Corey Henry — NOLA Music

Never heard Corey Henry before?

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"Footwork"

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Lapeitah (2016)

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"Corey Henry plays trombone like a freight train coming through — Treme's whole musical history riding behind it."

Why We Love Corey Henry

Corey Henry had what he's called the ideal upbringing for a New Orleans musician: born and raised in Treme, the birthplace of jazz, a few blocks from Congo Square, with a grandfather who played bass drum at Preservation Hall and an uncle, Benny Jones Sr., who founded the Treme Brass Band. Henry joined that band at 16 alongside his mentor Kermit Ruffins, and the road from there runs through the Lil Rascals Brass Band, Rebirth Brass Band — where his trombone appears on their 2012 Grammy-winning Rebirth of New Orleans — and funk supergroup Galactic. Since 2012 he's led his own Treme Funktet, and it's exactly the band you'd expect from someone who grew up with brass bands and second lines passing his front door every week: loud, joyful, and entirely unable to sit still.

Biography

Treme's Trombone

Corey Henry was born in July 1975 and raised on Barracks Street in Treme, the historic neighborhood that gave birth to jazz, just down from Little People's Club, once a popular second line parade stop. The third of seven children, Henry grew up surrounded by musicians: his grandfather, Chester Jones, played bass drum at Preservation Hall and with the Eureka, Onward, and Tuxedo brass bands, while his uncle, Benny Jones Sr., is a legendary snare drummer and founder of the Treme Brass Band and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Henry began on drums as a child before switching to trombone at 10, learning from family members including his uncle Benny. He joined the Treme Brass Band at 16 alongside his mentor Kermit Ruffins, and later inherited Ruffins' weekly Thursday night residency at Vaughan's Lounge. In the late 1990s, Henry founded the Lil Rascals Brass Band, and went on to play trombone on Kermit Ruffins' 1998 live album and his 2001 Swing This, as well as Widespread Panic's 1999 album 'Til the Medicine Takes.

Henry spent years as a member of Rebirth Brass Band, playing trombone on their 2012 Grammy-winning album Rebirth of New Orleans, and was also a member of the funk supergroup Galactic. He left Rebirth in 2011 to form his own band, the Treme Funktet, which won instant acclaim for its energetic live shows and 2016 debut album Lapeitah on Louisiana Red Hot Records. The band has won OffBeat Magazine's Best of the Beat award for Best Trombone, Gambit's Best of the Big Easy award for Best Funk Band (2019), and was named one of 13 standout sets at the 2019 New Orleans Jazz Fest by The New York Times. In 2019, Henry also won the Spirit of Satchmo Music Award for his commitment to Louis Armstrong's legacy, and in 2023 the Treme Funktet released the single "Footwork" ahead of Carnival season.