William "Count" Basie (1904-1984): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2017

VOLUME FIVE   NUMBER ONE

ORNETTE COLEMAN

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of: 
  

TYSHAWN SOREY

(November 4-10)

 

JALEEL SHAW

(November 11-17)

 

COUNT BASIE

(November 18-24)

 

NICHOLAS PAYTON

(November 25-December 1)

 

JONATHAN FINLAYSON

(December 2-8)

 

JIMMY HEATH

(December 9-15)

 

BRIAN BLADE

(December 16-22)

 

RAVI COLTRANE

(December 23-29)

 

CHRISTIAN SCOTT

(December 30-January 5)

 

GIL SCOTT-HERON

(January 6-12)

 

MARK TURNER

(January 13-19)

 

CRAIG TABORN

(January 20-26)

 

 

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/count-basie-mn0000127044/biography

William ‘Count’ Basie

(1904-1984)

Artist Biography by William Ruhlmann

Count Basie was among the most important bandleaders of the swing era. With the exception of a brief period in the early '50s, he led a big band from 1935 until his death almost 50 years later, and the band continued to perform after he died. Basie's orchestra was characterized by a light, swinging rhythm section that he led from the piano, lively ensemble work, and generous soloing. Basie was not a composer like Duke Ellington or an important soloist like Benny Goodman. His instrument was his band, which was considered the epitome of swing and became broadly influential on jazz.

Both of Basie's parents were musicians; his father, Harvie Basie, played the mellophone, and his mother, Lillian (Childs) Basie, was a pianist who gave her son his earliest lessons. Basie also learned from Harlem stride pianists, particularly Fats Waller. His first professional work came accompanying vaudeville performers, and he was part of a troupe that broke up in Kansas City in 1927, leaving him stranded there. He stayed in the Midwestern city, at first working in a silent movie house and then joining Walter Page's Blue Devils in July 1928. The band's vocalist was Jimmy Rushing. Basie left in early 1929 to play with other bands, eventually settling into one led by Bennie Moten. Upon Moten's untimely death on April 2, 1935, Basie worked as a soloist before leading a band initially called the Barons of Rhythm. Many former members of the Moten band joined this nine-piece outfit, among them Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), and Lester Young (tenor saxophone). Jimmy Rushing became the singer. The band gained a residency at the Reno Club in Kansas City and began broadcasting on the radio, an announcer dubbing the pianist "Count" Basie.

Basie got his big break when one of his broadcasts was heard by journalist and record producer John Hammond, who touted him to agents and record companies. As a result, the band was able to leave Kansas City in the fall of 1936 and take up an engagement at the Grand Terrace in Chicago, followed by a date in Buffalo, NY, before coming into Roseland in New York City in December. It made its recording debut on Decca Records in January 1937. Undergoing expansion and personnel changes, it returned to Chicago, then to the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston. Meanwhile, its recording of "One O'Clock Jump" became its first chart entry in September 1937. The tune became the band's theme song and it was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Basie returned to New York for an extended engagement at the small club the Famous Door in 1938 that really established the band as a success. "Stop Beatin' Round the Mulberry Bush," with Rushing on vocals, became a Top Ten hit in the fall of 1938. Basie spent the first half of 1939 in Chicago, meanwhile switching from Decca to Columbia Records, then went to the West Coast in the fall. He spent the early '40s touring extensively, but after the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 and the onset of the recording ban in August 1942, his travel was restricted. While on the West Coast, he and the band appeared in five films, all released within a matter of months in 1943: Hit Parade of 1943, Reveille with Beverly, Stage Door Canteen, Top Man, and Crazy House. He also scored a series of Top Ten hits on the pop and R&B charts, including "I Didn't Know About You" (pop, winter 1945); "Red Bank Blues" (R&B, winter 1945); "Rusty Dusty Blues" (R&B, spring 1945); "Jimmy's Blues" (pop and R&B, summer/fall 1945); and "Blue Skies" (pop, summer 1946). Switching to RCA Victor Records, he topped the charts in February 1947 with "Open the Door, Richard!," followed by three more Top Ten pop hits in 1947: "Free Eats," "One O'Clock Boogie," and "I Ain't Mad at You (You Ain't Mad at Me)."

The big bands' decline in popularity in the late '40s hit Basie as it did his peers, and he broke up his orchestra at the end of the decade, opting to lead smaller units for the next couple of years. But he was able to reform the big band in 1952, responding to increased opportunities for touring. For example, he went overseas for the first time to play in Scandinavia in 1954, and thereafter international touring played a large part in his schedule. An important addition to the band in late 1954 was vocalist Joe Williams. The orchestra was re-established commercially by the 1955 album Count Basie Swings - Joe Williams Sings(released on Clef Records), particularly by the single "Every Day (I Have the Blues)," which reached the Top Five of the R&B charts and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Another key recording of this period was an instrumental reading of "April in Paris" that made the pop Top 40 and the R&B Top Ten in early 1956; it also was enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame. These hits made what Albert Murray (co-author of Basie's autobiography, Good Morning Blues) called the "new testament" edition of the Basie band a major success. Williams remained with Basie until 1960, and even after his departure, the band continued to prosper.

At the first Grammy Awards ceremony, Basie won the 1958 awards for Best Performance by a Dance Band and Best Jazz Performance, Group, for his Roulette Records LP Basie. Breakfast Dance and Barbecue was nominated in the dance band category for 1959, and Basie won in the category in 1960 for Dance with Basie, earning nominations the same year for Best Performance by an Orchestra and Best Jazz Performance, Large Group, for The Count Basie Story. There were further nominations for best jazz performance for Basie at Birdland in 1961 and The Legend in 1962. None of these albums attracted much commercial attention, however, and in 1962, Basie switched to Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records in a bid to sell more records. Sinatra-Basie satisfied that desire, reaching the Top Five in early 1963. It was followed by This Time by Basie! Hits of the 50's and 60's, which reached the Top 20 and won the 1963 Grammy Award for Best Performance by an Orchestra for Dancing.

This initiated a period largely deplored by jazz fans that ran through the rest of the 1960s, when Basie teamed with various vocalists for a series of chart albums including Ella Fitzgerald (Ella and Basie!, 1963); Sinatra again (the Top 20 album It Might as Well Be Swing, 1964); Sammy Davis, Jr. (Our Shining Hour, 1965); the Mills Brothers (The Board of Directors, 1968); and Jackie Wilson (Manufacturers of Soul, 1968). He also reached the charts with an album of show tunes, Broadway Basie's ... Way (1966).

By the end of the 1960s, Basie had returned to more of a jazz format. His album Standing Ovation earned a 1969 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group or Soloist with Large Group (Eight or More), and in 1970, with Oliver Nelson as arranger/conductor, he recorded Afrique, an experimental, avant-garde album that earned a 1971 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band. By this time, the band performed largely on the jazz festival circuit and on cruise ships. In the early 1970s, after a series of short-term affiliations, Basie signed to Pablo Records, with which he recorded for the rest of his life. Pablo recorded Basie prolifically in a variety of settings, resulting in a series of well-received albums: Basie Jam earned a 1975 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Group; Basie and Zoot was nominated in the same category in 1976 and won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist; Prime Time won the 1977 Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band; and The Gifted Ones by Basie and Dizzy Gillespie was nominated for a 1979 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Group. Thereafter, Basie competed in the category of Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Big Band, winning the Grammy in 1980 for On the Road and in 1982 for Warm Breeze, earning a nomination for Farmer's Market Barbecue in 1983, and winning a final time, for his ninth career Grammy, in 1984 for 88 Basie Street.

Basie's health gradually deteriorated during the last eight years of his life. He suffered a heart attack in 1976 that put him out of commission for several months. He was back in the hospital in 1981, and when he returned to action, he was driving an electric wheel chair onto the stage. He died of cancer at 79.

Count Basie was admired as much by musicians as by listeners, and he displayed a remarkable consistency in a bandleading career that lasted long after swing became an archival style of music. After his death, his was one of the livelier ghost bands, led in turn by Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Grover Mitchell. His lengthy career resulted in a large discography spread across all of the major labels and quite a few minor ones as well.               

http://www.countbasietheatre.org/countbasiebio/

William J. “Count” Basie (1904-1984)

The title of one of his band’s most famous tunes — “The Kid from Red Bank” – is an obvious tip-off, but many jazz historians assume that William J. “Count” Basie, Jr. was a native of Kansas City, Missouri. And while that’s where Basie and his band rose to national fame, the jazz great’s origins can be traced to a house located just blocks away from the historic theater that today bears his name.

William Basie was born at 229 Mechanic Street on August 21, 1904. His father, Harvey Lee Basie, was a coachman and caretaker; his mother, Lillian Childs Basie, was a laundress, taking in washing and ironing. A brother, James, died when William was a young boy. The family always owned a piano, and Lilly Ann paid twenty-five cents per lesson to teach William to play.

In addition to helping his parents, William also did chores at Red Bank’s now-defunct Palace Theater. A projectionist taught him to rewind the reels, switch between projectors, and operate the spotlight for the vaudeville shows. On the afternoon the Palace’s house pianist failed to show for work, Basie offered to fill in – but was denied. Nonetheless persistent, the young Basie waited for the film to start, crept into the orchestra pit, and accompanied the film anyway. He was invited back to perform that evening.

Though Basie’s initial intentions were to become a drummer, his ambitions in that direction were forever erased after hearing drummer Sonny Greer from Long Branch. Greer, who later rose to fame as the drummer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, was so obviously superior to Basie that he made a hasty retreat to the piano. The men became friends and formed a duo.

Decades later, the two would be among fifty-seven musicians photographed on the stoop of a Harlem, brownstone by Art Kane, in a shot to accompany an Esquire magazine article on the “Golden Age of Jazz.” The photograph would later become as famous as the subjects it depicted, as inspiration for the documentary A Great Day in Harlem.

In 1924, Basie moved to New York City. There, he met and was influenced by noted stride pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. Though just a teenager, Basie was touring as a pianist and accompanist on the major vaudeville circuits. It’s believed that his experience in these roles ultimately lead to Basie’s reputation as a bandleader who had no issues with younger musicians taking up the spotlight.

 

In 1927, a canceled tour left Basie stranded in Kansas City, Missouri. He remained there, eventually joining bassist Walter Page’s Blue Devils, an outfit that also included vocalist Jimmy Rushing and trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. Each would one day figure prominently in Basie’s own band.

Basie left the Blue Devils early in 1929 to play with other bands in the area, and later that year schemed his way into the top band in the territory, the Bennie Moten band.

Basie Gets His Own Big Band

Moten himself was a pianist, but the band so influenced Basie that he was undeterred in wrangling a position for himself as staff arranger and substitute pianist.

Like many bandleaders of the day, Moten ran what was called a “commonwealth band,” with each member of the band having a say in the band’s operations. During one dispute about an upcoming performance, the band voted to oust Moten as its leader and – though he was not one of the instigators – installed Basie as its new leader.

The new band billed itself as Count Basie and his Cherry Blossom Orchestra, marking the first time that “Count” was officially added to his name. Though stories abound at the genesis of his nickname, Basie later recalled it as a tribute to his penchant for slipping off during arranging sessions with Moten. As soon as they got a few good bars down, Basie recalled, he’d slip out, leaving Moten to exclaim, “Where is that no ‘count rascal?”

Though Basie embraced his opportunity to lead a band, he quickly jumped ship to work with Moten’s new band, where he remained until Moten’s unexpected death in 1935. Soon, Basie and saxophonist Buster Smith pieced together their own nine-piece outfit, comprised of former members of the Blue Devils and the Bennie Moten Band. This new collective, Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, secured a residency at the Reno Club in Kansas City – a stay historians regard as Basie’s biggest career turning point.

Basie and John Hammond

Basie Meets John Hammond & Begins His Rise To Fame

The Reno Club residency established Basie as a permanent band leader, and because the performances were broadcast on radio, the band received nationwide exposure. One night in Chicago, a young music writer named John Hammons tuned in. Hammond had been instrumental in resurrecting the career of Bessie Smith, and during a later stint in A&R at Columbia Records, he influenced the careers of Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan – even Bruce Springsteen.

Hammond immediately wrote to Basie, expressing his wish to collaborate and introduce the band to even bigger audiences. When Basie finally wrote back, Hammond immediately left for Kansas City, and announced his presence by walking onstage during a Reno Club broadcast and sitting down with Basie between numbers.

Hammond and Basie shared a lifelong friendship, with Hammond later featuring Basie during the famous “Spirituals to Swing” concerts at Carnegie Hall. Hammond arranged for a national booking deal with MCA and a record deal with Decca Records, and by 1937, the bombastic, thirteen-piece band known as the Count Basie Orchestra moved to New York City and become one of the world’s leading big bands.

The Count Basie Orchestra

Over the next thirteen years, Basie’s Orchestra incessantly recorded and toured, establishing a new home base at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and performing there several times a year. The orchestra’s recordings, including “One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumpin’ At the Woodside,” “Taxi War Dance,” and “Lester Leaps In,” marked the peak of the Kansas City sound.

In 1938, Basie returned to Red Bank, marking his first homecoming performance . Singer Billie Holliday joined Basie for the show, held at the River Street School, located just a mile from the present-day Count Basie Theatre. In testament to the social attitudes and mindsets of the time, a local newspaper raved that Holliday was “the finest girl singer of her race.”

Basie onstage with his Orchestra

In 1950, financial considerations forced Basie to disband the orchestra. But by 1952 he reorganized the band, and the “second” Count Basie Orchestra was considered as exciting, vibrant and even more important than the first. The new outfit toured internationally, playing at the request of kings, queens and presidents, and issued a large number of recordings under Basie’s name and as the backing band for various singers — most notably Frank Sinatra.

After more than thirty years in the business, Basie made some of his most popular and critically-acclaimed work, including “April in Paris,” “Shiny Stockings,” “L’il Darling,” “Corner Pocket,” and even a hit single, “Everyday I Have the Blues,” with singer Big Joe Williams.

In 1961, Basie solidified his iconic status by performing at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

A few weeks later, Basie returned to Red Bank to perform at the Reade’s Carlton theater – the 1927 vaudeville house that today bears his name. The Asbury Park Press raved, “Seventeen hundred Cheer Basie at Homecoming,” and the legend himself was presented with a plaque celebrating “Count Basie Week” and recognizing him as one of Red Bank’s “all-time distinguished citizens.”

He returned to the Carlton in 1974 – then known as the Monmouth Arts Center. The show, a tribute to the Count’s 70th birthday, included the awarding of an honorary doctorate degree from what was then known as Monmouth College. The Asbury Park Press review of the performance remarked that the Basie Orchestra “retained its crisp, clipped, homogenized phrasing.”

Basie and his wife, Catherine

In 1979, Basie returned to the Monmouth Street theater, in a benefit for the A.M.E. Zion Church on Shrewsbury Avenue. “Well, we’re back home again,” he told the crowd. Afterwards, when a reporter asked Basie if he was concerned with getting old, he replied, “I don’t worry about getting tired. I just worry about getting work.” No problems there — he had just finished and an album with the great Ella Fitzgerald, and a tour of Italy, Germany and France was on the books.

In 1983, Basie made his last performance at the Carlton Theatre / Monmouth Arts Center, just nine days removed from the death of his second wife, Catherine, with whom he had been married 43 years.

Just 53 weeks later, Basie succumbed to cancer at the age of 79, and was buried in Pine Lawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. In November 1984, the Monmouth Arts Center was renamed to honor Basie, then wholly recognized as Red Bank’s most famous son.

A Legacy of Great Jazz

Over a sixty-plus year career, William “Count” Basie helped to establish jazz as a serious art form played not just in clubs but in theaters and concert halls. He established swing as one of jazz’s predominant styles, and solidified the link between jazz and the blues. Compared to the more complex, almost symphonic compositions and arrangements of some of the other leading bandleaders and composers of his time, most notably Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, the Basie band’s arrangements were usually straightforward “head arrangements,” based on a simple riff or melody (the “head”) made up and memorized by the band in rehearsal, and later played in performance as the background for soloists.

‘Jersey Boys: Basie in studio with Frank Sinatra

Basie won nine Grammy Awards, including two trophies at the very first Grammy ceremony on 1959.

The story of Basie’s life and career, and the history of his music and orchestra are of course not a linear tale that can be told succinctly in just a few pages. Musicians, singers, composers and arrangers came and went over many years and over many ensembles, grouping and regrouping like the audience in a club. Some dropped by for just a night. Some stayed for years. Some came and went and came again. Many had important and influential careers in their own right, and perhaps more than anything else that is the legacy of William “Count” Basie. His orchestra was a unique band during a unique time in the history of jazz and American music. It was full of outstanding musicians, composers and arrangers, but it was built and sustained by a man who as a musician, composer, arranger and band leader always seemed to know just the right note to strike at just the right time. No more, and no less.

For more information about the life and career of William “Count” Basie, visit www.countbasie.com. Also available is Good Morning Blues, Basie’s autobiography as told to Albert Murray, and The World of Count Basie, a collection of interviews with various Basie musicians by Stanley Dance.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Count-Basie

Count Basie

American musician

by  The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

Also known as William Basie

Born August 21, 1904

Red Bank, New Jersey

Died April 26, 1984 (aged 79)

Hollywood, Florida

movement / style

• swing
• big-band jazz

awards and honors

• Grammy Award (1984)
• Grammy Award (1982)
• Kennedy Center Honors (1981)
• Grammy Award (1980)
• Grammy Award (1977)
• Grammy Award (1976)
• Grammy Award (1963)
• Grammy Award (1960)
• Grammy Award (1958)

Count Basie, byname of William Basie (born August 21, 1904, Red Bank, New Jersey, U.S.—died April 26, 1984, Hollywood, Florida), American jazz musician noted for his spare, economical piano style and for his leadership of influential and widely heralded big bands.

Basie studied music with his mother and was later influenced by the Harlem pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, receiving informal tutelage on the organ from the latter. He began his professional career as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit. Stranded in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1927, Basie remained there and eventually (in 1935) assumed the leadership of a nine-piece band composed of former members of the Walter Page and Bennie Moten orchestras. One night, while the band was broadcasting on a shortwave radio station in Kansas City, he was dubbed “Count” Basie by a radio announcer who wanted to indicate his standing in a class with aristocrats of jazz such as Duke Ellington. Jazz critic and record producer John Hammond heard the broadcasts and promptly launched the band on its career. Though rooted in the riff style of the 1930s swing-era big bands, the Basie orchestra played with the forceful drive and carefree swing of a small combo. They were considered a model for ensemble rhythmic conception and tonal balance—this despite the fact that most of Basie’s sidemen in the 1930s were poor sight readers; mostly, the band relied on “head” arrangements (so called because the band had collectively composed and memorized them, rather than using sheet music).

The early Basie band was also noted for its legendary soloists and outstanding rhythm section. It featured such jazzmen as tenor saxophonists Lester Young (regarded by many as the premier tenor player in jazz history) and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison, and trombonists Benny Morton and Dicky Wells. The legendary Billie Holiday was a vocalist with Basie for a short stint (1937–38), although she was unable to record with the band because of her contract with another record label; mostly, vocals were handled by Jimmy Rushing, one of the most renowned “blues bawlers.” The rhythm unit for the band—pianist Basie, guitarist Freddie Green (who joined the Basie band in 1937 and stayed for 50 years), bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones—was unique in its lightness, precision, and relaxation, becoming the precursor for modern jazz accompanying styles. Basie began his career as a stridepianist, reflecting the influence of Johnson and Waller, but the style most associated with him was characterized by spareness and precision. Whereas other pianists were noted for technical flash and dazzling dexterity, Basie was known for his use of silence and for reducing his solo passages to the minimum amount of notes required for maximum emotional and rhythmic effect. As one Basie band member put it, “Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.”

The Basie orchestra had several hit recordings during the late 1930s and early ’40s, among them “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Every Tub,” “Lester Leaps In,” “Super Chief,” “Taxi War Dance,” “Miss Thing,” “Shorty George,” and “One O’Clock Jump,” the band’s biggest hit and theme song. It had continued success throughout the war years, but, like all big bands, it had declined in popularity by the end of the 1940s. During 1950 and ’51, economy forced Basie to front an octet, the only period in his career in which he did not lead a big band. In 1952 increased demand for personal appearances allowed Basie to form a new orchestra that in many ways was as highly praised as his bands of the 1930s and ’40s. (Fans distinguish the two major eras in Basie bands as the “Old Testament” and “New Testament.”) The Basie orchestra of the 1950s was a slick, professional unit that was expert at sight reading and demanding arrangements. Outstanding soloists such as tenor saxophonists Lucky Thompson, Paul Quinichette, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and trumpeters Clark Terry and Charlie Shavers, figured prominently. Singer Joe Williams, whose authoritative, blues-influenced vocals can be heard on hit recordings such as “Every Day I Have the Blues” and “Alright, Okay, You Win,” was also a major component in the band’s success. Arrangers Neal Hefti, Buster Harding, and Ernie Wilkins defined the new band’s sound on recordings such as “Li’l Darlin’,” “The Kid from Red Bank,” “Cute,” and “April in Paris” and on celebrated albums such as The Atomic Mr. Basie (1957).

The 1950s band showcased the sound and style Basie was to employ for the remainder of his career, although there were to be occasional—and successful—experiments such as Afrique (1970), an album of African rhythms and avant-garde compositions that still managed to remain faithful to the overall Basie sound. Throughout the 1960s, Basie’s recordings were often uninspired and marred by poor choice of material, but he remained an exceptional concert performer and made fine records with singers Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Frank Sinatra. When jazz record producer Norman Granz formed his Pablo label in the 1970s, several established jazz artists, including Basie, signed on in order to record unfettered by commercial demands. Basie benefited greatly from his association with Granz and made several recordings during the ’70s that rank among his best work. He recorded less often with his big band during this era (although when he did, the results were outstanding), concentrating instead on small-group and piano-duet recordings. Especially noteworthy were the albums featuring the duo of Basie and Oscar Peterson, with Basie’s economy and Peterson’s dexterous virtuosity proving an effective study in contrasts. Many of Basie’s albums of the ’70s were Grammy Award winners or nominees.

Suffering from diabetes and chronic arthritis during his later years, Basie continued to front his big band until a month before his death in 1984. The band itself carried on into the next century, with Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Grover Mitchell each assuming leadership for various intervals. Basie’s autobiography, Good Morning Blues, written with Albert Murray, was published posthumously in 1985. Along with Duke Ellington, Count Basie is regarded as one of the two most important and influential bandleaders in the history of jazz.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0821.html

April 27, 1984

OBITUARY

Count Basie, 79, Band Leader And Master of Swing, Dead

by JOHN S. WILSON

New York Times

Count Basie, the jazz pianist whose spare, economic keyboard style and supple rhythmic drive made his orchestra one of the most influential groups of the Big Band era, died of cancer yesterday morning at Doctors' Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. He was 79 years old and lived in Freeport, the Bahamas.

Mr. Basie was, along with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, one of the pre-eminent bandleaders of the Big Band era in the 1930's and 40's. Mr. Basie's band, more than any other, was the epitome of swing, of jazz that moved with a built-in flowing intensity.

This stemmed primarily from the presence in the rhythm section, from 1937 to the present, of both Mr. Basie on piano and Freddie Green on guitar.

As one critic put it, they "put wheels on all four bars of the beat," creating a smooth rhythmic flow over which Mr. Basie's other instrumentalists rode as though they were on a streamlined cushion. Among his band's best-known numbers were "One O'Clock Jump," "Jumpin' at the Woodside," "Li'l Darlin'" and "April in Paris."

Mr. Basie, a short, stocky, taciturn but witty man who liked to wear a yachting cap offstage, presided over the band at the piano with apparent utmost casualness. He flicked out tightly economical, single-finger passages, directing his musicians with a glance, a lift of an eyebrow or a note hit gently but positively in passing.

His piano style, which often seemed bare and simple, was an exquisitely realized condensation of the florid "stride" style of Fats Waller and James P. Johnson with whom Mr. Basie started.

Unostentatious as Mr. Basie appeared, his presence was a vital factor in directing his band or any group of musicians with whom he might be playing. There was a memorable concert at Town Hall several years ago when a number of musicians, including Mr. Basie, were scheduled to perform in a variety of combinations.

A group that included some Basie sidemen was on stage, playing in a ragged, desultory fashion, when Mr. Basie arrived. The pianist in the combo gave up his seat to Mr. Basie who sat down, tinkled a few introductory notes, looked up at the drummer, nodded at the rest of the group and, when the combo took off, the musicians were playing as brilliantly and cleanly as they had been disheveled only a few moments before.

Started Out a Drummer

Mr. Basie was born in Red Bank, N.J., on Aug. 21, 1904, an only child who was christened William. He started out to be a drummer. But the obvious talents of another young Red Bank drummer, Sonny Greer, who was Duke Ellington's drummer from 1919 to 1951, discouraged young Basie and he switched to piano. While he was in his late teens, he gravitated to Harlem, where he encountered Fats Waller.

"I had dropped into the old Lincoln Theater in Harlem," Mr. Basie once recalled, "and I heard a young fellow beating it out on an organ. From that time on, I was a daily  customer, hanging onto every note, sitting behind him all the time. He got used to seeing me, as though I were part of the show. One day he asked me whether I played the organ. 'No,' I said, 'but I'd give my right arm to learn.'

"The next day he invited me to sit in the pit and start working the pedals. I sat on the floor watching his feet and using my hands to imitate him. Then I sat beside him and he taught me."

Beginning in Vaudeville

Through Mr. Waller, Mr. Basie got a job as an accompanist with a vaudeville act called Katie Crippen and Her Kids. He became an accompanist to the blues singers Clara Smith and Maggie Jones and he worked in a 14th Street dance hall. Then he joined a touring show headed by one Gonzel White, playing piano in a four-piece band.

The Gonzel White show was stranded in Kansas City, Mo., a fateful location for Mr. Basie. For a year he played piano accompaniment to silent moves and then joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in Tulsa, Okla., a band that included--in addition to Mr. Page, a bassist--Jimmy Rushing, the blues signer, both of whom would be key members of Mr. Basie's band.

When the Page band broke up in 1929, Mr. Page, Mr. Basie and Mr. Rushing all joined Bennie Moten's orchestra, the leading big band in the Southwest, which became even stronger with their presence.

When Bennie Moten died in 1935, the band disintegrated and Mr. Basie organized a small band to play at the Reno Club in Kansas City that became the nucleus of the band with which he gained his initial fame. Scale for the musicians at the Reno Club, where beer was a nickel and whisky was 15 cents, was $15 a week for playing from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M., except Saturdays when it was 8 P.M. until 8 A.M. And it was a seven-day week.

From Bill to Count

The band broadcast from the Reno Club on an experimental radio station. It was on one of these broadcasts that Bill Basie became Count Basie.

"One night the announcer called me to the microphone for those usual few words of introduction," Mr. Basie once recalled. "He commented that Bill Basie was a rather ordinary name and that there were a couple of well-known bandleaders named Earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Then he said, 'Bill, I think I'll call you Count Basie from now on. Is that all right with you?' I thought he was kidding, shrugged my shoulders and replied, 'O.K.' Well, that was the last time I was ever introduced as Bill Basie. From then on, it was Count Basie."

The broadcast was picked up one night by John Hammond, the jazz enthusiast who had discovered Billie Holiday and helped Benny Goodman start his band. Mr. Hammond spread the word about the Basie band, went to Kansas City to hear it and support it and brought it to the attention of booking agents.

As a result, the band got a date at the Grand Terrace in Chicago. To go on the road, Mr. Basie expanded his nine-piece band to 13 pieces.

Pop Tunes With a Kick

"I wanted my 13-piece band to work together just like those nine pieces," he explained. "I wanted 13 men to think and play the same way. I wanted those three trumpets and two trombones to bite with real guts. But I wanted that bite to be just as tasty and subtle as if it were the three brass I used to use. In fact, the only reason I enlarged the brass was to get a richer harmonic structure. I said the minute the brass got out of hand and blared and screeched instead of making every note mean something, there'd be some changes made.

"Of course, I wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes--and, naturally, we had to--I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch."

Fletcher Henderson's band was playing at the Grand Terrace just before the Basie band arrived there. Mr. Basie's musicians had been playing "head" arrangements in Kansas City--treatments of the blues or pop tunes that were worked out on the stand. When the band left for Chicago it had only 12 written arrangements in its book. To help it through the Grand Terrace engagement, Fletcher Henderson, who had provided Benny Goodman with the arrangements that enabled his band to break through a year earlier, lent Mr. Basie some of his arrangements.

"He was the only leader in the business who ever went out of his way to help me," Mr. Basie said later.

Despite the presence of Lester Young and Herschel Evans in the saxophone section, Buck Clayton in the trumpet section, Jo Jones on drums, with Jimmy Rushing and, briefly, Billie Holiday as vocalists, the Basie band struggled for a year after it left Kansas City.

From the Grand Terrace, it moved on to New York and Roseland Ballroom (playing opposite Woody Herman's new, young band) where listeners complained that it was out of tune (not a surprising reaction since many of Mr. Basie's musicians were blowing patched-up horns and saxophones held together by rubber bands). The band flopped at a Pittsburgh hotel that had never booked a jazz band before. Even in Harlem, it puzzled the aware audiences at the Savoy Ballroom.

Breakthrough on 52d Street

Finally, Willard Alexander, a booking agent, in an effort to get the band on 52d Street, then the jazz center of New York, made a deal with the Famous Door, a shoebox of a room, 25 feet wide and about 50 feet long, which was having trouble doing business in the summer because it had no air-conditioning. Mr. Alexander agreed to lend the club $2,500 to install an air-conditioner if it would book the Basie band.

With Mr. Basie's 13 men in full cry at one end of this elongated closet, the sound ricocheting off the walls and rocketing down from the low ceiling, no listener could escape the exhilarating power of the band.

"When they let you in the door," Ralph Gleason, the jazz critic, reported, "it was like jumping into the center of a whirlwind. The sound was almost frightening.

Even more important was the fact that the Famous Door had national and local radio wires. "And that's when the whole fire started," said Mr. Alexander.

By then a series of records by the Basie band had begun appearing (under a contract with Decca Records by which Mr. Basie was paid a total of $750 for 24 sides with no royalties--"probably the most expensive blunder in Basie's history," said Mr. Hammond) that included hit after hit--"Swingin' the Blues," "Jumpin' at the Woodside," "One O'Clock Jump" (his theme) and many others now considered jazz classics.

Jazz Stars in the Band

The "book" of this early Basie band was based on blues and riffs developed on a blues structure. It was a loose and swinging band, built around distinctively individualistic solos by Lester Young, Hershel Evans, Buddy Tate, Buck Clayton, Harry Edison, Dickie Wells, Vic Dickenson and, primarily, Mr. Basie himself.

During the 1940's, many of the great jazz musicians of the decade passed through the band, among them Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas, Wardell Gray, Paul Quinichette, Lucky Thompson, J. J. Johnson, Paul Gonsalves and Clark Terry. In 1950, when big bands were falling apart, Mr. Basie cut down to an eight-piece group but by 1952 he was leading a big band once again.

This second-generation big band differed from the early one in that it depended on arrangers for its basic style, a smooth, rolling, highly polished swing style for which Neal Hefti ("Li'l Darlin'"), Ernie Wilkins and Frank Foster ("Shiny Stockings") were among the most notable orchestrators.

One of the band's most popular arrangements, "April in Paris," was written in 1955 by Wild Bill Davis, a jazz organist who had originally developed it for his own small group. The key factor in popularizing it was a series of repetitions of the final few bars when, as the orchestra seemingly came to the end of the piece, Mr. Basie held up a finger and called out, "One mo' time!"

Played for Presidents

Soloists were less prominent in this second edition of the Basie band although it included some of the major jazz musicians of the post-50's years, such as Thad Jones, Joe  Newman, Al Grey, Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis, Frank Wess, Jimmy Forrest and the blues singer Joe Williams.

The Basie band played at President John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball, and in 1965 toured with Frank Sinatra. In 1981, Mr. Basie was honored along with Cary Grant, Helen Hayes and other stars as a recipient of Washington's Kennedy Center honors for achievement in the performing arts.

At a White House reception, President Reagan said that Mr. Basie was "among the  handful of musicians that helped change the path of American music in the 30's and the 40's" and that he had "revolutionized jazz."

In 1976, Mr. Basie suffered a heart attack. While he recuperated his band continued to fulfill engagements, frequently with Nat Pierce taking Mr. Basie's place at the piano and sometimes with guest conductors such as the trumpeter Clark Terry, who was a member of the Basie band in the 1940's. Within less than six months, however, Mr. Basie was back at the keyboard. During his last years, he had difficulty walking and rode out on the stage on a motorized wheelchair which he sometimes drove with joyful abandon.

The Black Music Association honored Mr. Basie in 1982 with a gala at Radio City Music Hall. Lena Horne, Stevie Wonder, Joe Williams, Oscar Peterson and Quincy Jones were among the stars to pay tribute.

"He certainly made a notch in musical history," said Benny Goodman, 75 years old, the jazz clarinetist and bandleader. "He was a wonderful man. He was a big force in music."

The jazz pianist George Shearing said that Mr. Basie's greatest trademark was the three sweet, soft notes that ended many of his great swing-era compositions. "Can you imagine a man who kind of romps around the piano," Mr. Shearing said, "and those tiny tinkling things. You never got tired of that business at the end."

The band will continue under the guidance of Aaron Woodward, an adopted son of Mr. Basie who has worked closely with the orchestra leader during the last year.

Mr. Basie's wife, Catherine, died in April 1983. He is survived by a daughter, Diane Basie of Freeport.

There will be a viewing at Benta's Funeral Home, 630 St. Nicholas Avenue at 141st Street, on Sunday from 1 to 7 P.M. The funeral service will be at noon on Monday at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, 132 West 138th Street.

   

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

http://www.freddiegreen.org/book/basiebio.html

William "Count" Basie Biography, Recordings and Videos

b. William Allen Basie, 21 August 1904, Red Bank, New Jersey, USA, d. 26 April 1984, Hollywood, California, USA. Bandleader and pianist Basie grew up in Red Bank, just across the Hudson River from New York City. His mother gave him his first lessons at the piano, and he used every opportunity to hear the celebrated kings of New York keyboard - James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith and especially Fats Waller. Ragtime was all the rage, and these keyboard professors ransacked the European tradition to achieve ever more spectacular improvisations. The young Basie listened to Fats Waller playing the organ in Harlem's Lincoln Theater and received tuition from him. Pianists were in demand to accompany vaudeville acts, and Waller recommended Basie as his successor in the Katie Crippen And Her Kids troupe, and with them he toured black venues throughout America (often referred to as the "chitlin' circuit"). Stranded in Kansas City after the Gonzel White tour collapsed, Basie found it "wide-open". Owing to the laissez-faire administration of Democrat leader Tom Pendergast, musicians could easily find work, and jazz blossomed alongside gambling and prostitution (many people trace the origins of modern jazz to these circumstances - see Kansas City Jazz).

Basie played accompaniment for silent movies for a while, then in 1928 joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, starting a 20-year-long association with the bassist. When the Blue Devils broke up, Basie joined Bennie Moten, then in 1935, started his own band at the Reno Club and quickly lured Moten's best musicians into its ranks. Unfettered drinking hours, regular broadcasts on local radio and Basie's feel for swing honed the band into quite simply the most classy and propulsive unit in the history of music. Duke Ellington's band may have been more ambitious, but for sheer unstoppable swing Basie could not be beaten. Impresario John Hammond recognized as much when he heard them on their local broadcast. In January 1937 an augmented Basie band made its recording debut for Decca Records. By this time the classic rhythm section - Freddie Green (guitar), Walter Page (bass) and Jo Jones (drums) - had been established. The horns - which included Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Buck Clayton (trumpet) - sounded magnificent buoyed by this team and the goadings of Basie's deceptively simple piano. Basie frequently called himself a "non-pianist"; actually, his incisive minimalism had great power and influence - not least on Thelonious Monk, one of bebop's principal architects.

In 1938, the band recorded the classic track "Jumpin' At The Woodside", a Basie composition featuring solos by Earle Warren (alto saxophone) and Herschel Evans (clarinet), as well as Young and Clayton. The track could be taken as a definition of swing. Basie's residency at the Famous Door club on New York's West 52nd Street from July 1938 to January 1939 was a great success, CBS broadcasting the band over its radio network (transcriptions of these broadcasts have recently been made available - although hardly hi-fi, they are fascinating documents, with Lester Young playing clarinet as well as tenor). This booking was followed by a six-month residency in Chicago. It is this kind of regular work - spontaneity balanced with regular application - that explains why the recorded sides of the period are some of the great music of the century. In 1939 Basie left Decca for Columbia Records, with whom he stayed until 1946. Throughout the 40s the Count Basie band provided dancers with conducive rhythms and jazz fans with astonishing solos: both appreciated his characteristic contrast of brass and reeds. Outstanding tenors emerged: Don Byas, Buddy Tate, Lucky Thompson, Illinois Jacquet, Paul Gonsalves, as well as trumpeters (Al Killian and Joe Newman) and trombonists (Vic Dickenson and J.J. Johnson). On vocals Basie used Jimmy Rushing for the blues material and Helen Humes for pop and novelty numbers. Economic necessity pared down the Basie band to seven members at the start of the 50s, but otherwise Basie maintained a big band right through to his death in 1984. In 1954 he made his first tour of Europe, using arrangements by Ernie Wilkins and Neal Hefti. In June 1957 Basie broke the colour bar at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; his was the first black band to play there, and they stayed for a four-month engagement. The 1957 The Atomic Mr. Basie set Hefti's arrangements in glorious stereo sound and was acknowledged as a classic. Even the cover made its mark: in the 70s Blondie adapted its period nuclear-chic to frame singer Deborah Harry.

In 1960, Jimmy Rushing left the band, depriving it of a popular frontman, but the European tours continued - a groundbreaking tour of Japan in 1963 was also a great success. Count Basie was embraced by the American entertainment industry and appeared in the movies Sex And The Single Girl and Made In Paris. He became a regular television guest alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jnr. and Tony Bennett. Arranging for Basie was a significant step in the career of Quincy Jones (later famous as Michael Jackson's producer). The onslaught of the Beatles and rock music in the 60s was giving jazz a hard time; Basie responded by giving current pop tunes the big band treatment, and Jones arranged Hits Of The 50s And 60s. Its resounding commercial success led to a string of similar albums arranged by Billy Byers; the brass adopted the stridency of John Barry's James Bond scores and, unlike the work of the previous decades, these records now sound dated. In 1965, Basie signed to Sinatra's Reprise Records, and made several recordings and appearances with him.

By 1969 most of Basie's original sidemen had left the band, though Freddie Green was still with him. Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (tenor) was now his most distinguished soloist. The arranger Sammy Nestico provided some interesting compositions, and 1970 saw the release of Afrique, an intriguing and unconventional album arranged by Oliver Nelson with tunes by avant garde saxophonists such as Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders. In 1975, after recording for a slew of different labels, Basie found a home on Pablo Records (owned by Norman Granz, organizer of the Jazz At The Philharmonic showcases). This produced a late flowering, as, unlike previous producers, Granz let Basie do what he does best - swing the blues - rather than collaborate with popular singers. In 1983, the death of his wife Catherine, whom he had married 40 years earlier while he was with the Bennie Moten band, struck a heavy blow and he himself died the following year.

The later compromises should not cloud Basie's achievements: during the 30s he integrated the bounce of the blues into sophisticated ensemble playing. His piano work showed that rhythm and space were more important than technical virtuosity: his composing gave many eminent soloists their finest moments. Without the Count Basie Orchestra's sublimely aerated versions of "Cherokee" it is unlikely that Charlie Parker could ever have created "Koko". Modern jazz stands indubitably in Basie's debt. For newcomers to the work of Basie the Original American Decca Recordings is an unbeatable starting point.

Discography:

Dance Parade 10-inch album (Columbia 1949)

Count Basie At The Piano 10-inch album (Decca 1950)

with Lester Young Lester Young Quartet And Count Basie Seven 10-inch album (Mercury 1950)

with Young Count Basie And Lester Young 10-inch album (Jazz Panorama 1951)

Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Mercury 1952)

Count Basie And His Orchestra Collates (Mercury 1952)

Jazz Royalty 10-inch album (EmArcy 1954)

Count Basie And His Orchestra (Decca 1954)

The Old Count And The New Count - Basie 10-inch album (Epic 1954)

Basie Jazz (Clef 1954)

Rock The Blues 10-inch album (Epic 1954)

Count Basie Sextet (Clef 1954)

Count Basie Big Band (Clef 1954)

Count Basie Dance Session 1 (Clef 1954)

Count Basie i (RCA Victor 1955)

Lester Leaps In (Epic 1955)

Let's Go To Prez (Epic 1955)

Count Basie Dance Session 2 (Clef 1955)

Basie's Back In Town (Epic 1955)

Classics (Columbia 1955)

A Night At Count Basie's (Vanguard 1955)

Count Basie Swings/Joe Williams Sings (Clef 1955)

The Greatest! Count Basie Swings/Joe Williams Sings Standards (Verve 1956)

Basie Bash (Columbia 1956)

Basie (Clef 1956)

Blues By Basie 1939-50 recordings (Columbia 1956)

with Ella Fitzgerald, Williams One O'Clock Jump (Columbia 1956)

Count Basie ii (Brunswick 1956)

The Count (Clef 1956)

The Swinging Count (Clef 1956)

The Band Of Distinction (Clef 1956)

Basie Roars Again (Clef 1956)

The King Of Swing (Clef 1956)

Basie Rides Again (Clef 1956)

Basie In Europe (Clef 1956)

Count Basie iii (American Record Society 1956)

April In Paris (Verve 1957)

Basie's Best (American Record Society 1957)

Count Basie In London (Verve 1957)

Count Basie At Newport (Verve 1957)

The Atomic Mr Basie (Roulette 1957)

Basie Plays Hefti (Roulette 1958)

Sing Along With Basie (Roulette 1958)

Dizzy Gillespie And Count Basie At Newport (Verve 1958)

Hall Of Fame (Verve 1958)

with Tony Bennett Basie Swings, Bennett Sings (Roulette 1958)

One More Time (Roulette 1959)

Breakfast Dance And Barbecue (Roulette 1959)

with Billy Eckstine Basie/Eckstine Inc. (Roulette 1959)

Chairman Of The Board (Roulette 1959)

with Williams Memories Ad Lib (Roulette 1959)

Everyday I Have The Blues (Roulette 1959)

Tony Bennett In Person (Columbia 1959)

Dance With Basie (Roulette 1959)

Not Now I'll Tell You When (Roulette 1960)

Just The Blues (Roulette 1960)

String Along With Basie (Roulette 1960)

Kansas City Suite: The Music Of Benny Carter (Roulette 1960)

Count Basie/Sarah Vaughan (Roulette 1960)

The Count Basie Story (Roulette 1961)

The Essential Count Basie (Verve 1961)

First Time! The Count Meets The Duke (Columbia 1961)

Basie At Birdland (Roulette 1961)

with Bennett Bennett And Basie Strike Up The Band (Roulette 1962)

The Legend (Roulette 1962)

Count Basie And The Kansas City 7 (Impulse! 1962)

The Best Of Basie Volume 2 (Roulette 1962)

Count Basie Live In Sweden (Roulette 1962)

with Fitzgerald Ella And Basie! (Verve 1963)

Easin' It (Roulette 1963)

This Time By Basie! (Reprise 1963)

On My Way And Shouting Again (Verve 1963)

Li'l Ol' Groovemaker ... Basie (Verve 1963)

More Hits Of The 50s And 60s reissued as Frankly Basie: Count Basie Plays The Hits Of Frank Sinatra (Verve 1963)

Basie Land (Verve 1964)

Our Shining Hour (Verve 1964)

Basie Picks The Winners (Verve 1965)

with Arthur Prysock Prysock/Basie (Verve 1965)

Pop Goes The Basie (Reprise 1965)

Basie's Bounce (Affinity 1965)

Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve 1966)

Basie's Swingin' Voices Singin' (ABC-Paramount 1966)

Basie Meets Bond (United 1966)

Inside Outside (Verve 1966)

Basie's Beat (Verve 1967)

Broadway ... Basie's Way (Command 1967)

Hollywood ... Basie's Way (Command 1967)

Live In Antibes 1968 (Esoldun 1968)

Standing Ovation (Dot 1968)

High Voltage (Verve 1970)

Afrique (Doctor Jazz 1971)

At The Chatterbox 1937 recordings (Jazz Archives 1974)

Basie Jam, Vol. 1 (Pablo 1974)

with Big Joe Turner The Bosses (Pablo 1974)

For The First Time (Pablo 1974)

with Oscar Peterson Satch And Josh (Pablo 1975)

with Zoot Sims Basie And Zoot (Pablo 1975)

Basie Jam At Montreux '75 (Pablo 1975)

Fun Time: Count Basie Big Band At Montreux '75 (Pablo 1975)

The Basie Big Band (Pablo 1975)

For The Second Time (Pablo 1975)

I Told You So (Pablo 1976)

Basie Jam, Vol. 2 (Pablo 1976)

Basie Jam, Vol. 3 (Pablo 1976)

Prime Time (Pablo 1977)

Kansas City, Vol. 5 (Pablo 1977)

with Dizzy Gillespie The Gifted Ones (Pablo 1977)

Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo 1977)

Basie Big Band: Montreux '77 (Pablo 1977)

with Peterson Satch And Josh ... Again (Pablo 1977)

with Peterson Yessir, That's My Baby (Pablo 1978)

with Peterson Night Rider (Pablo 1978)

with Peterson The Timekeepers (Pablo 1978)

Live In Japan (Pablo 1978)

with Fitzgerald A Classy Pair (Pablo 1979)

with Fitzgerald A Perfect Match: Basie And Ella (Pablo 1979)

with Joe Pass, Fitzgerald Digital III At Montreux (Pablo 1979)

On The Road (Pablo 1980)

Get Together (Pablo 1980)

Kansas City, Vol. 7 (Pablo 1980)

Kansas City Shout (Pablo 1980)

Warm Breeze (Pablo 1981)

Farmers Market Barbecue (Pablo 1982)

Me And You (Pablo 1983)

88 Basie Street (Pablo 1983)

Mostly Blues ... And Some Others (Pablo 1983)

Fancy Pants (Pablo 1984)

with Roy Eldridge Loose Walk 1972 recording (Pablo 1992)

the Count Basie Orchestra directed By Grover Mitchell Count Plays Duke (MAMA 1998)

Live At The Sands 1966 recording (Reprise 1999)

the Count Basie Orchestra directed by Grover Mitchell Swing Shift (Mama 1999)

Compilations:

with Bennie Moten Count Basie In Kansas City 1929-32 recordings (Camden 1959)

Basie's Basement 1929-32 recordings (Camden 1959)

Verve's Choice - The Best Of Count Basie (Verve 1963)

The World Of Count Basie 3-LP set (Roulette 1964)

Super Chief 1936-42 recordings (Columbia 1972)

Good Morning Blues 1937-39 recordings (MCA 1977)

Basie And Friends 1974-81 recordings (Pablo 1982)

Birdland Era, Volumes 1 & 2 (Duke 1986)

The Essential Count Basie, Volume 1 1936-39 recordings (Columbia 1987)

The Essential Count Basie, Volume 2 1939-40 recordings (Columbia 1987)

The Essential Count Basie, Volume 3 1940-41 recordings (Columbia 1988)

The Swing Machine (Giants Of Jazz 1992)

The Best Of Count Basie (Pablo 1992)

The Complete American Decca Recordings (1937-1939) 3-CD box set (Decca 1992)

The Best Of Count Basie 1937-39 recordings (Decca 1992)

The Best Of Count Basie: The Roulette Years (Roulette 1992)

Live 1956, 1957, 1959, 1961 recordings, 3-CD box set (Sequel 1993)

The Complete Atomic Basie (Roulette 1994)

Count Basie And His Great Vocalists 1939-45 recordings (Columbia/Legacy 1995)

The Golden Years 1972-83 recordings, 4-CD box set (Pablo 1996)

One O'Clock Jump: The Very Best Of Count Basie (Collectables 1998)

Swingsation (GRP 1998)

The Complete Roulette Studio Count Basie 10-CD box set (Mosaic)

The Complete Roulette Live Recordings Of Count Basie And His Orchestra (1958-1962) 8-CD box set (Mosaic)

The Last Decade 1974, 1977, 1980 recordings (Artistry)

On The Upbeat 1937-145 recordings (Drive Archives)

Rock-A-Bye Basie, Vol. 2 1938-40 recordings (Vintage Jazz Classics)

The Jubilee Alternatives 1943-44 recordings (Hep)

Ken Burns Jazz: The Definitive Count Basie (Verve 2001)

Jump King Of Swing (Arpeggio 2001)

Blues By Basie (Columbia 2001)

Videography:

Count Basie And Friends (Verve Video 1990)

Swingin' The Blues (Verve Video 1993)

Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual: Count Basie (Rhino Home Video 1999).

Bibliography:

Count Basie And His Orchestra: Its Music and Its Musicians, Raymond Horricks. Count Basie, Alun Morgan.

Count Basie: A Biodiscography, Chris Sheridan.

Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography Of Count Basie, Albert Murray.

Filmography:

Policy Man (1938)

Choo Choo Swing (1942)

Reveille With Beverly (1943)

Stage Door Canteen (1943)

Top Man (1943)

Ebony Parade (1947)

Basin Street Revue (1956)

Cinderfella (1960)

Sex And The Single Girl (1964)

Made In Paris (1966)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

The Last Of The Blue Devils (1979)

Encyclopedia of Popular Music Copyright Muze UK Ltd. 1989 - 2002

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/11045834/Count-Basie-a-jazz-pioneer-who-still-inspires.html

Count Basie: a jazz pioneer who still inspires

Count Basie, who died 30 years ago, was born on August 21 1904. The big band star remains one of the most important figures in jazz

Count Basie Photo: Telegraph

by Martin Chilton

Culture Editor online

21 August 2014

The Telegraph

Count Basie's band was the epitome of swing and his pioneering sound can still be heard in jazz orchestras all over the world.

Basie, who was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 21 1904, died 30 years ago this year, but his legacy lives on in the music and musicians he inspired, including Kyle Eastwood, whose father Clint took his very young son to see Basie perform in 1976.

Basie was a popular figure in the UK and a measure of his band's brilliance was that when they first performed in London, in 1954, they arrived to find that all their printed sheet music had been sent in error to South America. Nobody was able to tell, because the 13-piece band soaring majestically on favourites such as Jumpin' at the Woodside, Li'l Darlin' and April in Paris. It fitted Basie's philosophy of music: "I wanted 13 men to think and play the same way. I wanted the trumpets and trombones to bite with real guts, to be tasty and subtle."

Basie, an only child who was christened William, started out to be a drummer but switched to piano before he was even a teenager. It was in Harlem that he found his first great influence: Fats Waller. He used to literally sit at Waller's feet, at the old Lincoln Theatre in Harlem, watching him work the pedals on the organ and using his hands to imitate the great jazz man. "Then I sat beside him and he taught me the keys," Basie used to recall fondly.

Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings is a 1956 album PHOTO: Verve Records

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Through Waller, Basie found a job as an accompanist with a vaudeville act called Katie Crippen and Her Kids. He later joined a touring show headed by Gonzel White, playing piano in a four-piece band.

One event from the Twenties that marked him for life was being taken to hospital in September 1927 with viral meningitis. He was there for a month and felt abandoned by his fellow band members. When he came out he had to take a job as an cinema organist for silent movies but it left him with a lifelong shortage of sympathy for band members with health problems.

It was in the Thirties, when he took over Bennie Moten's elegant boogie-influenced band following the bandleader's sudden death, that he found his creative breakthrough with a band that included young tenor saxophone maestro Lester Young. It was in this band that a swing sound that would change jazz was born. Basie often practised with just his innovative rhythm section, an approach that drove a swing drive that wowed audiences and made him one of the pre-eminent bandleaders of the Big Band era in the Thirties and Forties. President Ronald Reagan once described Basie as "among the handful of musicians that helped change the path of American music".

During the Forties, many of the great jazz postwar musicians passed through the band, including Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas, Wardell Gray, Lucky Thompson and Clark Terry, and the Basie band played at President John F Kennedy's inaugural ball. Jazz historian and trumpeter John Chilton said: "Count Basie had an incredibly economical and delicate piano style that enabled him to be the perfect bandleader. He was a true pioneer but something of a taciturn man. I met him a few times in London and New York and he was always friendly but never overly chatty. There was one famous press conference where an interviewer asked a ponderous and complicated question that took several minutes to deliver, about whether there were African influences in his music, and Basie just replied: 'I guess so'."

A simple approach reflected Basie's ethos. "It's the way you play that makes it. Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it."

And how did he get his name? In 1936, when he was playing at the Reno Club in Kansas, the announcer joked that with Earl Hines and Duke Ellington doing so well, Basie needed a better stage name. "Well that was the last time I was ever introduced as Bill Basie," the bandleader said.

Basie was the first African-American male recipient of a Grammy Award and his music continues to inspire young jazz players. And when your records have been chosen for Desert Island Discs by fellow musicians of the calibre of Tony Bennett, Nelson Riddle and Buddy Rich, you can be sure you created a legacy that will survive.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/jazz/dbasie.htm

As originally published in

The Atlantic Monthly

August 1984

The Loss of Count Basie

by Francis Davis

Forecasting the paths that big-band jazz might travel is difficult now that  another of its pacesetters has reached the end of his journey. In symbolic terms, the loss of Count Basie, who died last April, a few months shy of his eightieth birthday and a year away from his golden anniversary as a bandleader, is incalculable. Among big-band leaders only Duke Ellington exerted more long-term influence upon jazz and American popular music. Indeed, Ellington and Basie are often cited in the same breath as exemplifying everything rich and grand and irretrievable in the jazz past--the Duke and the Count, the last of a bygone aristocracy.

Yet Ellington and Basie represented contrasting approaches to the jazz orchestra. For Ellington, the big band was a blank page, upon which he wrote the most enduring body of orchestral literature in jazz history. Basie functioned more as an editor, although his signature was just as plain. Even in the 1930s, when the Basie Orchestra was enjoying its first national triumph with its largely unnotated arrangements (the bulk of them credited to Basie), the leader's piano was less pad and pencil than general-assignment desk, according to the testimony of his sidemen. "Basie would start out and vamp a little, set a tempo, and say 'that's it!'" the trombonist Dicky Wells remarked in his 1971 autobiography, Night People.

He'd set a rhythm for the saxes first, and [the alto saxophonist] Earle Warren would pick that up and lead the saxes. Then he'd set one for the bones and we'd pick that up. Now it's our rhythm against theirs. The third rhythm would be for the trumpets, and they'd start fanning with their derbies . . . . That's how Basie put his tunes together. He had a big band, but he handled it as though it were six pieces.

According to the outside arrangers whom Basie employed with increasing regularity beginning in the mid-fifties, band rehearsals generally found Basie penciling out everything in their scores he recognized as superfluous to the real matter at hand--that ineffable sensation jazz partisans call swing, practically a Basie patent. Although he gave the impression of being a laissez-faire leader--delegating musical authority to deputies, including the alto saxophonist Marshal Royal and the rhythm guitarist Freddie Green--Basie apparently demanded of his sidemen a commitment to basics as single-minded as his own. He seems to have had little tolerance for errant behavior off the bandstand; to judge from what his intimates say, he had no vices or affectations, save for the captain's hat he wore in later years. ("Count Basie! Where'd you park the ship, Count?" an old Kansas City crony asks him in the film The Last of the Blue Devils.)

To say that big bands were essentially the domain of composers and arrangers until the arrival of the Count Basie Orchestra in New York in 1936 would be an exaggeration, for there were charismatic improvisers in such "composer's" bands as Ellington's, Fletcher Henderson's, and even Paul Whiteman's. Still, it is fair to say that Basie deflated some of the pomposity that had attached itself to the big-band idiom, by encouraging his men to blow the blues as freely in performance as they might during informal gatherings. Basie deployed the full complement of horns not so much to frame his soloists as to goad them on with escalating call-and-response background riffs that ricocheted from section to section on the greased wheels of a locomotive rhythm section that included Basie, Freddie Green, the bassist Walter Page, and the drummer Jo Jones. A spirit of big-band camaraderie infused the unrefined ensemble passages, and jam-session rivalry fueled the solos, with three pairs of evenly matched opponents (the trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison, the trombonists Dicky Wells and Benny Norton, and the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans) locking horns. As if all this weren't excitement enough, Jimmy Rushing stood out front hollering the blues as if trying to shout down the entire aggregation.

This loosening of musical inhibitions was not something the Basie Orchestra, or any other band, accomplished by itself. Nor was it Basie's major contribution to jazz. Amid his band's explosions there were subtleties and divinations. For quite some time jazz rhythm sections had been moving away from a rigidly syncopated two beats to the measure toward a more rippling and evenly accentuated four-four, but it took the rhythm team of Jo Jones and Walter Page to map the route clearly for all to follow. Lester Young presaged bop, cool, and even free jazz with his reed-thin vibrato (a contest to the beefier tone of his section mate Evans), his musings on chord substitutions and passing tones, his peering around bar divisions, and his games of cat-and-mouse with the beat.

This great band remains the standard against which all other big bands have to be measured (Duke Ellington's being sui generis), and it is small wonder that most come up wanting. The retooled Basie band of the 1950s was a precision instrument nicknamed "The Basie Machine" by its admirers--a phrase that caught on with the band's detractors as well. Despite the presence of a number of competent soloists, including the cornetist Thad Jones and the saxophonists Frank Foster and Frank Wess, the stars of this band were the arrangers (including Foster, Neal Hefti, Ernie Wilkins, Buster Harding, and Wild Bill Davis) who codified the informal Basie style into a tight, instantly recognizable sound. Yet if this band was noticeably less freewheeling than the original model, it was no less potent, and judged as an ensemble rather than as a donnybrook among rugged individualists, it may even have been the superior unit. One must turn to Ellington to hear a consummation of brass and reeds as blithe and incandescent as the Basie Orchestra's recordings of Foster's "Shiny Stockings," Hefti's "Cute," and Davis's hit arrangement of "April in Paris" (a guilty pleasure, this last item--exhilarating despite its pop-goes-the-weasel quotes, fake endings, and Basie's coy exhortations of "One more time!"). The Basie Orchestra of the fifties was a machine whose motor purred; and hindsight reveals that Basie was right in gear with the larger movements of the period. The emergence of hard-bop groups, like the Jazz Messengers and the Horace Silver Quintet, signaled that jazz was returning to basics after a decade of creeping intellectualism--and Basie, though his music bore scant resemblance to the hard-bop phenomenon, was a man who had sworn by basics all along.

BASIE leaves an impressive legacy. A number of collections bear the title The Best of Count Basie, but only one fully warrants the superlative: the two-record set of the Basie Orchestra's landmark Decca recordings from the late thirties, which includes the original versions of "One O'Clock Jump," "Jumpin' at the Woodside," "Swinging the Blues," "Every Tub," "John's Idea," and "Doggin' Around"(MCA 2-4050). Perhaps the best thing about this Best of is that it whets the appetite for more vintage Basie. A good place to start is with the Bennie Moten Orchestra, the outfit that served as incubator for the Basie Orchestra in Kansas City in the mid-thirties. Regrettably, there is not a single domestic collection of Basie's work with Moten now available, but French RCA Victor has released three double albums devoted to that seminal band; Basie figures prominently in two of them, The Complete Bennie Moten, Volumes 3/4 (PM 43693) and Volumes 5/6 (PM 45688). Both Good Morning Blues (MCA 2-4108) and SuperChief (Columbia 31224) are delightful two-record potpourris of Basie's music from the thirties, the latter especially valuable because it includes four numbers with just Rushing, Young, the trumpeter Carl Smith, and the Basie rhythm section. (Super Chief only scratches the surface. The rest of the influential 1936-1939 Basie small-group sessions were last available spread out over the five double-album sets of Columbia's The Lester Young Story, which are now out of print--though all five still turn up in remainder bins from time to time.)

The 1940s were a decade of transition for jazz, and some of the changes were reflected in the styles of the parade of tenor saxophonists who marched with the Basie band following the death of Evans and the defection of Young: Don Byas, Paul Gonsalves, Illinois Jacquet, Lucky Thompson, Wardell Gray, and Charlie Rouse. The best compendium of forties Basie is the two-record import The Indispensable Count Basie (French RCA Victor PM 43688), although both Blues by Basie (Columbia PC 36824) and One O'Clock Jump (Columbia Special Products JCL 997) have plenty to recommend them, not the least of which is that they are comparatively easy to come by.

Basie's output during the fifties and the early sixties was staggering, and most of his best albums from that period remain in print, including April in Paris (Verve 2641), Basie (popularly known as The Atomic Basie; Roulette 59025),Basie Plays Hefti (Emus 12003), and the two-record sets 16 Men Swinging and Paradise Squat (Verve 2517 and 2542).

The seventies and eighties witnessed no decline in the quality or quantity of Basie's work. The last decade of his life was the most productive of his career, at least in terms of his own coming out as a pianist. When there is a roll call of the great soloists from the Basie Orchestra of the thirties, the leader's name is usually conspicuous by its absence. Long a reticent soloist, Basie finally began claiming the spotlight for himself, after several nudges in the right direction from his record producer Norman Granz. In addition to documenting the still vital Basie Orchestra on such fine Pablo releases as Farmers Market Barbecue (2310 874), Me and You (2310 891), and the recent 88 Basie Street (2310 901), Granz inaugurated a series of small-group sessions that pitted Basie against veteran improvisers of equal caliber. There were memorable confrontations with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (The Gifted Ones, 2310 833), the tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims (Basie and Zoot, 2310 745), and the blues singers Joe Turner and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (Kansas City Shout, 2310 859), as well as several brushes with fellow pianist Oscar Peterson (including Satch and Josh, 2310 722), and carefree trio dates with the bassist Ray Brown and the drummer Louis Bellson (For the First Time, 2310 712, and For the Second Time, 2310 878). All these records point to Basie's sustained vigor, his telling economy, and his sneaky wit, and they send the listener back to thirties Basie for his bare-bones solos and ad-lib intros. It was always possible to hear echoes of Fats Waller and the grandiose Harlem stride men in even the leanest of Basie's improvisations, but it also becomes possible, in retrospect, to hear premonitions of such modernists as John Lewis and Thelonious Monk in Basie's pregnant silences, the illusory bend of his blue notes, and the dot-dot-dash inevitability of his figurations. At last the cat is out of the bag: Count Basie was one of the masters of Jazz piano.

BASIE'S felicities as a pianist notwithstanding, his name will always be synonymous with big bands. Over the past three decades the Basie Orchestra suffered bouts of inertia, as any institution sometimes does, but it seemed to be on the move again in recent years. A week after Basie's death the Willard Alexander agency confirmed that the Basie Orchestra would indeed soldier on without its leader. A refusal to let go of the past reduces history to nostalgia; aesthetically, ghost bands are sweet cheats, no matter how pristine their intentions. Taking over the reins of the Duke Ellington Orchestra after his father's death, ten years ago, Mercer Ellington promised to blow the cobwebs off some of the masterpieces from the twenties and thirties that Duke had long ignored. But many of the veteran Ellingtonians who had conspired to give the latter-day Ellington Orchestra its distinctive voice had died or were to die within a few years of their leader, and many others had retired. Mercer soon found himself conducting an Ellington Orchestra in name only for audiences eager to hear a nostalgic medley of Ellington's hits rather than obscure but historically central Ellington compositions. (Thus the languors of the Broadway revue Sophisticated Ladies.) Even assuming there can be a Count Basie Orchestra without Count Basie, can there be a Basie Orchestra without his longtime sidekick Freddie Green, himself reduced to part-time status by the infirmities of age?

Only a few musicians from the golden era of big bands are still out there on the road. Lionel Hampton continues to put on a terrific show, and the indefatigable Woody Herman is as vital and amenable to change as ever, even if his band is no longer a spawning ground for great stylists. Buddy Rich fronts a big band whenever he is physically and economically able to, and Artie  Shaw--ever the iconoclast--has sent a ghost band on the road, though he is still very much alive. Benny Goodman's poor health makes recurring rumors that he will again enter the fray seem like wishful thinking.

Big bands are an endangered species, if by big band one means a style of presentation associated with the popular music of the thirties and forties. But within jazz big band also reveals sheer love of size, and big bands in that sense are still plentiful--college lab bands; television talk-show orchestras; busman's-holiday "rehearsal" bands like those that begat the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in New York in the mid-sixties and the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band in Los Angeles a decade later; expanded units of fluctuating sizes and instrumentations led by pantonalists like Sun Ra, George Russell, and Muhal Richard Abrams, protean composers for whom the orchestra promises wider compositional latitude, much as it must have for Ellington.

Still, the downscale economics of jazz ensure that most rehearsal bands will remain just that, performing before live audiences only rarely. Orchestras like Russell's and Abrams's tend to exist only in the recording studios, save for appearances at European festivals and an occasional week at a New York club. It hardly seems likely that big bands of any kind will ever again enjoy the widespread popularity that the big swing bands enjoyed in the years leading up to the Second World War, when jazz and popular dance music were virtually one and the same. Nothing in jazz is quite as thrilling in quite as many ways as a roaring big band. But the melancholy fact of the matter is that since jazz has evolved into an art music of limited popular appeal, contemporary jazz musicians will have to forgo the luxury of thinking big, except on rare occasions. The loss of Count Basie hits harder for underscoring everything else jazz has lost and figures to go on losing.

Copyright © 1984 by Francis Davis.  All rights reserved.

The Atlantic Monthly; August 1984; The Loss of Count Basie; Volume 254, No. 2; pages 95-97.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/11/count-basie-and-his-orchestra-one-oclock-jump23.html

Count Basie and His Orchestra - One O'Clock Jump

Count Basie and His Orchestra - Back to the Apple

Newport Jazz Festival (Newport, RI), 07/02/1959

 

Music Audio Count Basie and His Orchestra

One of the most important figures to come out of the Swing Era, Count Basie presided with regal authority for 50 years over a dynamic big band that defined the art of group swing. Their appearance at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival, coming two years after an acclaimed live album (1957's Count Basie at Newport on Verve), was a typically swinging affair marked by a steamrolling momentum and highly polished execution by the brassy juggernaut. A string of potent solo voices in saxophonists Frank Wess, Frank Foster and Marshall Royal, trumpeters Joe Newman, Snooky Young and Thad Jones, trombonists Al Grey and Benny Powell added improvisational punch to the proceedings while longstanding Basie drummer Sonny Payne fueled the well-oiled aggregation with his inimitable flash and swing factor alongside bassist Eddie Jones and reliable rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, a fixture in the Basie organization from its inception in 1937 to the bandleader's death in 1984. Their exhilarating set on July 2nd at Newport was enhanced by the bluesy vocals of Joe Williams, a Basie regular from 1954-1961, and special guests Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, whose ground-breaking vocalese approach on familiar Basie fare elevated the energy level a notch or two.

This 1950s edition of the Count Basie Orchestra, featuring fresh arrangements by Neal Hefti, Frank Foster, Thad Jones and Frank Wess, is sometimes known as the "new testament" band to distinguish this more modern, streamlined version of the Basie band from its "old testament" predecessors from the '30s and '40s. This newer aggregation came into its own with the release of 1957's Atomic Basie (on Morris Levy's Roulette Records label), marking a new phase in Basie's career. And by 1959, the group was running smoothly on all cylinders. They kick things off at the July 2nd concert with "Back to the Apple," a new Basie composition at the time which swings aggressively while showcasing the full dynamic range, from a whisper to a shout, in the course of this swaggering opener. The pristine quality of the recording allows for crystal clear separation of all the instruments in the band while the uncanny tightness in the horn section provides maximum punch on all the section hits. Shifting gears, they next take on Thad Jones's easy swinging "The Deacon," a soulful number which begins with a relaxed quartet feel from Basie's minimalist piano tinkling, accompanied only by Green's steady comping on guitar, Jones' insistent quarter note pulse on bass and Payne's subtle yet insistent time feel. The full band enters on Jones' buoyant theme and as the piece settles into a groove you can begin to hear the casual bantering on the bandstand among the musicians, particularly during Thad Jones' stirring trumpet solo and throughout the conversational exchanges between trombonists Benny Powell and Al Grey. Again, the superb recording quality lets you hear every nuance of Payne's drumming, and the sheer punch of the horns on those Basie-esque hits will knock you off your seat.

They fly through Neal Hefti's "Whirlybird," a romping big band vehicle that was aptly titled "Roller Coaster" in a previous incarnation, before Basie summons to the stage "the guy that sings the blues." Joe Williams is in particularly fine voice here as he delivers, in his deep-toned baritone voice, profoundly soulful renditions of "Five O'Clock in the Morning Blues," "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" and "Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You." Williams rocks the Newport crowd with exhilarating versions of two Big Joe Turner staples, "Shake Rattle and Roll" and the infectious shuffle "I've Got a Girl" (a variation on Turner's pioneering hit from 1938, "Roll 'Em Pete," which the Kansas City blues shouter performed with this boogie-woogie piano playing partner, Pete Johnson). He turns in an exhilarating rendition of his signature tune "Well Alright, OK, You Win" (which he premiered on 1955's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings) and delivers a soulful take on Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" (a gospel-tinged single introduced by Atlantic Records in 1956).

Just as the Basie set had built to an ecstatic peak, Williams introduces special guests Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, who leapt into the limelight just the previous year with their astonishing debut, Sing a Song of Basie on ABC-Paramount (later reissued on Impulse). Comprised of vocalese pioneers Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross, this invigorating trio specialized in setting lyrics (primarily penned by Hendricks) to existing and particularly memorable instrumental jazz solos. Ross was actually one of the first to successfully venture into vocalese with her 1952 hit "Twisted" (based on a famous Wardell Gray tenor sax solo). Her early experiments, along with those of fellow vocalese pioneers King Pleasure and Eddie Jefferson, marked her as a true innovator in vocal jazz. And when Ross joined forces in 1957 with Lambert and Hendricks - each of whom had been making notable strides on their own in the same vocalese direction - a powerhouse act was born.

Their appearance at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival came hot on the heels of their second triumphant release, The Swingers on the Pacific Jazz label (later reissued on EMI/Manhattan).

They enter with the jivey "It's Sand, Man" before tackling Basie's "Let Me See," Horace Silver's "Doodlin'" and the invigorating "Taps Miller." Williams joins them for a rousing rendition of Louis Jordan's "Rusty Dusty Blues," with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross providing backing vocal harmony and simulated horn pads. They deliver a soulful reading of Milt Jackson's "The Spirit-Feel," a tune that was also covered by Ray Charles the previous year at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. And they wrap it up with a swinging "Avenue C," a Basie staple chockfull of clever Hendricks lyrics, before segueing to Basie's closing theme, "One O'Clock Jump," putting the capper on what was easily one of the most invigorating and memorable sets of the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival.

Basie would return to Newport several times over the next 20 years, but this night ranks as one of Basie's peak performances at George Wein's annual clambake. A native of Red Bank, New Jersey, William "Count" Basie was born on August 21, 1904. His first piano teacher was his mother Lillian Basie. As a teenager, Basie played piano for silent films shown at the local Red Bank cinema. By 1924, he was hanging out in Harlem, where he met and befriended Harlem stride piano masters like Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson, all of whom introduced Basie to other top musicians while sharing piano tips with the young player. He later got his first road experience accompanying performers on the vaudeville circuit and in 1927 found himself stuck in Kansas City when the troupe he was traveling with disbanded. The 23-year-old pianist remained in that Midwestern town, picking up some freelance work before eventually hooking up in 1928 with Walter Page's Blue Devils. Bassist Page would later become part of Basie's All-American rhythm section (alongside drummer Jo Jones and guitarist Freddie Green). The singer in Page's Blue Devils band, Jimmy Rushing, would later become a star with the '30s edition of the Count Basie Orchestra. In 1935, after a stint in Bennie Moten's territory band, Basie formed his own nine-piece band (originally called the Barons of Rhythm) with former Moten bandmates Page on bass, Green on guitar, Jones on drums, Lester Young on tenor sax and Rushing on vocals. They were discovered by talent scout and record producer John Hammond, who was able to secure high-profile gigs for the band at the Grand Terrace in Chicago and the Roseland Ballroom in New York. This led to a recording contract with Decca Records in 1937. Their recording of "One O'Clock Jump" later that year was the band's first chart-topper and ultimately became the Count Basie Orchestra theme song for the next half century.

Basie spent the early '40s touring extensively with his orchestra. During the World War II years, they appeared in five films, including Reveille with Beverly, Stage Door Canteen, and Crazy House while also scoring hits with "I Didn't Know About You," "Red Bank Blues," "Rusty Dusty Blues" and "Blue Skies." In 1954, Basie went overseas for the first time to play in Scandinavia. Another Basie band staple, "April in Paris," was released the following year on an album of the same title for the Verve label. Vocalist Joe Williams was introduced to Basie fans on 1955's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, which included the hit single, "Every Day (I Have the Blues)." Williams remained a key component of the Count Basie Orchestra until 1960. In January 1960, the Basie band performed at one of the five John F. Kennedy Inaugural Balls. That summer, Basie and Duke Ellington combined forces for the recording First Time! The Count Meets the Duke, each jazz icon providing four numbers from his play book.

In 1962, Basie scored a big commercial success with Sinatra-Basie on Frank Sinatra's Reprise label and they repeated that formula on 1964's It Might As Well Be Spring. Through the '60s, Basie teamed with other vocalists in a series of successful recordings, including Ella Fitzgerald (1963's Ella and Basie!), Sammy Davis, Jr. (1965's Our Shining Hour) and Jackie Wilson (1968's Manufacturers of Soul). He returned to a purely instrumental straight ahead jazz format with 1969's Grammy nominated Standing Ovation and in 1970 recorded Afrique with arranger/conductor Oliver Nelson. Basie recorded through the '70s in a variety of small group settings for Norman Granz's Pablo Records, including 1972's Loose Walk (with Roy Eldridge), 1974's The Bosses (with Big Joe Turner), 1975's Basie Jam (with Harry "Sweets" Edison, J.J. Johnson, Zoot Sims, Ray Brown and Louie Bellson), 1976's Basie and Zoot (with Zoot Sims), 1977's Satch and Josh…Again (with Oscar Peterson) and 1978's The Gifted Ones (with Basie and Dizzy Gillespie). He won a Grammy in 1980 On the Road and in 1983 earned a Grammy nomination for Farmer's Market Barbecue. Basie remained a tireless road warrior until the end, driving an electric wheelchair onto the stage at performances all over the world. He died of pancreatic cancer on April 26, 1984 at age 79. Basie's legacy was carried on by a tribute band led in turn by Thad Jones, Frank Foster and Grover Mitchell. The current Count Basie Orchestra is under the direction of trombonist Bill Hughes, who appeared with the Basie band at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957 and 1959. (Milkowski)  

                     

https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/countbasie

Count Basie

                    

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Bill Basie studied music with his mother as a child and played piano in early childhood. He picked up the basics of early ragtime from some of the great Harlem pianists and studied organ informally with Fats Waller. He made his professional debut as an accompanist for vaudeville acts and replaced Waller in an act called Katie Crippen and her Kids. He also worked with June Clark and Sonny Greer who was later to become Duke Ellington’s drummer.

It was while traveling with the Gonzel White vaudeville show that Basie became stranded in Kansas City when the outfit suddenly broke up. He played at a silent movie house for a while and then became a member of the Walter Page Blue Devils in 1928 and ’29. Included in the ranks of the Blue Devils was a blues shouter who was later to play a key role as early male vocalist with Basie’s own big band, Jimmy Rushing. It was in fact the rotund Rushing who happened to hear Basie playing in Kansas City and invited him to attend a Blue Devil's performance. Basie soon joined the band after sitting in with them that night.

After Page's Blue Devils broke up Count Basie and some of the other band members integrated into the Bennie Moten band. He remained with Moten until his death in 1935. After Moten’s death the band continued under the leadership of Bennie’s brother Buster, but Basie started a group of his own and soon found a steady gig at the Reno Club in Kansas City employing some of the best personnel from the Moten band himself.

The band gradually built up in quantity and quality of personnel and was broadcast live regularly from the club by a small Kansas City radio station. It was during one of these broadcasts that the group was heard by John Hammond, a wealthy jazz aficionado, who had himself worked as an announcer, disc jockey and producer of a live jazz show on radio. Hammond decided that the band must go to New York. Through his efforts and support (at times even financially) the band enlarged its membership further and went to New York in 1936. Hammond installed Willard Alexander as the band’s manager and in January of 1937 the Count Basie band made its first recording with the Decca record label.

By the following year the Basie big band had become internationally famous, anchored by the leader’s simple and sparse piano style and the rhythm section of Freddie Greene guitar, Walter Page bass, and Jo Jones drums. The great soloists of this band included Jimmy Rushing as vocalist, Lester Young and Herschel Evans tenor saxes, Earl Warren on alto, Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpets, and Benny Morton and Dickie Wells on trombones, among others. Also contributing to the bands success were the arrangements by Eddie Durham and others in the band and the “head” arrangements spontaneously developed by the group.

Despite the occasional losses of key soloists, throughout the 1940’s Basie maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists. Among the long line of budding stars to pass through the Basie aggregation's ranks during these years were tenor men, Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Don Byas, Buddy Tate, Lucky Thompson, Illinois Jacquet, and Paul Gonsalves. On trumpets the list includes Buck Clayton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Joe Newman, and Emmett Berry. In the trombone section Dickie Wells, Benny Morton, Vic Dickenson, and J.J. Johnson all had stints with Basie in the 40’s.

Except for a period in 1950 and ’51, when economic conditions forced him to tour with a septet, Basie maintained a highly swinging big band that, at one time or another, included Clark Terry, Wardell Gray, Al Grey, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, Sonny Payne, Joe Wilder, Benny Powell, and Henry Coker. In 1954 Joe Williams became the band's full time male vocalist. By 1955 he had infused the Basie band with new life and further commercial success beginning with Every Day I Have The Blues. Also during this period arrangers Neal Hefti and Ernie Wilkins contributed many fine swinging arrangements to the band's book. These great men of music coupled with Basie’s undying allegiance to the beat and the 12 bar blues allowed the band to consistently turn out records of extremely high caliber well into even the 1970’s.

Count Basie's health began deteriorating in 1976 when he suffered a heart attack that put him out of commission for several months. Following another stay in the hospital in 1981 he began appearing on stage driving an electric wheel chair. Count Basie died of cancer at 79.

Along with a number of Grammy awards the Count and his big bands won the following Jazz polls: Esquire’s Silver Award in 1945; Down Beat reader’s poll in 1955, ’57-’59; Metronome Poll ’58-’60; Down Beat Critics Poll ’54-’57; Playboy All Stars’ All Stars ’59. As pianist Basie won the Metronome Poll in ’42-’43. In 1958 Count Basie was elected to the Down Beat Hall Of Fame.

 

THE MUSIC OF COUNT BASIE: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH COUNT BASIE:

Count Basie - The Atomic Mr. Basie - 1957 (FULL ALBUM):

Tracklist:

01 The Kid From Red Bank (00:00)

02 Duet (02:40)

03 After Supper (06:53)

04 Flight Of The Foo Birds (10:19)

05 Double-o (13:43)

06 Teddy The Toad (16:29)

07 Whirly-Bird (19:48)

08 Midnite Blue (23:40)

09 Splanky (28:08)

10 Fantail (31:44)

11 li'l darlin' (34:40)

PERSONNEL:

Wendell Culley — trumpet

Snooky Young — trumpet

Thad Jones — trumpet

Joe Newman — trumpet

Henry Coker — trombone

Al Grey — trombone

Benny Powell — trombone

Marshal Royal — reeds

Frank Wess — reeds

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis — reeds

Frank Foster — reeds

Charles Fowlkes — reeds

Count Basie — piano

Eddie Jones — bass

Freddie Green — guitar

Sonny Payne — drums

Neal Hefti — arrangements

Count Basie - "Basie Boogie":

Featuring music from Count Basie, an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer.

by Studio Telescriptions. Studio Films INC, USA

Show of the Week - Count Basie and his Orchestra (1965):

1. ALL OF ME ( 00:00 ) 2. FLIGHT OF THE FOO BIRDS ( 3:00 ) 3. THE MIDNIGHT SUN NEVER SETS ( 6:00 ) 4. BLUES FOR EILEEN ( 9:30 ) 5. JUMPIN' AT THE WOODSIDE ( 14:58 ) 6. I NEEDS TO BE BEED WITH ( 18:50 ) 7. APRIL IN PARIS ( 24:33 ) 8. LITTLE DARLIN' ( 27:59 ) 9. WHIRLY BIRD ( 32:08 ) 10. ONE O'CLOCK JUMP ( 40:15 ) + CLOSING COMMENT BY BASIE

The Best of Count Basie:

Count Basie:  Jazz Casual TV program  1962:

COUNT BASIE Swingin' the Blues, 1941 HOT big band swing jazz

 

 

COUNT BASIE KANSAS CITY -"COMBOS" (full album)

 

The All-American Rhythm Section:

1. SHOE SHINE BOY

2. LADY BE GOOD

Tatti Smith (trumpet)

Lester Young (tenor sax)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1936, Chicago, 9 Nov.

============

3. ALLEZ OOP

4. DON'T BE THAT WAY

5. MORTGAGE STOMP

Buck Clayton (trumpet)

Lester Young (tenor sax, clarinet)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1938, New York, 3 June.

===============

6. YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME

Shad Collins (trumpet)

Lester Young (tenor sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

Jimmy Rushing (vocal)

1939, New York, 2 February.

==============

7. I AIN'T GOT NOBODY

Buck Clayton, Shad Collins (trumpet)

Dick Wells (trombone)

Lester Young (tenor sax, clarinet)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1939, Chicago, 13 February.

===============

8. LIVE AND LOVE TONIGHT

Buck Clayton (trumpet)

Lester Young (tenor sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (organ)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1939, Chicago, 13 February.

======================

9. LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME

Buck Clayton, Shad Collins (trumpet)

Lester Young (tenor sax, clarinet)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1939, Chicago, 13 February.

=====================

10. DICKIE'S DREAM

11. LESTER LEAPS IN

Buck Clayton (trumpet)

Dicky Wells (trombone)

Lester Young (tenor sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1939, New York, 5 September.

====================

12. ST LOUIS BLUES

13. ROYAL GARDEN BLUES

14. SUGAR BLUES

15. BUGLE BLUES

Buck Clayton (trumpet)

Don Byas (tenor sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1942, Los Angeles, 24 July.

========================

16. AFTER THEATRE JUMP  

17. SIX CATS AND A PRICE

18. DESTINATION K.C

Buck Clayton (trumpet)

Dicky Wells (trombone)

Lester Young (tenor sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Rodney Richardson (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1944, New York, 22 March.

=========================

19. SWINGIN' THE BLUES

Emmett Berry (trumpet)

George Matthews (trombone)

C.Q.Price (alto sax)

Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax)

Jack Washington (baritono sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1947, New York, 20 May.

=================

20. ST LOUIS BOOGIE

21. MY BUDDY

22. BACKSTAGE AT STUFF'S

Emmett Berry (trumpet)

George Matthews (trombone)

C.Q.Price (alto sax)

Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax)

Jack Washington (baritono sax)

Freddie Green (guitar)

Count Basie (piano, organ)

Walter Page (bass)

Jo Jones (drums)

1947, New York, 20 May.

"Live At The Hollywood Palace" - Frank Sinatra & The Count Basie Orchestra (1965)

Count Basie Orchestra - "Corner Pocket" (1962) - HD/HQ:

 

 

The Second Incarnation: The Count Basie Orchestra of 1962, in all its swinging glory. Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Eric Dixon, Thad Jones, Al Aarons, Snooky Young -- and Freddie Green laying down those perfect 4/4 chords. Sonny Payne is the drummer

COUNT BASIE AND THE KANSAS CITY 7 -1962 w/ SONNY PAYNE --(Full Album):

 

 

Album Recorded: March 21 & 22, 1962

Count Basie – piano, organ

Thad Jones – trumpet

Frank Wess – flute, alto flute (tracks 2, 6 & 8)

Frank Foster – tenor saxophone, clarinet (tracks 1, 3-5 & 7)

Eric Dixon – tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet

Freddie Green – guitar

Eddie Jones – bass

Sonny Payne – drums

Tracks:

1. Oh, Lady Be Good! (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin)

2. Secrets (Frank Wess)

3. I Want a Little Girl (Murray Mencher, Billy Moll)

4. Shoe Shine Boy (Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin)

5. Count's Place (Count Basie)

6. Senator Whitehead (Wess)

7. Tally-Ho, Mr. Basie! (Basie)

8. What'cha Talkin'? (Thad Jones)

9. Trey of Hearts (Thad Jones)

Count Basie - "Super Chief"-- (1940 Version):

 

 

"One O'Clock Jump" w/ Count Basie & His Orchestra (1943):