Fletcher henderson biography
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Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson, a performer, arranger, and bandleader, became a popular and influential figure in big band and swing music during the 1920s. The Georgia native is credited with forming the first big band orchestra around 1920 in New York City.
James Fletcher Henderson was born on December 18, 1897, in Cuthbert, in Randolph County, to Ozie Lena Chapman and Fletcher Hamilton Henderson. He and his brother, Horace, who also became a successful jazz musician, grew up in a cultured household and were taught to play piano by their mother. While earning a degree in chemistry and mathematics at Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University), Henderson officially changed his name to Fletcher Hamilton Henderson Jr. In 1920, after his graduation, Henderson set off for New York City to find a job as a chemist.
Henderson, an African American, soon looked to music for employment opportunities after being turned down for work in his field, presumably because of his skin color. He found his first job as a song demonstrator for the Pace-Handy Music Corporation. This employment led to stints as a house pianist for Black Swan records and as a touring pianist and bandleader for the blues singer Ethel Waters. During his tenure at Black Swan, Henderson accompanied
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Fletcher Henderson
Home » Jazz Musicians » Fletcher Henderson
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Henderson, Fletcher
Bandleader, composer, pianist
Reading Skills Valued at Pace and Handy
Creating A New Style
Enter Armstrong
Artistic Resurgence, Commercial Decline
Selected discography
Sources
Fletcher Henderson, a figure whose place in music history continues to arouse debate and critical discussion, occupied a unique position in the development of jazz. A classically trained pianist, he helped bridge the world of the formal written arrangement with the African-American art of improvisation, creating a new orchestral style in jazz known as “swing.” The dominant exponent of the New York, or “eastcoast,” style, Henderson launched his career as part of the society orchestra and dance band craze of the 1920s and emerged, by the 1930s, as the leader of a model jazz ensemble.
Born on December 18, 1897, in Cuthbert, Georgia, James Fletcher Henderson was the son of a middle-class school principal and a music teacher who demanded that their three children receive a formal musical education. Henderson began to study piano at age six; he was often locked in a room and forced to practice. After seven years of classical instruction he developed a proficient sense of pitch and an ability to sight read music. As Richard Hadlock wrote in Jazz Maste