Brick Fleagle and Luther Henderson were jazz musicians and composers. Jacob Roger Fleagle, known professionally as “Brick,” was an acoustic guitarist and arranger. He learned the banjo at 17 years old, eventually switching to the guitar. Fleagle studied composition at the Peabody Conservatory in 1925 and 1929 with Frederick Weaver. He worked with many different bands, including Sam Robbins and the Baltimoreans in 1926 and Rex Stewart's band beginning in 1936. Fleagle started his own band at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York in 1935 while writing arrangements for other bands and musicians around the country, including Chick Webb, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Sonny Greer, and Luther Henderson. Fleagle and Luther Henderson began a music-copying business in 1946. Fleagle later went on to work for radio stations and recording studios before passing away in 1992.

Luther Henderson was a pianist, composer, and arranger. He was born in 1919 and grew up in Harlem, where music was an early influence in his life. After studying math for a short time in college, Henderson attended the Juilliard Institute and received a bachelor's degree in music in 1942. He then joined the U.S. Navy and became the Naval Band arranger and later the staff orchestrator of the US Navy School of Music in 1944. Henderson received his master’s degree at the New York University Graduate School of Music in 1946.

Henderson was an arranger and composer for more than 50 Broadway musicals, including Jelly's Last Jam, starring Gregory Hines, for which Henderson received a Tony nomination for best score. During his career Henderson also arranged dance music and was music director for several television shows. Henderson maintained close professional relationships with musicians such as Duke Ellington, for whom he wrote some symphonic orchestrations.

The archives of the Arthur Friedheim Library mounted an exhibit of the Fleagle and Henderson collection in 1994.