Ron Wynn observed that Napoleon "was a competent, though unimaginative trumpeter whose greatest value was the many recording sessions he led that helped increase jazz's popularity in the mid-1920s.

"[2] Richard Cook and Brian Morton, writing for The Penguin Guide to Jazz, refer to Napoleon as "a genuine pioneer" whose playing was "profoundly influential on men such as Red Nichols and Bix Beiderbecke.

[7] He recorded with the Cotton Pickers and the Charleston Chasers and also worked with blues singers Leona Williams and Alberta Hunter.

[4] Napoleon joined Jimmy Dorsey's then Los Angeles–based group in the mid-1940s, and he appeared with the band in the film Four Jills in a Jeep.

[6] Parting with Dorsey in 1947, he moved back to New York and worked as a studio musician at NBC until 1949 to 1950 when he reformed The Original Memphis Five.