Wayne Henderson, a trombonist and composer who was a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders, which played straight-ahead bebop beginning in the 1950s and then morphed into leading performers of jazz-funk, died on April 5 in Culver City, Calif. He was 74.

His wife, Cathy, said the cause was heart failure triggered by diabetes.

The Jazz Crusaders, who shortened their name to the Crusaders in 1971, placed 19 albums on the Billboard Top 200, eight of them in the Top 50. Their funky, danceable renditions of songs by the Beatles, Carole King and others extended their reach beyond jazz fans. So did original songs by Mr. Henderson, like “Keep That Same Old Feeling.” At their height the Crusaders opened for the Rolling Stones.

“We are the fathers of jazz-funk-fusion, and I am a funkster at heart,” Mr. Henderson said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “We took pop tunes like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘So Far Away’ and did them melodically with a groove, so people could dance if they wanted.”

That groove — subtle, almost mesmerizing repetitions of a theme — was the essential characteristic of the Crusaders’ music. Its influence can be heard today in acid jazz, house music and hip-hop.

Mr. Henderson was born on Sept. 24, 1939, in Houston, where he and three high school friends formed a group called the Swingsters in 1952. The others were Wilton Felder, a tenor saxophonist; Joe Sample, a keyboardist; and Stix Hooper, a drummer...