Fletcher Henderson, Composer: A Counter-Entry to the "International Dictionary of Black Composers"

Abstract

In writing about Fletcher for the International Dictionary of Black Composers (IDBC), I faced a challenge shared by many of that dictionary's contributors. The challenge was not simply to choose four compositions that best revealed my subject's work, as the IDBC guidelines required. It was the more basic challenge of deciding how to distinguish compositions among Henderson's wide-ranging activities as a creative musician. There is no doubt that had substantial compositional impact on the tradition he represents, to quote from the IDBC's criteria. But the term composition--with its overtones of singular artistic control and privileged aesthetic and legal status--fits a small proportion of Henderson's creative work. Still, I wrote the entry because the IDBC's guidelines offered an interpretive frame that would help me hear Henderson's music in a different way. I wrote with an awareness that I was presenting a rather tendentious perspective on a musician for whom was never a central focus. Later, I revisited my entry when I was invited to deliver a brief talk at a symposium focusing on issues raised by the IDBC (Magee 1997). The result, expanded upon in this article, comprises a kind of reflective counter-entry to the IDBC. historians agree that Fletcher was a major figure, but a survey of the literature reveals very little about his work as a composer. In The New Grove Dictionary of (Jazz Grove), is described as a arranger, and pianist. Even pieces with Henderson's byline and copyright credit, such as Down South Camp Meeting and Wrappin' It Up, are identified there as (Collier 1994, 515). Grove reflects the accepted view of Henderson's work: his main contributions lay in his roles as bandleader and arranger. As a bandleader, is often hailed as a sharp-eared talent spotter, recruiting a group of young sidemen who went on to become solo stars, including Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Carter. As an arranger, he wins a place as a pioneer in writing music that spurred an entire band to swing, especially the band of Benny Goodman, for whom served as a staff arranger during the mid- and late-1930s. A discussion of Henderson's compositions usually appears in the context of arrangements and recordings. In jazz history, Fletcher Henderson's compositions are invariably considered part of a larger musical enterprise. Writings centered on as a composer, then, appear as anomalies. was elected to the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1948. For that, he earned an entry in the 1952 ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, which lists five compositions, including Wrappin' It Up, a piece identified as an arrangement in Grove. The most complete documentation of Henderson's activity appears on six pages of Walter C. Allen's mammoth bio-discography Hendersonia. There, Allen presents ninety-seven titles in a Chronological Listing of Compositions Credited to Fletcher Henderson (and to George Brooks, Henderson's pseudonym). But he also concludes that they comprise only a secondary feature of his career (Allen 1974, 539). For most historians and musicians, the difference between a composition and an arrangement is straightforward and lies in the work's origins: a composition is an original work; an arrangement is a new version of an existing work. In jazz, though, the distinction often seems blurry. As one recent jazz history text puts it, Jazz arrangers usually create so much new material for their arrangements that there is really no difference between arranging and composing (Porter and Ullman 1993, 461). Eileen Southern complicates the distinction even further in her landmark text The Music of Black Americans, where the term composer applies to both the arranger and the soloist: In one sense all the leading jazz performers were composers as well as soloists; with their improvisations they shaped the basic themes into musical compositions. …