The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra was the most popular African-American band of the 1920s. The smooth, carefully arranged sound of Henderson’s orchestra was a huge influence on the Swing style of the next decade. The Orchestra played at the Club Alabam on West 44th Street in New York from 1922 to July of 1924 and then moved to the Roseland Ballroom when Armand J. Piron’s Orchestra vacated the job and returned to New Orleans.

In 1924 Henderson hired Louis Armstrong to replace Joe Smith on trumpet. Armstrong’s thirteen months in the band caused quite a stir among New York Jazz musicians who had never heard anything like him.

The orchestra also featured Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone, Buster Bailey on clarinet and Don Redman on alto saxophone and also contributing arrangements. When Armstrong left the band to return to Chicago to join Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra a succession of fine cornet and trumpet players played in the band.

They included Rex Stewart, Tommy Ladnier and June Clark. The orchestra recorded with dozens of record companies under a number of different names and pseudonyms including Henderson’s Dance Orchestra, Henderson’s Club Alabam Orchestra, The Dixie Stompers, Henderson’s Happy Six Orchestra, Fletcher Henderson and his Sawin’ Six, Louisiana Stompers and the Connie’s Inn Orchestra.

In 1929 the band traveled to Philadelphia to play the music in a musical revue called Horseshoes. During rehearsals for the show a dispute over White musicians’ role in the production fractured the band and half of the orchestra quit. Henderson put together another version of the band, but things were never the same and the band never resumed the level of popularity that it had enjoyed throughout the 1920s.

Thanks to Bob Palmer, Dominic Combe, J.E. Knox, Owen Miller, Scott and Mark of Vintage Music Company and James Gallup for their help with the recordings on this page.