
arrangements, Henderson simply repeats each “A” phrase within a chorus.
“Blue Skies,” however, presents a case of internal variations—melodic
changes within as well as among choruses. No wonder it was one of
Goodman’s favorites. The written passages have a soloistic quality; the
background figures are carefully integrated into the melodic and harmonic
fabric; one chorus flows naturally into the next; the arrangement develops
a carefully calibrated climax; and the whole thing hangs together and
sounds unified. “Blue Skies” stands out as particularly effective for the way
Henderson gradually effaces “Mr. Berlin’s idea” with his own swinging
variations, reserving a melodic surprise for the climactic final phrase.
The first chorus features three variations on Berlin’s main melody (the
“A” phrase). In the first eight measures, Henderson arranges the melody for
brass and reeds in thick block voicing with lots of open “air” (rests) where
Berlin’s original had long tones (see ex. 9.2). He further spikes his new
version with plenty of syncopation and blue notes (such as F in m. 2; A
in m. 3; and C in m. 5). Meanwhile, Henderson enriches the song’s
“vertical” dimension by adding sixths and sevenths to Berlin’s triadic
harmony. The phrase illustrates a perfect balance of Tin Pan Alley and
swing, keeping “Berlin’s idea” recognizable and transforming it with
Hendersonian trademarks.
Then Henderson begins to depart further from the source. He launches
the second eight with a new triplet figure, followed by two-note slurs with
offbeat accents (ex. 9.3). It culminates in a few long-link chains of synco-
pation—a rhythmic device that grows more prominent throughout the
arrangement.
In the final eight bars, the saxophones alone take the lead in a suave,
blues-inflected, and newly syncopated version of the original melody (ex.
9.4). Henderson punctuates the melody with a trombone “stinger” (m. 31)
heralding the next chorus. This effect, which becomes a familiar device in
Henderson’s popular song arrangements for Goodman, has its roots in pieces
played by Henderson’s own band, such as “Radio Rhythm” and “Hotter
than ’Ell.”20
In the second chorus, Henderson further complicates the texture. Omit-
ting the trombones, he now separates the reeds and brass for the first time,
building an elegant call-and-response pattern between the melody in the
muted trumpets and a smooth countermelody in the saxes (ex. 9.5).
Ex. 9.2.“Blue Skies” (1935), chorus 1, mm. 1–8. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers
in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.3.“Blue Skies,” chorus 1, mm. 9–16. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in the
Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Building the Kingdom of Swing 199
Ex. 9.4.“Blue Skies,” chorus 1, mm. 25–32. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in the
Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.5.“Blue Skies,” chorus 2, mm. 1–7. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in the
Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.6.“Blue Skies,” chorus 3, mm. 25–28. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in the
Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
over a longer, and louder, sequence. The pattern repeats, and Berlin’s orig-
inal “A” melody has completely dissolved in Henderson’s textural and figural
changes and Goodman’s improvisation. In the final eight bars, however,
Henderson introduces a surprising and climactic twist: as the saxophones
and trumpets play a spiky countermelody, Henderson brings in the trom-
bones to blast the principal melody exactly as Berlin wrote it, for the first
time (ex. 9.7).
Ex. 9.7.“Blue Skies,” beginning of last phrase. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in
the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
The style served Goodman well in his position as point man for the music
industry’s paradigm shift. It represents a particularly fine example of
Henderson’s principal work for Goodman, this is, arranging popular songs,
more than half of which comprise the thirty-two-bar AABA song form.
Whatever variations Henderson might play on the melody, the arrangement
preserves the integrity of the original song. In this way, Henderson’s arrange-
ments appear less oppositional, and more consensual, than John Hammond
claimed. The consensus lies in finding an elegant musical balance between
Tin Pan Alley and swing.
Goodman named “Blue Skies” among the melodic tunes on which he
believed Henderson had done such a wonderful job. Even among dozens of
Henderson arrangements that Goodman played repeatedly, “Blue Skies”
Building the Kingdom of Swing 201
holds a special place as one of the few that Goodman programmed for his
legendary Carnegie Hall concert in January 1938; and it is the one he
singled out for demonstration later that year when he invited Henderson on
to his radio program, the Camel Caravan, to explain arranging. “Blue Skies”
was “probably his [Goodman’s] all-time Fletcher Henderson favorite,”
according to Loren Schoenberg, the tenor saxophonist and bandleader who
played as Goodman’s sideman in the 1980s and led the band after
Goodman’s death. Goodman continued rehearsing and performing it with
his band to the end.21
almost all of the band’s vocal arrangements; yet none of them stayed for
very long. After Helen Ward left at the end of 1936, the band saw a quick
succession of singers for the next seven years, none staying for even two
years—including Martha Tilton (August 1937–May 1939), Louise Tobin
(May–October 1939), Mildred Bailey (October–December 1939), Helen
Forrest (December 1939–August 1941), and Peggy Lee (August
1941–March 1943). Singers posed a dilemma: they added necessary variety
to a program and helped hold an audience, but they detracted from
Goodman’s musical ideal (for him, “jazz” was instrumental music). They
also took some of the spotlight from the bandleader. This may be the reason
that Goodman always had a female singer but never had a particular one for
very long. As long as singers came and went quickly, none could become
irrevocably identified as the voice of the Benny Goodman Orchestra and
challenge the leader’s supremacy.23
Goodman preferred Helen Ward because she stood out as an exception
to the “rule” that female singers could not swing. Thus Henderson wrote
many of his earliest vocal arrangements for her. In his book Jazz Singing,
Will Friedwald calls Ward “the archetype of the early canaries” for “her
exuberant, toe-tapping approach” that proved highly influential in the mid-
1930s. It did not hurt, of course, that Ward was extremely attractive. When
she began working with Goodman she was a mere eighteen years old. She
was “so beautiful,” said trumpeter Jimmy Maxwell. “She came out in a
white nightgown [that] fit her . . . like it was painted on her, and you’re just
standing there with your favorite fantasy, and say[ing] ‘Sing to me, baby,
sing to me!’ ” Romances between band members and singers were common-
place. In fact, in Ward’s two years with the band, she dated Goodman “off
and on.” At this point, Goodman’s courtship technique mixed personal
and musical motives, shifting between solicitous and blunt. In the “on”
periods, Goodman would buy a gardenia for Ward every night. During an
“off ” period, however, Goodman saw Ward with another man and
abruptly asked her to marry him. “I really believe Benny liked me a lot,” she
recalled. “But I have to think the real reason he proposed was to keep me
from leaving the band. After all, I did sing every other tune.” Ward did stay
with the band, but the proposal otherwise resolved nothing: Ward and
Goodman continued off and on for a while. Finally, in October 1936,
Ward met Goodman at a restaurant to tell him she was leaving the band to
marry another man. Goodman took his dinner menu and “flung it across
the table in my face.”24
Despite their romantic tension (or perhaps because of it), Goodman and
Ward’s musical rapport flourished, as in Henderson’s arrangement of the
1931 rhythm song “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” by Harold
Arlen and Ted Koehler. Koehler’s lyrics inadvertently strike the keynote of
the Ward–Goodman romance: “I should hate you, but I guess I love you,”
she sings, “You’ve got me in between the devil and the deep blue sea.” No
wonder composer-critic Alec Wilder calls it the “definitive performance” of
the tune. If Berlin’s “Blue Skies” melody had a deliberately nonjazz
“straightness” in its rhythmic style, Arlen’s “Devil” was custom-made for
swinging. In fact, swing is built into the song, albeit with Tin Pan Alley’s
awkward approximation: dotted sixteenth-notes. It was one of the first
Henderson vocal arrangements Goodman played on the air, appearing on
the January 5, 1935, Let’s Dance broadcast. The arrangement quickly won
Building the Kingdom of Swing 203
Ex. 9.8.“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (1935), introduction. MSS 53, The
Benny Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.10.“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” chorus 3, mm. 1–8. MSS 53, The
Benny Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Building the Kingdom of Swing 205
9.10). The pattern repeats in the next two bars, then extends the chain of
syncopation across three measures, capped by a soloistic rip. Henderson
tapers the effect with a diminuendo as the ensemble descends to its lowest
pitches of the passage (mm. 5–6).
As in “Blue Skies,” the last section of the chorus is Henderson’s coup de
grace (ex. 9.11). The brass enters shouting for a call-and-response dialogue
with the saxophones for four bars. In the last four bars, Henderson brings
the entire band together playing on-the-beat block chords in a thundering
crescendo. The chains of syncopations, which had accumulated thematic
prominence throughout the arrangement, are now “straightened out” in the
score’s climactic moment.
Although less well known than Henderson’s “big arrangements” (for
reasons to be discussed later), “Blue Skies” and “Devil” encapsulate the key
elements of Hendersonese in the popular-song repertory that formed the
foundation of his work for Goodman. They begin with a purposeful intro-
duction—pictorial in “Blue Skies” and motivic in “Devil.” Omitting the
song’s verse, they proceed with three or four choruses of a thirty-two bar
AABA popular song. The brass and reed sections are harmonized with
enriched chords in tight, block voicing. A trombone “stinger” signals the
second chorus. Sections of the band are featured in call-and-response
patterns. The lead soloist or section stands out over a rich foundation of riffs
and other background figures. Such figures tend to suggest instrumental
stylizations of vocal effects, conjuring metaphors such as “humming,”
Ex. 9.11.“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” chorus 3, mm. 25–32. MSS 53,
The Benny Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
206 The Uncrowned King of Swing
three R’s meshed so perfectly that the music appears in retrospect to have
transcended the commercial circumstances surrounding it, making them
prime candidates for inclusion in the “jazz tradition”—a phrase connoting
a musical lineage constructed to emphasize the music’s autonomy from the
marketplace.
“King Porter Stomp” was the first arrangement that Henderson gave to
Goodman (along with his brother’s “Big John Special”). Radio and Records
had paved the Road for “King Porter Stomp.” The piece appeared on Let’s
Dance several times and was recorded twice by Victor in June and July
1935. Along the way, the band had tried it out before dancers during its one-
nighters between radio broadcasts. Then the Goodman band went on its
lengthy, and ultimately legendary, tour across the United States culminating
in a historic success at the Palomar Ballroom.
Any sense that the tour’s culmination was somehow predestined,
however, should be dispelled with a few facts about the band’s vicissitudes
in the spring and early summer. NBC failed to renew Let’s Dance after its
second thirteen-week run because a strike had put Nabisco in jeopardy.
MCA then installed Goodman’s band at one of its standard venues, the
Roosevelt Hotel, an intimate restaurant where dinner audiences had grown
accustomed to soft, elegant background music from MCA’s sweet bands
such as Guy Lombardo’s orchestra. In that context, Goodman’s radio-
shaped “hot” orientation collided with the new venue’s “sweet” aura. Helen
Ward summed up the problem by asking, “how softly can you play ‘King
Porter Stomp’?” The answer was, you can’t. Goodman got his two-week
notice after the first night. The Roosevelt Room “horror,” as saxophonist
Hymie Schertzer called it, raised doubts that Goodman’s brand of dance
music had legs beyond its brief run on the radio.30
With Goodman’s band expelled from MCA’s flagship venue, Willard
Alexander then tried something different: a cross-country tour, through
Ohio and Michigan and extending across Colorado and Utah, ultimately to
California. The band’s reception along the way had been mildly enthusiastic,
but not terribly encouraging, and the grinding life on the road exacerbated
Goodman’s doubts about the band’s potential. Goodman had almost given
up the band in Colorado. At Denver’s Elitch Gardens, the band reached a
low ebb, playing for minuscule huddles of dancers at a venue where the
manager urged the band to play waltzes and do comedy. In Utah, Goodman
fired his talented but undependable trumpet star Bunny Berigan, but then
rehired him the next day.31
Then the California audience, first in Oakland, then in Los Angeles,
showed a new receptivity to the music. When Bunny Berigan stood up and
played “Sometimes I’m Happy” and “King Porter Stomp,” Goodman
recalled, “the place exploded.” “From the moment I kicked them off,”
Goodman wrote, the band showed “some of the best playing I’d heard since
we left New York. To our complete amazement, half of the crowd stopped
dancing and came surging around the stand. . . . That was the moment that
decided things for me. After traveling three thousand miles, we finally found
people who were up on what we were trying to do. . . . That first big roar
from the crowd was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard in my life.”32
The Palomar explosion and its aftershocks have led some historians to
cite it as the birth of the swing era. Marshall W. Stearns, for example, after
Building the Kingdom of Swing 209
tracing jazz’s development in 1930–34, could simply assert, “The Swing Era
was born on the night of 21 August 1935.” More than four decades after it
was published, Stearns’s formulation still echoes through the jazz literature,
as in Gary Giddins’s extension stressing swing’s “birth” as a social phenom-
enon more than a musical one: “On that night, August 21, 1935, the swing
era was born, because on that night middle-class white kids said yes in
thunder and hard currency.” Indeed, what Goodman’s Palomar appearance
revealed—as it grew from that first night into a three-month run—was not
a new musical style but a new cultural “coalition” energized by white
teenagers, who would comprise swing’s most potent and unified audience.
Social historians David W. Stowe and Lewis A. Erenberg both stress that
youth was not a passive, hypnotized audience, but rather an active, empow-
ered group who expressed that empowerment above all through dancing.
These were the “jitterbugs” and “ickies” whose zeal and jerky movements
startled older observers as well as the musicians themselves, and they created
a subculture never envisioned by musicians such as Goodman, who was
initially baffled by celebrity and sometimes puzzled by and even contemp-
tuous of his fans.33
After the Palomar run, swing also became a kind of musical symbol of
New Deal America. Cultural historians have emphasized swing as a model
of populist pluralism and as such “the preeminent expression of the New
Deal.” Like Roosevelt’s New Deal, swing crossed and blurred lines of class,
ethnic, racial, and regional separation. Indeed, Goodman’s arrival in Cali-
fornia in August 1935 coincides with four new initiatives in the Second New
Deal passed by Congress, including the Social Security Act, passed on August
14, 1935. Later, a ballroom manager, asked if attendance had risen because
of swing’s popularity, said, “Not at all—you can give much more credit to
the present administration in Washington and to the morale of the nation in
general.”34
One of the paradoxes of the first night at the Palomar was that what
signaled the band’s effectiveness was not vigorous dancing, but its opposite,
as “half of the crowd stopped dancing and came surging around the stand.”
Another is that one of the key pieces that Goodman singled out for its effect
on the crowd was a complete anomaly in his book: “King Porter Stomp.”
“King Porter Stomp” was one of the oldest pieces in Goodman’s book,
dating back at least a quarter of a century. Moreover, it was one of Jelly Roll
Morton’s pieces, which were rarely played by bands other than Morton’s,
although a few had been issued in stock arrangements by the Melrose
Brothers. It was a multistrain blues-inflected ragtime-based piece at a time
when ragtime and blues were thoroughly out of fashion. In addition, the
arrangement has an expandable form, whose final sections, the trio and
“stomp” strains, could be extended indefinitely for a sequence of solos. The
“stomp” genre itself was outdated, having been a popular marketing cate-
gory in the 1920s when Henderson’s band also recorded “Carolina Stomp,”
“Henderson Stomp,” “Variety Stomp,” “Whiteman Stomp,” and of course,
“Sugar Foot Stomp.” “King Porter Stomp” could never belong among the
“regular sequence of numbers” that Goodman played on a radio show; next
to the popular songs that formed the core of Goodman’s book and the
majority of Henderson’s charts, “King Porter” stood out as distinctively
different.
210 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.12b. Goodman recording (July 1, 1935). MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in
the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
212 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.13.“King Porter Stomp,” penultimate strain riff
Ex. 9.13a. Henderson recording (1933) (transcribed by James Dapogny
and Dave Jones)
Ex. 9.13b. Goodman recording (1935). MSS 53, The Benny Goodman Papers in the
Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
second chorus. The guitar solo passage adds a particularly intimate touch
and unique color combination: Goodman’s guitarists rarely got a solo spot,
and this one is accompanied by a sotto voce trio of clarinets.
In ballads, the brass provide color instead of power, and Henderson
exploits a variety of coloristic possibilities by specifying passages for hat
mutes and cup mutes, and for “open” (unmuted) brass. Henderson’s mute
indications tend to be varied and precise, creating an array of shades. Thus,
in “Rosetta”’s first chorus the brass play a two-bar phrase in hat mutes; the
trumpets alone provide cup-muted background figures for Goodman’s
bridge solo. In the second chorus, they play brief, two-bar responses to
melodic variations in the saxophones. They shift to hat mutes for a pair of
long tones behind the tenor solo spots, then take out the mutes for a phrase-
ending turnaround. Henderson does not mark “open” for the beginning of
the second chorus, but it seems to be implied and, on the recording, the
brass certainly sound brighter from here to the end as their melodic partic-
ipation becomes more prominent.
Goodman’s best-known Henderson ballad arrangement was “Sometimes
I’m Happy.” The piece begins with one of Henderson’s rhythmless intro-
ductions: two bars of brass and saxes without piano, bass, guitar, and
drums. (In the score, there appears a single, bowed, long tone in the string
bass, which is inaudible, if even played, on the recording.)43 In one of
Henderson’s most transparent and delicately scored moments, the saxo-
phones, marked pianissimo, launch the piece with a soft puff on the tonic
chord (A), followed by cup-muted brass playing a legato phrase over saxo-
phone harmony.
Also as in a typical ballad, the first chorus features a nearly note-for-note
rendering of the melody, by the still cup-muted brass. What makes
Henderson’s setting memorable is the way he uses the melody’s gaps for
subtle saxophone punctuations, thereby developing the call-and-response
pattern begun in the introduction’s last four bars—an excellent stylization
of the churchy, shouting climaxes of “King Porter Stomp” and “Sugar Foot”
(ex. 9.15).
During Bunny Berigan’s beefy trumpet solo, Henderson writes smooth,
soft humming for the saxophones. (In a 1958 on-location recording in Brus-
sels, these long tones, fortified by a baritone saxophone, wrap a bear hug
around an elegantly understated and muted trumpet solo by Taft Jordan, a
sharp contrast to Berigan’s style—and a reminder that Henderson shaped his
charts to specific musicians. By the late fifties, Goodman’s saxes had a big,
broad warmth in contrast to the laser-clarity and elegance of his mid-thir-
ties saxophone quartet sound.)
Henderson himself “improvises” on the melody, as Goodman would say,
in the last chorus and a half, with an arranger’s variation, which, according
to Horace, represents one of the brothers’ collaborations in crisis. “Fletcher
was so swamped,” recalled Horace.
Sometimes he said to me, “I just can’t do it. Can you make something for
Benny?” I was tickled to death to think that Fletcher asked me to write
something for Benny Goodman. It was an honor. “Sometimes I’m
Happy”—there’s a beautiful thing he and I made together. The reed chorus
was a legend, the way it flowed. Fletcher wrote this early in the morning,
218 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.15.“Sometimes I’m Happy” (1935), introduction and chorus 1, beginning. MSS 53,
The Benny Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.17.“Sometimes I’m Happy,” chorus 4, beginning. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman
Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Saxes
Tpts.
Tbns.
Ab Bbmin E7 Eb7 E7
3 3
3
3
3
3
Eb7 Ab+5 Eb7 Ab+5
Building the Kingdom of Swing 221
Going to Chicago
Once his band was established on both coasts, Goodman moved on to the
heartland and his home town. Capitalizing on the extended Palomar engage-
ment, Willard Alexander arranged for Goodman’s band to go east for what
turned out to be another unusually long stint—a six and a half-month resi-
dency—at Chicago’s Congress Hotel, from November 1935 to May 1936.
Here, Goodman made the unprecedented move of hiring pianist Teddy
Wilson to play in the band. Although Goodman’s motivations were musical,
not social, he had nevertheless made a social statement to the white dancers
that packed into the Congress: now racial integration was a fact on the
bandstand as well as in the recording studio. Meanwhile, NBC created a
weekly sustaining program from the Congress that led to another commer-
cially sponsored show, the Elgin Revue, sponsored by the Elgin Watch
Company. Constant exposure on the airwaves required new arrangements
and led to regularly recording for Victor. As the three R’s continued to spur
and support the band, Goodman’s Chicago period saw many new
Henderson arrangements.
On November 22, 1935, soon after opening at the Congress Hotel,
Goodman led his band into a recording studio for the first time since the
Palomar Ballroom run. The session was unusually fruitful, producing seven
sides instead of the usual four. Four of them were Henderson arrangements.
They show Henderson extending the elements of “Hendersonese” in new
directions with particular emphasis on the strengths of the ensemble more
than on the soloists.
“When Buddha Smiles,” for example, features solos by Goodman and
tenor saxophonist Art Rollini, but it is really a showcase for sectional unity
and full-band cohesiveness in a slow-building swinger. The song itself dates
from the “oriental foxtrot” craze of the early twenties, and it is one of the
Paul Whiteman hits from the previous decade that Henderson practically
reinvented for the swing era. (“Whispering” and “Changes” are the others.)
Henderson brings it up to date in many ways. Perhaps the arrangement’s
most unusual feature is its through-composed quality. Although “Buddha”
features a conventional thirty-two-bar AABA structure, Henderson artfully
disguises the form through constant variation and a gradual build across
four choruses to the final climax. The third chorus reveals a rare instance of
Henderson writing across the seams of the pop song’s eight-bar phrases.
Here, Rollini’s tenor sax solo spans ten bars that straddle the first two “A”
222 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.18.“When Buddha Smiles” (1935), chorus 2, bridge. MSS 53, The Benny
Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.19.“When Buddha Smiles,” chorus 4, bridge. MSS 53, The Benny Goodman
Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
Ex. 9.20.“When Buddha Smiles,” transition to final chorus. MSS 53, The Benny
Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
In the last bar, pencil marks in all parts indicate a characteristic change:
Henderson’s final beat-and-a-half chord becomes a quick eighth-note bite.
(Such changes comprise the written legacy of Goodman’s rehearsals.) In the
recording, with Krupa sustaining light but active support throughout,
“Shoes” stands out as an unpretentious, simple-but-perfect swing chart that
must have been ideal for moderate-tempo dancing.
Carolina; and Fort Wayne, Indiana. And unlike the mere twenty-six-week
run of Let’s Dance, the Camel Caravan continued uninterrupted for three-
and-a-half years, from mid-1936 through December 1939 for a total of 182
programs. It became “the longest running commercially sponsored series
featuring one orchestra continuously.”46
And that was not all. In two extended stints totaling ten months from
October 1936 to January 1938 at the Madhattan Room of New York’s
Pennsylvania Hotel, Goodman’s band also held forth in frequent sustaining
programs. In fact, during the second stint (October 1937 through January
1938), the band could be heard at least once a night on sustaining programs.
Such intensive, indeed unprecedented, radio exposure forced Goodman to
refresh his repertoire constantly. Naturally, along with many other arrangers,
Henderson was called on again and again to produce new scores. Mean-
while, as he played earlier arrangements night after night over many months,
Goodman brought them as well to the Victor studio for recording. Thus, the
Camel Caravan period features recordings of many of Henderson’s most
exciting arrangements.
During this period of greatest radio exposure, Goodman’s band made
two public appearances in New York that matched the Palomar Ballroom
breakthrough in their symbolic importance or visceral crowd reaction. The
first was a brief run at the Paramount Theatre in March 1937 when crowds
of teenagers lined a New York City block waiting for tickets and, once
inside, danced in the aisles, thrilled at the sight of their heroes rising from
the pit in the dark, their faces illuminated only by the reflected glow of their
stand lamps. The second was the Carnegie Hall concert of January 16,
1938, a landmark presentation of swing for a strictly listening audience in
a concert format. The perceived incongruity between style and function
inspired Harry James’s famous quip that “I feel like a whore in church.” In
1937–38, Goodman’s band reached its peak of popular success and media
exposure. The period marks a watershed in music history for the way
media saturation fueled public interest and sustained a musical style whose
artistic legitimacy appeared to be crowned by the concert appearance at
Carnegie Hall.
Several Goodman records capture the band in the first months of the
Camel Caravan and show Henderson keeping his arranging style fresh and
vital. Good examples are “(I Would Do) Anything for You,” “Love Me or
Leave Me, “ and “I’ve Found a New Baby.” If three minutes marked a
normative performance, then any significant expansion of Henderson’s
typical three-chorus structure would dictate a rise in tempo. “Anything for
You” offers a case in point. The arrangement itself dates from the Let’s
Dance period, but now Goodman brought it back to the recording studio
after a year of rehearsal, public performance, and, most likely, radio expo-
sure. Henderson expands the typical form to five choruses—only four got
recorded—and opens up an unusually long stretch for improvised solos by
Goodman and his sidemen. He parcels out solos for five different musicians
(clarinet, trumpets 1 and 2, tenor sax 2, and piano) over the three internal
choruses. Framing the solo choruses are two ensemble-dominated sections
featuring a constantly evolving sequence of variations on the Claude
Hopkins tune. As a result the arrangement matches the expandable
“jamming” structure of the heads Henderson’s own band had developed
since the late 1920s.
226 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.22.“I Would Do Anything for You” (1935), chorus 1 melody variants. MSS 53, The
Benny Goodman Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.
the solo skates over the fast tempo with a few choice pitches soaring over a
foundation of riffs and rhythm. As if responding to Griffin’s flares, Hender-
son’s ensemble variations (which of course preceded—and shaped—the
solo) follow with broad, dramatic figures bursting out above their rhythmic
support—like an Armstrong solo written down and harmonized in block
voicing.
“Orchestrated Armstrong”: Jazz critic Gary Giddins has claimed that
much of big-band music in the 1930s can be summed up in that phrase—a
provocative idea that calls for both elaboration and qualification.48 In swing
arrangements, certain rhythms and pitch sequences echo figures that
Armstrong played in solos with Henderson in the mid-1920s and beyond:
syncopated double leaps, blues inflections, a sense of cohesion and devel-
opment, an impression of floating above the beat. But what a band
arrangement cannot really capture is Armstrong’s rhythmic elasticity and
timbral variety: those can only come from soloists. Armstrong appears to
glide across the beat, now anticipating it, now lagging behind it, but always
playing with an unerring sense of the actual pulse. So any claims that a
passage sounds like “orchestrated Armstrong” must be qualified, because
a group of musicians cannot play with the rhythmic or timbral freedom
of a soloist. Henderson’s arrangements offered a stylized interpretation of
Armstrong, not a precise orchestral rendering of all facets of Armstrong’s
unique style. Orchestrating Armstrong, in effect, required filtering out some
of the qualities that made Armstrong’s playing so powerful.
With that condition in mind, however, Henderson wrote many passages
that sound not only like an “improvised solo,” as Goodman had pointed out,
but like Armstrong in particular. In the final chorus of “Alexander’s Ragtime
Band,” for example, Henderson’s writing departs radically from the original
228 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Ex. 9.24.“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1936), final ensemble chorus (top line only)
In the Cootie Williams solo, for example, the brass and saxophones engage
in a shouting call and response that forms a supportive gauntlet. The rest of
the arrangement is a model of seamless, riff-based swing, unusual for its
dynamic effects. The saxophones emerge from the bridge to take the final
eight of the penultimate chorus with a riff figure played in a finely tapered
diminuendo. That passage moves seamlessly into the final riff chorus derived
from Henderson’s 1932 head, now featuring the brass and reeds together in
a figure that grows louder through the eight bars of the song’s “A” section.
In the final “A” section, the principal riff returns, now growing softer and
softer until the final cadence ends with uncharacteristic understatement.
A few weeks after Goodman recorded “Honeysuckle Rose,” the Camel
Caravan concluded its three-and-a-half year run. The show’s end punctuates
the first and most important phase of Goodman’s bandleading career.
A Kingdom in Decline?
Well before the last Camel Caravan broadcast on December 30, 1939,
Goodman’s band had been in transition. A flurry of personnel changes made
Goodman’s 1939 band an almost entirely different group from the one that
had built the Kingdom of Swing with Henderson’s arrangements four years
earlier. Gene Krupa had left back in March 1938 after an acrimonious
dispute. Another celebrity, trumpet star Harry James, left on better terms in
January 1939. Then, as Firestone put it, a “massive exodus of sidemen”
began in the spring of 1939, leaving only trombonist Red Ballard, saxo-
phonist Art Rollini, and pianist Jess Stacy as the surviving members of the
Palomar Ballroom band of August 1935. Meanwhile, since Helen Ward’s
departure toward the end of 1936, many vocalists had come and gone.49
Goodman’s predicament in 1939–40 conjures an image of Wile E.
Coyote, powered by the Acme jets of Henderson’s charts, running off the
cliff of his New-Deal era, prewar cultural foundation and popularity, and
spinning his legs in a frantic effort to stay aloft. In Jess Stacy’s view, “the
band was on the wane. The same interest wasn’t there. Benny could see
what was happening, and he was desperately trying to get back on top.”
Then Goodman even changed pianists, replacing Stacy with Fletcher
Henderson himself. A gentle Missourian, Stacy reflected on the incident
from Goodman’s point of view: “Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements had
really made Benny’s band,” he recalled, “and he probably thought that if he
could have Fletcher with him, he could bolster the band.” By spring of 1939,
some of Goodman’s competitors had caught up, including Artie Shaw,
whose star rose in 1938 with his hit record of Cole Porter’s “Begin the
Beguine,” and especially Glenn Miller, who used the three R’s to great advan-
tage in his dominance of big-band music beginning in the spring of 1939.
Miller enlisted in the army in September 1942, and, far from dropping out
of the scene, became defined by the war as America’s leading swing man, a
reputation that survived his death in December 1944. Indeed, Goodman’s
“wane” marks a shift in American culture from the inward-looking Depres-
sion years to the outward-looking war years. The Goodman-Henderson
heyday of 1935–39 created a populist sound with a youth-oriented blend of
black and white in New Deal America. The new generation of bandleaders
represented by Glenn Miller offered polish without the underlying energy of
Building the Kingdom of Swing 231
Over a period of five years, the Kingdom of Swing had been built from
a unique convergence of elements. Musically, it encompassed a repertoire
consisting mainly of current popular songs, an arranging style that both
revealed the tune and elegantly concealed it with swing variations, and a
performance style founded on carefully rehearsed scores. Socially, the music
got disseminated and popularized through an integrated network of those
three R’s: Road tours, Radio play, and Records. And it was eagerly absorbed
by a fan-base consisting mainly of teenagers inspired and empowered by the
music not just to listen but to dance. Above all, in consisted in a delicate
consensus joining teenagers and adults, black and white, oral and written
music, Tin Pan Alley and jazz. Henderson himself, however, never fully
reaped the benefits of that consensus.
10.
Never Say “Never Again”
H
enderson’s remaining life may be seen as a cycle of fulfillment and
frustration. His association with Goodman revived his bandleading
career in 1936; the band intermittently flourished and fizzled. Later
Henderson bands boasted an impressive roster of talent, for whom the band
was “like going to school,” but they had mixed success before listeners and
dancers. In 1936, Henderson also had a hit song, “Christopher Columbus,”
but failed to capitalize on its success. Henderson was by turns generous and
open, cheap and dishonest. Count Basie called Henderson “the only leader
in the business that ever went out of his way to help me”; and indeed
“dozens” of Henderson arrangements, according to John Hammond, formed
the cornerstone of Basie’s repertoire in the late 1930s. In the same period, a
wide-eyed high-school student named Charles Anderson introduced himself
to Henderson at the Vogue Ballroom in Los Angeles and got several tutorials
in arranging. “A wonderful person,” Anderson recalled, “Fletch wouldn’t
take a penny for all of his help.” On the other hand, Garvin Bushell, who
had been Fletcher’s friend since meeting him at Penn Station on arrival in
New York in the summer of 1920, was repeatedly underpaid—he once
caught Henderson with much more money than he had claimed to have—
and Bushell bitterly noted in 1989 that Henderson died owing him two to
three thousand dollars. Many other musicians shared a similar complaint,
but when the band was good, it seemed to matter less. “Almost each indi-
vidual musician had money coming,” Duke Ellington observed of the 1934
band, “and nothing ever happened.” Yet musicians who recognized all of
Henderson’s faults still prized their time in his band, claiming it as “my
biggest kicks” and “a great kick.”1
As Henderson enjoyed greater financial security, he also suffered from
increasingly poor health. Through the 1940s, Henderson intermittently
suffered a variety of ailments, including an eye infection, dizziness, exhaus-
tion, sciatica, high blood pressure, and, finally, a series of strokes that led to
his death in 1952 at the age of fifty-five. The very work that helped sustain
a steady income was also “a great strain,” he confessed. “It was good money,
but just too much for me to do.” A naïf once asked Henderson, “Does Benny
Goodman still arrange for you?” and he calmly responded, “No, I was
working him too hard. His eyes went bad on him and he had to give it up.”2
If the last sixteen years of Henderson’s life—really, the last half of his
professional career—reveal such mixed fortunes, they also reveal that,
234 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Yet Henderson liked being a bandleader because it was the job that
allowed him the most autonomy, which in turn stoked his abiding taste for
the road and its opportunities for extramarital liaisons. That affected both
his career and his marriage. In fact, his marital problems appear to have
guided some professional choices. John Hammond recalled that “[a]s
Fletcher spent more and more time on the road, and with the news of other
‘Mrs. Hendersons’ in places like Chicago and Los Angeles filtering in, Miss
Lee [as Hammond and others called Leora] took refuge in eating and grew
to a formidable size.” In 1941, Henderson’s marriage appears to have been
at a low ebb, and when his band had a chance to return to the Roseland Ball-
room—“The manager came to Pittsburgh and begged Fletcher to come
back”—Henderson opted to remain on tour. “He wasn’t too happy home,”
according to Sandy Williams, “and when he was on the road he could play
around.” The choice inspired Williams and another band member, Peanuts
Holland, to do some productive griping by writing a tune called “Let’s Go
Home,” which naturally found its way into Benny Goodman’s book. Later,
Henderson’s band settled in for a fifteen-month run at the Club DeLisa in
Chicago, but for some reason, Henderson simply gave up the band and
“disappeared,” according to one band member. He headed west to Los
Angeles, and made a few more arrangements, probably his last, for Benny
Goodman.6
Henderson ultimately returned to New York, and there in his last years
teamed up with former colleagues, such as Ethel Waters. After deteriorating
health forced an extended break in late 1949 and the first half of 1950,
Henderson came back to music and again wanted to form a band, which
played brief runs at the Savoy Ballroom and in the East Village. He then
composed music with J. C. Johnson for a revue called the Jazz Train, which
portrayed the history of jazz. The collaboration led to the publication of an
intimate ballad with a touch of whimsy called “Superstitions Never Worry
Me.” For the revue, Henderson “worked so hard,” recalled Leora. “He was
really trying to make a comeback—workin’ days and nights on arrange-
ments and rehearsals. But all of it was for nothing.” Fletcher Henderson’s
last band was a sextet in residence at the Café Society, beginning December
7, 1950. The group was heard on radio broadcasts heralded by a tune that
had been associated with Henderson for nearly fifteen years: “Christopher
Columbus.”7
The Grand Terrace band made several records. They offer the usual
potpourri of styles, new and old tunes, pop songs and Henderson originals,
and a mix of vocals and instrumentals. In other words, the recorded reper-
toire paints the profile of a band in residence at a swanky venue with floor
show and a radio wire, like the Connie’s Inn band. In this case, the reper-
tory and style were restricted by the Grand Terrace’s brutish manager, Ed
Fox, who plugged material published by his own company at the expense of
arrangements the band preferred.8
Yet in the record studio the Grand Terrace band clearly stretched beyond
standard Tin Pan Alley-style fare. Two of the most remarkable tunes were
blues-based: “Grand Terrace Stomp” and “Jangled Nerves.”“Grand Terrace
Stomp” represents a revised and utterly transformed version of Henderson’s
1928 “ ‘D’ Natural Blues.” The first notes of the introduction establish a
relaxed swing groove, far from the mechanical, rigid phrase on the 1928
recording. Meanwhile, if Count Basie’s book relied on Henderson’s arrange-
ments, “Jangled Nerves” sounds as if the influence went the other way. As
a high-speed, riff-based blues head arrangement, with spectacular solos by
Chu Berry and Roy Eldridge, it has all the key traits of the so-called Kansas
City style as it emerged in the mid-1930s in the Bennie Moten and Basie
bands. All traces of Henderson’s “symphonic” blues have evaporated.
These recordings capture the Grand Terrace band’s outstanding and
unique qualities, but it was “Christopher Columbus” that became more
closely associated with the band, and with Henderson in particular, than any
other. “Christopher Columbus” represents a familiar musical phenomenon:
a tune for which Henderson receives both too much credit and too little. It
became a hit record for Henderson’s band, and in fact, became Henderson’s
theme song, framing his performances up to his last appearance in the early
1950s. But this “Henderson” tune became better known and better played
in Goodman’s band, which in turn also made its main riff even more famous
as a passage in one of Goodman’s most popular flag-wavers: “Sing, Sing,
Sing,” arranged not by Henderson but by Jimmy Mundy. And, following
another pattern in his career, when Henderson had a chance to build on the
tune’s success, he failed to do so.
On top of that, the tune leaves a confusing legacy of conflicting attribu-
tions. According to Allen, the tune originated as a “bawdy song” called
“Cristoforo Columbo,” but the popular instrumental version began with a
saxophone riff developed by Chu Berry, to which Horace Henderson added
a brass countermelody—or was it Roy Eldridge? Fletcher’s band then began
playing an arrangement at the Grand Terrace — the arrangement that
Goodman soon picked up and played across town at the Congress Hotel.
Solicited for a written version by Chicago publisher Joe Davis, Fletcher
asked Horace to prepare a stock arrangement based on the version Fletcher’s
band was playing at the Grand Terrace. Horace apparently submitted a
version crediting himself and Berry as co-composers. Davis then published
the arrangement under the names of Leon Berry, as sole composer, and
Larry Clinton, as arranger, with lyrics by Andy Razaf, the lyricist of
“Honeysuckle Rose” among other hit songs. Horace received no official
credit. “Chu got $300,” Allen writes, “Fletcher got $100, but poor Horace
got NOTHING.” Nor did Roy Eldridge, who said the “brass parts” were his
idea. Meanwhile, bandleader Jimmie Lunceford claimed that the tune’s orig-
inal riff developed within his own band. Others have made similar claims
Never Say “Never Again” 237
for parts of the tune. The problem remains that Walter C. Allen, who has
traced the tune’s origins and attributions in some detail, does not cite the
sources of his information, although certain details point to Horace himself.
Indeed, Horace’s own account names Berry and himself as the creative forces
behind the riffs, with Horace alone claiming credit for crafting the musical
material into a complete piece. As so often happens in attempts to come to
grips with Henderson’s work, Fletcher Henderson himself remains an essen-
tial but shadowy figure in the moment and material form of musical
creation.9
Another musical mystery of “Christopher Columbus” is how a piece
whose two-voiced theme contains bone-jarring dissonances could sound so
natural and become so popular (ex. 10.1). On paper, “Christopher
Columbus” looks unpromising, with its jauntily rising and falling bass line
(saxes and trombones) set against a simple four-note descending figure
played by the trumpets. These opposing lines clash on strong beats: a major
ninth on the third beat of the first measure followed on the next downbeat
by a minor ninth (E and E)— one of the most grating dissonances in
western tonal music. “Weird,” Horace Henderson called it with evident
relish.10
Yet the harmonic plan and song form were familiar to Henderson and his
musicians, because “Christopher Columbus” is a modified rhythm-changes
tune. That is, it is yet another jazz standard based on the chords of the
refrain of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” which had formed the basis of
Henderson’s earlier (and also somewhat confusingly attributed) “Yeah
Man!” and “Hotter than ’Ell.” While its principal melody (the “A” section of
the AABA form) is grounded on alternating tonic–dominant harmony
simpler than its source, the bridge (“B”) comes straight from Gershwin.
“Christopher Columbus” occupied a central place in his repertory after
the band took up residence at the Grand Terrace. In the summer of 1936,
the Grand Terrace show featured singer Babe Matthews, who had replaced
Billie Holiday after Holiday came to blows with the club’s dictatorial
manager Ed Fox. (“I picked up an inkwell and bam, I threw it at him and
threatened to kill him,” in the words of Holiday’s as-told-to autobiography
Lady Sings the Blues.) For the show’s finale, the band played “Christopher
Columbus” as several showgirls entered one by one and declared their vote
for “king of swing.” The first girl would come out and nominate Duke
Ellington. Another would enter and say, “I nominate Cab Calloway for king
of swing.” A third would walk out and name Jimmie Lunceford. Finally,
Matthews would come on and say, “I nominate Fletcher Henderson who
made Christopher the thing. I think he should be crowned king of swing.”
238 The Uncrowned King of Swing
Grand Terrace show might have claimed), adopted it and gave it a more
polished rendering in an arrangement credited to Fletcher, although Horace
played a key role in putting the arrangement on paper. The tune’s success
offered Fletcher Henderson an opening through which to sustain and
magnify his band and bandleading career. But at a moment when, for the
first time, Henderson had found dual success as an arranger and a band-
leader, he failed to jump on the opportunity, held back by what appeared to
many to be an inscrutable passivity. It forms a moment of fulfillment that
became another focal point of frustration to those around him.
Legacies
After suffering at least three strokes in two years, Henderson died on
December 29, 1952. He had been born and married in December, had his
car accident and first stroke in December, and now his death followed suit—
a coincidence he had apparently predicted. “The day Fletcher died he had
one of his biggest audiences out here on the street what with ambulances
and the oxygen tanks,” recalled Leora. “Louis Armstrong sent the most
beautiful floral arrangement I’ve ever seen—shaped like an organ, pipes
and all.” The funeral took place on January 2, 1953. Several notables
showed up to pay their respects, according to the New York Age obituary,
including Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Don Redman, Andy Kirk, John
Hammond, and comedian Pigmeat Markham, with whom Henderson had
performed on vaudeville bills in the 1930s. Along with Goodman and
Hammond, honorary pallbearers included former sidemen Red Allen, Dicky
Wells, Irving Randolph, and Garvin Bushell. “Louis and Joe Glaser
[Armstrong’s manager] came to the funeral,” recalled Leora, “and, you know,
the people from Roseland sent a man up here to see how I was gettin’ on.”14
John Hammond remained loyal to “Miss Lee” until her death. Writing in
the early 1960s, he described her as “an embittered though philosophical
widow. A great lady, she had as many mourners as her more celebrated
husband.” Leora’s twenty-eight-year marriage (her second) had revolved
around her husband’s career, and in it she had earned the respect of musi-
cians in Fletcher’s orbit by performing many crucial roles: booker, straw
boss, copyist, talent scout, auditioner, and even substitute trumpet player.
She probably had a hand in some arranging as well during that desperate
period of late 1934. Leora died in early March 1958, and her funeral register
includes the signatures of John Hammond, Walter Johnson, and Hilton
Jefferson.15
Less than two months after Fletcher’s death, Goodman organized a
recording session of Henderson arrangements with the goal of compiling an
entire long-playing record in tribute. Helen Ward, all of thirty-six years old,
returned to sing a couple of the vocal arrangements. Among them was “I’ll
Never Say ‘Never Again’ Again,” an arrangement from the 1930s that
Goodman had never recorded. Knowing Goodman’s strict guidelines for
recording, we can only surmise that he had found something unsatisfactory
about it. But now, with Ward back for a reunion with the band, Goodman
dusted off the chart and found new value in it. With its rippling saxophone
figures, sharply etched riffs, suave backgrounds behind Ward’s swinging
vocal, and a climactic ensemble variation in the final chorus, a fine new
Henderson arrangement had had its premiere. In many ways, it marks the
240 The Uncrowned King of Swing
right, making his Jazz Messengers a “school” for young, ambitious players,
much like Henderson had done with his band. Among the most devoted
former sidemen was Herman “Sonny” Blount, who served a brief stint as
Henderson’s pianist in 1946–47 and went on to lead his own “arkestra”
under the name of Sun Ra, playing several pieces identified with Henderson.
“King Porter Stomp,” in particular, has become a touchstone for Hender-
son’s legacy. Composer-arranger Gil Evans, who as a California teenager had
absorbed Henderson’s style through Goodman’s Palomar broadcasts, made
a modern jazz arrangement of “King Porter Stomp” that encapsulates the
piece’s history, alluding to Jelly Roll Morton’s original as well as to Hender-
son’s arrangement for Goodman. Composer-pianist John Lewis of the
Modern Jazz Quartet wrote at least two original compositions based on the
chords of “King Porters”’s stomp section: “Golden Striker” and “Odds
Against Tomorrow.” The chords are Morton’s, but when asked what he
found intriguing about a piece that dates back to the century’s first decade,
Lewis said, “What made ‘King Porter Stomp’ interesting to me was not a per-
formance by Jelly Roll Morton or what I heard from him, but what Fletcher
Henderson did. He recomposed the piece. That’s what’s important.”20 Singer
and lyricist Jon Hendricks set lyrics—a vocalese—to Goodman’s 1935
recording of “King Porter Stomp” that also playfully convey some of the
piece’s history dating back to Morton. Hendricks, in effect, unites the tune’s
three principal legends: Morton, Henderson, and Goodman. The vocal
group Manhattan Transfer included Hendricks’s version on its album Swing,
issued at the height of the swing revival of the 1990s.
That revival began in southern California, so it should come as no
surprise that in recent years, Henderson’s arrangements—and Goodman’s
recordings of them—can be heard in Hollywood films evoking the 1930s
and 1940s. In Barton Fink, for example, the struggling screenwriter cele-
brates his finished script by dancing to Henderson’s “Down South Camp
Meeting.” Hendersonese also appears to be useful in conjuring the Prohibi-
tion-era underworld, as in Miller’s Crossing, which uses “King Porter
Stomp,” and The Road to Perdition, in which a “King Porter” knockoff
blares in a speakeasy while two gangsters engage in a tense back-office
confrontation. The call-and-response climax accompanies a gruesome
murder. Later in the film, Henderson’s 1933 recording of “Queer Notions”
haunts a diner scene. I have heard Henderson arrangements, usually in
Benny Goodman recordings, woven into the playlists of canned music piped
into bookstores and cafés and used as segue music during National Public
Radio’s Morning Edition. Henderson’s music never again found the broad
national following it had enjoyed for a brief period in the 1930s, but in the
early twenty-first century, his legacy continues to inflect the soundtrack of
American life.
Frustration or Fulfillment?
With Henderson’s last years and his legacy now in view, the notion of
consensus that concluded chapter 9 may seem pat. As compelling as it may
be, it does not resolve the moral ambiguity in Henderson’s career, in partic-
ular his famous collaboration with Benny Goodman and its aftermath. On
one hand, there is something uniquely and satisfyingly American about a
Never Say “Never Again” 243
musical success story that brings together, during a desperate period of the
nation’s history, a Vanderbilt scion and two sons of America’s historically
most restricted and abject groups: former slaves and Russian-Jewish immi-
grants. On the other hand, between the key musical players, Henderson saw
the greater disparity among creative effort, financial reward, and public
recognition.
To conclude that Henderson’s story thus forms “a study in frustration,”
as Hammond did, perhaps too easily casts Henderson as a victim in a
familiar ritual of white-guilt expiation. To conclude, as others have, that
Henderson’s musical goals somehow became fulfilled in Goodman’s perfor-
mances, places the story in another uncomfortably familiar plotline: white
agents appropriate African-American music and create a national (and inter-
national) phenomenon — which may be the story of twentieth-century
American vernacular music. Recognizing how Henderson’s story links up
with such larger historical narratives makes it more than a compelling
episode in American music history. It becomes a subject that we may still
debate on a continuum between frustration and fulfillment.
Exploring—even living—that tension requires transcending guilt and
blame. Two seemingly incompatible commentators have attempted to do
that in strikingly different ways. Martin Williams’s influential notion of a
jazz tradition, described in this book’s introduction, has tended to eclipse his
more exploratory musings—his boldness in posing unanswerable questions.
In an essay called “Just Asking,” Williams wonders why
Williams carries no disdain for Goodman, nor does he gloss over the
asymmetries in the Henderson-Goodman collaboration. He emphatically
declares his “respect for what Goodman did” and recognizes the best—and
worst—of what each man brought to the music:
For Williams, the moral issue boils down to aesthetic results, and from
that perspective frustration arises from a sense that neither man fully real-
ized the music’s potential, while fulfillment comes from having the
comparison to make thanks to the material legacy of sound recording.
244 The Uncrowned King of Swing
For another critic, Amiri Baraka, the moral issue hinges on social justice.
Writing in Blues People, Baraka makes a resonant claim about the
Henderson-Goodman collaboration without naming names: “The ease with
which big-band jazz was subverted suggests how open an expression Negro
music could become. And no Negro need feel ashamed of a rich Jewish
clarinetist.”22 Baraka’s authority would be easier to accept without its anti-
Semitic overtones, for he has touched on a tradition of commentary
exploring the complex and freighted interdependence of black and Jewish
artists, entertainers, and expressive forms.23 He labels Goodman the “rich
Jewish clarinetist” instead of naming him so that his sociological point
resonates more clearly. Like Williams, he doesn’t blame Goodman, but he
does disdain the social conditions that gave rise to his success. Behind the
ethnically charged anger in its foreground, however, the statement embodies
another delicate balancing act on the line between frustration and fulfill-
ment: frustration that Goodman’s wealth derived from playing music with
African-American roots, and fulfillment in the music’s power to survive and
even thrive in social conditions rewarding its transformation.
Williams and Baraka face the same issue and come to opposite conclu-
sions. For one, treating the music and musicians with honesty and respect
requires discussing musical style with intelligence, knowledge, and taste.
For the other, musical questions form the means to address larger social
patterns, because in music he hears not just artistic expression but how
people live their lives. Yet both writers recognize the Henderson-Goodman
collaboration as an important intersection of social and musical currents.
Both project their own feelings of frustration and fulfillment onto that
collaboration and its results. Together, they remind us that, as twenty-first
century observers trying to make sense of Henderson’s legacy, the frustra-
tion and fulfillment are no longer Henderson’s, but ours.
APPENDIX
Fletcher Henderson’s Arrangements
for Benny Goodman
H
enderson’s arrangements for Goodman survive primarily in two
collections created from bequests by Goodman: one at the Yale Music
Library (Yale-BG) and the other at the New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts (NYPL-BG). In a few instances, Goodman is known to
have played (and even recorded) a Henderson arrangement that does not
appear in any of the collections, such as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “I
Want to Be Happy.” In his book Hendersonia, Walter C. Allen lists several
“Other arrangements not credited, but which should be investigated as
possible FH arrangements” (see pp. 525–26), but only one of those,
“Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” is among the material Goodman
bequeathed to Yale and the NYPL. The exact scope and contents of
Henderson’s work, then, remain elusive. Yet since Goodman’s death, we have
a clearer picture of Henderson’s vast output than ever before.
Three resources provided valuable models and information: Yale Univer-
sity Music Library Archival Collection MSS 53: The Papers of Benny
Goodman, compiled by David A. Gier with the assistance of James John and
consultant Loren Schoenberg; an unpublished list compiled by Andrew
Homzy; and Andrew Homzy and Ken Druker’s Jazz Orchestrations: A
Resource List. As these sources profile the physical makeup of the material
(such as the precise number and nature of the instrumental parts), the
following focuses more on musical contents.
The list of arrangements provides the following information:
Title: The title is given as it appears on the arrangement. When the actual
song title is known to differ, the discrepancy is noted in brackets.
Songwriters: Songwriter names have been gleaned chiefly from Connor and
through ACE title searches at the ASCAP website (http://www.ascap.com/
ace/ACE.html).
Date: Dates for most arrangements have been determined or estimated in the
lists by Yale University, Andrew Homzy, and Ken Druker; Connor’s bio-
discography also helps establish dates by showing when arrangements were
played in public, on radio, or on record. Internal evidence includes: the
copyist’s stamp on the manuscript, showing the current year through which
union dues have been paid; the number of parts, since Goodman gradually
added more musicians to his band over the years of Henderson’s involve-
ment; and paper types, which often help to corroborate dates found
otherwise, especially when at least one manuscript in that paper type has a
union copyist’s date stamped on it. (No systematic study of paper types has
been attempted.) Knowledge of the year in which the song was published
can also be helpful in establishing at least an approximate date for an
arrangement.
Form: The arrangements’ formal outlines are based on the following key:
I = Introduction
A, B, C = principal formal divisions of arrangement (usually thirty-
two-bar song form, sometimes twelve-bar blues or sixteen-bar strain)
a, b, c = subsections of chorus, usually four or eight bars in length
X = transition, or interlude
T = tag ending
Numbers in parentheses indicate number of measures in each section.
Keys: This item shows the progression of keys from chorus to chorus, sepa-
rated by commas (for example, D, G, E ); an en-dash indicates a modulation
within a chorus (for example, E –A). One of Henderson’s distinguishing
marks as an arranger was his tendency to write in unusual keys and to
include one or more modulations in a piece.
Vocal: The words “yes” or “no” indicate whether or not the arrangement
includes singing. Although Goodman reportedly disdained singers and saw
purely instrumental music as more jazz worthy, roughly one-third of
Henderson’s arrangements include at least one chorus for a singer.
Abbreviations
Amerigrove The New Grove Dictionary of American Music
EJ Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development
Jazz Grove The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz
JOHP National Endowment for the Arts/Smithsonian Institution’s Jazz
Oral History Project, housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies,
Rutgers University, Newark, NJ
SE Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz,
1930–1945
Notes
Introduction
1 “an autonomous art form”: DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 13.
2 “The war against”: Williams, ed., The Art of Jazz, 202.
3 “was liberal in giving”: Quoted from a 1943 interview, in Allen, 503.
4 “In the ’20s”: Hammond, liner notes, 16.
5 “extremely talented”: Wilson, Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz, 48.
“Fletcher’d take these heads”; “to take improvised licks”: Allen, 501.
Meanwhile, as a corollary: For two recent examples, see Sudhalter, Lost Chords;
and Lees, Arranging the Score, whose introduction mentions several key black
arrangers while each chapter focuses on the work of an important white arranger.
6 “while half the band”: Chilton, Song of the Hawk, 95.
“aloof ”: Procope, interview with Chris Albertson, JOHP transcript, II:22.
“removed” and “inaccessible”: Ferguson, 57.
“Mona Lisa smile”: Quoted in Allen, 236.
“depression”: Saxophonist Billy Ternent, quoted in Shapiro and Hentoff, 218.
7 He stood over six feet tall: George Hoefer notes, Institute for Jazz Studies, Fletcher
Henderson file. The nickname “Smack”: Various reasons have been put forth to
explain the nickname—that it rhymed with his roommate’s nickname (“Mac”),
that it described the sound of his kisses, and that it was the sound he made in his
sleep. All of them appear to date from his university years. See Allen, 6.
8 Stewart, Jazz Masters, 21–23.
9 “car crazy”: Wells/Dance, 51.
“a predilection for rose”: Stewart, Jazz Masters, 26.
274 Notes to Pages 5–12
10 Once he began writing: Dance, The World of Swing, 352; and Allen, 302.
Clarinetist Russell Procope: Procope, JOHP transcript, 2:36–37.
11 The image inspired: Gioia, “Jazz and the Primitivist Myth.”
Before that, social historians: Shih, “The Spread of Jazz and the Big Bands”;
Hennessey, “From Jazz to Swing.” This landmark dissertation was revised in 1994
as a book titled From Jazz to Swing: African American Jazz Musicians and Their
Music, 1890–1935.
On the other hand: See Baraka [Jones], Blues People, chap. 9, for a provocative
discourse on black middle-class mentality.
“a fraction of what their white counterparts earned,”: DeVeaux, The Birth of
Bebop, 50.
12 “the blending . . . of class and mass”: Baker, 93 (emphasis original). Long
interpreted as a chiefly literary phenomenon, the Harlem Renaissance has been
traced in a variety of musical contexts in recent years. See, for example, Floyd,
Music and the Harlem Renaissance; Ramsey, Race Music, 111–17.
13 Schuller, SE, 15.
14 “learned two things at once”: Dodge, Hot Jazz and Jazz Dance, 101.
15 Some of the earliest commentary: For representative writing by white
commentators, see Osgood, So This Is Jazz; Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, both
discussed in chap. 5 of this book. For a discussion of black writing, see chap. 2.
16 “The radio made audiences”: Dance, World of Swing, 38.
“Tours produced new markets”: Stewart, Jazz Masters, 25–26.
“best advertisement”: Hammond, with Irving Townsend, John Hammond on
Record, 67.
17 “the golden, seething spirit”: Hobson, “Memorial to Fletcher.”
Meanwhile, jazz scholars have challenged: See the essays by Krin Gabbard, “The
Jazz Canon and Its Consequences,” and Jed Rasula, “The Media of Memory: The
Seductive Menace of Records in Jazz History,” in Gabbard, ed., Jazz Among the
Discourses.
18 “[o]ne of the most striking aspects”: DeVeaux, 12.
19 “the public in general”: Panassié, Hot Jazz, xiii.
“the artistry of ritual”: Floyd, The Power of Black Music, 22. Floyd repeatedly
stresses the integration of movement and music, since the foundation of his theory
lies in the centrality of the ring shout, which “fused the sacred and the secular, music
and dance” (p. 6). See also Olly Wilson, “The Association of Movement and Music
as a Manifestation of a Black Conceptual Approach to Music Making,” 98–105;
Small, 28–29; Murray, chap. 10; and Marshall and Jean Stearns, esp. 315–34.
“choreographed swing music”: Stearns and Stearns, 325.
“art form”: Olly Wilson, “Black Music as an Art Form,” in Black Music Research
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DISCOGRAPHY
F
LETCHER HENDERSON’S MUSIC is more completely available and easily acces-
sible than ever. Three collections represent efforts to survey Henderson’s
entire career on record. The most comprehensive remains the multi-
record album produced by John Hammond in 1962, with sixty-four
recordings on a set of three compact discs and titled The Fletcher Henderson
Story: A Study in Frustration (Columbia 57596). The best single-CD
anthology of Henderson’s career is Fletcher Henderson—Swing (ABC 836
093–2), featuring sixteen recordings from the 1920s and 1930s carefully
reproduced by Robert Parker with “new direct-from-disc-to-digital tech-
niques” resulting in remarkable clarity and power. At this writing, the most
widely available one-CD survey is Ken Burns Jazz: Fletcher Henderson
(Columbia Legacy 61447).
The Classics series offers remarkably comprehensive coverage of key jazz
figures in the 1920–45 period. Henderson stands among the best repre-
sented musicians in the series, with sixteen compact discs covering two
decades of recording activity. The series, however, does not include alternate
takes and rarely includes multiple recordings of the same arrangements
(with the rare exception of such key pieces as “King Porter Stomp”):
outcome just weeks after his death. I have also been fortunate to have grad-
uate student assistants to do a variety of tasks along the way, including
Amy Bland, Kunio Hara, and especially Peter Schimpf, who, in the late
stages, assumed the important, demanding, and seemingly endless role of
what might be called master of musical examples. Outside the music school,
I have enjoyed exchanging and discussing writing with Ray Hedin, a key
figure in helping me get acclimated to life in Bloomington.
Invaluable supplies of source material came from the late Charles
Anderson, David Baker, James Dapogny, Andrew Homzy, and Mark Tucker.
I’m grateful to librarians and archivists who assisted me in many ways,
including Kendall Crilly and Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy at Yale University
Music Library; Vincent Pelote and Edward Berger at the Institute of Jazz
Studies, Rutgers University; George Boziwick at the New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts, and Shugana Campbell at the Amistad
Research Center, Tulane University. Thanks to Hazen Schumacher at the
University of Michigan’s WUOM for allowing me to explore his vast collec-
tion of 78-rpm and LP records before many of Henderson’s recordings had
been reissued on compact disc. Frank Driggs and Duncan Schiedt made
their photograph collections available, and I’m glad to count Duncan as one
of the friends I’ve made through writing this book. Thanks, too, to Steve
Smith for sending tapes; and to Pyotr Michalowski (another helpful member
of the dissertation committee) for bringing back from his foreign travels
some otherwise hard-to-find recordings.
People who knew Henderson, now few and far between, have been
generous with their time, including Theresa Henderson Burroughs, the late
Benny Carter, Margery Dews, Josephine Harreld Love, and the late Fletcher
Muse. James T. Maher regaled me with uniquely informed perspectives on
the Henderson-Goodman collaboration. He proved to be exceptionally
generous, and I enjoyed many long exchanges with him. Thanks to him, I
also had the chance to meet and talk with Goodman’s biographer, Ross
Firestone, a key source for chapter 9.
My research has been supported by grants from the University of
Michigan Office for the Vice-President of Research, the Indiana University
Office of Research and the University Graduate School, the American Musi-
cological Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Oxford University Press staff has been patient, helpful, professional,
and efficient. Thanks especially to music editor Kim Robinson, production
editor Joellyn Ausanka, copy editor Mary Sutherland, and also to Eve
Bachrach, Jordan Bucher, Matthew Sollars, Maribeth Payne, and Sheldon
Meyer, who offered me a contract near the end of a remarkable career of
cultivating Oxford’s jazz list.
Collaboration begins in the family. Together, my parents form an anchor
of love and support. Behind everything worthwhile I have written stands my
father, Richard, who applied his red pen to my earliest efforts and whose
own prose makes every word count. Behind my finished projects also stands
my mother, Joyce, a model of cheerful but quiet determination. (And it
seems appropriate to mention that she, like an important subject in this
book, was born on August 21, 1935.) Rich Magee, not just an older brother
but a great friend, was a rock to lean on when the going got tough, and I’m
grateful to him and his family, Dianne, Katie, and Kevin, for their generosity
and hospitality while the book developed. My daughter Ellen (born 1996)
Acknowledgments 307
Every effort has been made to track down and contact copyright holders of songs
featured in the musical examples. Permission to use excerpts from the following
pieces is hereby acknowledged:
“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” lyric by Ted Koehler, music by Harold
Arlen. Copyright 1931 (renewed 1958) Ted Koehler Music and S. A. Music Co. All
rights for Ted Koehler Music administered by Fred Ahlert Music Corporation. All
rights reserved.
“Blue Skies,” words and music by Irving Berlin. Copyright 1927 by Irving Berlin.
Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
“Breakin’ in a Pair of Shoes,” by Dave Franklin, Sam Stept, and Ned Washington.
Copyright 1935 (renewed 1964) EMI Feist, Inc. Two Dees Music, Patti Washington
Music, Catherine Hinen. All rights for EMI Feist, Inc. controlled and administered
by EMI Feist Catalog Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used by permission of
Warner Bros. Publications.
“Dicty Blues,” by Fletcher Henderson, copyright 1923 (renewed 1951) EMI Mills
Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications.
“Down Hearted Blues,” by Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin. Copyright 1923 by
Alberta Hunter Music Co. Copyright renewed 1949, MCA Music and Alberta
Hunter Music Co.
“Fidgety Feet,” by D.J. La Rocca and Larry Shields. Copyright 1918 (renewed 1946)
EMI Feist, Inc. All rights assigned to SBK Catalogue Partnership. All rights controlled
and administered by EMI Feist Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission
of Warner Bros. Publications.
“Go ’Long Mule,” words and music by Henry Creamer and Robert King. Copyright
1924 Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York. Copyright renewed. International
copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“He’s the Hottest Man in Town,” by Jay Gorney and Owen Murphy. Copyright
310 Credits
1924 (renewed) EMI Robbins Music Corp. assigned to EMI Catalogue Partnership.
All rights for EMI Catalogue Partnership controlled and administered by EMI
Robbins Catalog Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner
Bros. Publications.
“I Would Do Anything for You,” by Alex Hill, Claude Hopkins, and Bob Williams.
Copyright, Joe Davis Inc., 1932. Used by permission of George Simon Music Co.,
Len Freedman Music.
“Jealous,” by Dick Finch, Jack Little, and Tommie Malie. Copyright 1924 (renewed
1952) EMI Mills Music, Inc. and Venus Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by
permission of Warner Bros. Publications.
“Jimminy Gee,” by Dick Finch, Jack Little, and Tommie Malie. Copyright 1924
(renewed 1952) EMI Mills Music, Inc. and Venus Music Corp. All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications.
“King Porter Stomp,” by Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton. Copyright 1924 (renewed),
Edwin H. Morris & Company, a division of MPL Music Publishing, Inc. All rights
reserved.
“Linger Awhile,” lyric by Harry Owens, music by Vincent Rose. Copyright Leo
Feist, Inc. Copyright renewed 1951 Edwin H. Morris & Company, a division of
MPL Music Publishing, Inc. and EMI Feist Catalog Inc. All rights reserved.
“Oh Sister Ain’t that Hot,” by Eddie Candon and Will Donaldson. Copyright 1923
(renewed 1951) EMI Mills Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of
Warner Bros. Publications.
“Sandman,” by Ralph Freed and Bonnie Lake. Copyright 1934 (renewed 1962) EMI
Mills Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publica-
tions.
“Sometimes I’m Happy,” words by Clifford Grey and Irving Caesar, music by Vincent
Youmans. Copyright 1925 Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright renewed; extended term of
copyright deriving from Clifford Grey assigned and effective September 23, 1981, to
Range Road Music, Inc. and Quartet Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All
rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Sugar Foot Stomp,” lyric by Walter Melrose, music by Joe Oliver. Copyright 1926
(renewed) Edwin H. Morris & Company, a division of MPL Music Publishing, Inc.,
and Universal–MCA Music Publishing. All rights reserved.
“The Wang Wang Blues,” by Leo Wood, Gus Mueller, Buster Johnson, and Henry
Busse. Copyright 1921 (renewed 1949, 1977) Cromwell Music, Inc. and EMI Feist,
Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications.
“When Buddha Smiles,” by Nacio Herb Brown, Arthur Freed, and King Zany. Copy-
right 1921. Used by permission of De La Prade Music, Highcourt Music, Markflite.
“When You Walked Out Someone Else Walked Right In,” words and music by Irving
Berlin. Copyright 1923 by Irving Berlin. Copyright renewed. International copyright
secured. All rights reserved.
INDEX
Addison, Bernard, 140, 240 194; special, 105, 110–19, 147, 154,
African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) 165, 189; stock, 8, 10, 41–46, 78,
Church, 14, 15–16 80–82, 84–85, 88–89, 114, 116,
“After the Storm,” 50–51, 60, 61, 128–29, 130, 131, 135, 143, 147,
279n18 150, 161, 165. See also Henderson,
“Ain’t Misbehavin’,” 121, 146, 183 Fletcher, as arranger; Henderson’s
Alexander, Willard, 195, 206–7, 208, arrangements; Redman’s arrange-
221, 231 ments
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” 227–28 “arranger’s chorus,” 46–47, 171, 179,
Allen, Henry “Red,” 3, 134, 139, 140, 187, 194
176, 179, 186, 187, 229, 239 arranger, role of, 2–3, 40, 147–48
Allen, Walter C., 9–10, 74, 96, 122, Atlanta, 17–18
135, 137, 169, 180, 181, 182–83, Atlanta University, 15, 17–19, 110,
185, 188, 236–37 276n21
Apollo Theater (New York), 83, 188, Austin, Gene, 146
192
Arlen, Harold, 145, 146, 184, 202 Bailey, William “Buster,” 3, 25, 74,
Armstrong, Louis, 3, 8, 27, 28, 32, 40, 79–80, 82, 96, 100–101, 127–28,
70, 110, 121, 131, 164, 183, 193; 130, 140, 150, 176, 186, 240
appearance of, 72; attitudes toward Baker, David, 240
Henderson band, 95–96; compared Baker, Houston A., Jr., 5, 29
to Joe Smith, 83–84; Henderson’s ballad, 180–81, 216–21
death and, 239; impact on Hawkins, Ballard, Red, 230
112–14, 134; impact on Henderson’s ballrooms, 35–36. See also Empire;
arrangements, 220, 227–28; impact Palomar; Roseland; Savoy
on Henderson’s band, 47, 67, 72–74, Baraka, Amiri, 73, 104, 244
85–86, 88, 90, 91–95, 98–99, Bartók, Béla, 231
111–14, 127, 151, 176, 188; impact Barton Fink (film), 242
in New York, 73, 142–43; impact on Basie, Count, 127, 144, 171, 181, 182,
Redman, 72–73, 76, 78, 85–86, 90, 183, 233, 236, 239, 241
92–95; impact on trumpet players, Bassman, George, 191
111–12, 114, 132, 134, 139, 172, “Basin Street Blues,” 228
176, 182, 226–27; and jazz history, battles, band, 4, 134, 164–65
1, 2, 28, 33, 73–74, 95, 96; and “Beale Street Blues,” 20, 43
Oliver, 85–86, 95, 171; reading “Beale Street Mamma,” 37, 43–44, 62
ability of, 72; as singer, 60, 95, Beethoven, Ludwig van, ix, 3, 73
145–46, 183; solo trumpet style of, Beiderbecke, Bix, 107, 125, 139,
66, 76–78, 82–83, 132, 227–28 154–57, 164
arrangement: head, 3, 131, 133, 134, Benny Goodman Story, The (film), 8
135, 148, 163–64, 170–75, 179, 183, Bergreen, Laurence, 95
185, 194; length of, 36, 172, 181, Berigan, Bunny, 199, 208, 210, 217
312 Index
Berlin, Irving, 37, 49, 61, 97, 179, California Ramblers, 34, 50, 279n20
196–200, 202, 223, 241 call and response. See Henderson’s
Bernhardt, Clyde, 98 arrangements
Bernie, Ben, 97 Calloway, Cab, 168, 169, 185, 237
Berry, Chu, 3, 181, 234, 236–7 Camel Caravan, The (radio show),
“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue 201, 224–25, 230
Sea,” 179, 196, 201–6, 215, 222, “Can You Take It?,” 112, 178–79, 228
223, 228 Carmichael, Hoagy, 156, 158
Bias, George, 146–47 “Carolina Stomp,” 91, 93–95, 111, 209
“Big John Special,” 173, 174, 184, 186, Carnegie Hall, 201, 225
208 Carter, Benny: as arranger, 2, 150–54,
“Big Trade, The,” 139, 141, 148, 154, 161, 164, 174, 186, 196, 228; back-
156, 161, 162 ground of, 149–50; as bandleader,
Black Swan Records, 21–25, 50. See 134; and “the Big Trade,” 139; and
also Pace Phonograph Corporation Goodman, 191; on Henderson’s
Blake, Eubie, 13, 22 band, 138, 139, 142, 143, 148; as
Blakey, Art, 234, 241 Henderson’s sideman, 3, 123,
Bleyer, Archie, 148, 160–61, 164 140–41, 143; Henderson’s sidemen
Blount, Sonny. See Sun Ra join, 188; and Mills (Irving), 158
“Blue Rhythm,” 158 Casa Loma Orchestra, 108, 126, 149,
“Blue Room, The,” 186 164–65
“Blue Skies,” 179, 193, 196–201, 202, “Casa Loma Stomp,” 149
203, 205, 206, 213, 215, 222, 223 chain of syncopation, 154, 186, 187.
blues: arranged, 63, 82, 86–90, 104–9, See also Henderson’s arrangements
161–65; and chimes effect, 66–67; Challis, Bill, 107, 125, 148, 154–57,
and fox-trot, 62–66; gutbucket, 62, 161, 164
66, 279n21; and Handy, 20;
Chambers, Elmer, 32, 44, 63, 64–65
harmony, 105, 160; meanings and
Chapman, Ozie Lena. See Henderson,
status of, 20, 23, 62, 104–5, 109–10,
Ozie Lena
180; and melodic inflections, 69,
Charleston, 36, 43, 46, 122
188, 197; and race, 66–67, 109–10,
116–17; and race records, 20–21, Charleston Bearcats, 111, 114
22–25; and renaissancism, 6; reper- “Charleston Crazy,” 38, 46–47
tory, 62–67, 104–9, 236 (see also “Chicago Blues,” 49–50, 59–60
individual titles); and singers, 22–25; Chilton, John, 31, 137, 180, 181
solos, 64, 65, 66, 69, 79, 83, 88; and “Chime Blues,” 67
song publishing, 20, 74; and tempo, “Chinatown, My Chinatown,” 100,
63, 108, 279n22; in title only, 62, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 164, 182
114; vocal vs. instrumental, 64–65, Chinese food, and jazz, 184, 288n39
83, 279n22; and written music, 63, “Chris and His Gang,” 238
279n23 Christian, Charlie, 229
“blues craze,” 22, 35, 104, 145 “Christopher Columbus,” 233, 235–39
“Blues in My Heart,” 158 “Clarinet Marmalade,” 99, 100, 145,
Bonime, Joseph, 190 154, 156–58
Boone, Harvey, 140, 141–42, 153, clarinet trio, 107. See also Henderson’s
155 arrangements; Redman’s arrange-
Boozer, Charlotte (grandmother), xi, 15 ments
“Boston, taking a,” 76, 281n12 Clark, C. Carroll, 22, 23
Braud, Wellman, 144 Clark, Dick, 215
“Breakin’ in a Pair of Shoes,” 223–24 Clark, June, 149
Brothers, Thomas, 96 class, social, 5, 23, 26, 29–30, 31,
Brymn, Tim, 13, 34 35–36, 136–37, 166–68
Buck, Gene, 52 classical music and opera: allusions to,
Burroughs, Theresa Henderson, 126 74; performers, 21, 23, 231; reper-
Bushell, Garvin, 12, 18, 21, 24, 25, 31, tory, 5, 7, 17, 22, 61, 138, 142, 231;
63, 68, 120, 233, 239, 240 training, 125–26
“Business in F,” 144, 145, 160 Clef Club, 13, 19, 25, 30, 31, 33
Index 313
Club Alabam (New York), 32, 33, 35, DeVeaux, Scott, 1, 5, 8, 28, 110
39, 41, 50, 138, 165 Dews, Margery P., 17, 18
Collier, James Lincoln, 95 “Dicty Blues,” 6, 38, 60, 66–67, 68–69,
Columbia (record company), 23, 82, 87, 105–6, 108, 112
34–35, 67, 68, 88, 116, 125, 127, “Diga Diga Doo,” 182
129, 130, 135, 139, 148, 161, 163, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,”
166, 167, 170, 171, 183, 189, 231 161
“Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” “Dipper Mouth Blues,” 85–89, 163,
238 228. See also “Sugar Foot Stomp”
“Come On, Baby!,” 150–51, 153 Dixon, Charlie, 30, 32, 49, 74, 135
“Comin’ and Going,” 139, 145, 161–62 “Do Doodle Oom,” 38, 68
commercialism, as basis for evaluating Dodds, Johnny, 96, 228
jazz, 1–2, 8, 27–28, 38, 52, 137–38, Dodge, Roger Pryor, 6
184, 193, 194–95, 201, 207–8 “Doin’ the Voom Voom,” 162
Confrey, Zez, 58, 97 Don Pasquale, 125
Congress Hotel (Chicago), 110, 221, Dorsey, Jimmy, 155
235 Dorsey, Thomas A., 18
Connie’s Inn (New York), 7, 31, 121, double consciousness. See Henderson,
136–38, 145, 146, 148, 149, 154, Fletcher, Jr., and double conscious-
164, 166, 192 ness
contrafact, 173, 175, 179, 186, 228. Douglas, Ann, 12–13
See also rhythm changes. “Down by the River,” 37, 46
Cook, Doc, 30, 125 “Down Hearted Blues,” 62, 64–65
Cook, Will Marion, 26, 33, 121 “Down Home Blues,” 23, 24–25
“Copenhagen,” 74, 80–83, 84, 85, 90, “Down South Camp Meeting,” 178,
91, 94 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 229, 240,
Cotton Club, 35, 125, 136, 137, 146, 242, 243
159, 164, 169 Down South Music Publishing
couesnaphone. See novelty, goofus Company, 38, 67. See also
“Crazy Blues,” 13–14, 21, 23 Henderson, Fletcher, Jr.; music
Creath, Charles, 131, 135 publishing
Crosby, Bing, 145–46, 183 “Driftwood,” 37, 41, 118
Cugat, Xavier, 191, 194 Driggs, Frank, 240
Cummins, Bernie, 206 DuBois, W.E.B., 12, 16, 17–18, 20, 21,
Cuthbert, Georgia, ix-xi, 14–17 22, 98–99, 109
cutting contests. See battles, band Dunn, Johnny, 34, 64, 66, 67, 280n24
Durante, Jimmy, 137
“ ‘D’ Natural Blues,” 6, 11, 106–08, Dutrey, Honoré, 89
109, 154, 178, 236
Dabney, Ford, 13, 34 “Easy Money,” 150–51
dancing: effect on arrangements, 36, education, importance of in black
47–51, 62, 111, 114, 127, 133, 173, community, 14–18
192–94; effect on band performance, Eldridge, Roy, 3, 114, 139, 234, 235,
111, 114, 127, 149, 175; indicated 236, 238
on music parts, 191; in jazz history, Elgin Revue (radio show), 221, 224
8–9; as measure of musical value, 9, Elitch’s Gardens (Denver), 207, 208
207; music’s effect on, 9, 208–9; and Ellington, Duke, 37, 114, 144, 164; and
radio, 190–91; at Roseland Ball- agency, 125, 167–69; and Hawkins,
room, 36; at Savoy Ballroom, 111, 181; on Henderson, 2, 28, 123, 233;
149; and tempo, 173. See also Henderson compared to, 8, 26, 125,
Charleston; fox-trot; Lindy Hop; 127, 136, 146, 159, 161, 162, 164,
taxi-dance halls; waltz 167, 234, 279n14; Henderson as
Dapogny, James, 10, 134, 240, 280n22 model for, 28, 241; Henderson’s
Davis, Charlie, 80 sidemen in band of, 31, 142, 143,
Decca (record company), 176, 183, 182; in jazz history, 98–99; replaced
185, 188 by Henderson, 121
DePew, Bill, 215 Empire Ballroom (New York), 168
314 Index
Erenberg, Lewis A., 209 225; in rehearsal, 212–15, 224;
Escudero, Ralph, 30, 33, 74, 93 repertory choices, 194, 206; reper-
Europe, James Reese, 13, 24, 26, 30, tory programming, 193–94, 201,
31, 34, 100, 142, 156 216; and radio, 189–94, 224–25; and
Evans, Gil, 242 recording industry, 206–7, 231; and
“Everybody Loves My Baby,” 38, 95 saxophone section, 213–14, 217,
“extra” measures, 57, 118 220; and singers, 190, 201–2, solo
phrases notated, 216, 226–27; styl-
Feist, Leo (publisher), 37, 223 istic precursors of, 63, 88, 118,
“Feelin’ the Way I Do,” 37, 53–54 131–32, 148, 150, 165, 178–79, 186,
“Fidgety Feet,” 99, 100–02 228–30; tours, 206–9, 221, 224–25;
Fields, Dorothy, 120, 182 and Ward, 201–2, 239
Firestone, Ross, 189, 201, 207, 213, goofus. See novelty
230 Gordon, Dexter, 3–4
Fitzgerald, Ella, 192 Gorham, Georgia, 20
Floyd, George, 234 “Gouge of Armour Avenue, The,” 38,
Floyd, Samuel A., Jr., 9 69–70, 162
“Forsaken Blues,” 61 Grand Terrace Café (Chicago), 108
Foster, Pops, 144 “Grand Terrace Stomp,” 108, 236. See
Fowler, Billy, 30, 142, 143, 150 also “ ‘D’ Natural Blues”
Fox, Ed, 234, 236, 237 Gray, Glen, 164–65
fox-trot, 9, 26, 62, 66, 145, 182, 185, Graystone Ballroom (Detroit), 134,
216, 221, 228 165, 188
Friedwald, Will, 146, 202 Great Day (stage show), 121–22, 136,
139, 141
Garland, Joe, 161 Great Man narrative, 73–74, 75–76.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 40 See also jazz, meanings of; jazz tradi-
Gennett (record company), 80–81, 158 tion
Gershwin, George, 6, 39, 74, 97, 100, Green, Abel, 36, 74, 109, 110
106, 173, 175, 184, 189, 191, 223, Green, Charlie, 32, 33, 67, 69–70, 74,
237. See also Rhapsody in Blue; “I 78, 89, 92, 93, 150, 162
Got Rhythm”; rhythm changes Greenfield, Elizabeth Taylor (the “Black
“Get Rhythm in Your Feet,” 197 Swan”), 21
Giddins, Gary, 95, 209, 227 Griffin, Chris, 212, 213, 226–27
Gifford, Gene, 149 Grofé, Ferde, 39–40, 97
Gillespie, Dizzy, 3, 228, 235, 241 “Groovin’ High,” 228
Gioia, Ted, 5 “Gulf Coast Blues,” 38, 62, 64
Giordano, Vince, 240 “Gully Low Blues,” 66
Goldkette, Jean, 107, 125, 126 gutbucket style, 62, 64, 66, 107
“Go ’Long Mule,” 37, 75–79, 87
“Goodbye,” 191, 194 Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 121, 147, 185
Goodman, Benny, xi, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, Hammond, John: background of,
79, 86, 90, 142, 160, 166, 187, 188; 166–67; compared to Jack Kapp,
and agents, 189–90, 206–7, 231; 184; “frustration” thesis of, 2, 240,
band’s decline, 230–31; and black 243; and Goodman, 189–90, 201,
musicians, 189–90, 191, 221, 206–7, 210, 215; and Henderson, 3,
229–30, 234, 243–44; at Carnegie 5, 39, 127, 166–68, 169, 170, 192,
Hall, 201, 225; and classical music, 233, 234, 235, 239; on Henderson’s
231; at Congress Hotel, 221; cultural arrangements, 193–95; Henderson
role of, 200, 209, 230–32; difficulties band’s attitude toward, 168; and
with band members, 208, 215–16, Henderson-Goodman collaboration,
230; early career of, 189–90; and 188, 190; and Leora Henderson,
fans, 209; and Hammond, 189–90, 235, 239; mission of, 166–67; and
201; and Henderson, 5, 9, 153, recordings, 7, 127, 166, 231; and
190–95, 196, 201, 212–16, 230–31, singers, 201
234, 238, 240–41; at Palomar Ball- Hampton, Lionel, xi, 183
room, 208–9; at Paramount Theatre, Handy, W. C., 19–20, 26, 34, 38, 43,
Index 315
98, 184. See also Pace and Handy 125–26; character of, 4, 19, 123,
Music Company 125, 165, 168, 170, 192, 234, 239;
“Happy As the Day Is Long,” 173, 174, as composer, 3, 61, 66–67, 104–9,
184, 186–87 121, 145, 178–79, 187–88, 198; in
Harker, Brian, 75 Cuthbert, x, 16–17; death and
Harlem Opera House, 120, 182, 188 funeral of, 239; and double
Harlem Renaissance, 5–6, 9, 13, 28–29, consciousness, 98–99, 109; early
71, 74, 75 musical jobs of, 19–26; education of,
harmonic loop, 173, 179 16–19; family of, x-xi, 14–19, 23,
Harms, T. B. (publisher), 37 110; financial vicissitudes of, 37,
Harreld, Kemper, 19, 22, 23, 26, 168–70, 233; and frustration theme,
276n17, 276n19 2, 240, 242–44; and Great Migra-
Harris, Michael W., 18 tion, 12; health problems of, 233,
Harrison, Jimmy, 100, 123, 127–28, 235, 239; and Horace Henderson,
130, 133, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 148, 175–76, 217–21, 234, 286n38;
150 jazz history and, 1–3, 29–30; 99,
Hawkins, Coleman: Armstrong’s influ- 137–38, 145, 147, 193; marital prob-
ence on, 98, 112–13; arranging role lems of, 126, 235; middle-class
of, 135, 174, 179; background of, 31; background of, 5, 29–30; and
and ballads, 180–81; and cars, 124; Morton (Jelly Roll), 135; and music
as clarinetist, 79, 82, 162; compared publishing, 38, 41, 74, 80; naming
to Henderson, 31; as composer, of, 16; name change of, 18, 275n17;
179–80; departure of, 182; and nickname (“Smack”), 4, 273n7; and
eating contests, 123; and Ellington, other arrangers, 148; as pianist, 24,
181; and Goodman, 190; and 25, 62–63, 66–67, 140, 143, 193; on
Hammond, 168; on head arrange- radio, 6–7, 36, 137, 196–97, 201,
ments, 170; on Henderson’s 235; and recordings (quantity), 8,
arranging style, 3; on Henderson’s 33–35, 71, 137, 145, 192; and
band, 175; in Henderson Reunion singers, 22–25, 62–63, 145–47,
Band, 240; in jazz history, 2, 185; 201–2; and women, 4, 19, 126, 235
joining Henderson’s band, 30–33; in (see also Henderson, Leora). See also
Redman’s arrangements, 52, 82, other Henderson headings and indi-
116–17; on Redman’s departure, 126; vidual titles of compositions and
replacements in Henderson’s band, arrangements
178, 181–82; as saxophone soloist, 3, Henderson, Fletcher, as arranger:
43, 52, 60, 68–69, 74, 92, 100–101, beginnings of, 126, 148, 170;
102, 109, 112–13, 117, 127–28, 130, collaborative process of, 3, 131–35,
133–34, 150, 160, 162, 172, 176, 163–64, 170–78, 188, 192, 217–21;
179, 180–81, 185; as section player, compared to Redman, 163, 184–85,
51, 82, 140, 153; on Smith (Joe), 84; 195, 197; demands on, 217–18,
star billing of, 2, 31, 141, 180–81; 233–34; financial rewards of, 3, 191,
tardiness of, 181; tenure with 233; self-doubts of, 171, 192; speed
Henderson band, 140, 143 of, 5, 188, 192–93; uncertain attribu-
Hawkins development as soloist: on tions to, 175, 220, 236–37, 286n38,
“Dicty Blues,” 68–69; on “The Stam- 287n19
pede,” 112–13; on “Hop Off,” 128, Henderson’s arrangements: Armstrong’s
130; on “It’s the Talk of the Town,” influence on, 220, 227–28; as anti-
180–81 commercial, 193–95; as art, 5, 9, 193,
“He’s the Hottest Man in Town,” 213; of ballads, 216–21; blues inflec-
44–46, 87 tions in, 188, 197; block voicing in,
head arrangement. See arrangement 195, 197, 205, 213, 218–20, 226,
Hegamin, Lucille, 21, 30 228; cadential flourish in, 226; call
Henderson, Fletcher Hamilton, Jr.: and response in, 132–33, 134, 163,
appearance of, 4, 23; and the blues, 173, 175, 176, 185, 186, 195, 197,
13–14, 20–25, 62–67, 104–9, 205, 217, 222, 223, 230; chains of
161–62, 164, 279n20; and cars, syncopation in, 195–96, 197, 199,
123–24; car accident of, 5, 124, 203, 204, 205, 206, 226, 241;
316 Index
Henderson’s arrangements (continued): on tour, 4, 7, 95, 110, 122–24, 136,
clarinet trio in, 179, 217; cuts in, 144, 164–65, 166, 167, 188, 192,
201, 231; dancing and, 8–9, 111, 234–35; versatility of, 5–6, 38, 110,
114, 133, 173, 175, 192–94, 207, 138–39, 145, 164. See also indi-
208–9; Goodman’s view of, 193, vidual title listings for recordings
195; and Goodman’s rehearsal Henderson, Fletcher Hamilton, Sr.
method, 212–14; harmony in, 197, (father), x-xi, 5, 14–16, 17, 18, 20,
223; influence of, 240–42; introduc- 23–24, 26
tions in, 186, 196, 203, 205, 213–15, Henderson, Horace Ware (brother):
217; keys of, 5, 106, 160, 178–79; admiration for Fletcher, 18–19, 161;
length of, 172, 181, 194; melodic as arranger, 2, 174, 175–78, 229,
variation in, 197–200, 204–5, 226; 236–37; on band battles, 108, 165;
mutes in, 217; number of, 8, 201, as bandleader, 150, 188; and Blakey,
245; oral to written form of, 3, 234; and blues, 161–62; collabora-
163–64, 175–78, 210; and radio, tion with Fletcher, 175–78, 217–21,
193; rhythm section omission in, 236–37; competition with Fletcher,
213–15, 217; riffs in, 107, 109, 112, 188, 234; as composer, 139, 145,
132–35, 171–73, 175–78, 195, 199, 161–62, 173–74, 184, 186, 229,
205, 226, 229, 230, 239; notation vs. 236–37, 238; death and burial, x; on
performance of, 215–17, 224–25; Fletcher’s early musical experiences,
and popular-song forms, 173, 179, 17, 18–19; on Fletcher’s rehearsal
187, 197, 221; quasi-vocal writing method, 171; and Goodman,
in, 205–6; sectional separation in, 217–18; as leader of Henderson
108, 132–33, 195, 197, 199, 205, band, 181, 234; naming of, 16; on
222; with singer, 201–6; soloistic other arrangers, 149, 160
lines in, 195, 197, 204, 227–28; Henderson, Irma Belle (sister), 16,
“stinger” in, 176, 197, 203, 205,
275n9, 275n13
289n20; straight rhythms for climax
Henderson, James Anderson (grand-
in, 200, 205, 206, 222–23; structure
father), 13–14, 15, 16
of, 171–73, 194, 201; unifying
Henderson, James Fletcher. See
elements in, 195–96, 197, 206;
Henderson, Fletcher Hamilton, Jr.,
tempo markings in, 216. See also
Appendix name change
Henderson’s band: and agents, 121, Henderson, Leora (wife), xi, 4, 19,
124–25, 166–69; and audiences, 83–84, 122, 124, 126, 167, 181, 187,
35–36, 95, 110, 136–38, 164–65, 188, 239
168–69, 235; in “battle,” 108, 165; Henderson, Ozie Lena (mother), 5, 16,
and cars, 123–24; and concern for 17
appearance, 4–5, 29, 72, 74; and “Henderson Stomp, The,” 209, 229
drinking, 123; and eating, 123; as Hendricks, Jon, 242
gentlemen, 139, 142, 143; and Hennessey, Thomas J., 29, 31, 124, 169
Hammond, 166–68; and Henderson’s Herskovits, Melville J., 29
leadership style, 3–4, 29, 39, 72, Higginbotham, J. C., 16, 123, 133,
121–22, 139, 153, 165, 170–71, 134, 140, 165, 172, 182, 240
234–35, 238–39; and lack of disci- Hines, Earl, 183, 191
pline, 95, 122, 124, 126, 165, 166, Hobson, Wilder, 7, 127
167–68, 170, 181; personnel, 28–33, “Hocus Pocus,” 176, 185
74, 139–44, 235; public perfor- Hodeir, André, 99, 126
mances vs. sound recording, 7–8, 35, Holiday, Billie, 143, 168, 190, 201, 237
126–27, 134, 138, 149, 175, 188; Holiday, Clarence, 140, 143, 162
and radio, 6–7, 36, 137; reading Hollywood Hotel (film), 228
music, 6, 29, 74, 81; in rehearsal, 72, “Honeysuckle Rose,” 167, 171–74,
90, 148, 170–71, 174; repertory of, 194, 229, 236, 240
5, 7, 37–38, 62, 74, 80, 99–100, “Hop Off,” 10, 127–31, 134, 171
104–5, 120, 131, 138, 145, 193, Hopkins, Claude, 7, 183, 225, 287n19
236–38; status and reputation, 3–5, “Hot and Anxious,” 145, 161–62, 229
30–33, 37, 70–71, 73–74, 137–39; “Hot Mustard,” 105–6, 109
Index 317
“Hotter than ’Ell,” 173, 174, 175–78, Jones, Claude, 140, 141
184, 186, 197, 229, 237, 240 Jones, Isham, 60, 97
“House of David Blues, The,” 142, Jones, Jo, 144
158, 180 Jones, Jonah, 178
“Houston Blues,” 55–56 Jones, Ralph “Shrimp,” 30
Howard Normal School, 14, 15, 16, 17 Joplin, Scott, 26
Hsio Wen Shih, 29, 31 Jordan, Louis, 183, 241
Hudson, Will, 174, 176, 185 “Just Blues,” 6, 108–9, 145, 162
Huggins, Nathan Irvin, 29
Hughes, Langston, 20 Kapp, Jack, 183–84, 188
Hughes, Revella, 22, 23 “Keep a Song in Your Soul,” 153–54,
Hunter, Alberta, 22, 65 196
Kenney, William Howland, 184
“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” keys, 5, 10–11, 106, 160, 178, 179, 206
193 “King Porter Stomp,” 100, 131–35,
“I Got Rhythm,” 173, 175, 186, 191, 156, 163, 164, 167, 171, 173, 174,
197, 237. See also rhythm changes 187, 193, 207–12, 215, 217, 221,
“I Want to Be Happy,” 186 222, 229, 231, 240, 241, 242
“I Wish I Could Make You Cry,” 38, 53 Kincaide, Deane, 191
“I’m Gonna See You,” 47–48, 59 Kirby, John, 133, 140, 143, 144, 146,
“I’ve Found a New Baby,” 148, 153–54, 166
“If I Could Be with You One Hour Kirk, Andy, 138, 183, 184, 238, 239
Tonight,” 180 Klaxon. See novelty, Klaxon
“In the Mood,” 161, 229 Koehler, Ted, 184, 202
International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Krueger, Bennie, 51, 279n14
234
Krupa, Gene, 215–16, 230, 238
“It’s the Talk of the Town,” 180, 182,
183
Ladnier, Tommy, 3, 100, 101, 102–3,
129–30, 143, 150
James, Elmer, 140
Lafayette Theatre (New York), 60, 120,
James, Harry, 189, 225, 230
“Jangled Nerves,” 236 121, 136–37, 169
jazz, meanings of, 3, 6, 8, 27–28, 33, Lang, Eddie, 146, 156
73–74, 80, 97–100, 202 Lange, Arthur, 43, 46, 97, 109, 194
jazz, symphonic, 47, 75, 97, 106, 107, Lanin, Sam, 34, 35, 131, 133, 135
108, 109, 110, 114–19, 120, 161 Leslie, Edgar, 158
jazz tradition, concept of, 1–2, 208 Leslie, Lew, 158
“Jealous,” 37, 54–55, 56 Leslie, Nat, 145, 148, 158–60, 161,
Jefferson, Hilton, 3, 140, 179, 182, 164, 176
186, 187, 229, 239, 240 Let’s Dance (radio show), 9, 190–95,
Jenkins, Gordon, 191 196, 201, 202, 206, 208, 224, 225,
Jerome, Jerry, 231 241
Jewish-black interdependence, 37, “Let’s Dance” (song), 191, 194
243–44. See also race Lewis, John, 242
“Jimminy Gee,” 37, 54, 56 Lewis, Ted, 97–98, 142, 156
Johnson, Charlie, 125, 142, 150 “Limehouse Blues,” 184, 186
Johnson, Fred “Deacon,” 19, 26, 30 Lindy Hop, 9, 111, 133
Johnson, J. C., 235 “Linger Awhile,” 37, 50
Johnson, J. J., 241 “Livery Stable Blues,” 99, 103
Johnson, J. Rosamond, 121 Locke, Alain, 12, 29, 33, 74
Johnson, James P., 24 Lombardo, Guy, 206, 208
Johnson, James Weldon, 21, 26, 29, “Lonesome Journey Blues,” 66
121 Lopez, Vincent, 29, 33, 34, 97
Johnson, Keg, 140 “Lost My Rhythm,” 197
Johnson, Walter, 140, 143–44, 160, “Lots O’ Mamma,” 37, 56–57, 67–68
170, 185, 239 “Love Me or Leave Me,” 225, 226
Jolson, Al, 146, 196 “Low Down on the Bayou,” 158
318 Index
Lucie, Lawrence, 137, 140, 143, 144, Down South, Feist, Harms, Marks,
170 Melrose, Witmark
Lunceford, Jimmie, 183, 236, 237 Musso, Vido, 226
“My Gal Sal,” 145, 154
“Malinda’s Wedding Day,” 146 “My Papa Doesn’t Two-Time No
Manone, Wingy, 161 Time,” 37, 60
Marable, Fate, 182
Markham, Pigmeat, 239 NAACP, 13, 21
Marks, E. B. (publisher), 37 “Nagasaki,” 173, 174, 182–83
Marsalis, Wynton, 240 Nail, John, 21, 276n26
Marshall, Joseph “Kaiser,” 30, 33, names, significance of band, 34
54–55, 72, 74, 82, 88, 91, 95, 100, Nesbitt, John, 148–49, 153, 164
107, 112, 115, 123, 133, 144, 150 New Deal, the, 209, 230
Matthews, Babe, 237–38 “New Kind of Man, A,” 37, 61
Maxwell, Jimmy, 202, 231 New Negro, idea of, 12, 28–29, 33, 67,
May, Henry F., 12 97, 98, 104, 109
Mays, Willie, 291n15 New Negro, The (book), 12, 29, 33,
McHugh, Jimmy, 120, 182 74
McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, 125, 134, New Orleans jazz as a distinctive
141, 143, 148, 157–58, 185 musical approach, 43, 67, 79, 80, 88,
Melnick, Jeffrey, 38 99–103, 110, 143, 164
Melrose Brothers Music Company, 74, New Orleans Rhythm Kings, 100
80–81, 88, 131, 158, 209 New York Public Library for the
“Memphis Blues,” 20, 184 Performing Arts, 8, 201
Meoux, Leora. See Henderson, Leora New York Yankees, 4
Metcalf, Louis, 29, 76, 78, 83, 84, 188 Nigger Heaven (novel), 67
Mezzrow, Mezz, 136 nightclubs, 35, 136. See also Club
“Midnight Blues,” 62–63, 66 Alabam, Connie’s Inn, Cotton Club,
Mikell, Eugene, 13, 142 Grand Terrace Café
Miley, Bubber, 162, 280n29 Nixon, Teddy, 53, 57, 69
Miller, Glenn, 86, 161, 189, 230, 241 “Nobody Knows De Trouble I’ve Seen,”
Mills, Jack, 37, 38 22
Mills, Irving, 121, 125, 158–59, 167, Noone, Jimmy, 79
168–69, 176, 185, 206 novelty, 58–62, 70, 76, 78, 79, 197;
“Minnie the Moocher’s Wedding Day,” animal imitation, 58, 76; “doo
197 wacka” brass effect, 50, 76, 87;
minstrelsy, 76, 106, 146, 184, 241 “doodle” tunes, 61; electrical effects,
“Moan, You Moaners,” 146–47 60; goofus (couesnaphone), 61,
“Mobile Blues,” 60 279n20; hiss, 115; kazoo, 60;
Mondello, Toots, 220 Klaxon, 61; mouthpiece, 76; musical
“Money Blues,” 79 quotation, 61; quasi-vocal sounds,
Morgan, Russ, 174, 185 58, 60; railroad effects, 58–60, 147,
Morris, Thomas, 66 279n17; scat singing as, 60–61
Morton, Benny, 109, 123, 139, 140,
141, 143, 150, 162, 240 “Oh Daddy,” 23
Morton, Jelly Roll, 34, 74, 98, 131–32, “Oh! Sister Ain’t That Hot,” 41–43
135, 143, 193, 209, 210, 242 OKeh (record label), 22
Moten, Bennie, 125, 236 “Ol’ Man River,” 147, 185
Mundy, Jimmy, 2, 191, 236, 238 “Old Folks at Home,” 22, 110, 147
Murray, Kel, 191, 194 Oliver, King, 34, 43, 66, 79, 86, 87, 88,
Murphy, Spud, 191 89, 95, 98, 102, 139, 163, 164, 171,
Muse, Fletcher Henderson, xi, 16 182, 193
music business, 124–25, 168–69, Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB),
206–7 43, 99–103, 142, 156
Music Corporation of America (MCA), Ory, Kid, 34, 96
206–7, 208, 231 Osgood, Henry O., 97–98, 109,
music publishers, 37–38, 74. See also 110
Index 319
Pace and Handy Music Company, 19, 138, 184, 210, 242–43; and passing,
20, 21 21, 26, 137, 144; and publishing,
Pace, Harry, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 19–20, 38; and race records (and
276n21 “general” records), 7, 13–14, 20–21,
Pace Phonograph Corporation, 21. See 22, 33–35, 62, 128, 180; and racism,
also Black Swan Records 25, 71, 121, 122, 126, 167–68, 189,
Paige, Billy, 32, 150 192, 234; and radio, 36, 192 (see
Palomar Ballroom (Los Angeles), 207, also radio); and record industry, 116,
208, 209, 210, 221, 225, 242 138, 183–84; and segregation, ix, 25,
“Panama,” 99, 100 137, 149, 189; and social class, 5,
Panassié, Hugues, 9, 27–28 14, 16, 18, 23, 29–30, 31, 67, 109,
Paramount Theatre (New York), 225 209; and stereotypes, 6, 7–8, 18,
Parker, Charlie, 235, 241 27–28, 67, 74, 98, 106, 109–10, 138,
parody, musical, 41, 50, 56, 58–59, 60, 146, 183. See also blues; double
75, 76, 78, 119. See also novelty; consciousness; Harlem Renaissance;
signifying Jewish-black interdependence; New
Pasquall, Jerome “Don,” 125 Negro; professionalism; renaissan-
Payne, Daniel A., 15 cism; versatility
Peyton, Dave, 30, 33, 97, 109–10 radio: commercial sponsorship of, 190;
Piron, A. J., 36, 37 and dancing, 190–91; and the
plug. See songplugging Depression, 190–91; development of,
Polla, W.C., 44, 45 6–7, 190; and music business, 169;
Pollack, Ben, 189 and musical repertory and style, 193,
“Potato Head Blues,” 228 236; network, 7, 137, 190, 221,
Procope, Russell: on Armstrong, 224–25; on-location, 7, 36, 137, 190;
142–43; background of, 142; and program format, 194; and record-
“the Big Trade,” 139, 154; character ings, 137, 226, 221; and tours, 7,
of, 143, 154; and classical music, 206, 221, 224–25. See also Camel
142; on Connie’s Inn neighborhood, Caravan; Goodman, Benny;
136–37; Ellington on, 143; on Henderson, Fletcher Hamilton, Jr.;
Hammond, 168; on Henderson, 5, Henderson’s arrangements; Let’s
123, 137, 142–43, 148; on Jefferson Dance; race
(Hilton), 187; on musical jobs, 139, “Radio Rhythm,” 145, 158–60, 176,
143, 144; oral history of, 5, 142; as 197
reed player, 3, 143, 155, 159–60, ragtime, 26, 55, 98, 100, 131, 196
162, 176; on tempo, 173, 180; tenure Randolph, Irving “Mouse,” 140
with Henderson, 140–41; on versa- Randolph Training School. See Howard
tility, 5, 138, 142 Normal School
professionalism, musical, 5–6 Razaf, Andy, 121
Public Theater (New York), 120, 121, reading, music, 6, 29, 33, 63, 74, 98,
167 107, 119. See also Henderson’s band,
reading music
“Queer Notions,” 174, 179–80, 182, record companies, 34–35, 163, 206–7,
242 231; influence on style and repertory,
quotation, musical, 61, 196–97. See 156, 183–84; links to publishers, 81,
also novelty 158. See also Black Swan; Columbia;
Decca; Victor; Vocalion
race: and complexion, 4, 5, 14, 122, recordings, and jazz history, 8, 137–38
124, 137, 144; and “crow-jim,” 3; records, 6–8, 21–23, 24–25, 33–35
and integration, 189–90, 201, 221, Redman, Don: background of, 32;
229, 230–31, 234; and interracial beginnings as arranger, 32, 46;
influence, 51, 149, 161, 154–58, 210, in eating contests, 123; at
227–30, 243–44; and jazz criticism, Henderson’s funeral, 239; in
27–28, 33, 73–74, 97–99, 109–10, Henderson Reunion Band, 240;
210, 243–44; and musical repertory, impact in Henderson’s band, 30, 32,
7–8, 38, 138, 183–84; and musical 39–41; impact of departure, 125–26;
style, 6, 27–28, 97–98, 109, 116, in jazz history, 30, 39–40, 99, 127;
320 Index
Redman, Don (continued): 235; and Leora, 239; and musical
with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, 141, versatility demanded by, 27, 36; pres-
148, 158; as reed player, 44, 50–51, tige of, 7, 36; and radio, 36. See also
60, 63, 64; as singer, 61–61, 102 Roseland Building
Redman’s arrangements: accompani- Roseland Building, 38, 85
ments in, 76, 88; aesthetic of, 40–41, “Rosetta,” 216–17
72–73; Armstrong’s influence on, Ross, Allie, 120
72–73, 76–79, 90, 93–95, 111–12; “Rug Cutter’s Swing,” 173, 174, 184,
breaks in, 46, 48, 78, 84, 86, 87, 186
102, 105, 115–16, 119; call and Runnin’ Wild (stage show), 46, 59
response in, 84, 93–94; clarinet trio Russell, Luis, 125, 144, 167, 182
in, 79–80, 82, 86–87, 116; codas in, Russell, Ross, 2, 195
45, 75, 88; compared to Henderson’s, Rust, Brian, 149, 158
184–85, 195; cymbal in, 54–58;
dance influence on, 47–51; as “S.O.L. Blues,” 66
doctored stock arrangements, 41–46, St. Cyr, Johnny, 96
78, 80–82, 84–85, 87–89, 91–92, “St. Louis Blues, The,” 20, 87, 99, 103,
94–95, 184–85, 228; “extra” 228
measures in, 57, 118; formal Sampson, Edgar, 140, 141–42, 191
symmetry in, 78, 90, 91, 105; humor “Sandman,” 213–15, 215, 216
in, 40, 61, 119; introductions in, 63, Savoy Ballroom (New York), 111, 114,
75, 87, 100; replaced, 157–58; 120, 149, 168, 169
reused material in, 100; riffs in, 88, Savoy Bearcats. See Charleston
100; secondary rag rhythm in, 75, Bearcats
102; and signifying, 40–41, 50, 87; “Say! Say! Sadie,” 37, 53, 57–58
social value of, 98; soloistic writing scat singing. See novelty
in, 63; and symphonic jazz, 47, Schertzer, Hymie, 208, 213, 215
114–19; timbral shifts in, 46–48, Schoebel, Elmer, 84–85, 88, 90–91,
52–56, 185; unifying elements in, 79; 158, 164, 210
variation techniques in, 40–63, Schoenberg, Loren, 201, 213, 240
90–92, 102–4, 117–18. See also Schuller, Gunther, 6, 9, 27, 40, 68, 73,
novelty; parody, musical 74, 76, 80, 81, 86, 102, 115, 126,
rehearsal. See Henderson’s band, in 127, 132, 137, 143, 144, 148, 149,
rehearsal; Goodman, Benny, in 182, 184, 185, 197, 193, 195, 210,
rehearsal 215, 240
renaissancism, 5–6, 74, 121, 138. See Scott, Emmett, 21
also Baker, Houston, Jr.; Harlem Scott, Howard, 29, 31, 33, 43, 55,
Renaissance; professionalism; versa- 67–68, 71, 73, 74, 75, 79, 83
tility secondary rag rhythm, 75, 102, 129,
Reuss, Allan, 216, 226 161, 218
Rhapsody in Blue, 6, 39, 100 Seldes, Gilbert, 97
Rhone, Happy, 31 “Sensation,” 99, 100, 102
rhythm changes, 173, 223, 228–29, “Shake Your Feet,” 37, 52–53
237. See also contrafact; “I Got “Shanghai Shuffle,” 184–85, 240
Rhythm” Shaw, Artie, 86, 230
riffs. See Henderson’s arrangements Show Boat, 121
Robertson, Dick, 146 signifying, 40–41, 50, 59, 119
Robeson, Paul, 26 “Sing, Sing, Sing,” 236, 238
“Rocky Mountain Blues,” 114–17, 120 “Singin’ the Blues,” 145, 154–57
“Roll On, Mississippi, Roll On,” 147 singers. See Armstrong, Louis; Crosby,
Rollini, Adrian, 61, 279n19 Bing; Henderson, Fletcher Hamilton,
Rollini, Art, 199, 215, 221, 230 Jr.; Henderson’s arrangements
Roseland Ballroom, 6, 32, 38, 69, 95, Sissle and Blake, 22, 33, 120. See also
110, 137, 138, 139, 161; Armstrong Blake, Eubie
at, 73, 142; dances at, 36; “Slipped Disc,” 231
Henderson’s band at, 35–36, 169, Smith, Bessie, 22–23, 24, 25, 62, 63,
188; Henderson’s refusal to return to, 64–65, 84, 86, 98, 145, 190
Index 321
Smith, Joe, 3, 25, 64, 74, 83–85, 100, 193, 203, 217, 228, 229, 281n23.
112, 123, 130, 150 See also “Dipper Mouth Blues”
Smith, Luke, 83 Sun Ra, 242
Smith, Mamie, 13, 21, 22, 30, 31, 34, Sweatman, Wilbur, 31
83, 142 “Sweet and Hot,” 146, 153
Smith, Russell, 83, 84, 117, 123, 139, swing: as era, 9, 193, 209; as part of
140, 143 jazz history, 210; revival, 242; as
Snowden, Elmer, 37, 138, 143 rhythm, 113, 196; and singers,
social class. See class, social 201–2; as style, 3
“Somebody Loves Me,” 145, 146, 153, Sylvester, Hannah, 63
228 symphonic jazz. See jazz, symphonic
“Somebody Stole My Gal,” 60–61
“Sometimes I’m Happy,” 193, 208, “T.N.T.,” 10, 90–95, 111
215, 217–21 “Take the ‘A’ Train,” 241
song-plugging, 37, 158, 194 Tate, Erskine, 30
Sousa, John Philip, 114 Tatum, Art, 183
special arrangement. See arrangement taxi-dance halls, 30, 36, 150
spirituals, 22 Teagarden, Jack, 189
Spring, Howard, 133 tempo, 173, 180, 216
Stacy, Jess, 226, 230, 238 theaters, jazz and, 120
“Stampede, The,” 111–14, 116, 120, Thomas, George, 55–56
127, 179 Thomas, Joe, 140, 238, 240
Stamper, Dave, 52 369th “Hell Fighters” Regiment, 13,
“Star Dust,” 145, 158 21, 31, 100
Stark, Bobby, 3, 107, 109, 132, 133, “31st Street Blues,” 59
134, 139, 140, 141, 142, 150, 160, “Tidal Wave,” 184, 185
162, 172, 176, 210 Tin Pan Alley, 37–38, 41, 70, 80, 137,
“Stealin’ Apples,” 229 138, 145, 146, 154, 160, 193, 194,
Stearns, Marshall W., 9, 208–9 197, 202, 223, 236. See also song-
Stevens, Artemus, 20 plugging
Stewart, Rex: and Armstrong, 111–12; titles, meanings, significance, and
and Beiderbecke, 139, 155–56; and patterns among, 11, 37, 43, 61, 62,
cars, 124; and eating contests, 123; 67, 90, 106, 108, 116, 139, 161, 184
and Green, 32; on Henderson, 4, tours, 25, 30, 31, 122–24, 207–8. See
171; on Henderson’s band, 122–24, also Henderson’s band; Goodman,
126–27, 148–49; on Henderson’s Benny
style, 3; and Henderson Reunion transcription from sound recording,
Band, 108, 240; imitated, 114; on 10–11
other Henderson sidemen, 141, 144; Tree of Hope, 136
on music business, 7, 30, 116, Triangle Music Publishing Company,
124–25, 138; and Oliver, 139, 163; 38, 85
in public performance, 134, 148–49, Trumbauer, Frankie, 154–57, 164
165; as sideman, 139–40, 150, 165; Tucker, Mark, 58, 180, 280n29
as soloist, 111–12, 155–56, 160, Tyers, Bill, 13
163; and “western style,” 76, 111
Stewart, Sammy, 33 Vallee, Rudy, 146, 189
Still, William Grant, 20, 21, 50, 60, Van Vechten, Carl, 67
279n17 Varèse, Edgard, 279n17
stock arrangement. See arrangement. “Variety Stomp,” 209
“Stockholm Stomp,” 100 venues, 30, 36, 110, 120, 136–38,
stomp, 209 169. See also Apollo Theater;
Stowe, David W., 167, 209 Carnegie Hall; Club Alabam;
Strayhorn, Billy, 241 Congress Hotel; Connie’s Inn;
Striver’s Row, 67, 72, 104 Cotton Club; Graystone Ballroom;
Sudhalter, Richard, 149, 155–56 Harlem Opera House; Palomar
“Sugar Foot Stomp,” 74, 85–90, 91, 93, Ballroom; Paramount Theatre;
94, 141, 145, 156, 157, 162–64, 171, Public Theater;
322 Index
venues (continued): White, Freddy, 133, 140
Roseland Ballroom; theaters; taxi- Whiteman, Paul: arranging aesthetic of,
dance halls 39, 73, 79–80, 97, 109, 172;
versatility, musical, 5–6, 27, 38, 110, changing style of, 125; and Crosby
138, 142, 164, 189. See also (Bing), 146; “Experiment in Modern
Henderson’s band Music,” 58, 75; and Henderson, 71,
Victor (record company), 8, 21, 34, 97, 119, 154–55; Henderson’s band
125, 138, 147, 163, 169, 182, 183, compared to, 45, 52–53, 71, 102,
185, 207, 208, 216, 221, 231 119; as Henderson’s model, 1,
Vocalion (record company), 34–35, 27–28, 38, 119; as jazz representa-
68–69, 138, 176 tive, 33, 39, 52–53, 58, 97, 99, 109,
Vodery, Will, 13 110; and symphonic jazz, 97, 119
“Whiteman Stomp,” 47, 114, 116–19,
“Wabash Blues,” 60, 103 120, 209
Wagner, Richard, 61 Wiedoeft, Rudy, 51, 279n14
“Wait’ll You See My Gal,” 61 Wilber, Bob, 240
Wallace, Sippie, 279n22 “Wild Party,” 184, 185–86
Waller, Fats, 119, 121, 171–72 Wilder, Alec, 202
Wallerstein, Ted, 207, 231 Williams, Bert, 141
Walton, Lester, 21, 25 Williams, Clarence, 8, 38, 125, 128
waltzes, 7, 36, 72, 138, 154, 208 Williams, Cootie, 229–30
“Wang Wang Blues, The,” 99, 100, Williams, Fess, 111
102–4, 150, 151–53 Williams, Martin, 102, 113, 127, 184,
Ward, Helen, 191, 194, 201, 202, 203, 187, 240, 243–44
206, 207, 208, 212, 213, 215, 230, Williams, Sandy, 122, 124, 134, 135,
239 139, 140, 141, 179
Ware, Edmund, 15, 16 Wilson, Edmund, 20
Washington, Booker T., 14, 15, 16, 17, Wilson, Olly, 9, 40
21 Wilson, Teddy, 2, 172, 190, 194, 221,
“Water Boy Serenade,” 121 238
Waters, Ethel, 22, 23, 24–25, 26, 30, Witmark and Sons, M. (publisher),
63, 83, 190 37
Webb, Chick, 86, 134, 137, 138, 141, Wolverines, 80–81
142, 143, 154, 168, 183, 191 Wooding, Sam, 30, 32, 39
Webster, Ben, 3, 140, 176, 178, 182, “Words,” 37, 74–75
186 “Wrappin’ It Up,” 178, 183, 187–88,
Wells, Dicky, 111, 114, 122, 123, 124, 193, 222, 229, 240, 243
140, 170–71, 174, 175, 178, 182, Wright, Richard Robert, 14–15
185, 186, 239
“western” style, 76, 82, 88, 111 Yale University Music Library, 8, 201
“What-Cha-Call-’Em Blues,” 84–85, “Yeah Man!,” 173, 174, 175–78, 186,
108 237. See also “Hotter than ’Ell”
“When Buddha Smiles,” 221–23 Youmans, Vincent, 121
“When You Walked Out Someone Else Young, Lester, 3, 140, 155, 181–82
Walked Right In,” 37, 49
“Whispering,” 34, 221, 228–29 Ziegfeld Follies, The, 52, 238
A suave portrait of Henderson used as a publicity photo in the late 1930s. The Stanley Dance and
Helen Oakley Dance Archives, Yale University Music Library.
The Henderson family, ca. 1909. Front: Fletcher Sr., Horace, Ozie; back: Irma, Fletcher Jr. (then named
James). Fletcher Henderson Papers, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
Fletcher, Irma, and Horace Henderson, ca. 1915. Frank Driggs Collection.
The Atlanta University Class of 1920. Left to right: Clayton Yates, Albert Edwards, Marcia Brown, Herbert
Thompson, Herbert Greenwood, Horace Hodges, Charles Elder, Ralph Jefferson, Fletcher Henderson,
Nolden White, Margaret Moore, George Hodges, Clayton Cornell. In the class yearbook, it was Charles
“Snap” Elder who wrote the “prophecy” claiming future comparisons between Henderson and Sergei
Rachmaninoff. Family photos also show Henderson and Margaret Moore together informally on the
university campus. Fletcher Henderson Papers, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
Fletcher Sr. and Jr. at home, New York, ca. 1923. Frank Driggs Collection.
Probably Henderson’s first professional portrait alone, signed “To Mamma + Papa,” early 1920s.
Duncan Schiedt Collection.
“He was a strict leader,” recalled Howard Scott.“Every night you had to . . . stand inspection.” Fletcher
Henderson and His Orchestra, New York, probably summer 1924, soon after opening at the Roseland
Ballroom. Left to right: Charlie Dixon, banjo; Howard Scott, trumpet; Fletcher Henderson, piano; Elmer
Chambers, trumpet; Charlie Green, trombone; Don Redman, reeds; Kaiser Marshall, drums; Ralph
Escudero, tuba; Coleman Hawkins, reeds. The Stanley Dance and Helen Oakley Dance Archives, Yale
University Music Library.
“The ‘class’ dance place on Broadway.” The Roseland Ballroom, at 1658 Broadway, between West 51st
and 52nd Streets. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Roseland interior, ca. 1926, featuring two bandstands on the right, each with a banner featuring the
bandleader’s name: Harvey Marburger and Fletcher Henderson. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
“The next night you couldn’t get into the place,” said Howard Scott.“Just that quick it had gone all
around about this new trumpet player at Roseland.” Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra with Louis
Armstrong, late 1924. Left to right: Howard Scott, trumpet; Coleman Hawkins, reeds; Louis Armstrong,
trumpet; Charlie Dixon, banjo; Fletcher Henderson, piano; Kaiser Marshall, drums; Buster Bailey, reeds;
Elmer Chambers, trumpet; Charlie Green, trombone; Ralph Escudero, tuba; Don Redman, reeds. Frank
Driggs Collection.
Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, 1927, soon after Don Redman’s departure. Left to right:
Henderson; Charlie Dixon, banjo; Jimmy Harrison, trombone; Don Pasquall, alto saxophone; Benny
Morton, trombone; Buster Bailey, clarinet, alto saxophone; June Cole, tuba; Coleman Hawkins, tenor
saxophone; Kaiser Marshall, drums; Tommy Ladnier, trumpet; Joe Smith, trumpet; Russell Smith,
trumpet. Frank Driggs Collection.
Don Redman, the key figure in Henderson’s early band, in a relaxed pose that belies his intricate scores.
Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Louis Armstrong stayed with Henderson only thirteen months, but his sound and style continued
to resonate in the band’s soloists and in Henderson’s arrangements for Benny Goodman. Duncan
Schiedt Collection.
Leora Henderson performed many crucial roles for her husband: booker, straw boss, copyist, talent scout,
auditioner, and substitute trumpet player. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Benny Carter said that joining Henderson’s band was “a great, great thing for me,” and his elegant
arrangements helped shape the “Henderson” style. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Horace Henderson both idolized and competed with his older brother; he wrote many great
arrangements for his band and some for Benny Goodman as well. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Henderson in the driver’s seat of his beloved Packard, Atlantic City, 1929, with participants in Vincent
Youmans’s Great Day, including an unidentified man, Harold Arlen, Bobby Stark, Lois Deppe, Will Marion
Cook, and Rex Stewart. Frank Driggs Collection.
The hub of Harlem entertainment: The Lafayette Theatre, Tree of Hope, and Connie’s Inn on Seventh
Avenue near 131st Street in the late 1920s. Frank Driggs Collection.
Inside the exclusive Connie’s Inn, Henderson’s home base in the early Depression years. Frank
Driggs Collection.
By 1932, Henderson had become “easygoing” and the band had become a loosely run collective of all-
star musicians. Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, Atlantic City boardwalk, July 1932. Seated: Edgar
Sampson, alto saxophone, violin; Sandy Williams, trombone; J.C. Higginbotham, trombone; Fletcher
Henderson, piano; Russell Smith, trumpet; Walter Johnson, drums. Standing: John Kirby, bass; Coleman
Hawkins, tenor saxophone; Russell Procope, clarinet, alto saxophone; Rex Stewart, trumpet; Bobby Stark,
trumpet; Clarence Holiday, guitar. Frank Driggs Collection.
Building the Kingdom of Swing: Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, with Helen Ward, during a Let’s
Dance broadcast, 1935. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
The King of Swing: Benny Goodman in the film Hollywood Hotel, 1936. Duncan Schiedt Collection.
Goodman’s success helped re-ignite Henderson’s bandleading career: the “Grand Terrace” band of 1936,
another all-star group. Left to right: Chu Berry, tenor saxophone; Joe Thomas, trumpet; Horace Henderson,
piano; Sid Catlett, drums; Fletcher Henderson, piano; Dick Vance, trumpet; Teddy Lewis, vocal; Buster Bailey,
clarinet; Ed Cuffee, trombone; Elmer Williams, tenor saxophone; Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Israel Crosby, bass;
Fernando Arbello, trombone; Bob Lessey, guitar; Don Pasquall, alto saxophone. Frank Driggs Collection.
Advertisement for the “New Grand Terrace,” July 1937, emphasizing cool air and hot music and
attributing the hit “Christopher Columbus” to Fletcher Henderson alone. Frank Driggs Collection.
Helen Ward, Benny Goodman, and John Hammond with Fletcher Henderson, about two months before
Henderson’s death.“Nobody could have done more than John and Benny,” recalled Leora Henderson.
Duncan Schiedt Collection.