{"id":86,"date":"2005-07-26T06:58:05","date_gmt":"2005-07-26T13:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2005-07-26T06:58:28","modified_gmt":"2005-07-26T13:58:28","slug":"luther-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=86","title":{"rendered":"Luther who?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luther Henderson is not a household name, not even a B-list celebrity in the eyes of the general public. Finding a publisher for his biography has been a lengthy and difficult process, but I am pleased to say that I am in negotiations right now and hope to announce a signing very soon. Meanwhile, people are asking me “Luther who?”<\/p>\n

Luther Henderson was a composer, arranger, conductor, musical director, orchestrator, and pianist. He was a proud black man who graduated from the Julliard School of Music in 1942, and in 1956, married a white woman, his second wife. He was Duke Ellington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153classical arm,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d orchestrating music for Beggar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holiday, Three Black Kings, and other symphonic works. Duke spoke highly of Luther, but seldom gave him the credit he was due. Luther was Lena Horne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pianist and musical director. During his sixty-year career in music, he worked his magic on some of Broadway’s greatest musical hits, including Flower Drum Song, Funny Girl, No No Nanette, Purlie, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Jelly’s Last Jam, starring such performers as Barbra Streisand, Laine Kazan, Robert Guillaume, Savion Glover, Andre Deshields, Tonya Pinkins, and Gregory Hines. His music was heard on television programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Bell Telephone Hour, and specials for the pop stars of the day including Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Andy Williams, Victor Borge, and Polly Bergen. <\/p>\n

Despite the success of these shows, on both stage and television, his contributions were never properly valued. What reason, or combination of reasons, led to this oversight? Certainly there were those who usurped credit, whether due to ego, carelessness, or resentment of Luther\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s training and talent. Was he caught between two worlds \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the elite classical world embodied in his Julliard training, and the world of jazz, his own heritage? Both worlds viewed him with suspicion; neither took him seriously. Was it due to the racial biases of the times? Or was it just the inevitable fate of a background man?<\/p>\n

Those in the business understood his talent, but it is hard to communicate to an audience just what Luther really did. We value a composer above an arranger or orchestrator, thinking that one is more original and creative than the other. When music is described as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcincidental,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the word used for background music as opposed to featured songs in a show, we assume it is, well, incidental, not very important. Even \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbackground\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 conveys lack of importance. Most of Luther\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s major projects were based on songs written by others, but the difference between a song in its original form and Luther\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s orchestration based on that song is vast. Luther\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interpretation is every bit as creative as the original song. He tried to explain it in an interview for American Theatre magazine in 1997:<\/p>\n

Sometimes I call it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctranslating\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the music, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more like transporting the music. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going through me, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m enjoying it going through me, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m adding to it what happens when it passes through me. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to imitate Duke Ellington. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t copy Jelly Roll Morton. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be Fats Waller. But I can express what Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and Duke Ellington mean to me. I can be the conduit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Luther lived his life largely in the shadows, yet he never saw it that way. He was an affable man who appeared to view his experiences through proverbial rose-colored glasses, and for the most part, that is truly how he saw things. He lived as though he had plenty of money, but he was poorly compensated and he never liked to ask for proper recompense. He believed his work was important, but he said he enjoyed it so much, that it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem right to be paid. He thought everyone loved him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and most people did, but some didn’t. Growing up black in America, embracing both jazz and classical music \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one, an American art form that has yet to be fully appreciated, and the other, a field not truly open to blacks at that time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was not a path to fame and fortune. But with a love of music, a prodigious talent, and an optimistic outlook, that is the life he chose. It was a life that required extreme dedication and concentration, sometimes to the detriment of family relations and his role as husband and father. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luther Henderson is not a household name, not even a B-list celebrity in the eyes of the general public. Finding a publisher for his biography has been a lengthy and difficult process, but I am pleased to say that I am in negotiations right now and hope to announce a signing very soon. Meanwhile, people … Continue reading “Luther who?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-writing-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}