(Wild Party (3:04)
Malinda's Weddin' Day (2:43)
Peaceful V...)
Wild Party (3:04)
Malinda's Weddin' Day (2:43)
Peaceful Valley (3:02)
Why Couldn't It Be Poor Little Me? (3:03)
Oh! Eva (Ain't You Coming Out Tonight?) (2:57)
Big Chief De Sota (3:01)
12th Street Rag (3:03)
Get It Fixed (3:02)
Poplar Street Blues (3:18)
You Know Me, Alabam' (3:14)
I'll Always Be In Love With You (3:04)
Sugar (3:00)
I Want To See A Little More Of What I Saw In Arkansas (2:53)
I'll Take Her Back If She Wants To Come Back (3:05)
The Grass Is Always Greener (In The Other Fellow's Yard) (3:03)
Riffin' (2:24)
Take A Picture Of The Moon (3:03)
Tampeekoe (2:59)
Alone At Last (3:06)
You'll Never Go To Heaven With Those Eyes (3:02)
When sold by Amazon.com, this product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson was an African American pianist and composer. He was a leading pioneer in the sound, style, and instrumentation of big band jazz.
Background
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson was born on December 18, 1897 in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States. His father, whose name he bore, was a teacher of Latin and mathematics at Douglas Academy in Cuthbert when he met and married Ozie Lena Chapman. Both his parents were pianists.
Education
Henderson was taught piano by his parents and by a private teacher from the age of six. Jazz, however, was not allowed in the strict Henderson household. Henderson was sent to Atlanta University College Preparatory School in 1911, and, in 1916, to the university itself, from which he graduated in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry. During his college years he also worked as a piano accompanist in a summer resort.
Career
In 1920 Henderson arrived in New York and took a job as a laboratory assistant with a chemical firm, but he soon became a song demonstrator for Harry Pace and W. C. Handy's publishing company. Pace, an earlier graduate of Atlanta University, had in 1921 formed the Black Swan recording company, and Henderson and William Grant Still became its musical directors. Ethel Waters was the label's most valuable artist; her records sold so well that in the same year a band was formed, under Henderson's leadership, to tour the country with her. It was during this tour that Henderson hired Joe Smith, a brilliant young cornetist in Pittsburgh and the first of the many great instrumentalists he employed during his career.
In 1923, after a period of freelancing and recording extensively for many different companies, Henderson opened at the Club Alabam in New York with a ten-piece band that included saxophonists Don Redman and Coleman Hawkins. In July 1924, the band began a lengthy series of engagements at the Roseland Ballroom on Broadway. Among its members was another cornetist Henderson had first heard while on tour with Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong. Although the band had, prior to this time, primarily played smooth, unadventurous dance music, Armstrong's spirit and imagination helped transform it. Redman, a well-schooled musician, began to write ambitious arrangements, and the band's emphasis shifted to what was then termed "hot jazz. " Broadcasting regularly from Roseland, it was soon known among musicians as the best jazz band in America--in fact, when Edward "Duke" Ellington first formed a big band, it was Henderson's, he said, that he wanted his own to sound like.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, the dominant position of his band enabled Henderson to hire such other outstanding musicians as Tommy Ladnier, Russell Smith, Rex Stewart, and Bobby Stark on trumpet; Charlie Green, Jimmy Harrison, and Benny Morton on trombone; William C. "Buster" Bailey on clarinet; Benny Carter on alto saxophone; and Joseph "Kaiser" Marshall and Walter Johnson on drums. Their work and salaries set standards for the whole profession. In between seasons at Roseland--where the band appeared thirty times in twenty-four years--Henderson and his men went on tour in an automobile caravan, playing ballrooms and theaters throughout the country. Henderson himself drove a big open Packard at high speeds, and was severely injured in a 1928 accident. Although he recovered from his injuries, his wife claimed that the accident affected Henderson's business sense, and that he was thereafter somewhat irresponsible in his dealings.
Following a period of financial difficulty, caused in part by the depression, Henderson and his band opened in 1930 at Connie's Inn in Harlem. Redman and Carter had by then both left to lead bands of their own, and Henderson began to write his own arrangements, with important results. Although he continued to lead a band regularly until 1939, Henderson's heyday as a bandleader was nearly over, as his supremacy was increasingly challenged by Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Earl Hines, and Count Basie. In 1936, following a hit record of "Christopher Columbus, " and with the contributions of such brilliant musicians as trumpeter Roy Eldridge and tenor saxophonist Leon "Chu" Berry, Henderson's band enjoyed a considerable revival of popularity while at the Grand Terrace club in Chicago.
Three years later, however, Henderson disbanded the group and joined Benny Goodman as full-time arranger and occasional pianist. Goodman's success in the Swing Era, as he always readily admitted, derived in large part from the arrangements Henderson wrote for him.
Despite the security Goodman offered, Henderson formed a new band in 1941 and struggled through the difficult years of World War II until 1947, when he resumed work as an arranger for Goodman and an accompanist for Ethel Waters. In 1950, he wrote the music for The Jazz Train, a show in which he again led a big band. It ran for only a few weeks in New York.
After the show closed, Henderson led a sextet until the following December, when he suffered a stroke. Although he was partly paralyzed, his health appeared to be improving, but in 1952 he suffered a second stroke, which was followed by a fatal heart seizure in New York City in December of that year.