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correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 72 |
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/03/16/frank-sinatra-jr-dies-tour/81895096/
|
en
|
The Detroit News
|
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[
"Sandy Cohen and Andrew Dalton, The Detroit News"
] |
2016-03-16T00:00:00
|
Performer who carried on his iconic father’s musical legacy dies of cardiac arrest in Florida, family says
|
en
|
AP
|
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/03/16/frank-sinatra-jr-dies-tour/81895096/
|
Los Angeles — Frank Sinatra Jr., who carried on his famous father’s legacy with his own music career and whose kidnapping as a young man added a bizarre chapter to his father’s legendary life, died Wednesday. He was 72.
The younger Sinatra died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest while on tour in Daytona Beach, Florida, the Sinatra family said in a statement to the Associated Press.
The statement said the family mourns the untimely passing of their son, brother, father and uncle. No other details were provided.
His real name was Francis Wayne Sinatra — his father’s full name is Francis Albert Sinatra — but went professionally by Frank Sinatra Jr.
Sinatra Jr. was the middle child of Sinatra and Nancy Barbato Sinatra, who was the elder Sinatra’s first wife and the mother of all three of his children. Sinatra Jr.’s older sister was Nancy Sinatra, who had a successful musical career of her own, and his younger sister was TV producer Tina Sinatra.
He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1943, just as his father’s career was getting started, and he would watch his dad become one of the most famous singers of all time. But he usually watched from a distance, as Sinatra was constantly away on tours and making movies.
He did, however, sometimes get to see him from the wings of the stage, especially when his father performed for long stints in Las Vegas. Sinatra Jr. got to see many other storied performers too, like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Count Basie.
“I saw all the top stars perform,” Sinatra Jr. told the AP in 2002. He said one of his favorite memories of his father harks back to a performance in the late 1960s at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
“He was sitting on a little stool, and he sang the Beatles song ‘Yesterday’ and ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ and ‘Didn’t We,’ ” Sinatra Jr. said. “We were all crying and singing.”
Sinatra Jr. followed his father into music as a teenager, eventually working for the senior Sinatra as his musical director and conductor.
The elder Sinatra died of a heart attack May 14, 1998, at 82.
Sinatra Jr. was able to provide a link to his father’s music after his death, performing his songs and arrangements on tours and especially in Las Vegas.
“Since my father’s death, a lot of people have made it clear that they’re not ready to give up the music,” Sinatra Jr. said in the 2002 AP interview. “For me, it’s a big, fat gift. I get to sing with a big orchestra and get to sing orchestrations that will never be old.”
When Sinatra Jr. was 19 in 1963, three men kidnapped him at gunpoint from a Lake Tahoe hotel. He was returned safely after two days when his family paid $240,000 for his release.
Barry Keenan, a high school friend of Nancy Sinatra, was arrested with the other two suspects, Johnny Irwin and Joe Amsler, and convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping.
Keenan masterminded the kidnapping, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to life plus 75 years in prison, but was declared legally insane at the time of the crime, had his sentence reduced and was paroled in 1968 after serving 4 ½ years.
Sinatra Jr. was married in 1998, but divorced in 2000. He is survived by a son, Michael.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 84 |
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/national-international/natl-maria-cole-wife-of-nat-king-cole-dies-at-89-2/1900115/
|
en
|
Maria Cole, Widow of Nat King Cole, Dies at 89
|
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2012-07-12T04:15:38
|
Maria Hawkins Cole, widow of jazz crooner Nat “King” Cole and mother of singer Natalie Cole, has died in South Florida after a short battle with cancer. She...
|
en
|
NBC 6 South Florida
|
https://ots.nbcwpshield.com/qa/national-international/natl-maria-cole-wife-of-nat-king-cole-dies-at-89-2/2142825/
|
Maria Hawkins Cole, widow of jazz crooner Nat "King" Cole and mother of singer Natalie Cole, has died in South Florida after a short battle with cancer. She was 89.
A representative of the family confirmed that she died Tuesday at a Boca Raton hospice, surrounded by her family.
Before and after marrying the famed singer and piano player, Maria Cole had her own long singing career, performing with greats such as Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Born in Boston in 1922, she lived as a child in North Carolina after her mother died, according to a statement from the family. She later moved to New York to pursue a music career
According to her family, Ellington heard recordings of Maria Cole singing and hired her as a vocalist with his orchestra. She stayed with him until 1946 when she began soloing at the city's Club Zanzibar as an opening act for the Mills Brothers. There she met Nat "King" Cole.
The two were married in 1948 by then-U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Maria Cole traveled and performed with her husband throughout the '50s. After her husband died from cancer in 1965, Maria Cole created the Cole Cancer Foundation.
Her children, Natalie, Timolin and Casey Cole, said in a joint statement, "Our mom was in a class all by herself. She epitomized, class, elegance, and truly defined what it is to be a real lady. ... She died how she lived — with great strength, courage and dignity, surrounded by her loving family."
At the time of her death Maria Cole lived in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Private services will be held in Glendale, Calif.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 27 |
https://www.notablebiographies.com/Ba-Be/Basie-Count.html
|
en
|
Count Basie Biography
|
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Born: August 21, 1904
Red Bank, New Jersey
Died: April 26, 1984
Hollywood, Florida
African American bandleader and musician
Count Basie was an extremely popular figure in the jazz world for half a century. He was a fine pianist and leader of one of the greatest jazz bands in history.
Early years
William Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 21, 1904. His parents, Harvey and Lillian (Childs) Basie, were both musicians. Basie played drums in his school band and took some piano lessons from his
mother. But it was in Harlem, New York City, that he learned the basics of piano, mainly from his sometime organ teacher, the great Fats Waller (1904–1943).
Basie made his professional debut playing piano with vaudeville acts (traveling variety entertainment). While on one tour he became stranded in Kansas City, Missouri. After working briefly as house organist in a silent movie theater, he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1928. When that band broke up in 1929, he Bennie Moten's band hired him. He played piano with them, with one interruption, for the next five years. It was during this time that he was given the nickname "Count."
After Moten died in 1935, Basie took what was left of the band, expanded the personnel, and formed the first Count Basie Orchestra. Within a year the band developed its own variation of the Kansas City swing style—a solid rhythm backing the horn soloists, who were also supported by sectional riffing (the repeating of a musical figure by the non-soloing brass and reeds). This familiar pattern was evident in the band's theme song, "One O'Clock Jump," written by Basie himself in 1937.
Success in the swing era
By 1937 Basie's band was, with the possible exception of Duke Ellington's (1899–1974), the most famous African American band in America. Basie's band regularly worked some of the better big city hotel ballrooms. With many of the other big bands of the swing era he also shared the less appealing one-nighters (a series of single night performances in a number of small cities and towns that were traveled to by bus).
Many of the band's arrangements were "heads"—arrangements worked out without planning in rehearsal and then written down later. The songs were often designed to showcase the band's brilliant soloists. Sometimes the arrangement was the reworking of a standard tune—"I Got Rhythm," "Dinah," or "Lady, Be Good." Sometimes a member of the band would come up with an original, written with a particular soloist or two in mind. Two of Basie's earliest favorites, "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and "Lester Leaps In," were created as features for saxophonist Lester Young. They were referred to as "flagwavers," fast-paced tunes designed to excite the audience. The swing era band (1935–45) was unquestionably Basie's greatest. The superior arrangements (reflecting Basie's good taste) and the skilled performers (reflecting Basie's sound management) gave the band a permanent place in jazz history.
Later years
The loss of key personnel (some to military service), the wartime ban on recordings, the 1943 musicians' strike, the strain of onenighters, and the bebop revolution of the mid-1940s all played a role in the death of the big-band era. Basie decided to form a medium-sized band in 1950, juggling combinations of all-star musicians. The groups' recordings were of the highest quality, but in 1951 Basie returned to his first love—the big band—and it thrived. Another boost was provided in the late 1950s by the recording of "April in Paris," which became the trademark of the band for the next quarter of a century.
A stocky, handsome man with heavy-lidded eyes and a sly smile, Basie was a shrewd judge of talent and character, and he was extremely patient in dealing with the egos of his musicians. He and his band recorded with many other famous artists, including Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), and Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990). Perhaps the most startling of the band's achievements was its fifty-year survival in a culture that experienced so many changes in musical fashion, especially after the mid-1960s, when jazz lost much of its audience to other forms of music.
In 1976 Basie suffered a heart attack, but he returned to the bandstand half a year later. During his last years he had difficulty walking and so rode out on stage in a motorized wheelchair. He died of cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984. His wife, Catherine, had died in 1983. They had one daughter. The band survived Basie's death, with trumpeter Thad Jones directing until his own death in 1986.
|
|||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 25 |
https://www.cram.com/essay/Count-Basie-Research-Paper/FJJJAPFNWT
|
en
|
Count Basie Research Paper - 1501 Words
|
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https://www.cram.com/essay/Count-Basie-Research-Paper/FJJJAPFNWT
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On August 21st, 1904, one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians was born. This great musician was known as William Count Basie. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, where he became a pianist and a player of vaudeville based entertainment. Basie ultimately formed his own big band that had many hits, for example: “Blue Skies” and “One O’Clock Jump.” Basie’s band and music helped to define the ‘swing’ era. He became the first African American male to receive a Grammy Award. Throughout his years he’d worked with a variety of different artists and had won countless other Grammys. Unfortunately, his life came to an end in Florida on April 26th, 1984. To begin with, Count Basie was born to Harvey Lee, a mellophonist and Lillian Basie, a pianist …show more content…
It was titled "Blue Balls." The radio broadcaster inquired as to whether the band would play the tune yet said he couldn't utilize that title reporting in real time. He recommended, since it was nearing one a.m., "One O'clock Jump." “The title stuck, and not only did the now-forgotten announcer dream up the tune’s title, he was the first to call Basie “Count.””(Jazz Standards Songs and Instrumentals (One O'clock Jump), n.d.) This record was his statement piece, his announcement that Basie Band has arrived. “One O’clock Jump” was the band’s theme song. They utilized this song in every one of their concerts ending with it.
0:04: Basie begins on the piano, with the same beat being played with his left hand. These patterns are reminiscent of boogie-woogie piano. The other member slowly come in trying to get a feel of where the fall into the song.
0:11: With his right hand, Basie comes in with the blues chorus, as the leader of the melody. His rhythm section has now found their place and following Basie on the piano. Freddie Green on the acoustic guitar is following Basie’s left hand at this
|
|||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 70 |
https://www.craveguitars.co.uk/tag/count-basie/
|
en
|
Count Basie
|
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2020-09-16T11:19:25+01:00
|
CRAVE (Cool & Rare American Vintage Electric) Guitars - Love Vintage Guitars
|
en
|
CRAVE Guitars
|
https://www.craveguitars.co.uk/tag/count-basie/
|
Introduction
Okeydokey guitar and music fans out there. If you are reading this 5th part of the series of articles, I hope you know the routine by now, so I won’t bore you with any further preamble and we can get on with the latest episode.
If you would like to (re)visit the first four parts (covering 300 years) of the story to‑date, you can do so here (each link opens a new browser tab):
Part I – 1650‑1900
Part II – 1900‑1919
Part III – 1920‑1939
Part IV – 1940-1949
Before we delve in to the Fifties, I was asked a very good question following the last article, which was…
Question(s): “A young Elvis Presley sang ‘Old Shep’ in a talent contest… he came 2nd. I would dearly like to know who beat the future ‘King’ of rock and roll. Do you happen to know if it was a fellow pop star?”
Answer: Many reports say that the young Elvis came 2nd. However, in a later interview, Presley said that he came 5th. The photograph of the prize giving presentation suggests that Presley may be correct in his recollection as three others are holding prizes while the young Presley, standing on the far right of the photo below wearing glasses, is standing empty-handed. The winners, as far as anyone knows, did not go on to become famous.
This also raises the point of illustrating the facts. I actually have some interesting images for each and every fact listed in these articles. While a picture can convey many words, to add that many photos, each publication would become humongous to wade through. I know people like to see pictures, rather than read volumes of sometimes repetitive narrative. On this occasion, it is probably better not to illustrate each fact. Apologies to all the picture loving people out there.
Once again, so much happened in the course of the 1950s that the decade demands a discrete article to itself. Let’s go…
The Story of Modern Music Part V 1950-1959
For many people, the birth of rock ‘n’ roll heralded a whole new era of popular music. So, as we get to the 1950s, this article will cover what was going on in the world that enabled such a musical revolution to take place and the fundamental cultural changes that went along with it. The world would never be the same again. It is worth remembering that, at the time, not everyone was excited about change and many conservative traditionalists fiercely rejected and resisted such a rebellious and irreversible transformation.
Historical Context 1950-1959
For most developed economies, the 1950s was a period of slow recovery from the severe consequences of WWII. However, the world was not without conflict and warfare in many other regions including in Asia, Africa and South America. The Cold War continued to fester, fuelled by intense competition between the democratic United States and communism Soviet Russia. The bitter rivalry included reciprocal nuclear weapons testing, military escalation and the start of the ‘space race’. The McCarthy ‘witch hunts’ of communist subversive and treasonous American citizens fuelled bitter political conspiracy and widespread public paranoia. The threat of mutually assured destruction maintained a fragile stalemate between west and east. By the end of the decade, as employment and income levels began to improve, individual freedoms and opportunities would lead to a paradigm shift in civilised countries including radical social, political, technological and cultural change that would set the dynamic scene for following decades.
Musical Genre Development 1950-1959
The 1950s was a decade of innovation that saw the massive explosion of musical creativity across many genres, fusing influences and generating many new musical styles. Arguably, it was during the 1950s that modern music ‘grew up’ and any suggestions that the popular music crazes of the time were ephemeral ‘fads’ were finally dispelled. Country music remained popular with artists such as Johnny Cash and Hank Williams at the forefront of a revival.
Possibly not a genre in itself but easy listening music became popular in the 1950s and lasted until the 1970s. A form of middle‑of‑the‑road (MOR) music, it found popularity on radio and then extended into various styles of background music, elevator music or ‘muzak’. Easy listening music was often instrumental or vocal interpretations of past popular music standards, rather than anything new in its own right. Some major artists tapped into the appeal, including Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, Herp Alpert, The Carpenters and Richard Clayderman.
In the post‑war years, modernistic music, broadly also encompassing experimental and avant‑garde music was being explored by many composers wishing to push boundaries either within existing traditions or by introducing original elements outside prevailing styles. The aim of many composers was to break rules, reject established conventions and challenge audiences in a creative, if frequently alienating, way. Practitioners included Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage.
During the 1950s rhythm and blues music, often shortened to R&B, became popular, being a more upbeat form of blues music. R&B emanated from mainly African‑American music that was widespread during the late 1940s. Record companies promoted R&B toward predominantly urban African American audiences. R&B’s popularity was based on a fusing many influences such as jazz, blues, country and gospel to create strongly rhythmic, beat‑based songs. R&B would, in turn, influence the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll and soul of the late 1950s and 1960s. In response to other influences, R&B changed to include other styles such as doo‑wop. Famous R&B artists of the time included Ray Charles, The Drifters, Sam Cooke, The Platters and the Coasters.
By the mid‑1950s, the cultural clash of blues, jazz and country combined to create a new phenomenon in the United States, rock ‘n’ roll, a phrase popularised by radio disc jockey Alan Freed in 1954. Bill Haley (And His Comets) is often credited as the catalyst although many other artists were instrumental in creating the new youth musical revolution, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Rockabilly was a very close relation to rock ‘n’ roll at the time popularised by artists such as Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent. Classic rock ‘n’ roll is essentially based on a backbeat dance rhythm performed on electric guitar, bass, and drums, replacing the piano and saxophone as lead instruments. The cultural importance of rock ‘n’ roll cannot be underestimated and its impact went far beyond just a musical genre, influencing lifestyle, film & TV, art, fashion, attitudes, and language. Although its roots can be traced back to the 1930s, it was in the 1950s that rock ‘n’ roll began to pervade modern society, coming as it did at a time of immense post‑war technological, economic, social and political change. On the back of radio coverage, the 45rpm single record would provide a massive boost to sales of rock ‘n’ roll songs to America’s urban counterculture youth. Rock ‘n’ roll began to decline by the early 1960s as other forms of popular music began to dilute its impact.
Musical Facts 1950-1959
During the Fifties, many more household names that we take for granted today came into the world. Modern music began the transition from the traditional forms to more contemporary genres. As younger artists born in the 1930s and 1940s began to create the ‘new’ music, the shift in the balance of ‘facts’ from births, through achievements, to deaths are just beginning to become apparent.
Tailpiece
So… by the end of the 1950s, KABOOM! – Rock ‘n’ Roll had well and truly arrived and there was no going back. The significant influence of rock ‘n’ roll had set in motion further evolutionary strands that would continue to expand horizons in all sorts of different directions during a period of unprecedented creativity. New musical genres demanded technological developments in recording, distribution and consumption of music.
Things are only going to get even more interesting as we go forward. I hope you will return and see what happened in the 1960s and beyond. No cliff‑hanger required, just a touch of gentle encouragement to return here next month. In the meantime, I have plenty more vintage guitars that need some tender loving care, followed by some serious playing workouts. Until next time…
CRAVE Guitars’ ‘Quote of the Month’: “Exercise your right to be you or regret the denial of yourself.”
© 2019 CRAVE Guitars – Love Vintage Guitars.
← Return to ‘Musings’ page
Introduction
Welcome once again all guitar and music aficionados. We are now half way through 2019 and not only are the evenings once again beginning to draw in but also the end of the ‘noughties’ is just a few months away. What a sobering thought. One wonders whether the 2020s will match the exhilarating heights (and lows) of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ of last Century. Sometimes, I doubt it and there are too many ‘harbingers of doom’ for optimism and hope to reign too strongly but perhaps it was ever thus – I hope I’m wrong. However, that sort of future speculation is for another place an time, as this month we are looking back to some 70‑80 years’ ago.
We are here in the midst of a series of articles chronicling the story of modern music by way of numerous guitar‑oriented facts and events. If you’ve been following the series so far, you’ll already know that, so I won’t bang on about it any longer.
If you would like to (re)visit the first three parts (and nearly 300 years) of the story to‑date, you can do so here (each link opens a new browser tab):
Part I – 1650‑1900
Part II – 1900‑1919
Part III – 1920‑1939
The Story of Modern Music Part IV 1940-1949
There are so many facets to the 1940s that to cover the 1950s as well would make for an overlong article, so for the sake of our mutual sanity, let’s take it one step (and decade) at a time. So… this month, we concentrate solely on the 1940s, a watershed decade during which epochal change was increasing in both pace, scale and scope. Without further ado, assuming you know the routine and format by now, let us dispatch our ‘boots on the ground’ and get on with the show. Onward to the fascinating Forties…
Historical Context 1940-1949
The 1940s was known simply, and rather unimaginatively, as ‘The Forties’. During the first half of the decade the world was dominated by major conflict and brutal warfare. As if the world had not already seen enough, almost as soon as WWII ended, the Cold War began, again raising international political and military tensions between the capitalist west and communist eastern blocs, a struggle that would last for several decades. Ordinary people in many countries suffered on‑going economic austerity, adversity and disadvantage for many years as a consequence of WWII. Socially, concerns over the possibility of widespread post‑war friction sat at odds with hopes for long‑term peace. Technological progress was closely linked to competitive military advances and many major innovations spawned during the 1940s would ultimately benefit future generations.
Well that is where the world was at, at the time. Now to refocus our attention onto the matter in hand, musical history.
Musical Genre Development 1940-1949
Music of the 1940s built on the sustained popularity of jazz, bebop and swing/big band music to provide upbeat positivity against the background of WWII, as played by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Artie Shaw. Electric blues had spread to the west coast of America, particularly California, performed by artists such as T-Bone Walker and B.B. King. Chicago also became a vital locus for electric blues, as played by Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, as did Detroit with the likes of John Lee Hooker, and Indiana with Albert King and Jimmy Reed. Blues remained strong in the southern states, including artists like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Freddie King. Country and western music also became popular again with ‘singing cowboys’ such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Wartime songs would feature across many musical genres and many entertainers helped to support the allied forces at home and abroad, including Vera Lynn, Gracie Fields and The Andrews Sisters. It was also during the 1940s that the influence of Latin music began to be felt across other genres, popularised by the likes of ‘The Brazilian Bombshell’, Carmen Miranda brought to western cinemagoers by film director Busby Berkeley.
Around 1945, bluegrass began to make its mark. Bluegrass fused many American, European and African roots styles culminating in a unique blend of country, folk, traditional and Appalachian mountain music incorporating blues and jazz influences. The music is usually played on acoustic string instruments including fiddle, five-string banjo, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass. Bluegrass was particularly popular for dancing, including dance styles such as buckdancing, flatfooting and clogging. The term ‘bluegrass’ arose not only from a type of grass in the region near Kentucky but also from the name used by pioneers of the genre, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Monroe is often called the ‘Father of Bluegrass’ and his band notably featured Earl Scruggs on banjo and Lester Flatt on guitar. In the early days, bluegrass was categorised along with country & western, hillbilly and folk music before being defined as a discrete genre that remains popular today.
Traditional popular music is generally defined as having broad appeal for a wide audience and has existed throughout time and across the globe. While the ‘pop song’ originated in the 1920s, modern popular music is largely accepted to be Anglo‑American in origin and arose during the 1940s as the big bands declined and before rock & roll music took off in the mid‑1950s. Popular music was notable for structured song writing, often comprising repeated verse and chorus with a middle bridge section. Popular music was often based on musical standards, sung by ‘crooners’. In addition, popular music was also often composed by professional songwriters, which was then performed by a vocalist accompanied by a backing band or orchestra. Success was characterised by record sales and chart position as a measure of achievement. Perhaps the most famous popular music artists of the early popular music era were Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby who achieved enormous commercial success. The familiar term ‘pop music’ actually appears to have its origins in Britain in the mid‑1950s. Popular music is often referred to as, but not synonymous with, ‘pop’ music; however, pop music developed as a major separate genre during the 1960s and has largely remained so to the current day. Another characteristic is that popular music is constantly evolving into many different formats and styles to keep pace with social and cultural changes, including aging western populations. Traditional popular standards were being released well into the 1950s by the likes of Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin.
During the late 1940s, there was already indicative evidence of the sounds that would coalesce and become what we now call rock ‘n’ roll during the 1950s, particularly by blues/R&B artists such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe. That fundamental step-change is now for the next article.
Musical Facts 1940-1949
Many legendary artists that we now take for granted as part of today’s musical landscape were not yet born or still mere fledglings yet to make their indelible mark on our collective consciousness. As with last month’s article, a large proportion of the musical facts relate to births of future stars.
Looking down the long list of nearly 200 musical events during the 1940s, it could quickly become repetitive, e.g. American/English blah‑de‑blah was born in blah, blah. However, just a scan of the names and places gives a sense about what these youthful individuals were experiencing as teenagers during the ‘big bang’ of rock ‘n’ roll and the tsunami of the ‘British Invasion’, just a few years later. Just think of the exposure they had to sweeping new music crazes and how the fads might have inspired and stimulated these curious youngsters on to great music careers that they could never have foreseen. Some of these fabulous flames would burn brightly and briefly, while others would endure as wizened veterans still working hard and influencing today’s generations. As time passes, the balance between births, lifetime achievements and, sadly, deaths will shift considerably.
Tailpiece
Well, that’s it for another month – that is a veritable roll call of rock ‘n’ roll, all packed into just 10 years. The thing that struck me most about this article is the overwhelming focus on America and Britain as the drivers for musical change in the 20th Century. Today, we readily accept a much more diverse, global infusion of styles and influences. One can pontificate that it had to start somewhere and these two countries largely made it happen bilaterally; maybe not exclusively but certainly predominantly. Unsurprisingly, perhaps given the period, it is also male dominated.
Just how quickly we proceed from here depends entirely on the volume of the content. At this rate, we could be at this for a while yet. I didn’t realise when I started, what a colossal exercise it was going to be. However, I have found it fascinating to focus on musical evolution through this lens and I hope that you have found something of interest along the way. Maybe the Forties were not a great deal of interest to you, they were certainly before my time. We will get around to other periods that may motivate your attention span in a different way, I promise… eventually.
We are now well past the chronological midway point but we haven’t yet reached half way in terms of content. The massive upsurge of musical events that took place over the latter part of the 20th Century has still to unfold fully, raising the anticipation of plenty more to come… and, boy, is there plenty more! The ambitious effort to bring an interrelated bunch of musical factoids to life within the context of the broader human condition continues unabated. I hope you will join me on the rest of the journey, hopefully reconvening here‑ish next month. Until next time…
CRAVE Guitars ‘Quote of the Month’: “Material things feed the vanity of the ego, while music nourishes the spirit and sustains the soul.”
© 2019 CRAVE Guitars – Love Vintage Guitars.
← Return to ‘Musings’ page
Introduction
Hello and welcome back to the second part of what is turning out to be CRAVE Guitars’ magnum opus for this year. You can revisit Part I by clicking on the link below (it will open in new browser tab):
March 2019: Part I – 1650‑1900
After posting Part I in March 2019, I realised that the intended approach wasn’t going to work as I’d originally intended, especially as the series would progress. The idea for this year was to present each section in two parts, i) a short narrative setting the general historical context through global political, technological and economic events of the time, and ii) the list of music facts covering the same period. That worked well enough for the first article, which briefly covered 250 years (1650 to 1900) as a precursor to ‘modern’ musical times (from 1900 onwards).
Now… after a bit of reflection, this posed a few problems once we get into the 20th and 21st Centuries, as the number of facts and the historical context expanded in quantity and complexity. Not only this, there was a noticeable disconnect between the context and the musical facts that seemed to leave a hole in the story. While not a huge problem, I wasn’t happy with the result. The course of events needed something additional not only to make the story more coherent but also to become more interesting.
So, as it’s ‘early doors’ in the project, I decided to revisit the deferred piece of research that I was going to publish this year. This brainwave enabled me to adapt that other idea and to combine it with the historical context and musical facts. It isn’t quite what I was thinking of but I reckon it will work quite well. This extensive new piece of work involved documenting the development of relevant musical genres that took place over the same time period as the rest. This move, however, will negate the original idea I had for 2019. Oh well, never mind.
Unfortunately for me, this presented another issue which was to undertake the background work needed for it to make sense and this was on top of the other elements I was already working on. If that was the end of the story, that would be enough. However, it also meant that the length of each section would then not only become too long but also too ‘chunky’. The answer to that is to split the sections into decades, each comprising three parts – historical context, musical genre developments and music facts. That’s where we are this month.
As music is an art not a science, the approach is, to some extent, necessarily arbitrary. In an attempt to avoid repetition, each genre is only covered in the first period when it became popular. As you might expect, history, genres, artists and time periods are not always neatly organised, so there is often overlap and a degree of ‘fuzziness’ around the edges. I hope, however, that the structure is relatively easy to follow and makes some kind of sense.
As previously mentioned, this is not a detailed, comprehensive academic exercise. It is purely for entertainment and each snippet of information barely scratches the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If you want to know more, I’m afraid you’ll have to go and explore where it takes you for yourself.
Finally, before we get started with this month’s part of musical history, I also have to say that the starting point of the series is from the perspective of the guitar and guitar music. If you are reading this, then you probably already appreciate that anyway, however, it does need to be said. This means that, while other aspects of music are covered, it will have a definite and obvious guitar bias. As the author, that’s my prerogative and I’m not apologising for that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this part of the story because this is where things begin to get enthralling.
The Story of Modern Music Part II – 1900-1919
Musical Context
This is the new bit of the story added to cement the whole together, so a quick recap is needed.
Popular music of the early 1900s was very different from the predominantly highly structured classical music genres that preceded it. Starting around 1870, the catalyst for the emergent modern styles led to a seemingly miraculous eruption of musical innovation, creativity and experimentation during the 20th Century that was unlike anything that preceded it and probably unlike anything we will see again, at least in our lifetimes. Blues, jazz, gospel and folk were becoming particularly prominent and relevant in the western world.
In order to appreciate where modern music of the 20th Century began, we need to take a brief look at the origins that began to appear in the late 19th Century, even though they were still not necessarily prominent at the turn of the millennium. In these sections it is important to recognise that musical genres did not appear from nothing and neither did they disappear overnight. In addition, many musical genres endured and morphed over decades and many have seen periodical revivals. The categorisation of music into decades for the sake of this article is simply a convenient device to provide a frame of reference within which the ‘facts’ can be readily accommodated. Similarly, genre boundaries and musical styles emanating from particular geographical territories should be seen as fluid and constantly cross‑pollinating, and should not, therefore, be taken as definitive. Where appropriate, relevant notes will be included. Nothing in music, it seems, is simple or straightforward.
1870s
The Blues, or ‘the devil’s music’ is a major musical genre that originated in the Deep South of the United States such as Mississippi, Louisiana and southern Texas from around the 1870s and spread widely across the country changing its style as its popularity increased. Blues really came to prominence at the beginning of the 20th Century. The basis of the blues came predominantly from African American music and traditional African music, as well as European traditional folk music. The genre can be recognised often by repeating chord progressions and commonly a 12‑bar structure. The word ‘blues’ is largely attributed to melancholy, sad or depressed mental states and is often associated with trials and tribulations of post‑slavery black oppression. The development of the blues included work songs, spiritual songs, chants, and ballads. Around 1902, African American musician WC Handy, often called ‘the father of the blues’, heard blues music being played at a railway station and set about promoting the genre through early recordings. Some of the early practitioners of blues include Charlie Patton, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy and Lead Belly, along with many others. Blues music has been highly influential over the last 150 years and its lasting effects can be found widely in jazz as well as later musical genres such as rhythm & blues, rock ‘n’ roll and rock music. Blues has also spawned many sub‑genres including Delta blues, country blues, Piedmont blues, hill country blues, West Coast blues, electric Chicago blues, Texas blues and blues rock.
1890s
While orchestral music remained popular up to the end of the 19th Century, a new breed of music was attracting listeners’ attention. Ragtime emanated from the African American communities of urban cities including St. Louis in Missouri around 1895-1897. Ragtime takes the traditional march musical style that had been made popular by John Philip Sousa and was often played by African American bands. Ragtime incorporated ‘ragged’ syncopated rhythms often reminiscent of polyrhythmic African music. Ragtime became a massively popular form of dance music up to around 1919. Ragtime, along with blues music largely influenced and evolved into Jazz from about 1917. Dance crazes inspired by ragtime became popular with contemporary audiences of the time including the shimmy, the turkey trot, the buzzard lope, the chicken scratch, the monkey glide, and the bunny hug. Predominantly white audiences first encountered the new craze at popular vaudeville shows, with artists soon migrating to the music clubs. Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb and James Scott are known as the ‘big three’ ragtime composers of their time.
Right, now things are back on track, let’s get going with the early part of the 20th Century.
The 1900s
The 1900s was a decade that heralded not only intense hope for a new millennium but also further leaps of scientific and technological progress.
Historical Context 1900-1909
Musical Genre Development 1900-1909
Blues music was beginning to spread from the rural areas of the American Deep South and varieties such as hill blues and country blues reflected the social culture of their regional origins. Church music was also prominent in the American Bible belt, as was Anglo‑American folk music with immigrants influencing home grown styles.
Although classical music began to be overtaken rapidly by more modern forms, opera became particularly popular in the early 20th Century and sustained interest until about 1960.
Jazz music, often termed ‘America’s classical music’, is another major musical genre starting from around 1900. Early forms of jazz musical expression emerged mainly from the American south and particularly around the city of New Orleans in Louisiana, often referred to as Dixieland. Jazz stemmed from existing blues, ragtime and European military band music, all of which were popular in the late 19th Century. Musician Buddy Bolden is widely recognised for fusing blues and ragtime to form the basis of jazz. Partly because of these origins, early jazz music was principally performed by African American musicians. Jazz is characterized by ‘swing’ and ‘blue’ notes, call and response patterns, polyrhythmic arrangements and extensive improvisation. Jazz rapidly diversified with forms such as ‘honky‑tonk’, ‘boogie woogie’ and simple jug band music. The main surge in the popularity of jazz music occurred after WWI and particularly from 1920 onwards, known widely as ‘the Jazz Age’. The growth of the jazz craze soon spread to dance halls and speakeasies as well as ubiquitous marching bands. Music and dancing became a significant part of popular jazz culture, including the cakewalk, the black bottom, the Charleston, the lindy hop and the jitterbug. The introduction of recording technology and wireless radio also gave much broader exposure to the exciting new musical genre. Popular jazz artists included Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Fats Waller, as well as big band orchestras led by the likes of Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. Jazz rapidly diversified including forms such as Kansas City jazz, gypsy jazz, bebop, cool jazz, free jazz and fusion. Jazz and its many different styles remained hugely popular up to the 1940s and its legacy heavily influenced the proliferation of other musical genres from the early 1950s.
Musical Facts 1901-1909
The 1910s
The 1910s was a tumultuous decade and one that would leave the world on a watershed, with positive and negative implications for the ones that would follow.
Historical Context 1910-1919
Musical Genre Development 1910-1919
By 1910, blues music was migrating into urban areas and would have a major influence on all forms of music. Jazz particularly New Orleans Jazz maintained its popularity during the 1910s. Religion was of great solace to the oppressed black communities of southern USA and unaccompanied singing of spirituals grew in popularity, eventually morphing into gospel by the 1930s. Social development in America and particularly Europe during the 1910s was heavily impacted by World War I. In the absence of technological music distribution, the ‘new’ music from the previous decade continued to spread and it maintained its influence during the 1910s. As a consequence, no major genre styles appeared before the boom period of the post‑war ‘roaring twenties’. Recordings of Afro‑Caribbean calypso music began to appear in the 1910s, which proved not only popular but also influential.
Musical Facts 1910-1919
Tailpiece
OK, there you have it for this month’s article and we’ve only covered two decades! But, what influential decades they were. Things are just starting to hot up and there is still plenty to look forward to over coming months. Music and world events begin to get even more complicated and quite exciting from here on in. I’m not sure how many months this series will last, so we’ll just have to take things as they come.
In the background, the repatriation project is ongoing at an intentionally slow pace with about 3‑4 guitars a month attracting some much deserved tender loving care and attention. Also, the ‘most wanted’ vintage gear hunt is still underway but with no desperate urgency, as there is plenty else to be getting on with. Also, the postponed and much‑needed cellar renovation (i.e. future guitar accommodation) may begin to get underway by mid‑year. So, lots of fun and games to be had if at all possible. Until next time…
CRAVE Guitars ‘Quote of the Month’: “Intelligence is not about what you know or how much you know but about having the curiosity to ask ‘why?’”
© 2019 CRAVE Guitars – Love Vintage Guitars.
← Return to ‘Musings’ page
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This Day in Black History: Aug. 21, 1904
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2012-08-21T11:00:00+00:00
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Bandleader William "Count" Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on Aug. 21, 1904.
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BET
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https://www.bet.com/article/68wfsh/this-day-in-black-history-aug-21-1904
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Bandleader William "Count" Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on Aug. 21, 1904.
By Britt Middleton
Legendary bandleader, composer and jazz pianist William "Count" Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on Aug. 21, 1904. As a young man, Basie toured the vaudeville circuit as a solo pianist, music director and accompanist for blues singers, comedians and dancers but would go on to record alongside legends including Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. He is perhaps best known for his 1937 hit, "One O' Clock Jump," which helped solidify his status as one of the great band leaders in the big band and swing genres. On April 26, 1984, at the age of 79, he passed away from pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida.
BET National News - Keep up to date with breaking news stories from around the nation, including headlines from the hip hop and entertainment world. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
(Photo: Reg Birkett/Getty Images)
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[] |
[] |
[
"Count Basie"
] | null |
[
"IMDb"
] | null |
Count Basie. Soundtrack: Pearl Harbor. The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in...
|
en
|
IMDb
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
|
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 87 |
https://www.nndb.com/people/834/000024762/
|
en
|
Count Basie
|
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/silly-nndb-icon.png
| null |
AKA William Allen Basie
Born: 21-Aug-1904
Birthplace: Red Bank, NJ
Died: 26-Apr-1984
Location of death: Hollywood, FL
Cause of death: Cancer - Pancreatic
Remains: Buried, Pinelawn Memorial Park, Farmingdale, NY
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Pianist, Jazz Musician
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Big band pianist
Father: Harvey Lee Basie
Mother: Lilly Ann Childs
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity
Phi Mu Alpha Fraternity (uncertain)
Freemasonry
The Count Basie Orchestra Bandleader/Pianist 1937-49;1952-84
Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame 1978
Kennedy Center Honor 1981
Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame 1981
NEA Jazz Master 1983
Grammy Best Jazz Performance, Group (1958)
Grammy Best Performance By A Dance Band (1958)
Grammy Best Performance By A Band For Dancing (1960)
Grammy Best Performance By An Orchestra - For Dancing (1963)
Grammy Best Jazz Performance By A Soloist (Instrumental) (1976)
Grammy Best Jazz Performance By A Big Band (1977)
Grammy Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band (1980)
Grammy Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band (1982)
Grammy Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band (1984)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award (1979)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award (1985)
Grammy Hall of Fame Award (1992)
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2002)
Stroke
Paralyzed
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Blazing Saddles (7-Feb-1974) · Himself
Made in Paris (9-Feb-1966) · Himself
Sex and the Single Girl (25-Dec-1964) · Themselves
Cinderfella (16-Dec-1960) · Himself
Crazy House (8-Oct-1943)
Stage Door Canteen (24-Jun-1943) · Himself
Hit Parade of 1943 (26-Mar-1943)
Reveille with Beverly (4-Feb-1943) · Himself
Author of books:
Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (1985, memoir)
New!
NNDB MAPPER Create a map starting with Count Basie
Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
|
|||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 24 |
http://soozebluesjazz.weebly.com/count-basie.html
|
en
|
Count Basie
|
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http://soozebluesjazz.weebly.com/uploads/6/9/2/4/6924732/1211632.jpg?385
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The story of Count Basie is very much the story of the great jazz band that he led for close to 50 years (1935-1984), an orchestra with a distinctive sound, anchored by a subtle but propulsive beat,...
|
Sooze Blues & Jazz
|
http://soozebluesjazz.weebly.com/count-basie.html
| |||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 26 |
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
|
en
|
Count Basie
|
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[] |
[] |
[
"Count Basie"
] | null |
[
"IMDb"
] | null |
Count Basie. Soundtrack: Pearl Harbor. The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in...
|
en
|
IMDb
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
|
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 73 |
http://swampland.com/articles/view/title:larry_howard
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en
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Swampland:Larry Howard
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http://swampland.com/favicon.ico
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Larry Howard
The Southern Rock of Ages
Former Grinderswitch guitarist Larry Howard talks about his old band, his friends like The Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker Band and his journey toward a higher calling.
by Michael Buffalo Smith
April 2001
I wanted to find out where you were born and raised and first became interested in music.
I was born in Winterhaven, in central Florida, in 1950. Winterhaven is close to Disney World, about 20 miles, but when I grew up there was nothing there but swamps and orange trees. I was born in Florida and went to school there, I didn’t graduate from high school. I wasn’t really interested in it too much. I had some cousins that were ahead of me in school and when they would come home in the afternoons I would come home with them and do homework with them and they taught me a lot. When I started school I was probably already on the 3rd or 4th grade level. I got bored with school pretty quick.
I grew up there in central Florida and when I was 14 or 15 I had an opportunity to be around my dad and his brother who had a bluegrass band when we were growing up and as far back as I remember I was around musicians. Vassar Clements used to come by and sit in in my dad’s band when I was a little kid. My mom has a picture of me as a kid at about 18 months old sitting on the couch at home with the jumbo Gibson guitar and my arms wrapped around it. That’s pretty young. When I was 13-14 a man named General Van Fleet in Florida, who was a prominent general in WWII, paid for me to attend a special education school at the University of Miami for two summers where I was able to study theory and composition at the University of Miami which was an interesting thing. When I first got started in music I was interested in classical music. So, I went there to study theory and composition and composing.
The second year I went there Count Basie was on campus doing a clinic for the whole summer and had his solo chair players from the rest of his band. The rest of the people came out of the college. I went to audition and made it into his band there at the school. I was able to spend the next six weeks with Count Basie playing everyday in the summer music program at age 14. This culminated in a large concert at the Orange Bowl with Count Basie. After coming home from doing that some guy in town -- and understand this was 1964 and at that time there were no local bands -- this guy knew that I was heavily into music came to me and wanted me to play guitar in their band. I had never played a guitar but they convinced me to try it and they got a guy named Carl Chambers who had written “Close Enough to Perfect” for Alabama and “I’m a Brand New Man” and a bunch of other stuff.
He also played with the Bellamy Brothers and Ricky Skaggs. I went to him and he physically put my hands on a guitar and then showed me how to play some songs and in six weeks I played my first gig as a guitar player. At that time the band was called The United Sounds. That is the band I was telling you that Les Dudek joined later. Then Les and I played in another group in the '60s called Blue Truth, the first progressive all-original material band that we did. I guess that was 1965-66 when Les and I played with Ricky Burnette, the drummer from Grinderswitch We started playing and touring then. We did all original music and toured with and backed up lots of bands coming through Florida.
How did that evolve into Grinderswitch?
We had a group together in Florida and when Duane got killed, of course we all grew up playing the same circuit in Florida. Dickey’s band, The Jokers, and Gregg and Duane and the Allman Joys. We all played the pier in Daytona and all the same places in the mid-60s. We all knew each other and played together at times. When Duane got killed Dickey started a band called Solo -- he actually recruited the keyboard player that we had at the time, Peter Celeste, he is from Sarasota. He and a couple of other guys left Florida to come to Macon and play in Dickey’s band.
Then, after the band had been together for a short period of time and all these guys had moved up to Macon to play in the band, then they decided that they would continue The Allman Broyhers Band. The record company and the people in the band did not want Dickey to do a solo project at the same time he was trying to keep the band going without Duane. Berry was still alive at this time but he had brought these guys to Macon, moved these guys up there and he did not want to just break the group up after just having moved them up there. He contacted Les, and Les came to Macon to take Dickey’s place in the band Solo and this was to go on to become its own entity. So, Les took Dickey’s place in Dickey’s own band. That is how Les ended up playing on Brothers and Sisters because he took Dickey’s place in Dickey’s band. So, Les was here in town with the band that Dickey put together when Duane died. Les went into the studio and played on “Ramblin’ Man” and “Jessica.” That’s where the connection between Dickey and Les came in. During that period of time Joe Dan Petty was a roadie for the brothers. Joe Dan had been the drummer for Dickey’s band in Florida, the Jokers.
Joe Dan was up here in Macon and just working for them and not playing with anyone. He told Les that he would like to start playing again and put together a band. Les said he had just left a band in Florida and the drummer and guitar player are still down there and Danny Roberts had taken Les’s place. Danny was in a band when we left to come to Macon and Danny went with a band called Mud Crutch. Me and Danny and Ricky were playing with a band when Les left to come up here. We kept the band together and then Les called and said we should come up and meet with Joe Dan and jam and play with him and see what would happen. Me and Ricky came up and met Joe Dan and the day we got here we were out at the Brothers' farm and Joe Dan fell off a horse and broke his collarbone. We were up here to play with Joe Dan but after the accident we couldn’t play with him. So, we sat down and had a long talk about what we wanted to accomplish musically and what our musical philosophies were. Then we went back home and packed all our stuff and moved to Macon and started a band called Grinderswitch without ever having played with Joe Dan. The band was formed on the basis of similar philosophies and ideals. The band Mud Crutch went with Danny and moved to Colorado and tried to get something going and began recording with Shelter. That band is where Tom Petty came from. He was the lead singer in Mud Crutch. They did some recordings and demos but could never get a deal. The band split up and the next group that formed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom is from Gainesville and he was in Gainesville at the time and this whole crew was playing together in different formations in different bands at that time.
How did Dru Lumbar end up in the band?
Here is another point of interest that is odd to me. I have been living out in the country outside of Macon and I have been out there for about seven years and I have just moved into a house in Macon and then I was standing on the front porch, just in the past two weeks and realized that this house that I am in now is just two doors down from the original house that I moved into when I came to Macon back in 1972. So, after thirty years, I am right back on the same street that I started on.
That house that I moved into then was Dr. John’s Band -- Alex Taylor’s Band -- that was Chuck Leavell and Lou Mullinax and all those guys were in that house. Lou Mullinax was the drummer that played with Alex Taylor and also Dr. John. But he od’ed here and that broke the band up and that house was available. So, me, and Joe Dan and Ricky moved into that house.Then I was at Grant’s Lounge here in Macon one night and heard a guitar player and singer playing in a band called the King James Version. I liked them and when it was over with I went to the Carousel, a barbeque place, and here is this guy standing there from the band and I went up to him and told him how much I liked his guitar and singing and he asked what I was doing and he asked what I was doing. I told him that me and Joe Dan and Ricky were in this band together and I said that it was too bad he was in that band because he should come and jam with us. He told me that was his final performance with the band and that band went separate ways and Dru came to our house and played together for about six days and he went home and got his stuff and came to live at our house.
That is where Grinderswitch was formed, two doors down from where I am living now. When Ricky and I decided to live in Macon and go home and get our stuff and move we had been at the Big House hanging out for a month and when we went home to Florida Berry got killed. We left town to get our stuff and when we got back Berry was gone.
Do you have special memories of Grinderswitch and the people in it? Also, elaborate on the members, Joe Dan, his passing, memories of the band.
The biggest high point of that band was the fact that all the members of the band were together for about eight years, with me in the band, and after I left they did a couple of albums. During that period of time, Gregg would kid us about never coming home. We worked, realistically, all the time. We would go on the road with the Allman Brothers and then we toured for several years with us and Charlie Daniels and Marshall Tucker Band. We would go out for 40-45 days at a time and come home for 3-4 days and then do it again. Then we booked clubs and everything we could between that.
This is the only band I was ever in where we literally worked every night we possibly could. Through all of that the four original members -- and then later on Steve -- I think the high point of that band to me was the fact that it was really a family. We went through unbelievable good times and bad times and everyone to this day is very respectful of each other. We are brothers and more in the real sense than blood brothers. We had incredible highs and lows together. Ricky and I started playing in a jazz, dixieland band together when we were about 13 years old. We had been playing music since 1963.
I had never played in a permanent fixed band with anyone but Ricky. This was since the age of 13 years. But, the first band I played guitar in, Ricky was the drummer and up until 1980 he was the only drummer I had ever played with. Joe Dan was an incredible person, he and I were very much alike and very strong personalities. We butted heads over the years and were very protective of the other guys in the band over the years. You couldn’t call this a love/hate relationship -- it was a love relationship -- just like a marriage. We fought sometimes and everyone in the band did. I did not know any of the Southern bands that did not fight. Joe Dan and I did not ever get physical but Dru and I did a couple of times. There were nights when we went onstage and literally fight with our guitars, literally in a battle with the guitars and then in to the dressing room continue it there. The next morning we would hit the road again and I think the band -- more so than any of the other bands -- we were close to we were able to rebound from whatever our problems or differences were then. I can sight you personal things that we went through in the band that were incredible as far as some of the relationships with other people, in particular in the area of females, we went through some incredible changes but the next morning we were on the road and everyone was smiling.
What do you recall about the tour with Marshall Tucker and Bonnie Bramlett in Europe?
Well, I had such a great time I hardly remember it. It was one of those tours. (laughs) When we got into London on the first day we had been playing at the Starlight Amphitheatre right before. Actually, we had been on that tour that culminated at the end of Europe. Grinderswitch had been on the road for about 120 days straight. We had done a whole tour of the U.S. starting in the northeast, across the U.S. and all the way down through California and Texas and through the midwest, back down into Louisiana and Alabama and that whole area and then into Macon for three days of rehearsal with Bonnie and straight to Europe for one month. I do not think I had a day off for 120 days. When we got over there we had been at the Starlight and some people we had known from a motorcycle group came to the Starlight to see me and Toy (Caldwell) and said "when you get to London go to the Hard Rock Cafe, someone will meet you and be there to go with you throughout Europe.” When we got there Toy and I got a taxi and went to the Hard Rock cafe and had no idea who would meet us. Toy and I were in our usual form -- which was pretty shaky -- and we got this taxi and the driver took off like a New York taxi driver and Toy started yelling and got down in the floor board of the taxi. (laughs) Toy was screaming at the guy and hollering at me wanting out of the taxi. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe and went into the bathroom and this guy came in and said he was supposed to meet us. Toy and I both did not know how he knew we from America, but we were standing there with cowboy boots and hats on and no one else looked like that. (laughs) We were so naive we didn’t stop to consider we looked so different from everyone else. I can tell you for sure that I know all these people and no one is going to tell the true story of what happened between 1971 and 1980. It will never be told. No one will ever tell it.
I know for a fact from the many Southern Rockers that I have interviewed -- we would be off the record talking -- and they will say “well, we might as well stop at this point and not go too far because a lot of the stories could shake the foundation of families and the legal system if it was talked about.” (laughs)
I think we were either in Paris or Scotland and the newspapers came out the next morning after the concert that night, I think we did that live album in five different countries on that tour. We would go to a country and there would be mobile trucks of stuff there waiting on us. That straight Southern Rock album was actually recorded in five different countries. But I remember waking up the next morning and the headline of the paper said something about the cowboys came to France to rock and they came on stage reeking of whiskey and hash. That sort of sums up the tour.
The tour was sponsored by Jim Beam and when we got there the first concert we played they brought in cases of Jim Beam whiskey, and the tour people were upset because we did not want to drink it. We were drinking other things and they just wanted us to drink the whiskey rather than buy something else. We finally got angry and said well, if you want us to drink this we will. That lasted about three days and then the promoters decided to get us whatever we wanted. (laughs)
With Grinderswitch how did you come to leave the band? What caused you to make that decision and what did you do after you left?
The main thing that led to that decision was that I had a severe drug problem at that time. When I came to Grinderswitch, we started in 1972, and I think that particularly myself and Joe Dan came to the table with drug habits already. This was not a thing where our association with Southern Rock began all that -- that began years before anyone had coined Southern Rock. After a couple of years Joe Dan became completely straight. He hardly ever even had a beer. Which is amazing to me that he tolerated all of us going crazy all the time. I had gone through for a very long time and had been through a very serious drug addiction problem, as did other people involved with that whole thing -- were in the same category. The thing that was the final straw for me to finally leave the band, I had been a couple of short term treatment programs and on an extended tour with David Allan Coe.
I had been roaring pretty heavy on the road with David. When we got home the guys in the band said I needed to check in someplace and get treated and straightened out. This was becoming a liability, legally and otherwise with the band. I knew that what they were saying was true and that I had tried treatment programs before and it did not do anything for me. I had even gone to a psychiatrist and he had refused to see me any more. I was paying someone to see me but they said they did not want to see me any more. I wished I could blame it on the drugs but the drugs were a symptom of what was going on inside of me. I had begun to realize that the lifestyle that I was leading was influencing the thousands of people that came to see us, they were emulating what we were doing. What had started in the '70s that had been an innocent party situation and had turned into a real devastation to the people around me and that people that were coming to see us.
That thing made me stop and leave the band and stop and take a long look at what I was doing. Early on in the '70s I would go out and play when we were touring with the Brothers and we would go out onstage and everyone showed up to party and have a good time but, later on, in the latter part of the '70s, I was showing up heavily addicted and I was seeing in the eyes of the audience that they were really in the same condition I was in. In a very real way they were emulating what we were doing. The Southern Rockers are coming to town and we are all going to let out the stops and party until we can’t move any more. Unfortunately, in the early '70s those people came and did that then they sobered up and went to their jobs. But we did it over and over every night. In the later '70s I began to realize that these people had been coming around for a long time and many of them were fighting the same things we were fighting, long term alcohol and drug abuse. This was destroying our families and people’s families. People were dying around me and in the audience. I just stopped and looked at it and said is this what I want for my life and how is this the direction I want to lead other people in.
What did you do right after that?
When I left the band in December 1979, for 2 or 3 months I just sat in the house and got high. I just boarded up the doors and played my guitar and got high around the clock. I was dealing with this whole issue of where had this whole road led me to. I had destroyed my marriage and was working on destroying another marriage. I had seen everybody around me do the same thing. After 2 or 3 months of this I moved back to Florida to see if I could get myself straightened out. I moved into this mansion with some very wealthy people and instead of getting better I got worse. Everything that I had been doing was there in abundance and we just got into a perpetual party and I just could not get away from it. Then on August 20, 1980 I overdosed for the third time, this time in Florida, and I ended up in the hospital. I was in an operating room in the hospital for nine hours. Oddly enough, I knew this was where all of this was leading to. During the time I was in the operating room, my family was in the waiting room and the doctors had told them that there was no way I would survive. At some time during all of this I was out of my body watching all of this, me on the table and seeing my family and trying to talk to them but they could not hear me. I had been going through this process for about one year and all of this was going on inside me every night when I was hitting the stage. What am I doing and where is this leading me and other people. I realized that I had finally come to the end of the road and probably was going to die.
Having been raised in the South I believed that there was a God and it had not really served me in anyway. Believing that there was a God, I was not acknowledging that. In the South, when you grow up there are Christian people around but I had never applied this to my life. The knowledge of this was not doing me any good at all. I wish I could say that I had some kind of spiritual awakening but actually what I had was a death experience. And in the midst of this I said to God that I believed he was there somewhere and if you are there put me back in that body and I will do whatever you want me to do. It was not really about religion, it was not about anything but me saying God if you are there I want to have a relationship with you. I woke up in that operating room as straight as I am now. The people in the operating room freaked out. I had fallen face first on a slate floor and busted my face open. I had been up for days freebasing cocaine and taking quaaludes with it. When I od’ed I had fallen on my face and fractured my jaw and split open my chin. When I woke up on the operating table I was still in that condition and they had not tried to repair any of the damage because they did not feel I would live. When I woke up I was totally awake and straight. They began to sew me up and put me together and I have been straight ever since that day.
I was released from the hospital the next day and have been drug and alcohol free for 21 years. I am not saying that in a pious way. I am not condemning anyone for their behavior or whatever they are doing. This is what made major changes in my life. I have never been a religious person; the dictionary describes religion as man’s search for God. I think that leading up to that point I was searching for some type of a true God and some type of Godliness because everywhere I looked was destruction. It was that day that my search for God ended and I tell people that I am not into religion and it could get you in lots of trouble. You can search down all the wrong avenues and not know God. I am not into all that stuff but I know for sure that day I was looking at myself from out of my body and I said "God if you are real, put me back into that body and it was an instantaneous thing."
So, you are looking at your relationship with God as more of a personal thing more than some labeled religion. Do you feel that going to church is the only way to be a Christian?
To begin with, from the Biblical standpoint, what makes you a Christian is accepting the fact that Christ was who he was and did what he did -- and you accept that by faith, that is what makes you a Christian. The Bible says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you shall be saved. Going to church does not make you Christian. There are lots of people that go to church that are far from being Christian. I have people ask me about church and say that they do not want to go because of the corruption and greed and hypocrisy. If anyone tells me that they are not already involved in that in their life, there is no such thing. I go to church but not out of obligation. I go to meet new people and have friendships with other people.
I have always felt that the majority of people I have met in church are some of the weirdest people I have ever met. On the other hand, they are feeling the same about me. I am as weird as anyone can be when it comes to a traditional church atmosphere but I have made up my mind not to let the weirdness keep us apart. So, I deal with their weirdness and they deal with my weirdness. I go to an independent church -- it is multicultural and we are up to people of about 13 different races. There are doctors, lawyers and welfare people. This church is like the world we live in and there are about 1000 people in our church and we have grown to two services per Sunday. There are lots of traditional church people there and it is still weird. At the same time I show up there and am very involved in that Church and they feel the same way about me. They feel I am weird but that does not stop us from having common ground in getting along.
It is all humanity. Some people are not aware of it but I have been an ordained minister since 1987. I did not send off and get my papers through Playboy magazine. I take that seriously. I am able to marry people’s kids from around here. I married Joe Dan’s kids and I am able to help in times when we have deaths in the community of music here in Macon. I presided over Joe Dan’s funeral and I spoke at Sam Whiteside’s memorial and I take that seriously. At the same time I am not into religion. I think that can get you into a lot of problems. I do believe that I have an ongoing and fruitful relationship with God and I am glad that it is. The thing that burns me up most about people is that they tell me that they do not want anything to do with religion and I say “good, there is hope for you,” and number two is that people say they are not into this “God thing” and I say “how can you not be into God when you do not know anything about it?” To me, it just makes me feel bad when people tell me that because I feel like they are being totally ignorant. According to world report here is something that can potentially help you make the necessary changes to make in your life and give you some kind of eternal peace. They tell me that they want nothing to do with it and know absolutely nothing about it.
At the same time August 19, 1980 I was in the same condition, sitting on the side of the bed freebasing cocaine and wondering what was wrong with me and what was wrong with the world. God draws people to him in such a way that people respond and people are drawn to that relationship. It is not anything that I can do and not anything that a church person can do. All we can do is be there and help to assist in that. It is not something that I can say that you need to quit what you are doing and go to church every time the doors are open. That is not any of my business and what it is is your understanding and your relationship with God that will ultimately bring you to where you need to be. All I can do is be there and answer questions and let my own life and 21-year experience with life be some sort of barometer for people as to whether or not this is true or of any benefit to them. I do not go preach to people. I would like people to observe what is going on in other’s lives and that they know that have a relationship with God. You are going to find people that are going to claim that and there is not going to be any proof of that whatsoever.
I tell people that, by faith, I cried out to the God that might do something for me in desperation and it was not a spiritual awakening or nirvana, it was out of desperation to make a change in my life and at that point to make a change in my death. At that point I was obviously dying. The good thing about it is that since then I do not have to accept it by faith any more because I can go right down the line and prove to myself and anyone else that God is in my life and my relationship with him is real and I have proof of that. I think that people just have to accept it by faith and I think that is how God intended it to be. But it does not remain there. God will do things in your life that is incredible and lots of times He is doing those things in our life and we just do not recognize it and give Him the credit for it. We just receive the benefit from it. I know I did when I was on the operating table in 1980. I have not done anything differently except try to keep a relationship with him, keeping an open mind of communication with him and since that time my whole life has turned around. I have my own studio and I will not have to bow before another record company. I do not chase after a record company to release a product, because I am doing it for a different reason. I do it because I think that music should be something that is helpful and helps people in some way or another. At the end of 1979 I felt like the music and lifestyle I was leading was destructive to me and my family and that everybody I came into contact with on and off stage. I do not feel that way any more.
I feel like my music is designed and made to make people to feel better and offer people some kind of hope in their relationships and their relationships with God. I am not interested in commercially exploiting it. I am interested in whoever wants it or needs it has it. That is why I give the majority of it away. In my last project I gave away 30,000 pieces or product. It was in the inner cities, Indian reservations, in foreign countries, all over Russia. We are giving away 20,000 pieces of product on the eastern border of Russia. I have been able to work with other musicians and produced a number of albums over the years now and especially over the past 4-5 years. I am producing more albums and I have a non-profit organization. Some of the people that I said were weird at church have been able to finance me going to an Indian reservation where there is absolutely no money or hope and because of the support of people around me I can financially afford to go to these places and do concerts and spend time with them and go to their homes and leave music with them that is uplifting and not have to charge them. The new product that I am working on right now, when I got ready to do this I contacted people who help me do what I do and this whole project was paid for before I even started and this was in two weeks time. This new CD project was totally paid for before I even walked into the studio. Everything in that studio is totally paid for. If people want proof that there is a God just follow me around and see what he is doing. Starting on Thursday I am going to all the prisons in Georgia with a team of others and I will be in there doing concerts in all these prisons and the only way that happens is that I make my music free of charge. Now, there is nobody that I know in the Southern Rock business that could not be doing a life sentence in prison right now. I make it a point that I am going into these places and see these guys and these are some of the guys that were seeing some of the shows that we played. It is amazing to see people that are locked up in this country that were at multiple Southern Rock concerts. Now I have a chance to give something back. These people know me through all of this and go back and give something back. Some of them are locked back in cells so far back that I can’t play for them but I get back in there and spend 15 minutes with someone who has been locked in a cell for 10 years. I am 50 years old and have made a commitment to give back to others for the next twenty years if I live that long. I appreciate all the fabulous experiences I have had throughout my life. Do I wish that I had not done the things that I did throughout the whole Southern Rock thing? No, I am not sorry, I did this and I am at the point where I do not need my ego built up and to no help of the music industry I am financially in a place where I can do what I do.
After all the years in the industry with Capricorn I died on an operating table broke and busted. My brother, Toy Caldwell, died the same way. I can go down the list and give you names of people that went through that whole experience and ended up with nothing in the end. Do I wish I had not done it -- no -- it was an experience that very few people in this world will ever experience. But now at fifty I do not need another record out there to prove to people that I am talented and I can play, write songs, engineer. I need to go back to people less fortunate and spend time with them. I am not saying everyone needs to do that. I am not on a campaign saying that if you were in the music business in the '60s and '70s you should go back and do penance for it. This is just where life brought me to this. It is hard to hear the passion that I have for what I do over a computer. I am going to Russia soon to help some musicians in Russia produce some music and have the opportunity to make a CD. I have made a ton of them and lost count of how many I have done and I don’t even know any more but there are some people out here that have not had an opportunity to do any. And Omega Arts is a non-profit organization that helps people to find a relationship with God and utilize the art gift that God has put in them and there are no obligations or strings attached to them. In the music industry I am not as visible as I once was but it does not mean that I am not as busy as I once was. There is a difference in trying to put yourself in the spotlight and trying to be busy helping other people to achieve their goals and desires in life. I have been sunburned from the spotlight and blind from all that stuff.
It does not hold an allure for me any more. In some way everyone who steps in to the spotlight is looking for approval and acceptance. I have found approval and acceptance in my relationship with God. I don’t need that but I do not shun it. There is nothing I enjoy more than playing live but I do not need that for acceptance or approval. One of the things that I have in my studio is what Pascal said, “All of man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a room quietly alone.” I think that is probably one of the truer statements I have seen in my life. I have reached a place in my life where I can sit quietly in a room alone and realize that I am not alone.
This has been different from so many of the interviews that I have done and this has been really interesting to me. You have this new CD coming out -- what are your immediate future plans?
The new CD is called Wood and Steel. It is combination of blues and black gospel and Southern Rock mixed together. In the music Jack is playing with a lot of brushes and plastics instead of sticks and the majority of the album is retro as far as style and I have a combination of acoustic leads and acoustic piano. There are several people playing on it. Bonnie (Bramlett) is singing on it, Dru (Lombar) and Chuck (Leavell) are playing on it. I have a guy that used to sing with the Imperials that sang with Elvis doing some background vocals. It is a further continuation of different styles that I do. It seems like every album has to be a different slant on the blues. I wrote all the tunes and all the mixing and everything in production by myself. I have never done that and it is proving really interesting. I don’t even have an assistant. It will be interesting to see how that turns out. I am producing a project in April on a guy from Missouri, Jimmy Bratcher, and the Russian event and a festival in Memphis in June called The One Festival that deals with social awareness -- and the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois that is an alternative Christian Festival and it has about 40,000 and a five-hour blues jam. Bonnie is coming and Dru’s band and my band and Glen Kaiser’s band and I think Jimmy Nalls will join us and Craig Martin if he gets free that day. Bruce Brookshire will be there as well. That night we are doing a set as a Southern Rock of Ages set with all the Southern Rockers coming together for a jam. I am exploring the idea of having something like this on a regular basis with all of these Christian performers.
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Allen, Henry “Red.” Born in Algiers, Louisiana, in 1908, Allen first played trumpet in his father’s brass band. In 1927 he joined King Oliver, as had Louis Armstrong before him. After working with the already well-known leader Luis Russell, he worked with Fletcher Henderson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, and with Luis Russell’s band again, now fronted by Armstrong. He recorded several wonderful 78s with his own band in the late Twenties and early Thirties. His period of greatest influence was in the late Thirties, when perhaps only Armstrong and Roy Eldridge were more popular and more critically acclaimed. His powerful style, though derived at first from Armstrong, later developed idiosyncratically to the point where his long, melodic lines and original ideas were admired by many modern players as well as devotees of older styles. In the Forties he formed his own sextet and worked at prominent clubs in New York into the Fifties. He was featured in the epochal CBS-TV show “The Sound Of Jazz,” which aired not long before the Big Picture was taken. Later he was still a very powerful mainstream player, though he often performed in Dixieland groups. Allen died in 1967.
Basie, William “Count.” Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1904, Basie was a pianist, leader, composer and leading figure in the swing era with a long string of successful releases. After studying piano with his mother, he went as a young man to New York where he met and learned from James P. Johnson, Fats Waller (from whom he also learned to play the organ) and other stride piano giants. By the time Basie was 20 he was touring vaudeville circuits as a solo performer and working as an accompanist for blues singers, dancers and comedians. Stranded in the late Twenties in Kansas City with an out-of-work touring group, he decided to stay there, playing piano in a silent-film theatre. In July 1928 he joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils, which included another sometime pianist, blues shouter Jimmy Rushing. About two years later Basie left the Blue Devils with others to join the Bennie Moten Orchestra. When Moten died suddenly in 1935, Basie left and organized a band with several former members of the Moten band, including Jo Jones and Lester Young, calling themselves the Barons of Rhythm. It was this band which legendary record producer and talent finder John Hammond heard on the radio. Hammond went to Kansas City to scout, and brought the band to New York for eventual stardom as the Count Basie Orchestra. Basie came to New York in 1936 with a small band which he soon enlarged to the standard swing band size of five or six brass, four or five saxophones, and four rhythm. The band continued to thrive during World War II as one of the greatest of swing bands. Despite many personnel changes, it dropped down to a septet for only two years, 1950 through 1952. The band’s recordings and radio broadcasts from New York and other big cities brought Basie international fame for “One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumping at the Woodside” and many other classics. The band was particularly successful with its use of arrangements featuring Basie’s minimalist piano style (often using only one or two fingers) and the spectacular playing of its stars. Among them were saxophonists Lester Young, Herschel Evans and Buddy Tate; trumpeters Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Harry Edison and Buck Clayton; trombonists Dickie Wells and Benny Morton; and the legendary rhythm section of Jo Jones on drums, Freddy Green on guitar and Walter Page on bass. During and after the War Basie recruited younger, inspired soloists, including saxophonists Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, Paul Gonsalves and Illinois Jacquet; trombone players J.J. Johnson and Vic Dickenson; and trumpeters Al Killian, Joe Newman and Emmett Berry. In 1954 the band made its first tour of Europe. In 1955, Basie’s 20th year as a leader, it repeated the European tour. The band featured new stars Thad Jones and Joe Wilder on trumpets; Benny Powell and Henry Coker on trombones; and arrangements by Ernie Wilkins, Neal Hefti, Johnny Mandel and Manny Albam. In September 1957 the band became the first black group to play the Waldorf-Astoria, working there a record-setting 13 weeks. It began to make yearly overseas tours and appeared at major clubs. In addition to the many Basie band recordings, Basie made a number of records as a sideman, starting in 1929 with Walter Page and Bennie Moten and with blues singer Joe Turner. Basie remained a popular and permanent institution on the national and international scene until his death. Even today his band continues to play under the leadership of longtime veteran Frank Foster. The Basie band and its stars have garnered many awards, including several from the readers of Down Beat and Metronome. Basie died in 1984.
Blakey, Art. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1919, this drummer and bandleader was an important figure in the history of modern jazz, particularly hard bop. Blakey was known to many musicians by his Muslim name “Buhaina.” Early in his career he was a sideman in the later years of the famous Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1939-1944). He also led his own big band briefly in the Boston area. In 1944 he joined the seminal Billy Eckstine band, an incubator of bop which sprang from the Earl Hines big band. It included many innovative musicians, notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and Fats Navarro. In 1947, when the Eckstine group disbanded, Blakey formed a big rehearsal band he called the Jazz Messengers. The many incarnations of Jazz Messengers were proving grounds for a long list of important musicians, including Donald Byrd, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Woody Shaw, and Branford and Wynton Marsalis. His later Messenger groups were smaller, usually quintets. Blakey’s first band, co-led with Horace Silver, featured trumpeter Kenny Dorham and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. When Silver left to form his own band, Blakey took over the group. In 1971-1972 he toured in the Giants of Jazz with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt and Kai Winding. Blakey, an innovative and influential drummer, fronted an unbroken series of Jazz Messengers until his death in 1990.
Clayton, Buck. Born in Parsons, Kansas, in 1911, Clayton was a trumpet player, composer and arranger. He learned piano from his father, who taught various instruments. He moved to California at 21, but left shortly thereafter to take a 21-piece band to Shanghai for two years. Back in the U.S. he replaced the prominent Hot Lips Page in Count Basie’s band in 1936, when promoter Joe Glaser attempted to make Page into another Louis Armstrong. Clayton is best known for his work with Basie from 1936 through 1943, as well as his excellent arrangements in mainstream swing style. His trumpet work was always inventive and inspired, showing great range and taste. As a result, he was chosen to play on many of the important Teddy Wilson-led Billie Holiday recordings of the late Thirties and early Forties. As an exciting but thoroughly logical and lyrical trumpeter, he was rivaled only by his contemporaries Roy Eldridge and Red Allen. After seven years with the Basie band as it rose to fame in the late Thirties and early Forties, Clayton joined the army in 1943. Discharged in 1946, he became a member of Norman Granz’ Jazz At The Philharmonic, touring France in 1949 and again in 1953. He was a member of Joe Bushkin’s quartet in New York from 1951 through 1953 and later made numerous records with bands assembled for specific occasions. He worked with Benny Goodman at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 and with Eddie Condon’s groups beginning in 1959. He toured Japan and Australia and made several annual tours of Europe in the Sixties, appearing at jazz festivals. In the mid-Sixties lip problems curtailed his trumpet playing, but he continued to arrange and compose, and fronted his own bands frequently into the late Eighties. Clayton died in New York in 1993.
Eldridge, Roy. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1911, Eldridge was a bridge between Louis Armstrong’s style and bop, and one of the most significant trumpet players and leaders of the Thirties and Forties. He was self-taught except for some instruction in theory from his elder brother Joe. He started playing semi-professionally at the age of 16, and within a couple of years was on the road with well-known bands, including those of Horace Henderson, Speed Webb, Zack Whyte and Elmer Snowden. Eldridge worked with Teddy Hill’s band in New York in 1935, where he teamed up with tenor star Chu Berry (Coleman Hawkins’ main challenger). Next, he joined Fletcher Henderson, one of the premier swing bands of its time, where he followed Red Allen as the principal trumpet soloist. Eldridge left Henderson in 1936 to lead his own explosive little band—three saxophones, four rhythm—in a famous extended stay at the historic Three Deuces Club in Chicago. For many months the band broadcast nightly at 1:00 A.M. During this period Eldridge says he “left the band business to study radio engineering for eight months,” a claim which turned out to be only wishful rewriting of history. (“I know because I was his electronics mentor for the rest of his life,” reports Charles Graham.) After a second stint with his band at the Three Deuces, Eldridge went on to national prominence both as horn player and vocalist with Gene Krupa’s big band, where he replaced his friend and admirer, the phenomenal trumpet player Shorty Sherock. He made memorable recordings with Krupa, two of which would be identified with him for the rest of his life: “Let Me Off Uptown” and “Rockin’ Chair.” Later Eldridge formed a larger band which played at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York and at Kelly’s Stable. He subsequently worked with many popular big bands, including those of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and was on staff at CBS. During this time he toured for more than a year in Europe. In the Fifties he frequently performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic where he teamed with Coleman Hawkins, an association that continued as long as he traveled. Eldridge worked briefly with Count Basie’s band but found it too confining. Finally in 1970 he settled, for the rest of his performing life, at Jimmy Ryan’s club in New York. Even in this format, he managed to remain the surging, vital swing star he had always been. The Ryan’s job lasted for about 10 years, and though the club had been known as a 52nd Street Dixieland stronghold, during Eldridge’s long tenure it became a home of swing. Eventually doctor’s orders forced him to stop playing the trumpet. However, he continued to appear throughout the Eighties, singing on occasion and playing a little drums and piano (a role he had frequently filled while with Gene Krupa) and at school clinics. In 1989, three weeks after his wife of 52 years died, Eldridge stopped eating and was taken to a hospital where, according to the medical diagnosis, he died of malnutrition. Many who knew him consider loneliness to be the cause of his death.
Freeman, Bud. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1906, Freeman was a tenor saxophonist most often associated with Chicago-style jazz. Although the tenor saxophone had previously not been considered a proper instrument in Dixieland music, he made it acceptable. His style derived partly from the sound of prominent C-melody saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, longtime partner of Bix Beiderbecke. Lester Young often cited Freeman as one of his influences. Freeman’s solos were usually bouncy, as demonstrated in his original composition “The Eel,” which he recorded several times. He was part of the famous Austin High School Gang of Chicago, which often included guitarist, raconteur and promoter Eddie Condon as well as Gene Krupa, Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy and Dick McPartland. As early as 1928 Freeman played in Paris with his close friend, drummer Dave Tough. Later he was part of the saxophone sections of many famous big bands, led by such notables as Paul Whiteman, Ray Noble, Art Kassell, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack, Red Nichols, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. In 1939 Freeman formed a small recording band which he called the Summa Cum Laude Orchestra. After a relatively brief stint on the road with this group, he worked primarily as a soloist. Beginning in 1969 he played in The World’s Greatest Jazz Band. Freeman died in Chicago in 1988.
Gillespie, John Birks “Dizzy.” Born in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917, Gillespie was a trumpeter, leader and composer. At the time of the Big Picture, he was well on his way to becoming one of the premier jazz musicians in the world. He studied trombone in his early teens but soon switched to trumpet. Gillespie first came to prominence in the late Thirties when he was hired by Teddy Hill to replace Roy Eldridge. Lionel Hampton’s first recording for RCA Victor in 1939 starred Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Chu Berry and Benny Carter on saxophones, Cozy Cole and Milt Hinton in the rhythm section, and a 22-year-old Gillespie on trumpet. He was in the Cab Calloway band for more than two years before being fired for cutting up—both figuratively and literally. When he was about 26 or 27, Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, along with a few other musicians, began to evolve swing into the complicated music called bebop (later bop). Gillespie worked for a while in the big band of Earl Hines and later with singer Billy Eckstine’s band, where he was the musical director. Both bands were strongly influenced by his ideas. After that he led his own groups, several radical large bands in the late Forties and early Fifties. Upon discovering that big bands were economically impractical, he spent the rest of his life leading small groups, although he often fronted big bands on special occasions. He had an unusually outgoing personality that radiated good humor, mimicry and self-parody in equal parts. His humorous stage manner, incredible trumpet improvisations and innovative compositions were the basis of his fame. At the time of his death, Gillespie was the most popular—and the most important—jazz musician in the world. His numerous works include “A Night in Tunisia,” “Manteca,” “Groovin’ High,” “Woody ‘n You” and many others among today’s jazz standards. Although he had joined the Baha’i religion, his wife Lorraine was a devout Catholic and kept a small Catholic chapel in their home. When he died in 1993, two major memorial ceremonies were held in New York. The first was in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church at 53rd Street in Manhattan (where Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge and scores of other musicians’ final rites had taken place) attended by an overflow congregation of several hundred mourners. The second, a few days later, was held in the huge Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in upper Manhattan, attended by several thousand people.
Glenn, Tyree. Born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1912, Glenn played trombone and vibraphone. His professional career began in Washington, D.C., where he played with the Tommy Mills band from 1934 through 1936. By 1937 he was playing in New York City with Eddie Barefield, then Eddie Mallory and later Benny Carter (1937-1939). He joined Cab Calloway’s orchestra in 1940, where he remained until 1946. He toured Europe with Don Redman in 1946, and in 1947 joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra for five years. In 1953 he went to WPIX in New York as a staff musician. Next, he joined CBS radio, where he appeared daily on the Jack Sterling show and later on Arthur Godfrey’s daily radio show. Subsequently he worked at New York Studios and again for Ellington. While playing with Eddie Mallory, Glenn accompanied Ethel Walters on her U.S. tour. It was she who encouraged him to take up the vibes by giving him his first set, which he kept and used for the rest of his life. Soon after joining Ellington, Glenn added to his repertoire the growl and wah-wah sounds featured on many Ellington numbers, and used them in all his playing thereafter to great effect. In addition to his exceptionally clear ringing tone, special effects and fine vibraphone solos, Glenn’s easy, outgoing personality made him very popular in his frequent night club and radio appearances. During his last years (1965-1968) Glenn performed with Louis Armstrong & his All-Stars. While on the road with Armstrong, Glenn served as the band’s musical director, often going on ahead of the group to rehearse local rhythm sections for the band. Glenn died in New Jersey in 1972.
Hawkins, Coleman. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1904, this great tenor saxophonist went on the road with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds in 1922 while still in his teens. In 1923 he joined Fletcher Henderson, at that time one of the hottest bands in the country, and stayed there for 10 years. Believing there was nowhere else for him to go in the U.S., Hawkins sent the leading English bandleader, Jack Hylton, a telegram saying, “I would like to come to England.” Hylton wired back at once, hiring him. Hawkins intended to stay only a year or so but stayed almost five. By the time he returned to the States, he was widely acknowledged to be one of the best tenor players in the world. In late 1939 Hawkins made his famous recording of “Body and Soul.” It was a runaway hit that remains a favorite of musicians. Consisting of a four-bar piano intro followed by several choruses of tenor sax and a protracted ending, it had no vocal chorus and was not arranged. Less than three minutes long, it is arguably the most admired saxophone solo of all time and a true masterpiece. Hawkins was associated with that tune for the rest of his life. After the record’s success, he quickly assembled a nine-piece band and went on the road for several years. He never again worked under any leader. At the time of the Big Picture, he was one of the best-regarded older jazzmen, reigning as “The Champ” until his decline in the mid-Sixties. Some assume that Lester Young had long ago challenged him and even toppled him from preeminence, but the two were exponents of widely differing schools—Hawkins “hot” and Young “cool”—and were never really in competition. Hawkins died in 1969.
Hinton, Milt. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1910, Hinton was an excellent amateur photographer as well as a consummate bass player. Hinton grew up in Chicago and started playing with prominent bands in the Thirties. In the mid-Thirties he worked for Zutty Singleton at the Three Deuces Club in Chicago, until he was hired away in 1936 by Cab Calloway, with whom he stayed until 1951. From then on he freelanced extensively, working with such top leaders as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. One of the most sought-after bassists in jazz, Hinton has appeared on innumerable recordings, often under his own name. Many of his thousands of photographs, taken over the course of 50 years, have been published in two books coauthored with his friend David Berger, Bass Line and Overtime, where some of the pictures in this film first appeared. Though active into the Nineties, Hinton was slowing down by 1997. His health continued to fail until he died in the year 2000.
Jackson, Chubby. Born in New York City in 1918, bass player Jackson was playing bass in popular bands by 1937, including those of Mike Reilly (“The Music Goes Down and Around”), Johnny Messner, Raymond Scott, Jan Savitt and Henry Busse. From 1941 through 1943 he was with Charlie Barnet before starting his greatest association, the first of several stints with various Woody Herman “herds.” As a key member of Herman bands, Jackson was widely regarded to be their spark plug. He composed several of the bands’ hits, including “Northwest Passage.” Jackson went to Europe with his own quintet in 1947 and led a band in New York in 1949. His ebullient personality and great drive made him a valuable addition to any group he played with during the bop era. He won numerous awards, including Esquire’s New Star award in 1945, its Gold Award in 1946 and 1947, and the Down Beat poll in 1945. It is interesting to note that Jackson’s son Duffy is an outstanding drummer who worked for years with various Count Basie bands and other bands around the world. Chubby died in 2003.
Jones, Hank. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1918, pianist Jones was the elder brother of jazz musicians Thad (trumpet) and Elvin (drums). He started playing in Michigan and later moved to Buffalo, New York. He arrived in New York in 1944 and played in the groups of Hot Lips Page, Andy Kirk and John Kirby, and he also accompanied Billy Eckstine. In addition, Jones worked with Coleman Hawkins, and in 1947 was on one of the first Jazz At The Philharmonic tours. He accompanied Ella Fitzgerald from 1948 through 1953, including a tour of Europe, and made several great recordings with Charlie Parker for Norman Granz. He freelanced in New York until 1956, then joined with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. He did more freelancing until 1958, just before the Big Picture was taken. After that he joined the CBS network orchestra and stayed there until it disbanded 17 years later. Jones is the epitome of “session” musicians because he can readily fit into any musical style—old or new, traditional, swing or modern. He can read anything with great precision, a must in top professional work. He performed on the Ed Sullivan Show many times, and has played on hundreds of recordings. In the Seventies he was pianist and assistant to the conductor for the Broadway show “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” In recent years he has appeared and toured with innumerable prominent groups and has been a longtime member of a group called the New York Rhythm Section, consisting of Milt Hinton (bass), Barry Galbraith (guitar) and Osie Johnson (drums).
Krupa, Gene. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1909, Krupa is probably the most famous drummer ever, certainly in the era of swing music, starting with his place in the Benny Goodman band of the late Thirties and later with his own band. Apart from the many records he made with his own band and with Goodman, he was the nominal leader of an extraordinary 1935 recording called “Swing Is Here,” featuring Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry and Goodman. Supplementing Krupa’s own solid musical style was his superb showmanship. His remarkable work with Goodman at the beginning of the swing era and Goodman’s own meteoric rise to stardom combined to propel Krupa to a similar stardom himself. It is unfortunate that he is better remembered for his heavy drumming in “Sing, Sing, Sing” with Goodman than for his superb drumming with his own band. Hollywood made “The Gene Krupa Story” based loosely on his career, with the actor Sal Mineo as Krupa. When the picture failed to include Roy Eldridge, through no fault of Krupa’s, he gave Eldridge an expensive set of drums. Krupa’s group disbanded permanently in 1951 whereupon he performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic and later with his own small groups. In 1951 Krupa and Cozy Cole started a drum school in New York. He continued teaching, studying classical drumming and playing in small groups intermittently for the next 12 years. Krupa died in 1973.
McPartland, Marian. Born in Windsor, England, in 1920, this fine pianist came from a family of musicians, including a great-uncle, Sir Frederick Dyson (Mayor of the City of Windsor), who played cello. McPartland debuted as part of a traveling four-piano group, then, just before World War II, she formed a duo with the prominent British pianist Billy Mayerl. She married trumpeter Jimmy McPartland during World War II, and the couple came to the U.S. after the war in 1946 to start a group led by Jimmy. This band broke up in 1951. Marian then formed her first trio and worked at many popular spots, starting with The Hickory House. Gradually that club became a well-known musicians’ hangout and was Duke Ellington’s regular dining spot whenever he was in New York. McPartland became widely known, continuing to lead her trio as the house band there for a number of years. She also worked at The Composer in New York and at the London House in Chicago. She has appeared widely at jazz festivals and concerts all over the world and has made many recordings on her own label. She is currently known for her weekly radio program, “Piano Jazz,” on which she interviews and plays with pianists and other musicians. The program has been heard regularly for many years on hundreds of public radio stations throughout the U.S.
Mingus, Charles. Born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1922, Mingus was an extremely creative and innovative composer as well as a bass player, leader and pianist. His compositions were recorded on his own short-lived labels as well as on Columbia and Atlantic. He first came to national attention as a member of Red Norvo’s trio with guitarist Tal Farlow in 1950-1951. He also participated in the memorable Massey Hall concert in Toronto with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-Fifties Mingus ran the Jazz Composers’ Workshop and was a key member, with Max Roach, of the Jazz Composers’ Guild, a successor to the Rebels’ Festival in Newport in the summer of 1960. He was noted for his egocentric yet generous personality, his habit of admonishing audiences and his self-destructive tendencies. In 1971 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship award and published his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog. “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Better Git Your Soul” are two of the best-known titles among his immense body of original work. His life was stormy, and his legacy, carried on musically by The Mingus Dynasty and other orchestras in the Eighties and Nineties, continues to grow. Mingus died in 1979.
Monk, Thelonious Sphere. Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1917, this pianist, composer and leader moved to New York at a young age. At first a disciple of the great stride pianist James P. Johnson, he later became an early experimenter in what was to become bop, along with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and others at Minton’s and other uptown hangouts. He led his own quartet in relative obscurity for years, finally achieving recognition in the Fifties. His eccentric speech and onstage persona, combined with his unique, jagged piano style and offbeat titles for compositions, gained him much notice, even notoriety, for years. He was scheduled to appear on the cover of Time magazine in late November 1963, but was bumped from there by coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (He did make the cover several months later, however.) Monk made many overseas tours with his quartet and traveled around the world with other leaders as The Giants of Jazz in the Seventies. He wrote numerous compositions, including “Epistrophy,” “Well You Needn’t” and “Crepuscule with Nellie.” In the Seventies he gradually faded from public view and became a recluse, living at the home of his most prominent champion, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Since his death, his work has attracted ever-increasing attention. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards, most notably “Round Midnight.” Monk died in 1982.
Pettiford, Oscar. Born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in 1922, this noted bass and cello player, leader and composer was part of a large musical family. He learned to play several instruments at an early age, and by 1943, when he was not yet 20, had worked with Charlie Barnet’s big band and Roy Eldridge’s quintet. Soon afterward he joined the emerging bop scene in New York as co-leader with Dizzy Gillespie of a group on 52nd Street. From 1944 onward he was in many groups, large and small, including those of Woody Herman and Duke Ellington. By the mid-Fifties he had his own band but was not temperamentally suited to be a leader. A very important musician on bass as well as cello, he introduced much innovation to the playing of both instruments. More than anyone except perhaps the very short-lived Jimmy Blanton (and later Charles Mingus and Ray Brown), Pettiford established the bass as a solo instrument in addition to its role in the rhythm section. Pettiford in 1960.
Rushing, Jimmy. Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1902, Rushing was a singer and pianist. He began singing in after-hours clubs in the mid-Twenties, and first met with success in and around Kansas City with Walter Page and his Blue Devils (1927-1928) and Bennie Moten’s band (1929-1934). In 1935 Rushing joined Count Basie and accompanied him to New York. It was as a member of that orchestra in the late Thirties that he came to national prominence. Known as “Mr. Five-by-Five” because of his girth, he was an entirely original and forceful blues singer and was greatly responsible for the popularity of the Basie band in its early years. Due to the exposure that band gave him, he was able to go out on his own in the Fifties, being replaced in Basie’s band by vocalist Joe Williams. Rushing toured and recorded solo and with his own groups, and appeared at many jazz festivals and on overseas tours, including one with Benny Goodman in 1958. He later performed with Eddie Condon and Buck Clayton. He recorded prolifically with the Basie band and one time with Goodman. His distinctive, high-pitched blues-shouting style was as instantly recognizable as Louis Armstrong’s. Among Basie’s many stars, none was more responsible for its early popular success than Rushing. He died in 1972.
Russell, Pee Wee. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Russell was a clarinetist with the Austin High School Gang in Chicago in the early Twenties, and with numerous Dixieland groups thereafter. During the Twenties he also played with Jack Teagarden in Texas and with Bix Beiderbecke in St. Louis. In 1927 he moved to New York to play with Red Nichols & his Five Pennies, and from 1935 through 1937 he was with trumpeter Louis Prima. From the mid-Forties onward he played most often in groups led by Eddie Condon, frequently at New York Dixieland hangouts like Nick’s and Condon’s. Russell was famous for his plaintive tone smears, very unusual timbres and wandering melody lines. His unique, complex and inimitable style included a great variety of odd squeaks and growls, alternating soft and hard notes, rasping attacks and soaring, long-held or abruptly terminated phrases and notes. He played greatly contrasting rhythms, often widely varying the time values as well as the notes. Almost no one has attempted to emulate him, nor consciously demonstrated being influenced by his style. Nevertheless Russell was one of the best-known and widely admired clarinet players for years. He died in 1969.
Silver, Horace. Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1928, Silver has been a pianist, composer and leader of his own quintets since the early Fifties. He started playing tenor saxophone in high school but gave it up when he heard Lester Young on records. He is recognized as one of the most important founders of the hard bop school. When Stan Getz made an appearance in 1950 in Hartford, Silver’s hometown, he heard Horace and his trio play and offered them a job then and there. The job lasted about a year and launched Silver’s career. In 1951 he moved to New York and worked with such important and prominent musicians as Lester Young, Oscar Pettiford and Coleman Hawkins. From 1953 until 1955 he was with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In addition to his importance in establishing hard bop, he fused elements of rhythm & blues, gospel music and jazz, influencing pianists such as Ramsey Lewis, Bobby Timmons and Les McCann. He was largely responsible for setting what would become the standard instrumentation of bop groups in the late Fifties and Sixties: trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums. He also nurtured many important younger players who joined his groups, including Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Benny Golson and Joe Henderson. He carried his piano style, hard “comping” (accompaniment), to a high level of musicianship while developing his own style of composing and arranging. He is one of the few musicians in jazz who records his own compositions almost exclusively. He has had numerous hit records and a number of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “The Preacher,” “Doodlin’,” “Sister Sadie” and “Song for My Father.” Since the mid-Sixties he has experimented with large ensembles, including voices, woodwinds, strings and other combinations. Although frequently plagued with arthritis of the hands, he has maintained a busy schedule well into the 21st century.
Smith, Willie “the Lion.” Born in Goshen, New York, in 1897, Smith was a pianist. Though he’s not in the Big Picture—he was tired and had sat down on steps next door—he appears in many other pictures taken that day. “The Lion” was almost always seen, as he was on that day, with a cigar clenched firmly in his teeth and wearing his derby hat. A most colorful individual, he sometimes bragged that he was Hebrew and even a cantor. He was one of the best known of the Harlem stride school, along with James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Luckey Roberts. His style was particularly individual in that he adapted the flavor of 19th century impressionist composers Ravel and Debussy, whom he greatly admired, to stride piano. He penned many beautiful miniatures that combined impressionism with stride. In the late Thirties Smith became known to a wider public through several recordings. Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey performed memorable arrangements of his compositions, especially “Echo of Spring.” Smith was an early mentor to Ralph Sutton, Mel Powell and Duke Ellington, the latter of whom composed and recorded “Portrait of the Lion” in tribute to Smith. In the Fifties Smith performed often at the Central Plaza and elsewhere in New York. He toured Europe several times and appeared at many jazz festivals. His life was documented in an autobiography (with George Hoefer), Music on My Mind, published in 1964. Smith died in 1973.
Stewart, Rex. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1907, Stewart played cornet and trumpet. In his early years he played several instruments, but cornet was always his main focus. His most important early work was with Fletcher Henderson’s band as the replacement for Louis Armstrong (at Armstrong’s suggestion), who was leaving to form his own band. Initially Stewart felt uneasy about his ability to fill the shoes of his idol, and soon left Fletcher to join the band of Fletcher’s younger brother Horace. After a year or so with Horace, the now better-prepared Stewart rejoined Fletcher Henderson. He stayed with Fletcher more than four years this time, until 1934 when he left to join Duke Ellington’s band. By that time Ellington was in his golden era, well on his way to becoming what he would be ever after: the most original and longest-playing band leader ever. Stewart, a true master, stayed 10 years with the band for what would be his longest and most important job. There he invented the unique growling, almost human, half-valve sound featured nightly in the extended piece “Boy Meets Horn.” This was also the title of Stewart’s autobiography, published posthumously by Claire Gordon in 1982. Stewart wrote a number of other well-known Ellington numbers, but he remained forever identified with “Boy Meets Horn.” After Ellington, Stewart worked primarily with his own groups and made several U.S. and worldwide appearances, including Jazz At The Philharmonic. In the late Forties he stayed in France long enough to study at the famous cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu. While there, he also delivered several lectures on jazz at the Paris Conservatory of Music. Later he delivered similar ones at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In 1957 and 1958 he became musical director for a festival at Great South Bay, Long Island, celebrating the music of Fletcher Henderson with the Henderson Alumni Orchestra. He also played for two years at Eddie Condon’s jazz club in New York. Stewart went into semi-retirement in the Sixties, though he wrote frequently for Down Beat magazine and often appeared briefly at night spots blowing his incomparable cornet. A number of extremely interesting articles on music and musicians by Stewart were collected in Jazz Masters of the 30s, published by MacMillan as part of a series. Stewart died in 1972 in Los Angeles.
Ware, Wilbur. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1923, Ware was an extraordinary bass player whose strong tone and harmonic inventiveness made him much sought-after by a wide variety of groups, small and large. Even in his later years he worked with experimental groups while continuing to play in established mainstream and bop groups. Beginning in the mid-Forties he worked with such prominent leaders as Roy Eldridge, Joe Williams and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. By the Fifties he had worked with Johnny Griffin, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonious Monk. Later, as house bassist at Riverside Records, Ware could be heard on many important recordings. In New York he played with John Coltrane in Monk’s quartet at the Five Spot. He also led his own small groups and played with the Sonny Rollins trio at the Village Vanguard. Being in great demand, he worked steadily in a wide variety of groups. In the early Sixties he joined Max Roach, Charles Mingus and others in the Newport Rebels, a group formed in protest against the Newport Jazz Festival. A number of significant recordings by this group and associated musicians were released later. In the mid-Sixties illness forced him to return to Chicago, but in the Seventies he returned to New York, where he was active with mainstream as well as avant-garde groups. Ware died in 1979.
Wilkins, Ernie. Born in St. Louis in 1922, Wilkins is recognized as a saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is best known for his arrangements for big bands, including those of Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Count Basie. He began playing professionally in a famous Navy band during World War II with such budding stars as Clark Terry, Gerald Wilson, Major Holley and earlier stars like alto saxophonist Willie Smith. In 1949 he was in the last Earl Hines big band. In 1951 he joined the Count Basie band, playing both alto and tenor saxophones. He gained prominence in the Fifties for his compositions and arrangements. He performed and arranged for Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and went overseas with it for the U.S. State Department in 1956. He then wrote for Harry James and was greatly instrumental in modernizing that band. His arrangements were largely responsible for the success of the Count Basie band in the Fifties. After that he worked for Earl Hines and others, concentrating mainly on arranging, and served as musical director for A & R Records. In the late Sixties Wilkins went to Europe with Clark Terry’s big band as musical director, and he settled in Copenhagen. In his later years, he was confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke, finally passing away in 1999.
Young, Lester “Pres.” Born in Woodville, Mississippi, in 1909, Young played tenor saxophone. By 1930 he was playing with various Midwest bands and in 1934 worked briefly with Count Basie. After short stays with several other bands he rejoined Basie, where he remained until he became a solo star. During his time with Basie he developed a very wide following among tenor men. He was perceived as the founder of a new, light, soaring way of playing tenor. It was very different from the husky, aggressive, punchy playing style of Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry and Ben Webster, the most widely admired tenor players in the Thirties and early Forties. In the late Thirties Young made a number of historic recordings with Billie Holiday. In late 1944 he was drafted into the Army for what turned out to be a very harsh period in his life. He was released about a year later after months of Army confinement for using drugs. He then returned to playing music, and made his first solo recordings in addition to working every year with Jazz At The Philharmonic. Between his discharge from the Army in 1945 and the taking of the Big Picture, late 1958, he continued to drink and use drugs heavily, and in the late Fifties he was rarely at the peak of his powers. During and after the early years of bebop, Young continued to win admirers, most notably Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. Ultimately he developed even more adherents to his lyrical style of legato tenor. Although never really a bebop musician, Young was an important transitional figure between swing and bop, along with Roy Eldridge, Charlie Christian and others. He died in early 1959.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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| 30 |
https://www.freddiegreen.org/articles/gp_mrhythm.html
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en
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Freddie Green - Mr. Rhythm Remembered
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Author: Jim Ferguson
Source: Guitar Player Magazine
Issue: August 1987
While jazz legends Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie boast extended careers, in terms of longevity in the idiom they don't hold a candle to Freddie Green, rhythm guitarist par excellence. From 1937 until his death at seventy-five this past March he occupied the rhythm guitar chair in various ensembles led by pianist Count Basie, backing celebrated players such as saxophonist Lester Young, clarinetist Benny Goodman, and vocalist Billie Holiday, to name a few. In the world of guitar, the sheer length of his career is second only to that of maestro Andres Segovia, who gave his first public recital in 1909 and was still touring earlier this year at the age of ninety-four.
But rest assured that achievement in jazz is no mere endurance record because during his fifty year career, he set the standard for traditional four-to-the-bar rhythm guitar influencing players the caliber of Allan Reuss, George Van Eps, Allan Hanlon and Al Hendrickson. While his acoustic-based sound was sometimes felt more than heard in the midst of Basie's larger ensembles, they wouldn't have been the same without it. Green's flawless timekeeping abilities, along with his knack for weaving seamless foundations of three- and four-note chord voicings, was the basis of a kinetic accompaniment approach that was an integral part of some of the most vibrant jazz ever recorded.
Green was an essential cog in what is generally considered to be the best rhythm section in the history of big band jazz and what bandleader Paul Whiteman dubbed the All-American Rhythm Section, which featured Basie, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones. It remained essentially intact from their first encounter in 1937 until Jones' departure in the late 1940s. From the start Green earned a reputation as a stylist without equal, fans and fellow players referred to him as Mr. Rhythm with the utmost respect.
Freddie's heyday was jazz's Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, when small groups proliferated but the emphasis was on the incredibly popular big bands that combined spirited jazz with danceable rhythms. From the early 1930s to the early 1940s the acoustic archtop was the instrument of choice among rhythm guitarists due to its "cutting power", the ability to be heard in a large ensemble setting. However, as the Forties unfolded, it was used less and less, as players gravitated toward amplified instruments. (Charlie Christian, an influential electric guitarist with Benny Goodman's immensely popular orchestra of the late 1930s and early 1940s, was largely responsible for this trend.)
Despite the move toward amplification, Green persisted in employing a totally acoustic instrument (although he briefly experimented with a pickup and amp in the late 1940s), apparently feeling secure with Basie and under no pressure to change. In the hands of a lesser player, an acoustic archtop would have seemed like an anachronism after the late 1940s, when the popularity of the big bands waned; however Green played with such finesse, commitment, and class that his music had a vital, timeless quality. While amplification gave guitarists a chance to step into the spotlight as soloists, Green chose to remain behind the scenes in a supportive capacity. Whatever his reasons for choosing such a self-effacing role, he came to be universally recognized as the premier backup guitarist. While aficionados will forever debate the various merits of most other players, there is only one Mr. Rhythm.
Frederick William Green was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 31, 1911. Before his teenage years, he picked up the banjo. Trumpeter Sam Walker, the father of one of Freddie's friends, taught him how to read music and encouraged him to play the guitar. Walker was an organizer for Charleston's respected Jenkins Orphanage Band, and he allowed Freddie to perform with the group, which also included a young Cat Anderson, who went on to play trumpet with pianist Duke Ellington and others. Green toured with the Jenkins band as far north as Maine.
After Freddie's parents died when he was in his early teens, he went to New York to live with his aunt and finishing his schooling. Eventually he began to play rent parties and in New York clubs such as the Yeah Man in Harlem and Greenwich Village's Black Cat. Tenor Saxophonist Lonnie Simmons got him one of his first jobs, working with the Night Hawks at the Black Cat. While at the club in 1937, Green was noticed by jazz talent scout John Hammond, who ultimately introduced him to Basie.
Hammond described his first impressions of Green in his autobiography John Hammond on Record [1977, Ridge Press/Summit Book]: "One of my favorite clubs was the Black Cat, a mob-owned joint. The band included two cousins, the drummer Kenny Clarke and the bass player Frank Clarke, but it was the guitarist that interested me the most. His name was Freddie Green, and I thought he was the greatest I had ever heard. He had unusually long fingers, a steady stroke, and unobtrusively held the whole rhythm section together. He was the antithesis of the sort of stiff, chugging guitarist Benny Goodman liked. Freddie was closer to the incomparable Eddie Lang than any guitar player I'd ever heard. He was perhaps not the soloist that Lang was, but he had a beat."
Count Basie had just come from Kansas City to New York and was debuting at the famed Roseland Ballroom. Soon after discovering Green, Hammond took Basie, Lester Young, Walter Page, Jo Jones, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and Benny Goodman to hear Freddie at the Black Cat. Although Basie liked his current guitarist, Claude Williams, he let him go in favor of Green, who joined the band after the Roseland engagement. Green cut his first sides with Count Basie and his Orchestra (featuring Page and Jones) for Decca on March 26, 1937, playing rhythm on "Honeysuckle Rose", "Pennies From Heaven", "Swinging At The Daisy Chain", and "Roseland Shuffle".
Green and Basie participated in Hammond's historic 1938 and 1939 Spirituals to Swing concerts, which featured a wide variety of jazz and blues artists (the second event paired Lester Young with Charlie Christian). For the next few years, Green propelled Basie's ensembles, recording for Columbia and RCA, and backing up players such as saxophonists Buddy Tate, Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas, Paul Gonsalves, trumpeter Emmett Berry, trombonist J.J. Johnson, vocalist Jimmy Rushing, and many others. In addition to recording with Count Basie and his Orchestra during that period, Green also participated in small groups led by Basie, including Count Basie and his Kansas City Seven, and Count Basie and his All-American Rhythm Section.
In 1945 Green recorded four spirited sides ("I'm In The Mood For Love", "Sugar Hips", "Get Lucky", and "I'll Never Be The Same") on the Duke label under the name Freddie Green and his Kansas City Seven. For the most part, Green used members from the Basie band, including trumpeter Buck Clayton, trombonist Dickie Wells, saxophonist Lucky Thompson, and drummer Shadow Wilson, who was filling in for Jo Jones while he was in the armed service. The ensemble also featured bassist Al Hall, vocalist Sylvia Simms, and pianist Sammy Benskin. When Jones finally quit Basie in 1948, he was permanently replaced by Wilson, which marked an end to the All-American Rhythm Section's reign.
As bebop gained momentum in the late 1940s and the emphasis shifted to small group jazz, many big bands fell on hard times. Count Basie was no exception, and in the summer of 1950 he pared the orchestra down to a handful of players. Green found himself unemployed for the first time in 13 years. According to his son, Al, the situation didn't last for long. Shortly after being let go, Freddie showed up with his guitar at one of Basie's gigs insisting he was back in the group. From that moment on, the relationship between Basie and Green was cemented. The unit soon swelled to a septet that included clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and trumpeter Clark Terry.
In 1952 Basie was back with another big band, which eventually recorded memorable sessions represented on the reissue album Sixteen Men Swinging. Three years later, Freddie cut the classic Mr. Rhythm under the name Freddie Green and his Orchestra with trumpeter Joe Newman, trombonist Henry Coker, saxophonist Al Cohn, pianist Nat Pierce, drummers Osie Johnson and Jo Jones, and bassist Milt Hinton. The session was a neat blend of rhythmic swing and more bebop-oriented soloing, and much of the material was penned by Green, including "Back And Forth", "Feed Bag", "Little Red", "Free And Easy", and "Swingin' Back".
From the late 1950s into the 1960s the band accompanied such notable vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughn, Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, Sammy Davis Jr., and Judy Garland. In 1962, Green, Basie, bassist Ed Jones, and drummer Sonny Payne recorded the remarkable Count Basie and the Kansas City Seven, with cuts featuring flutists Frank Wess and Eric Dixon. The mid 1960s and 1970s brought numerous personnel changes to the aggregation; however, it mainly stayed with the Kansas City style swing it did best, despite brief flirtations with more contemporary material such as Beatles' songs and James Bond themes. Although big band jazz had long been a thing of the past, the group continued to record and tour extensively. For instance, in March 1965, Count Basie played 27 one-night stands, criss-crossing the country from Florida to New Jersey to Ohio to New York to Missouri to North Dakota to Illinois.
In 1975, Green teamed with Herb Ellis for the album Rhythm Willie, with bassist Ray Brown, drummer Jake Hanna, and pianist Ross Tompkins. Led by Ellis' brilliant blues-tinged single string work and backed by an expert rhythm section, the group cut a swinging mix of tunes, including "It Had To Be You", the title track, and Charlie Christian's "A Smooth One". Unlike some previous recordings with Basie, Green's masterful work was extremely well recorded and in perfect balance with the rest of the ensemble.
Count Basie's death in 1984 closed a rich chapter in big band jazz. He and Green had been good friends onstage and off, and Freddie assumed the helm of the 19 piece group. On March 1, 1987, Freddie Green died of a heart attack after playing a show in Las Vegas. The sad event marked the end of an era in the history of jazz guitar. In Los Angeles, what was intended to be a surprise tribute to Green organized by jazz critic Leonard Feather was turned into a memorial that featured the Basie band, vocalist Sarah Vaughan, and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley declared March 19 Freddie Green Day. Various honors Green garnered over his colorful career include his induction into the Jazz Hall of Fame, a 1958 Down Beat Critics Poll award, and a 1986 Grammy nomination for the album Swing Reunion, with pianist Teddy Wilson, drummer Louis Bellson, guitarist Remo Palmier, vibraphonist Red Norvo, and bassist George Duvivier.
All jazz fans - and especially guitarists - owe a debt to Green, who helped to keep alive one of the most vital styles in music. In the May 1983 issue of Guitar Player, Jim Hall declares: "If you pruned the tree of jazz, Freddie Green would be the only person left. If you have to listen to only one guitarist, study the way he plays rhythm with Count Basie." Green, who undoubtedly played more bars of straight 4/4 than any other guitarist in the history of jazz, had the uncanny knack to keep things continually interesting, mainly through his use of three- and four- note chord forms, which he connected into smooth, air-tight accompaniments. The following example - essentially a I, IV, I progression - shows how he used open voicings to create movement between the upper voice of the chord and the bass note (the fifth, second, and first strings should be damped by the left hand):
He continually avoided the limelight, content to play a supportive role. In Norman Mongan's The History of the Guitar in Jazz [1983; Oak Publications, New York], Green explained how he became a rhythm specialist: "At first when I joined Basie, I experimented with a couple of single string things, but people started looking at me as if to say, 'What's happening?' So that was the last of that. Rhythm holds the whole thing together."
Despite Green's commitment to rhythm, he played a number of single string solos over the years that frequently recalled Eddie Lang's work in the early 1930s. On "The Boll Weevil Song" from the album Brother John Sellers (recorded by an evangelist singer in 1954), he contributed an inspired bluesy solo. The small group recording Memories Ad-Lib [Roulette LP SR-59037], with Joe Williams and Count Basie, has several notable single string outings.
Just as Freddie occasionally deviated from playing rhythm on record, he also experimented with amplification for a short while in the late 1940's, equipping his large Stromberg Master 400 archtop with a DeArmond pickup, which he ran through a Gibson amp (Al Green recalls the amp gathering dust in a corner of his father's New York apartment). Prior to using the Stromberg, Green played an Epiphone Emperor. According to Al, the Stromberg became too valuable to take on the road, so Freddie switched to a blonde Gretsch Eldorado custom.
In the early 1950s, Al Green spent an unforgettable summer traveling with his father and Count Basie's band: "The camaraderie was great, even though moving the equipment was a hassle. One evening at a dance they were playing, Marshall Royal (sax) was soloing, and I glanced over at Dad doing his thing in his very unassuming kind of way. I remember thinking 'Gee, why doesn't he play the saxophone, so he could get some recognition like Marshall Royal?' But what does a 12 year old kid understand about someone who is so dedicated to his art? It took a lot of time, but he finally got the recognition he deserved." Mr. Rhythm, rest in peace.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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0
| 29 |
https://www.app.com/story/news/history/2016/02/28/hey-who-knew-count-basie/79787406/
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en
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Asbury Park Press
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"Tamara Walker @twilderapp, Asbury Park Press"
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2016-02-28T00:00:00
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Jazz great hails from the Shore
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en
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https://www.app.com/story/news/history/2016/02/28/hey-who-knew-count-basie/79787406/
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Hey, Who knew? Count Basie, Red Bank's king of jazz
RED BANK - Before the town on the southern bank of the Navesink River was the place to be on Friday nights, it was known for songs like "Red Bank Boogie" and "The Kid from Red Bank." The "kid" behind those tunes was born William James Basie.
His songs were part of the new rhythm that roared into the 1920s — jazz.
He had flappers tapping their toes and snapping their fingers to ditties that rattled their bones. Words like "cool" and "hip" were used to describe musicians and fans shimmying to the sound. And in smoky rooms filled with good times, Basie was honing his craft.
He would become "Count" Basie as part of his ascent to legend.
You may recognize the name as a theater, but Count Basie was a man. Ya, dig?
Who was Count Basie and how did he get that name?
Born on Aug. 21, 1904, Basie's family lived on Mechanic Street. He attended Red Bank Borough Public Schools. In archive Asbury Park Press stories, his father was said to be a gardener and building supervisor, and his mother laundered clothes and linens. Basie was the oldest of two boys, but his brother died as an infant.
Humble beginnings wouldn't limit his family. With his feet barely touching the foot pedals, Basie began taking piano lessons at the age of five for a fee of 25 cents.
He dreamed of becoming a performer.
An archive story also states that at 17 years old Basie left his home for Harlem to pursue a dream of stardom. He found himself in the right place at the right time in meeting pianist Fats Waller. Basie joined Waller's act and toured the vaudeville circuit across the U.S.
After Prohibition hit, many musicians had to play in the underground world of illegal bars and clubs. Basie continued to master his big-band jazz sound playing these venues night after night. He also joined two rival bands: In 1927, Walter Page's Blue Devils and in 1928, the Bennie Moten Orchestra.
Basie saw many changes as he progressed, including his name. There are varying accounts of how "Bill" got the nickname "Count."
One story stated Basie would disappear during arranging sessions for the Moten Orchestra to go have fun, resulting in Bennie Moten declaring him the "no count" -- as in "no good" -- rascal.
Another story from the Asbury Park Press attributed the name change to a spontaneous moment ahead of a radio performance.
The story goes that while waiting to play a live radio show at The Reno Club in Kansas City, the radio host recounted several standout artists' names of the period like Duke Ellington, the Baron of Lee, the Earl of Hines and spontaneously dubbed Basie's group the Count with his Barons of Rhythm.
By 1935, Count Basie and his Barons of Rhythm, could be heard all over the airwaves, but the name soon changed to the one the world would forever know — Count Basie Orchestra.
Signing with Decca Record in 1937, his band produced music known for its distinct sound. In 1939, the band left the label and signed with Columbia Records. Selling millions of records, the music he created would define the jazz and swing sounds into the 1940s.
Coming Back to Red Bank
Count Basie always came home for shows and more importantly, benefit performances. Described as a man of his word, Basie would commit to a gig — big or small — if it helped his hometown. Before his passing Hollywood, Florida in 1984 from cancer, organizations recognized him for his outstanding community service and achievements in the music industry.
His contributions stretched far beyond Red Bank, and his hometown has paid homage to him because of them:
In 1974, Count Basie received an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Monmouth College --- known today as Monmouth University. Shrewsbury A.M.E. Zion Church, where his family worshiped when he was a child, also honored him with a plaque for his contributions to the Christian fellowship.
The same year he died the Monmouth Arts Center was renamed Count Basie Theater for his lifetime career achievement as a king of jazz music.
Several organizations also have been named in honor of his legacy: Count Basie Learning Center, Count Basie Foundation, and Count Basie Scholarship Fund.
Did you know?
His band was the first African-American big band to play at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Count Basie made history in 1958 as the first African-American man to receive a Grammy. He earned nine Grammy Awards over the course of his career. Four of his songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: "One O'Clock Jump" in 1979 "April in Paris" in 1985 and "Everyday I have the Blues" in 1992 and "Lester Leaps" in 2005. Count Basie also recorded with many influential artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson and even Quincy Jones.
True or False :
1) Count Basie performed for England's Prince Charles for his second birthday.
2) Count Basie Day is celebrated on June 26th in Red Bank.
3) A community park on Henry Street in Red Bank bears Count Basie's name.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Count_Basie
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New World Encyclopedia
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https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Count_Basie
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William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was a prominent American jazz pianist and band leader. Like his contemporary Duke Ellington, Basie assembled a group of premiere musicians and through innovative use of rhythm and improvisation, and his spare yet suggestive piano work, Basie largely defined the distinctive Kansas City jazz style that would, in turn, influence the emergence of modern jazz. For his contribution to classic jazz and his anticipation of modern developments, Basie is regarded as one of jazz music’s all time greats.
Basie is known for his inimitable statements on the piano, but it has also been said that his real instrument was his band. Basie brought to perfection the union of opposites characteristic of much great art: His crisp, contrapuntal piano and the relaxed, even swing of the rest of his rhythm section; his incisive, minimalist piano and the powerful sound of his orchestra; and countless pairs of hard/soft soloists dialogging with each other. Combining soulful blues and upbeat, celebratory rhythms and solo performances, Basie's music possessed an emotional resonance that elevated Big Band jazz beyond the conventions of popular swing jazz.
Early life
Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, to Harvey Lee Basie, and Lillian Ann Childs and lived on Mechanic Street. Later, he would be referred to as the “Kid from Red Bank” (the title of a tune). Bill had a brother, LeRoy Basie. His father worked as coachman for a wealthy family. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a grounds keeper and handyman for several families in the area. His mother took in laundry, and was Basie's first piano teacher when he was a child. He was taught organ informally by Fats Waller. Along with Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Lucky Roberts, and other pianists of the Harlem stride tradition would be Basie’s prime influences.
Basie toured the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuit, starting in 1924, as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers. Sometimes, he would also provide musical accompaniment to silent movies. His touring took him to Kansas City, Missouri, where he met many jazz musicians in the area. Kansas City was then an important transit point and a musical scene connected to nightlife, similar to New Orleans’ Storyville, had begun to thrive there, giving birth to a distinctive Kansas City style. In 1928, Basie joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the following year became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City.
Moten’s ensemble was a good "territory band," a term signifying the rising popularity of jazz outside of urban scenes and of popular bands that would range far from home for engagements. Moten himself was a capable, but unremarkable, ragtime pianist who had the good sense to put to use the young pianist he had recruited: Basie. Except for Basie, the really outstanding musician of the band was trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. The band had had its successes (notably a 1928 version of "South") but it was still a few steps away from the swing era. Occasionally, one could hear an accordion in the ensembles, which gave it a pleasant but unsophisticated rural sound.
Within a mere two years, the band had absorbed many of the best elements of Walter Page’s Blue Devils, a competing band that had dissolved. These included Page himself, a formidable bassist who gave the band a powerful new swing. Basie’s piano had become gradually more present ("Moten Swing," "Prince of Wails") and he soon came to all but own the band. He started his own band in 1934, but shortly after returned to Moten's band. When Moten died in 1935, the band soon dissembled, and in 1936, Basie, along with several of Moten’s key alumni, resurrected it under a new name, Barons of Rhythm, soon to become the Count Basie Orchestra.
The classic band: Basie’s “First Testament”
In addition to touring, the band performed nightly radio broadcasts, and serendipitously, the young Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond—a music legend who had discovered the seventeen-year-old Billie Holiday in 1933, tracked down the forgotten Bessie Smith for a final recording session in 1937, and later launched the careers of Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen—picked up the Basie band on his car radio. Inspired by what he heard, Hammond set out for Kansas City to hear Basie in person, and in October 1936, the producer arranged a recording session in Chicago that he later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with."
Basie's band honed their repertoire at a long engagement at a Chicago club. It was at this time that he was first called "Count" Basie by a local disk jockey, a term of distinction for outstanding jazz greats that included Joe "King" Oliver, Edward "Duke" Ellington, and Bessie Smith, who was crowned the Empress of the Blues. Soon the Basie band was expanded to the full big band size (13 musicians), and by the end of 1936 Hammond brought the band to New York, where it opened at the Roseland Ballroom. By the next year Basie took up residence at the Famous Door, and the Count Basie Orchestra continued to perform in New York until 1950.
Basie’s music was characterized by his trademark "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. Basie also showcased some of the best blues singers of the era: Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, and later Big Joe Turner and Joe Williams. Most congenial to the band was Jimmy Rushing, called “Mr. Five by Five” (due to his short stature and large girth). Rushing epitomized the spirit of Basie’s orchestral blues, a blues that was more urbane and often humorous than traditional blues. Even more importantly, Count Basie was a highly successful band-leader who was able to hold onto some of the greatest jazz musicians of the 1930s and early 1940s, like Buck Clayton and Lester Young, and the band's brilliant rhythm section, Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones. He was also able to hire great arrangers that knew how to use the band's abilities, like Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
With his newly formed band, Basie quickly brought the Kansas City style of jazz to perfection. While not fundamentally different from the style played by other swing era bands in New York or Chicago, this way of playing was characterized by a supple, light beat and the astute use of riffs—short melodic patterns played repeatedly, especially towards the end of a piece, to heighten the atmosphere. The alternating playing of several riffs could go on indefinitely, until a climax was reached. Unfortunately, the recordings of that era were limited to about three minutes, so they cannot fully convey the equivalent of the band’s live performances.
Another Basie innovation was the introduction of two tenor saxophones “dueling” with each other. The first, historical pair consisted of Lester Young, with his detached, cool sound and Herschel Evans with his more traditional, intensely hot style. This was the starting point of a long history of saxophone duels within the Basie Band and beyond. On trumpet also, the elegant Buck Clayton and the powerful Harry “Sweets Edison” were a perfect complement to each other. On trombone too, there were usually two major voices at any given time, including Bennie Morton, Dickie Wells, and Vic Dickenson.
Basie the pianist
Most of the time, Basie played very few notes, but these were perfectly chosen to fill the silence he used with equal mastery. His unique, crisp style can immediately be recognized by knowledgable jazz fans(only Nat Pierce has been somewhat successful at imitating him). At times, his piano was reminiscent of Earl Hines’s jumpy and ethereal rhythmic playing ("Moten Swing," with Bennie Moten). Much of the time, the stable and powerful qualities of his stride piano heritage were obvious. His playing was often pure Fats Waller, with the stomping left hand the pearly flurries of the right hand (John’s Idea, 1937), except that it was also pure Basie. Over the years, Basie’s subtle sense of rhythm, combined with his powerful stride playing, would produce a unique synthesis that gradually evolved into his signature minimalist style. He would play next to nothing but fill the room with his few notes.
Many tunes also highlight Basie’s double role as soloist and accompanist of his key players (e.g., in Roseland Shuffle, 1937, in his dialogue with Lester Young). Occasionally, Basie would also produce piano solos ("How Long Blues," 1938) or contribute extended solos to his band’s performances ("Boogie Woogie").
The Basie rhythm section
Basie’s rhythm section has often been described as the best in jazz history. It was certainly the most cohesive of its time and has reached proverbial fame. Starting with Basie’s presence in the Moten band, it came into being over the years when, first, Walter Page’s bass gave real swing to the band. Later, Jo Jones on drums introduced the even 4 beats that contrasted with earlier drummers emphasizing 2 beats out of 4. Jones was also a formidable soloist. When finally Freddie Green added his guitar to the band, the section was complete. Over the next 50 years, Green would practically play nothing but a succession of chords that completed the even dynamism of the section. Interestingly, each time a new element of that section was added, the already existing members toned down their playing without changing it to reach the perfect balance that made the ensemble famous. Much of that subtle quality was lost once Jones and Page departed, but even the more muscular nature of drumming in the New Testament band maintained the essence of that quality thanks to the lasting presence of Freddie Green and Basie himself.
Basie’s “New Testament”
By the late 1940s the Big Band era appeared to be at an end, but (after downsizing to a septette and octette in 1950) Basie reformed his band as an even larger 16-piece orchestra in 1952, and led it until his death. Basie remained faithful to the Kansas City style and helped keep jazz alive with his distinctive piano playing. The new band gave its real meaning to the name big band. Its huge sound was brassier than that of the first band. It also relied on sophisticated arrangements, while the first band had mostly relied on star soloists and their ability to play "head arrangements." These were simple arrangements learned by heart by musicians who, for all their talent, were poor sight readers. In that sense, the new band was more professional and less dependent on particular key players. Any capable musician could fit in and replace a departing member of the band. What was gained in weight and in sophistication was perhaps compensated by a slight loss in originality over time. The new soloists of the band, while excellent, were not quite of the historical caliber of a Lester Young. The emotion-laden sound of the ensembles and Basie’s own input became all the more important.
Basie and modern jazz
With his New Testament band, Basie moved into the special realm of classic jazz being played in the era of bop and modern jazz—concurrently with developments that were of a totally different nature. While he and his musicians remained swing musicians in essence, they did evolve with the times, creating the big band music of after the swing era. The major soloists who passed through the new band through the years include Clark Terry on flugelhorn, Joe Newman on trumpet, Paul Gonsalves, Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Eddie “Lockjaw Davis" on tenor, Sonny Paine and Louis Bellson (a white musician) on drums, and many more. All of them could be considered transitional artists, mixing elements of classic jazz with the complexities and tone of modern jazz.
The vocalists
By the mid 1950s, the Count Basie Band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for the finest jazz vocalists of the time. Joe Williams was spectacularly featured on the 1957 album One o'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings. Ella Fitzgerald, the quintessential swing singer, recorded several times with the Count Basie Orchestra. These records are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald's 1963 album Ella and Basie! is remembered as one of Fitzgerald's greatest recordings. With the "New Testament" Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from the "Songbook" recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. She toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and a much tamer Basie band also met on the 1979 albums Digital III at Montreux, A Classy Pair, and A Perfect Match.
Frank Sinatra had an equally fruitful relationship with Basie; 1963's Sinatra-Basie and 1964's It Might As Well Be Swing (both arranged by Quincy Jones) are two of the highest points at the peak of Sinatra's artistry. Jones provided the punchy arrangements for the Basie band on Sinatra's biggest selling album, the live Sinatra at the Sands.
In the 60s, Basie was often compelled to compromise on the choice of his material to maintain his band. In 1960, he appeared as himself (along with his band) in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella. But by the 70s, his fame had reached a peak, including with the public at large, not unlike the popularity achieved by Louis Armstrong. He was named the greatest jazz musician on earth by the British publication Melody Maker and was invited to perform for Queen Elizabeth before even Duke Ellington earned that distinction. Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984 at the age of seventy-nine. The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey was named in his honor.
Legacy
“Basie's status as a great musician was not a matter of extension and elaboration of blues idiom basics as was the case of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington," says jazz critic Albert Murray. "Basie's claim to fame and prestige was based on his refinement of the fundamentals that make jazz music swing. The Basie hallmark was always simplicity, but it is a simplicity that is the result of a distillation that produced music that was as refined, subtle and elegant as it was earthy and robust. There is no better example of the un-gaudy in the work of any other American artist in any medium."
Basie's consummate artistry, like Ellington's, is a credit to his visionary understanding of the jazz idiom and his leadership as much as to his innovative keyboard work. Basie's band is often cited as the most important precursor of the emergence of modern jazz, and it is not coincidental that the leading innovator of forties, the saxophonist Charlie Parker, was a native of Kansas City. Basie gathered many of the premiere jazz artists of the era. Saxophonist Herschel Evans and his distinctive "Texas moan;" the blues-based "Hot Lips" Page, who had earlier performed with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith; jazz balladeers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Turner; and above all brilliant, boundary-breaking tenor sax improviser Lester Young (known affectionately as "Pres") established a style for the Basie band that drew from the excitement of traditional jazz and informed it with innovations in rhythm and phrasings that would lead jazz in radical new directions.
"Count Basie's music is not about protest," said Murray. "It is about celebration, and . . . what [Basie's music] generates is a sense of well-being that even becomes exhilaration."
References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Basie, Count. Count Basie Collection (Artist Transcriptions). Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004.
Basie, Count. The Piano Style of Count Basie: Some of Basie's Best of Advanced Piano. Alfred Publishing Company, 2001.
Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980.
Murray, Albert et al.Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002.
All links retrieved January 10, 2024.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-jazz-pianists/
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en
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The 50 Best Jazz Pianists Of All Time
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[
""
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[
"Charles Waring"
] |
2024-02-16T05:11:42+00:00
|
From iconic bandleaders to unique talents, the best jazz pianists both shaped the genre and revolutionized the role of the piano in music.
|
en
|
uDiscover Music
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https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-jazz-pianists/
|
From the smoky jazz clubs of New Orleans to the grand concert halls of New York City, the sound of the piano has always been a cornerstone of jazz music. And there have been some truly legendary jazz pianists who have taken the art form to new heights with their technical skills, innovative improvisation, and sheer passion for the music. In this article, we’ll be celebrating the best of the best, the jazz pianists who have left an indelible mark on the genre and continue to inspire new generations of musicians.
While you’re reading, listen to our Jazz Piano Classics playlist here.
The piano’s importance in jazz stretches back to the time of Scott Joplin, at the turn of the 20th Century, when ragtime – with its jaunty, percussive rhythms – proved an important early building block in the evolution of jazz music.
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From ragtime piano came the more sophisticated and virtuosic “stride” style of James P Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith – with its locomotive, two-step, left-hand accompaniment – in the 20s and 30s, which in turn led to Fats Waller and ultimately culminated with Art Tatum. Hands down one of the best jazz pianists in history, Tatum was a blind genius who arguably created the most densely polyphonic and sophisticated pre-bebop piano style of all, fusing stride with swing.
In the mid-40s, the bebop revolution, instigated by horn players Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, resulted in a generation of artists (led by Bud Powell) who would enter the ranks of the best jazz pianists with an approach that treated the instrument like a trumpet or saxophone, picking out syncopated right-hand melodies with horn-style phrasing. When the 50s arrived, there were others, such as Bill Evans, who fused the bop aesthetic with a sensibility nurtured on classical and romantic music, producing a densely-harmonized piano style that was supremely lyrical and richly expressive. Evans’ influence – like Bud Powell’s before him – was pervasive, and many future jazz piano stars (from Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to Keith Jarrett and, more recently, Brad Mehldau) are indebted to him.
The jazz world has produced an abundance of super-talented piano players – many more than can be accommodated in this list of the 50 best jazz pianists of all time. Indeed, whittling it down was not an easy task, but we’ve persevered and come up with a list of names that we believe represent the most important ivory-ticklers of the genre.
In our estimation, here are the 50 best jazz pianists of all time.
50: Lennie Tristano (1919-1978)
Opinions differ on the significance of this blind, Chicago-born pianist who played with Charlie Parker in the late 40s and went on to establish himself as a musician with a unique sound and style. What is certain is that Tristano was an uncompromising innovator whose unorthodox conception of melody and harmony presaged the birth of free jazz. He also experimented with multi-tracking recording in the early 50s – which most jazz musicians considered anathema – by overdubbing improvised piano parts. Tristano was also a noted jazz teacher and it is claimed that his influence affected Miles Davis (on Birth Of The Cool) as well as Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan.
49: Kenny Kirkland (1954-1998)
From Brooklyn, New York, Kirkland had a fruitful association with the Marsalis brothers, Wynton and Branford, in the 80s and 90s, appearing as a sideman on many of their albums. Kirkland also played with jazz greats, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Elvin Jones, in the 80s, and appeared on five albums by ex-Police frontman, Sting. His own discography contains just one solo album, 1991’s Kenny Kirkland, for GRP, though it’s likely that, had he not died prematurely, aged 43, from congestive heart failure, Kirkland would have recorded many more solo albums.
48: Dave Grusin (born 1934)
A founding father of an accessible, R&B-inflected form of instrumental music called smooth jazz, Grusin is rare among the best jazz pianists for having also set up his own record label, GRP, in 1978. Originally from Colorado, Grusin began releasing piano-led albums under his own name in the early 60s, a decade that also saw him break into the world of television music, where he wrote themes for numerous US TV shows. Grusin went on to become a prolific composer of movie scores (among them On Golden Pond and The Fabulous Baker Boys) and has also released a raft of keyboard-oriented studio albums.
47: Duke Pearson (1932-1980)
Born Columbus Calvin Pearson in Atlanta, Georgia, Pearson’s career took off when he moved to New York City in 1959. That was the year he recorded his debut album for Blue Note, and he went onto become one of the best jazz pianists the iconic label signed. Enjoying a long association with Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff’s outfit, he not only recorded his own music, but worked as an in-house arranger and A&R man. A capable and versatile pianist, Pearson’s own records veered more towards the soul jazz style.
46: Elmo Hope (1923-1967)
A sideman for noted saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and Harold Land in the 50s, New Yorker Hope (real name St Elmo Sylvester Hope) was a bebop pianist with a bright sound, dynamic touch, and, like Thelonious Monk, had a penchant for dissonance. He recorded for Blue Note, Prestige, and Pacific Jazz in the 50s. Sadly, his life was blighted by drug addiction, which hastened his premature death at the age of 43.
45: Kenny Barron (born 1943)
As a teacher, this capable Philadelphia pianist can count Maynard Ferguson pianist Earl MacDonald, and recent Blue Note signing Aaron Parks, as his star pupils. Barron’s own career began with sideman stints with Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. A nine-time Grammy nominee, Barron has been recording since the late 60s and his many collaborators include fellow pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris. A master who is fluent in both the bebop and post-bop styles, Barron is one of the best jazz pianists alive today.
44: John Lewis (1920-2001)
As one of the charter members of The Modern Jazz Quartet, a pioneering group that fused bebop with classical music aesthetics, Lewis was an influential musician whose gleaming, staccato piano style was indebted to Count Basie and saxophonist Lester Young. Prior to the MJQ, he was a sideman for Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Outside of his band, Lewis made many albums under his own name, the earliest in 1955.
43: Harold Mabern (1936-2019)
Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Mabern is unique among the best jazz pianists for having begun as a drummer before switching to piano. Moving to Chicago, and then New York, he was regarded as a go-to sideman in the late 50s and early 60s (playing with the likes of Cannonball Adderley, Jackie McLean, Roland Kirk, and Wes Montgomery) before beginning his own recording career, which started at Prestige Records in 1968. A virtuoso who is fully fluent in bebop, modal, and post-bop jazz styles, Mabern is still actively recording and performing today at the age of 81.
42: Kenny Drew (1928-1993)
New York City-born Drew – who served his musical apprenticeship as a sideman for Buddy DeFranco, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker – was a highly-regarded bebop pianist and composer who enjoyed a long and fruitful association with tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, when both musicians lived in Denmark during the 60s and 70s. Cutting his first solo LP in 1953, Drew recorded regularly for a variety of different labels up until his death. He died and was buried in Copenhagen.
41: Jaki Byard (1922-1999)
An eclectic, versatile pianist who also played saxophone, Massachusetts-born Byard’s own music drew on everything from ragtime to free jazz and also covered all styles in between. He played with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson in the late 50s, but his career really took off when he moved to New York City in the 60s. He spent two years with Charles Mingus, as well as working with Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk. Though revered by the critics, Byard’s unique sound was less well-received by the public, but he remains one of the best jazz pianists in history, not only because of his impact on jazz in general, but also in relation to his role in the evolution of the piano itself.
40: Cedar Walton (1934-2013)
From Dallas, Texas, as a child this hard bop piano giant was raised on a diet of Art Tatum, Nat “King” Cole, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. Though their music infused Walton’s own style, he found his own voice on the piano and, after a stint with Kenny Dorham, John Coltrane, and The Jazztet, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1961, going on to cut nine albums with the group. Walton’s own career as a leader began in 1967 and, in the 70s, he dabbled with jazz-funk and fusion. In addition to being a gifted pianist, Walton was also a noted composer, contributing “Bolivia” and “Mode For Joe” to the jazz standards repertoire.
39: Barry Harris (1929-2021)
Born and raised in Detroit, Harris, whose mother played piano in church, was an early starter, taking up his chosen instrument at the age of four. When he was older, he was smitten by jazz and fell under the spell of modernists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. By the 50s, Harris was a jobbing pianist and worked with Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Gene Ammons; in the 60s he gigged with Cannonball Adderley. Stylistically, Harris is a staunch disciple of hard bop, which is reflected in the horn-like phrasing of his right-hand melodies, complex rhythmic syncopations, and dense harmonization. One of the best jazz pianists still with us from the bebop era.
38: Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)
Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh, Williams was a self-taught pianist who rose to fame as a teenage prodigy in the 20s. By the 30s, she was working as a freelance arranger, writing charts for Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and, later, Duke Ellington. When bebop arrived, in the mid-40s, she had an affinity for the revolutionary new style, and was a mentor to Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. A prodigiously talented musician, Williams was an inspirational figure and paved the way for noted contemporary female pianists such as Tania Maria, the late Geri Allen, Eliane Elias, and Diana Krall.
37: Bobby Timmons (1935-1974)
One of a multitude of musicians who came through Art Blakey’s “Hard Bop Academy,” The Jazz Messengers, this Philadelphia musician was the son of a preacher and grew up playing in church. Gospel music left an indelible mark on Timmons and its DNA can be detected in his playing and much of the music he wrote, which included the classic tunes “Moanin’,” “This Here,” and “Dat Dere,” which earned him his place among the best jazz pianists for laying the blueprint for what became known as soul jazz in the late 50s and early 60s. Sadly, Timmons’ career was cut short, at 38, by his chronic alcoholism.
36: Andrew Hill (1931-2007)
Hailing from Chicago, as a boy Hill earned small change playing accordion on the Windy City’s streets. He worked mainly as a sideman in the 50s, but in 1963, after a move to New York, Hill began a long association with Blue Note Records that resulted in 16 albums. Though influenced by Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum, Hill forged his own distinctive and complex style, both as a pianist and composer. His music tended to be chromatic and angular, and while it pushed the barriers, it also remained rooted in jazz tradition.
35: Brad Mehldau (born 1970)
From Jacksonville, Florida, Mehldau is undoubtedly one of the leading pianists in contemporary jazz. Though, compared to many of the best jazz pianists, his influences are wide and varied – ranging from pop, rock, folk, and classical music, to bebop, country, and even electronic music – he has distilled them all into a unique style which is inspired by the lyricism of Bill Evans and spellbinding virtuosic improvisation of Keith Jarrett. Mehldau’s long-running piano trio has also continually broken new ground with its near-telepathic collective improvisation and eclectic repertoire.
34: Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
A poet as well as a pianist/composer, this New Yorker was a leading light of the avant-garde movement in the late 50s and early 60s. Not for the faint-hearted, Taylor’s energetic style is often fiercely atonal, employing jarring cluster chords and a dense, polyrhythmic complexity. He released his debut LP in 1956 and recorded regularly for a raft of different labels up until 2009.
33: Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965)
Given his fame in the 50s as a pop singer with a silky croon, it’s perhaps not surprising that many often forget that Alabama-born Cole was also one of the best jazz pianists of his time. Starting out playing gospel music on the organ before being formally tutored in piano, Cole was schooled in classical music but quickly gravitated to jazz. He was especially influenced by Earl Hines, whose ornate, heavily embellished approach was the foundation for Cole’s own style, which developed within the confines of his own trio in the 30s and 40s. From 1943 onwards, it was Cole’s voice that drew more acclaim, however, and his success as a singer went on to eclipse his piano playing.
32: Sonny Clark (1931-1963)
Born Conrad Clark, this piano-playing exponent of hard bop from Herminie, Pennsylvania, enjoyed a brief period under the jazz spotlight between 1955 and 1961. Influenced by Bud Powell and noted for his horn-like right-hand melodies, Clark was a sideman for Dinah Washington, Sonny Rollins, and Charles Mingus, and also enjoyed a fecund five-year spell at Blue Note Records, where he served up nine albums, including the classic hard bop manifesto Cool Struttin’. Sadly, Clark was a heroin addict and died, aged 31, from a suspected (but never proven) overdose.
31: Michel Petrucciani (1962-1999)
Despite suffering from a genetic disease that stunted his growth, resulted in brittle bones, and gave him perpetual arm pain, France-born Petrucciani defied the odds to become one of the world’s best jazz pianists, and was inspired to take up the instrument after seeing Duke Ellington on TV. By 13, he was playing professionally, and at 18 recorded the first of many LPs. Though his lyrical approach to the piano was undoubtedly indebted to Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, Petrucciani, who died at 36, nevertheless had an individual sound and style.
30: Hank Jones (1918-2010)
The elder sibling of trumpeter Thad, and drummer Elvin, Jones, this Mississippi-born/Michigan-raised pianist was initially influenced by Earl Hines and Fats Waller, but later fell under bebop’s spell. He recorded with Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker before embarking on a stellar solo career that blossomed in the 50s. Hired for his impeccable musical taste and sonic eloquence, Jones’ myriad sideman credits ranged from Dizzy Gillespie and Dexter Gordon to Anita O’Day and Marilyn Monroe.
29: Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
This Texas pianist’s music was largely forgotten until his tune, “The Entertainer” – which was used on the soundtrack to the 1973 blockbuster film The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman – revived interest in his work. In his heyday, in the early years of the 20th Century, Joplin was crowned King Of Ragtime, a jaunty, syncopated style of music that was an amalgam of African-American and Western European music. Though no recordings of Joplin exist, his status as one of history’s best jazz pianists is assured, thanks in part to piano rolls and sheet music from the time, illustrating his unique style, which went on to influence James P Johnson.
28: Ramsey Lewis (1935-2022)
Emerging on Chess Records in the 50s fronting a piano trio, Chicago-born Lewis racked up a trio of finger-clicking crossover pop hits in the mid-60s (the biggest was 1965’s “The In Crowd”) before plugging his piano into the mains socket and going the way of funk and fusion in the 70s. A classically-trained pianist, Lewis fused jazz with rhythm’n’blues and gospel music to forge a distinctive soul jazz style that spawned a host of imitators.
27: Wynton Kelly (1931-1977)
Influenced by Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell, Brooklyn-born Kelly is best remembered for his association with Miles Davis between 1959 and 1961 (he played on the iconic 1959 LP Kind Of Blue). He also recorded a slew of solo albums, all of which highlighted his glistening, horn-like right-hand melodies and penchant for block chordal accompaniment. Contemporary pianists who claim to have been influenced by him include Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau.
26: Willie “The Lion” Smith (1897-1973)
Together with James P Johnson and Fats Waller, William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff Smith (to give him his full name) was a noted practitioner of the stride style of playing. Born in New York, he rose to fame in the 20s as an accompanist of blues singers. His propulsive, dynamic style, with its dazzling finger-work, exerted a profound influence on both Duke Ellington’s and George Gershwin’s approach to the piano.
25: James P. Johnson (1894-1955)
This New Jersey pianist helped bridge the transition from ragtime to jazz with his stride piano technique, which built on ragtime’s locomotive, see-saw jauntiness but added more sophisticated harmonies and a stronger blues element. Though his music is mostly forgotten now, Johnson – who was also a noted accompanist for singers Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters – was a pioneer who earns his place among the best jazz singers in part because of his powerful influence over Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Art Tatum.
24: Bob James (born 1939)
Though Missouri-born James is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of smooth jazz, ironically, he began his career in the vanguard of the early 60s avant-garde scene. By the 70s, though, James’ star was on the rise thanks to his being the in-house arranger at producer Creed Taylor’s influential CTI label. He made four hugely popular, radio-friendly albums for CTI, where he established himself as the doyen of a lighter, more accessible version of jazz-fusion. Though he’s an undoubted master of the electric Fender Rhodes keyboard (which dominated his classic 70s records), in recent years James has returned to the acoustic piano.
23: George Shearing (1919-2011)
Blind from birth, the much-honored London-born George Shearing (who, uniquely among the best jazz pianists, was a Sir, having been knighted in 2007) displayed an aptitude for the piano and accordion at an early age. He eked a living as a jobbing pianist for hire until emigrating to the US in 1947, where he quickly made a name for himself with his synthesis of swing, bebop, and elements drawn from classical music. A pioneer of block chords, Shearing’s group – which including the distinctive sound of the vibraphone – became hugely popular and influential in the 50s.
22: Joe Zawinul (1932-2007)
Inspired to take up jazz after hearing Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose,” Austrian-born Zawinul ventured to the US in 1959, where he immediately made his mark as a pianist and composer in Cannonball Adderley’s band. Though Miles Davis tried to poach him (Zawinul worked on Miles’ groundbreaking In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew albums at the end of the 60s), the pianist stayed with Cannonball until 1970 and then co-founded famed fusion pioneers Weather Report.
21: Teddy Wilson (1912-1986)
Dubbed The Marxist Mozart for his espousal of left-wing political causes, Texas-born Theodore Wilson was a virtuosic pianist who gained prominence in the swing era and worked as a sideman with some of the biggest names in jazz, ranging from Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. He also made many recordings under his own name, but today is mostly remembered as Billie Holiday’s accompanist.
20: Horace Silver (1928-2014)
Born in Connecticut with Cape Verdean ancestry, Horace Silver was an archetypal hard bop pianist whose rise to fame began when he co-founded The Jazz Messengers (which Art Blakey later took over) in 1954. As well as a dexterous pianist who enjoyed a long and fruitful stretch at Blue Note between 1952 and 1980, Silver was a prolific tunesmith (among his most famous compositions is “Song For My Father”).
19: Red Garland (1923-1984)
For a jazz pianist who started out in life as a welterweight boxer, Texas-born William “Red” Garland had a decidedly delicate touch. He played as a sideman for Billy Eckstine and Charlie Parker, and was in bluesman Eddie Vinson’s band alongside a young John Coltrane. His path would cross with Coltrane’s again in the 50s, when both joined Miles Davis’ quintet and made several groundbreaking albums for Prestige and Columbia (among them Workin’ and ’Round About Midnight). Davis liked Garland for his Ahmad Jamal-like lightness of touch and use of space. Another hallmark of the Texan’s singular style was his use of two-handed block chords.
18: Tommy Flanagan (1930-2001)
For many, Detroiter Thomas Lee Flanagan’s name is synonymous with saxophone giant John Coltrane. He played on Trane’s totemic 1960 masterpiece, Giant Steps, and as a sideman also featured on significant LPs by Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus) and guitarist Wes Montgomery (The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery). Describing his approach to piano, Flanagan once said, “I like to play like a horn player, like I’m blowing into the piano.” Though he was a valued sideman, he also made a slew of albums under his own name for a raft of different labels between 1957 and 1997.
17: Erroll Garner (1923-1977)
With his predilection for performing in an ornate style that comprised lush chords, liquid runs and complex syncopations, this Pennsylvanian from Pittsburgh was a child piano prodigy who first recorded in the 40s but blossomed spectacularly in the 50s. He would arguably earn his place among the best jazz pianists solely for giving the jazz world the perennially popular standard “Misty,” which he composed in 1954 and recorded many times thereafter. Arguably the most compelling album he made was 1955’s classic Concert By The Sea, which captures Garner in all his glory.
16: Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)
One of an elite handful of jazz artists to score a big crossover pop hit in the 60s (“Take Five”), California-born Brubeck, who grew up on a ranch, studied to be a vet but switched to music during college. A near-fatal diving accident in 1951 caused nerve damage to Brubeck’s hands and changed the way he played piano, where fleet-of-finger lines were replaced by dense block chords. Even so, Brubeck could still play with imagination and elegance, and often composed music using unusual and asymmetrical time signatures.
15: Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941)
Given that he once claimed to have singlehandedly invented jazz, modesty was most certainly not a recognizable trait in the character of this New Orleans pianist born Ferdinand LeMothe – though he wholly deserves recognition among the best jazz pianists. As both a composer and arranger, Morton was a seminal figure in the development of early jazz – among his most famous recordings is “Black Bottom Stomp” – and he was also a noted pianist whose propulsive, jaunty style grew out of ragtime and anticipated the stride development.
14: Earl Hines (1903-1983)
From Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Earl “Fatha” Hines was a key figure in the evolution of jazz piano-playing. He started as an orthodox stride-style player but soon introduced innovations. In a bid to be heard in a big band ensemble, Hines began articulating melodies with octaves (or what he called “trumpet notes”), as well as using a tremolo effect (a rapid alternation of two notes). Though he began his recording career in 1923, he was able to adapt to changing styles in jazz and kept recording until 1981. A jazz piano colossus.
13: Count Basie (1904-1984)
Like fellow jazz aristocrat Duke Ellington, Count Basie’s prowess at the piano was often eclipsed by his role as a successful bandleader. Originally from Red Bank, New Jersey, Bill Basie rose to fame during the big-band swing epoch with popular tunes such as “One O’clock Jump.” He usually led from the piano, adhering to a minimalistic less-is-more aesthetic and employing forceful percussive accenting and octaves so that his bluesy notes cut through the full band sound.
12: Fats Waller (1904-1943)
Native New Yorker Thomas “Fats” Waller didn’t live to see his 40th birthday (he succumbed to pneumonia at 39), but nevertheless proved to be an influential pianist, particularly for his contribution to the evolution of the highly rhythmic stride style, an important foundation stone in jazz piano. Waller was also an organist and composer whose repertoire included the immortal tunes “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”
11: Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
It’s often overlooked that Washington, DC-born Edward Kennedy Ellington was a tremendous jazz pianist with his own inimitable style. That’s because Ellington earned greater fame as a popular bandleader and composer during the big band swing era of the 30s. There are a few solo piano entries in the jazz aristocrat’s extensive discography (most notably, perhaps, 1953’s The Duke Plays Ellington) that reveal the full extent of Ellington’s skills.
10: Ahmad Jamal (born 1930)
Pittsburgh-born Ahmad Jamal possesses a delicate, nimble touch and intuitively knows how to use space to good effect. It was the latter quality that made Miles Davis such a big fan of his music in the 50s, attempting to replicate Jamal’s light piano style in his groups of that era. Jamal first recorded for OKeh in 1951, but it was later in the same decade when took his position among the best jazz pianists of all time, with the best-selling live album At The Pershing, which took his music to a larger audience. A master of musical understatement.
9: Chick Corea (1941-2021)
Like Keith Jarrett, Armando “Chick” Corea, from Chelsea, Massachusetts, was an early starter – he began playing piano aged four – and later rose to fame as a sideman with the great Miles Davis (replacing Herbie Hancock). Though influenced by the romanticism of Bill Evans, there’s always been a palpable Latin inflection to Corea’s music, which has ranged from straight-ahead jazz to electric fusion (he led the jazz-rock behemoth Return To Forever in the 70s).
8: Keith Jarrett (born 1945)
From Allentown, Pennsylvania, Keith Jarrett started playing piano at the age of two and rapidly blossomed into a precociously gifted child prodigy steeped in classical music. As a teenager, Jarrett was seduced by jazz and quickly became fluent in its idiom. He played with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the mid-60s before joining the groups of Charles Lloyd and, later, Miles Davis. In the 70s, at ECM Records, Jarrett – eschewing electric instruments – patented a lyrical style and, in the same decade, released an improvised solo recital called The Köln Concert, which set a new benchmark for unaccompanied jazz piano. An intrepid improviser whose imagination knows no bounds.
7: Bud Powell (1924-1966)
This Harlem-born musician was the first pianist to approach the piano as if it were a horn instrument. Though he gleaned much from the left-hand stride-style of Art Tatum, alto saxophonist and bebop architect Charlie Parker was Bud Powell’s main inspiration. As a result, Powell proved highly influential, even though his career was short (he died aged 41, after years of mental health problems). The missing link between Art Tatum and bebop, his status as one of the best jazz pianists of all time is forever assured.
6: McCoy Tyner (1938-2020)
From Philadelphia, McCoy Tyner rose to fame as a member of John Coltrane’s groundbreaking quartet between 1960 and 1965, playing on the saxophonist’s iconic 1965 album, A Love Supreme. An exponent of modal jazz with a passion for blues, Tyner’s main hallmark is using chords with prominent fourths. He also often attacks the piano with brute force, though he can also play with extreme delicacy, employing staccato right-hand runs. After Coltrane, Tyner established himself as one of contemporary jazz’s pre-eminent pianists with a series of astounding albums for Blue Note and, later, Milestone.
5: Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)
Originally from Quebec, Canada, Peterson was a classically-trained child prodigy who fell under the influence of Art Tatum and Nat “King” Cole. He made his first recording in 1945, but it was in the 50s, after he joined jazz impresario Norman Granz’s Verve label and led a piano trio, that he became a household name. Renowned for ornate filigrees and a hard-swinging style, Peterson was a dextrous improviser.
4: Herbie Hancock (born 1940)
Though he’s flirted with funk, dabbled with disco, and even dallied with electro and hip-hop (exemplified by his 1983 global hit, “Rockit”), at heart this Chicago-born musical chameleon is a committed jazz pianist. Though influenced by Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock forged his own style in the 60s, both as a solo artist and as a member of Miles Davis’ pathfinding post-bop quintet. Though he’s almost 80, Hancock still has the musical inquisitiveness of a teenager.
3: Bill Evans (1929-1980)
A troubled soul, this New Jersey pianist was plagued with drug addiction problems throughout his adult life and professional career, but it didn’t stop him producing a remarkably beautiful and consistent body of work. Reflective romantic ballads with lush chords were his undoubted forte, but Evans – who drew on both bebop and classical music for inspiration – could also swing with verve, especially in a live setting. (Start with his legendary trio recordings with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, like Sunday at the Village Vanguard or Waltz for Debby for evidence of both.) Myriad pianists have fallen under Evans’ spell, including Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, and, more recently, Brad Mehldau.
2: Thelonious Monk (1917-1982)
Misunderstood by many, this North Carolina-born maverick (who was rarely seen without a hat) is one of the most idiosyncratic of the world’s best jazz pianists. Emerging in the bebop dawn of the mid-to-late 40s, he pursued his own idiosyncratic path, creating a unique musical universe where angular but hummable melodies, dissonant cluster chords, and a lightly-swinging rhythmic pulse ruled. As a composer, Monk contributed several standards to the jazz songbook – including “’Round Midnight” and “Straight, No Chaser” – and, as a keyboardist, recorded several albums of unaccompanied piano, including the classic Thelonious Alone In San Francisco.
1: Art Tatum (1909-1956)
At the pinnacle of our list of the 50 best jazz pianists of all time is the man regarded as a keyboard deity. Visually impaired from infancy, Ohio-born Art Tatum learned to play the piano by ear as a child and, blessed with perfect pitch, quickly excelled at the instrument. He patented a technically advanced, uniquely florid style from an early age that melded elements from stride, swing and classical music. Though hugely influential – Oscar Peterson was one of his prime disciples – Tatum’s life came to an end shortly after his 47th birthday.
Looking for more? Discover the 50 best jazz trumpeters here.
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https://veermag.com/2023/02/essay-the-sound-of-surprise/
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ESSAY: The Sound of Surprise
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2023-02-21T16:39:16-04:00
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(Count Basie at his piano in 1955. Photo by James J. Kriegmann) By Tom Robotham Whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, my go-to answer is, all of it. I’d be hard-pressed to pick a single favorite genre. That said, when I reflect on the richness of my experiences with music over
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VEER Magazine :: Hampton Roads arts, culture, entertainment, beer, wine, travel, dining -
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https://veermag.com/2023/02/essay-the-sound-of-surprise/
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(Count Basie at his piano in 1955. Photo by James J. Kriegmann)
By Tom Robotham
Whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, my go-to answer is, all of it. I’d be hard-pressed to pick a single favorite genre. That said, when I reflect on the richness of my experiences with music over the course of my life, my love of jazz stands out prominently.
The seeds of that love were planted early on by mother, a classically trained singer with a degree in music from Florida State University. Not that she liked jazz, per se. But she sang constantly while doing household chores, and favored tunes from the American Songbook, that great body of popular standards drawn from Hollywood and Broadway musicals. Many of those songs became jazz standards as well—thus, when I heard my first jazz recordings, I recognized the melodies immediately.
My mother also instilled in me a love of instrumental music, by sitting me down for my first piano lesson when I was 5. I loved vocal music, too, of course—especially The Beatles. But from an early age, I was fascinated by records without vocals, such as those by The Ventures. Later on, because of this, I was powerfully drawn to the instrumentals of prog-rock bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. Greg Lake’s and Jon Anderson’s vocals were certainly part of the appeal, but they were secondary to the dazzling virtuosity of Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe, and Carl Palmer.
None of this was jazz, of course. But it set the stage for me, as did jazz-influenced sections of John Barleycorn Must Die, by Traffic, which I first heard at a friend’s house when I was 15.
With that in mind, I bought my first jazz record a year later while flipping through the bins at Korvette’s department store: A Big-Band anthology, featuring Sing, Sing, Sing, In the Mood and other Swing-era classics.
In spite of this, I remained partial to rock until I went off to college. The great turning point came when I got a gig as an on-air host at WPLT, Plattsburgh, my college radio station. The large record library included hundreds of jazz albums, in addition to rock, folk and classical, and it was there that my education in jazz began in earnest.
That education grew ever more intense when I graduated and began my career as a newspaperman in the early ‘80s. The timing could not have been more fortuitous, as America, during that period, was experiencing something of a jazz renaissance, led by Wynton Marsalis and other young players who were devoted to reviving interest in this uniquely American art form. Spurred by the interest in these musicians, record companies like Blue Note and Verve began reissuing many of their old recordings as well.
Coinciding with this was my great good fortune to be granted a weekly music column at my paper, The Staten Island Advance. Armed with this credential, I got free records and free admission to jazz shows at clubs and concert halls, especially during the Kool Jazz Festivals.
The beauty of this period—from 1980-1983—lay not only in the creative output of the young musicians like Marsalis, but in the fact that so many giants of the music were still going strong. As a result, I got to see Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Art Blakey, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Ron Carter, Max Roach, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan, and dozens of others.
Better still, I got to interview some of them. One show that stands out is a performance by Count Basie and his orchestra at a Knights of Columbus Hall in Staten Island. I’d seen many of those other artists at Carnegie Hall, and they were wonderful, due in part to the extraordinary acoustics of that iconic venue. I remember Getz’s performance, in particular, because at one point he sent his sidemen off for a break, walked to the front of the stage alone, with his sax, and said, “Now I’m going to show you why this is the greatest concert hall in the world,” and proceeded to play without a mic. His silky-smooth tones filled the hall to the rafters. What made the Basie performance so special, on the other hand, was that the band played in front of a large dance floor. I was accompanied by my girlfriend at the time, and for the better part of two hours, we danced to our hearts’ content. It felt as if we’d gone through a time machine, back to the 1930s or the war years. After the show, to top things off, the concert organizer introduced me to Basie. He was ailing at the time, confined to a motorized wheel chair, but his mind was still sharp, and he’d had complete control of his ensemble. He also could not have been friendlier, and he thanked me for the preview article I’d written.
As fine as that memory is, however, another experience stands above it. When I got wind that Dizzy Gillespie had a show scheduled at a club in New Jersey, just over the bridge from Staten Island, I arranged to interview him by phone for another preview piece. That went well, but phone interviews aren’t ideal, so I resolved to follow up in person. Fortunately, a few nights before the Jersey gig, he was playing at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village. I’d called ahead to tell the manager what I was doing, and when I arrived, he ushered me to a seat directly in front of the bandstand.
“I hope you don’t mind sharing a table,” he said, pointing to a woman who was already sitting there. Naturally, I told him that was fine. When I sat down, she immediately extended her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Sylvia Syms.” She’s not all that well remembered these days, but in the 1950s and ‘60s she was a popular jazz singer. As I soon learned, she and Dizzy—whom she called by his real name, John—were good friends. While we were waiting for the show to begin, she regaled me with stories about their heydays, and I got a particular kick out of one remark.
“I remember when Miles Davis first came on the scene,” she said. “He was such a sweet young man.”
Later, during a break between sets, Gillespie came over to join his old friend, and I introduced myself as the one who’d interviewed him by phone. We talked some more, which fleshed out material for my column.
“What’s that book you have there?” he said, pointing to the paperback sitting on the table. (I never went anywhere without a book in those days.) It was Nat Hentoff’s The Jazz Life.
“Oh,” he said. “Nat’s a great writer and sure knows jazz.”
As a journalist, I tried to avoid acting like a mere fan, but at that moment I couldn’t resist, and asked him to sign it. He gladly obliged, and while I was never a big autograph hound, I cherish it to this day. It’s especially meaningful to me, not only because it reminds me of my warm encounter with one of the great pioneers of Bebop, but because Hentoff was also a major influence on my jazz education, with his books, liner notes, and columns in The Village Voice.
Years later, when I became editor of Port Folio Weekly, Hentoff and I became friends, which led to one of the greatest honors I’ve ever received. He read my Editor’s Notebook every week and was struck by one in particular—a column in which I’d written about why I, as the editor, devoted so much space to jazz coverage. He ended up devoting an entire Jazz Times column to what I’d said in Port Folio, praising my comments under the headline, “Bringing Newspapers into Jazz.” That meant more to me than any award.
The Port Folio years allowed me to continue the jazz education I’d started while working at the Staten Island Advance, but the 1990s were a rich decade as well. Before I got the editor’s gig, I continued working part-time in New York, flying up every week for six years. I was working for Hearst Magazines at the time, which also afforded me great access to things, and when I learned that Blue Note records wanted to issue a series of compilations under the Esquire magazine brand, I jumped at the opportunity to shepherd the project. (Esquire was owned by Hearst at the time, and the project made sense because the magazine had done so much to promote jazz over the years.)
The many meetings I had with Bruce Lundvall, the legendary head of Blue Note, are as fondly memorable as my encounters with the musicians themselves. One day, he mentioned that he was going to Bradley’s (a great jazz bar that, alas, no longer exists) to hear a young pianist named Jacky Terrasson. He invited me and my boss to join him, and it turned out to be another serendipitous event in my life. It was fascinating in part because the president of Verve was also there and interested in signing Terrasson. Lundvall won out.
“I threw in a new piano as a bonus,” he told me later.
That aside, though, I was just blown away by Terrasson’s playing. To this day, he remains one of my all-time favorite jazz musicians.
When I finally took the Port Folio gig, I was initially concerned that being anchored to Norfolk would cut me off from jazz, other than what I had in my record collection—and I did miss places like the Vanguard, the Blue Note and Bradley’s, among others. But to my delight, I soon met a number of jazz musicians based here, including Jae Sinnett, Jimmy Masters, Woody Beckner, Russell Scarborough, Justin Kauflin and others. And in keeping with the commitment I laid out in that column, I wrote about the local scene whenever I got the chance. I’m especially glad to have produced a cover story about the experiences of jazz musicians in a less-than-top-tier market. I’m also grateful to have had the opportunity to write about the great jazz saxophonist and Basie alum Frank Foster, who’d moved to Chesapeake. A short time after relocating here, while on tour, he’d had a stroke, and I wanted to chronicle not only his stellar career but the challenges he now faced as a result of his disability.
My friendship with Rob Cross, director of the Virginia Arts Festival, led to yet another great opportunity: the chance to help produce a Port Folio concert series. Among the musicians I got to bring here was none other than Jacky Terrasson, who performed a superb show at the NorVa. Afterwards, my friend and Port Folio contributor Jim Newsom went to dinner with Terrasson, and that was, needless to say, a delight, closing the circle that began years earlier at Bradley’s.
I’ve related all of these experiences here for one reason: to publicly express how extraordinarily lucky I feel to have had this exposure to America’s greatest art form. As Ken Burns so beautifully articulated in his multi-part Jazz documentary, the music is so quintessentially American because it’s about individual freedom and improvisation, tempered by the need for group cooperation. It is, in other words, the American experiment expressed in sound. The story of jazz, of course, is also the story of race in America.
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https://wiki.kidzsearch.com/wiki/Count_Basie
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Count Basie Facts for Kids
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Count Basie facts. William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. He was one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time. He led his popular Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years. Many important musicians came to became popular and successful with his help, like tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's famous songs were "One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris".
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William James Basie was born in 1904 in New Jersey. His parents were Harvey Lee Basie and Lillian Ann Childs, who lived on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, New Jersey.[1] His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a rich judge. After automobiles (cars) became more popular than using horses to get around, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for some families in the area.[2] His mother was a piano player and she gave Basie his first piano lessons. To earn money, she took in laundry to wash and baked cakes for sale.[3]
Basie was not very interested in school. He dreamed of a traveling, inspired by the carnivals which came to town. He only got as far as junior high school.[4] He helped out at the Palace theater in Red Bank, to get into the shows for free. He also learned to use the spotlights for the vaudeville shows. One day, when the pianist did not arrive in time for the show, Basie played instead. He soon learned to improvise music for silent movies.[5]
Basie was very good at the piano, but he liked drums better. There was another drummer in Red Bank who was better, called Sonny Greer, so Basie stopped playing drums and just played piano.[3] They played together until Greer started his professional career. Basie played with different groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, like Harry Richardson’s "Kings of Syncopation".[6] When he was not playing a gig, he spent time at the local pool hall with other musicians. He got some jobs in Asbury Park, playing at the Hong Kong Inn, until a better player took his place.[7]
Around 1924, Basie went to Harlem, New York City. A lot of jazz was being played there. He liced down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Soon after he went to Harlem, he met Sonny Greer again, who was now the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band.[8] Soon, Basie met many Harlem musicians, like Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in some acts between 1925 and 1927, as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers Katie Krippen and Gonzelle White.[9][10] He went to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. He met many great jazz musicians, like Louis Armstrong.[11]
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie got his first regular job at Leroy’s, a place known for its piano players, where lots of celebrities went. The band usually played without sheet music.[12] He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater, accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play the organ.[13] Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out when there was not much work, arranging gigs at house-rent parties, where he met other important musicians.[14]
In 1928 Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which had Jimmy Rushing singing.[15] A few months later, Basie was asked to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. He began to be known as "Count" Basie.[16]
In 1929, Basie started playing with the Bennie Moten band, Kansas City.[17] The Moten band was classier and more respected than the Blue Devils. They played in a style called the Kansas City stomp.[18] As well as playing piano, Basie also arranged music with Eddie Durham.[19] When they were staying in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He sometimes played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten.[20] The band got better when they added a saxophone player called Ben Webster.
The band voted Moten out and Basie became the leader. The band was now called "Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms". Later he went to join Moten's new band.[21] Moten died in 1935 and the band did not stay together. Basie made a new band, which included many of the musicians from Moten's band. Lester Young, a saxophone player, also joined. They played at the Reno Club and sometimes on local radio. One night the band started improvising a piece which Basie called "One O'Clock Jump".[22] It became his signature tune.[23]
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https://www.broadwayworld.com/new-jersey/regional/The-Prom-4080676
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The Prom at Phoenix Productions (at the Count Basie Center for the Arts) New Jersey 2024
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Complete Information About The Prom in New Jersey at Phoenix Productions (at the Count Basie Center for the Arts). FRIDAY, MAY 3 • DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM SATURDAY, MAY 4 • DOORS 1PM • SHOWTIME 2PM | DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre • Basi...
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en
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BroadwayWorld.com
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https://www.broadwayworld.com/new-jersey/regional/The-Prom-4080676
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View All New Jersey Shows
>
The Prom
FRIDAY, MAY 3 • DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MAY 4 • DOORS 1PM • SHOWTIME 2PM | DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM
Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre • Basie Center Campus • 99 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ
A delightful musical about an end of the year high-school dance. Four eccentric Broadway stars are in desperate need of a new stage. So, when they hear that trouble is brewing around a small-town prom, they know that it’s time to put a spotlight on the issue…and themselves. The town’s parents want to keep the high school dance on the straight and narrow—but when one student just wants to bring her girlfriend to prom, the entire town has a date with destiny. On a mission to transform lives, Broadway’s brassiest join forces with a courageous girl and the town’s citizens and the result is love that brings them all together. Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, this show expertly captures all the humor and heart of a classic musical comedy with a message that resonates with audiences now more than ever.
Authors
Bob Martin
Chad Beguelin
Jack Viertel
Matthew Sklar
Tony Awards and Nominations for The Prom
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https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/count-basie-theatre-90586207/all/
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en
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Profile for Count Basie Theatre
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Linknovate profile for Count Basie Theatre :
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Count Basie on the left, from "Stage Door Canteen" (1943) William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was a prominent American jazz pianist and band leader. Like his contemporary Duke Ellington, Basie assembled a group of premiere musicians and through innovative use of rhythm and improvisation, and his spare yet suggestive piano work, Basie largely defined the distinctive Kansas City jazz style that would, in turn, influence the emergence of modern jazz. For his contribution to classic jazz and his anticipation of modern developments, Basie is regarded as one of jazz music’s all time greats. Basie is known for his inimitable statements on the piano, but it has also been said that his real instrument was his band. Basie brought to perfection the union of opposites characteristic of much great art: His crisp, contrapuntal piano and the relaxed, even swing of the rest of his rhythm section; his incisive, minimalist piano and the powerful sound of his orchestra; and countless pairs of hard/soft soloists dialogging with each other. Combining soulful blues and upbeat, celebratory rhythms and solo performances, Basie's music possessed an emotional resonance that elevated Big Band jazz beyond the conventions of popular swing jazz. Early life Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, New Jersey Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, to Harvey Lee Basie, and Lillian Ann Childs and lived on Mechanic Street. Later, he would be referred to as the “Kid from Red Bank” (the title of a tune). Bill had a brother, LeRoy Basie. His father worked as coachman for a wealthy family. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a grounds keeper and handyman for several families in the area. His mother took in laundry, and was Basie's first piano teacher when he was a child. He was taught organ informally by Fats Waller. Along with Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Lucky Roberts, and other pianists of the Harlem stride tradition would be Basie’s prime influences. Basie toured the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuit, starting in 1924, as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers. Sometimes, he would also provide musical accompaniment to silent movies. His touring took him to Kansas City, Missouri, where he met many jazz musicians in the area. Kansas City was then an important transit point and a musical scene connected to nightlife, similar to New Orleans’ Storyville, had begun to thrive there, giving birth to a distinctive Kansas City style. In 1928, Basie joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the following year became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City. Moten’s ensemble was a good "territory band," a term signifying the rising popularity of jazz outside of urban scenes and of popular bands that would range far from home for engagements. Moten himself was a capable, but unremarkable, ragtime pianist who had the good sense to put to use the young pianist he had recruited: Basie. Except for Basie, the really outstanding musician of the band was trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. The band had had its successes (notably a 1928 version of "South") but it was still a few steps away from the swing era. Occasionally, one could hear an accordion in the ensembles, which gave it a pleasant but unsophisticated rural sound. Within a mere two years, the band had absorbed many of the best elements of Walter Page’s Blue Devils, a competing band that had dissolved. These included Page himself, a formidable bassist who gave the band a powerful new swing. Basie’s piano had become gradually more present ("Moten Swing," "Prince of Wails") and he soon came to all but own the band. He started his own band in 1934, but shortly after returned to Moten's band. When Moten died in 1935, the band soon dissembled, and in 1936, Basie, along with several of Moten’s key alumni, resurrected it under a new name, Barons of Rhythm, soon to become the Count Basie Orchestra. The classic band: Basie’s “First Testament” In addition to touring, the band performed nightly radio broadcasts, and serendipitously, the young Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond—a music legend who had discovered the seventeen-year-old Billie Holiday in 1933, tracked down the forgotten Bessie Smith for a final recording session in 1937, and later launched the careers of Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen—picked up the Basie band on his car radio. Inspired by what he heard, Hammond set out for Kansas City to hear Basie in person, and in October 1936, the producer arranged a recording session in Chicago that he later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with." Basie's band honed their repertoire at a long engagement at a Chicago club. It was at this time that he was first called "Count" Basie by a local disk jockey, a term of distinction for outstanding jazz greats that included Joe "King" Oliver, Edward "Duke" Ellington, and Bessie Smith, who was crowned the Empress of the Blues. Soon the Basie band was expanded to the full big band size (13 musicians), and by the end of 1936 Hammond brought the band to New York, where it opened at the Roseland Ballroom. By the next year Basie took up residence at the Famous Door, and the Count Basie Orchestra continued to perform in New York until 1950. Basie’s music was characterized by his trademark "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. Basie also showcased some of the best blues singers of the era: Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, and later Big Joe Turner and Joe Williams. Most congenial to the band was Jimmy Rushing, called “Mr. Five by Five” (due to his short stature and large girth). Rushing epitomized the spirit of Basie’s orchestral blues, a blues that was more urbane and often humorous than traditional blues. Even more importantly, Count Basie was a highly successful band-leader who was able to hold onto some of the greatest jazz musicians of the 1930s and early 1940s, like Buck Clayton and Lester Young, and the band's brilliant rhythm section, Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones. He was also able to hire great arrangers that knew how to use the band's abilities, like Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy. With his newly formed band, Basie quickly brought the Kansas City style of jazz to perfection. While not fundamentally different from the style played by other swing era bands in New York or Chicago, this way of playing was characterized by a supple, light beat and the astute use of riffs—short melodic patterns played repeatedly, especially towards the end of a piece, to heighten the atmosphere. The alternating playing of several riffs could go on indefinitely, until a climax was reached. Unfortunately, the recordings of that era were limited to about three minutes, so they cannot fully convey the equivalent of the band’s live performances. Another Basie innovation was the introduction of two tenor saxophones “dueling” with each other. The first, historical pair consisted of Lester Young, with his detached, cool sound and Herschel Evans with his more traditional, intensely hot style. This was the starting point of a long history of saxophone duels within the Basie Band and beyond. On trumpet also, the elegant Buck Clayton and the powerful Harry “Sweets Edison” were a perfect complement to each other. On trombone too, there were usually two major voices at any given time, including Bennie Morton, Dickie Wells, and Vic Dickenson. Basie the pianist Most of the time, Basie played very few notes, but these were perfectly chosen to fill the silence he used with equal mastery. His unique, crisp style can immediately be recognized by knowledgable jazz fans(only Nat Pierce has been somewhat successful at imitating him). At times, his piano was reminiscent of Earl Hines’s jumpy and ethereal rhythmic playing ("Moten Swing," with Bennie Moten). Much of the time, the stable and powerful qualities of his stride piano heritage were obvious. His playing was often pure Fats Waller, with the stomping left hand the pearly flurries of the right hand (John’s Idea, 1937), except that it was also pure Basie. Over the years, Basie’s subtle sense of rhythm, combined with his powerful stride playing, would produce a unique synthesis that gradually evolved into his signature minimalist style. He would play next to nothing but fill the room with his few notes. Many tunes also highlight Basie’s double role as soloist and accompanist of his key players (e.g., in Roseland Shuffle, 1937, in his dialogue with Lester Young). Occasionally, Basie would also produce piano solos ("How Long Blues," 1938) or contribute extended solos to his band’s performances ("Boogie Woogie"). The Basie rhythm section Basie’s rhythm section has often been described as the best in jazz history. It was certainly the most cohesive of its time and has reached proverbial fame. Starting with Basie’s presence in the Moten band, it came into being over the years when, first, Walter Page’s bass gave real swing to the band. Later, Jo Jones on drums introduced the even 4 beats that contrasted with earlier drummers emphasizing 2 beats out of 4. Jones was also a formidable soloist. When finally Freddie Green added his guitar to the band, the section was complete. Over the next 50 years, Green would practically play nothing but a succession of chords that completed the even dynamism of the section. Interestingly, each time a new element of that section was added, the already existing members toned down their playing without changing it to reach the perfect balance that made the ensemble famous. Much of that subtle quality was lost once Jones and Page departed, but even the more muscular nature of drumming in the New Testament band maintained the essence of that quality thanks to the lasting presence of Freddie Green and Basie himself. Basie’s “New Testament” By the late 1940s the Big Band era appeared to be at an end, but (after downsizing to a septette and octette in 1950) Basie reformed his band as an even larger 16-piece orchestra in 1952, and led it until his death. Basie remained faithful to the Kansas City style and helped keep jazz alive with his distinctive piano playing. The new band gave its real meaning to the name big band. Its huge sound was brassier than that of the first band. It also relied on sophisticated arrangements, while the first band had mostly relied on star soloists and their ability to play "head arrangements." These were simple arrangements learned by heart by musicians who, for all their talent, were poor sight readers. In that sense, the new band was more professional and less dependent on particular key players. Any capable musician could fit in and replace a departing member of the band. What was gained in weight and in sophistication was perhaps compensated by a slight loss in originality over time. The new soloists of the band, while excellent, were not quite of the historical caliber of a Lester Young. The emotion-laden sound of the ensembles and Basie’s own input became all the more important. Basie and modern jazz With his New Testament band, Basie moved into the special realm of classic jazz being played in the era of bop and modern jazz—concurrently with developments that were of a totally different nature. While he and his musicians remained swing musicians in essence, they did evolve with the times, creating the big band music of after the swing era. The major soloists who passed through the new band through the years include Clark Terry on flugelhorn, Joe Newman on trumpet, Paul Gonsalves, Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Eddie “Lockjaw Davis" on tenor, Sonny Paine and Louis Bellson (a white musician) on drums, and many more. All of them could be considered transitional artists, mixing elements of classic jazz with the complexities and tone of modern jazz. The vocalists By the mid 1950s, the Count Basie Band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for the finest jazz vocalists of the time. Joe Williams was spectacularly featured on the 1957 album One o'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings. Ella Fitzgerald, the quintessential swing singer, recorded several times with the Count Basie Orchestra. These records are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald's 1963 album Ella and Basie! is remembered as one of Fitzgerald's greatest recordings. With the "New Testament" Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from the "Songbook" recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. She toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and a much tamer Basie band also met on the 1979 albums Digital III at Montreux, A Classy Pair, and A Perfect Match. Frank Sinatra had an equally fruitful relationship with Basie; 1963's Sinatra-Basie and 1964's It Might As Well Be Swing (both arranged by Quincy Jones) are two of the highest points at the peak of Sinatra's artistry. Jones provided the punchy arrangements for the Basie band on Sinatra's biggest selling album, the live Sinatra at the Sands. In the 60s, Basie was often compelled to compromise on the choice of his material to maintain his band. In 1960, he appeared as himself (along with his band) in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella. But by the 70s, his fame had reached a peak, including with the public at large, not unlike the popularity achieved by Louis Armstrong. He was named the greatest jazz musician on earth by the British publication Melody Maker and was invited to perform for Queen Elizabeth before even Duke Ellington earned that distinction. Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984 at the age of seventy-nine. The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey was named in his honor. Legacy “Basie's status as a great musician was not a matter of extension and elaboration of blues idiom basics as was the case of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington," says jazz critic Albert Murray. "Basie's claim to fame and prestige was based on his refinement of the fundamentals that make jazz music swing. The Basie hallmark was always simplicity, but it is a simplicity that is the result of a distillation that produced music that was as refined, subtle and elegant as it was earthy and robust. There is no better example of the un-gaudy in the work of any other American artist in any medium." Basie's consummate artistry, like Ellington's, is a credit to his visionary understanding of the jazz idiom and his leadership as much as to his innovative keyboard work. Basie's band is often cited as the most important precursor of the emergence of modern jazz, and it is not coincidental that the leading innovator of forties, the saxophonist Charlie Parker, was a native of Kansas City. Basie gathered many of the premiere jazz artists of the era. Saxophonist Herschel Evans and his distinctive "Texas moan;" the blues-based "Hot Lips" Page, who had earlier performed with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith; jazz balladeers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Turner; and above all brilliant, boundary-breaking tenor sax improviser Lester Young (known affectionately as "Pres") established a style for the Basie band that drew from the excitement of traditional jazz and informed it with innovations in rhythm and phrasings that would lead jazz in radical new directions. "Count Basie's music is not about protest," said Murray. "It is about celebration, and . . . what [Basie's music] generates is a sense of well-being that even becomes exhilaration." References ISBN links support NWE through referral fees Basie, Count. Count Basie Collection (Artist Transcriptions). Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004. (Artist Transcriptions). Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004. Basie, Count. The Piano Style of Count Basie: Some of Basie's Best of Advanced Piano. Alfred Publishing Company, 2001. Alfred Publishing Company, 2001. Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980. Murray, Albert et al.Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002. All links retrieved April 6, 2022.
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https://blackthen.com/williams-james-count-basie-one-of-the-greatest-influential-jazz-musicians-of-all-times/
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Williams James “Count Basie”: One of the Greatest Influential Jazz Musicians of All Times
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William James “Count Basie” is regarded as being one of the most influential jazz musicians of all times. Basie was a bandleader as well as a great pianist.
He was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. During his youth, Basie's mother taught him to play the piano. She later paid 25 cents for him to take lessons. His father ...
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Black Then
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https://blackthen.com/williams-james-count-basie-one-of-the-greatest-influential-jazz-musicians-of-all-times/
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William James “Count Basie” is regarded as being one of the most influential jazz musicians of all times. Basie was a bandleader as well as a great pianist.
He was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. During his youth, Basie’s mother taught him to play the piano. She later paid 25 cents for him to take lessons. His father worked as a coachman, caretaker, and later a handyman for wealthy families.
When he was in his teens, he began performing at various events. Basie eventually dropped out of school and learned how to operate the lights for the vaudeville performances. He soon started playing in the vaudeville shows before forming his own big band.
Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, “Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm,” in 1935, and he led the group for almost 50 years. Many musicians including Lester Young, Herschel Evans, and Harry “Sweets” Edison worked under his leadership. Basie is also noted for helping to define the era of “swing” with hits such as One O’Clock Jump and Blue Skies. In 1958, he became the first African-American male recipient of a Grammy Award.
Count Basie was one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. He won many Grammys throughout his career and worked with numerous timeless artists, including Joe Williams and Ella Fitzgerald. Basie died in Florida on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.
source:
Who Was The First Black Grammy Winner?
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_basie_count.htm
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Count Basie, whose real name was William James Basie, was a jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer who left an indelible mark on the world of music.
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en
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Estelle\'s Bookstore
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https://estellesbooks.com/count-basie/
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Count Basie, whose real name was William James Basie, was a jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer who left an indelible mark on the world of music. Born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey, Basie’s journey through the world of jazz would take him from the humble beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance to becoming one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz.
Early Beginnings
Count Basie‘s love affair with music began at an early age when he discovered the joy of the piano. Self-taught and naturally gifted, he developed his own unique style by listening to the greats of the jazz and blues genres. His early years as a performer saw him traveling the vaudeville circuit, accompanying silent films, and playing in various bands.
The Big Apple & the Harlem Renaissance
In 1927, Basie made his way to the epicenter of jazz, New York City. He joined the thriving Harlem Renaissance scene, where he honed his skills and earned his place as a pianist of note. It was during this time that he earned the nickname “Count” from a radio announcer, inspired by the elegant and regal demeanor he displayed on and off the stage.
The Count Basie Orchestra
In 1935, Count Basie formed his own band, the Count Basie Orchestra, which would go on to become one of the most renowned and enduring big bands in jazz history. With his exceptional piano skills at the helm, Basie’s orchestra was known for its signature “Kansas City Swing” style, characterized by a relentless, swinging rhythm section and impeccable soloists.
The Swing Era
Basie’s orchestra quickly gained popularity during the Swing Era, providing the soundtrack to countless dance floors across the nation. Their smooth, swinging tunes became anthems of an era characterized by exuberance, dance, and the joy of music. Hits like “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” made Basie a household name and secured his place in the pantheon of jazz legends.
Legendary Collaborations
Count Basie had the privilege of collaborating with some of the most iconic figures in jazz history. His musical partnerships with the likes of Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and Joe Williams produced timeless recordings that continue to captivate audiences today. The interplay between Basie’s piano and Lester Young’s tenor saxophone, in particular, is regarded as one of the most harmonious duets in jazz history.
From Swing to Count Basie & His Orchestra
As the music landscape evolved, so did Count Basie’s orchestra. The swing era eventually gave way to the big band sound, and Basie adapted seamlessly. His orchestra continued to flourish, earning Grammy Awards and accolades for albums like “Atomic Basie” and “The Complete Atomic Basie.”
The Basie Legacy
Count Basie’s influence on jazz extended far beyond his illustrious career. He played a pivotal role in breaking down racial barriers in music, leading one of the first integrated jazz ensembles. His commitment to racial equality was not only reflected in his band but also in his unwavering support for the civil rights movement.
Basie’s style was characterized by its simplicity and elegance. He once said, “I don’t believe in runnin’ all over the keyboard. I like to let the piano breathe.” This minimalist approach allowed the beauty of his compositions to shine through.
Awards & Recognition
Count Basie’s contributions to the world of jazz earned him numerous awards and accolades. He received multiple Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Final Note
Count Basie’s legacy continues to resonate through the countless recordings and performances that showcase his genius. He passed away on April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Florida, leaving behind a rich musical tapestry that continues to inspire new generations of jazz musicians and enthusiasts.
Count Basie’s enduring impact on jazz music, his pioneering spirit, and his dedication to the art form make him not only a jazz legend but also a cultural icon whose influence will be felt for generations to come.
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Basie, William James "Count"
August 21, 1904April 26, 1984 Source for information on Basie, William James "Count": Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History dictionary.
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/basie-william-james-count
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August 21, 1904
April 26, 1984
Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, jazz pianist and bandleader William "Count" Basie took up drums as a child, performing at informal neighborhood gatherings. He began to play piano before his teens, and in high school he formed a band with drummer Sonny Greer. In 1924 Basie moved to New York, where he was befriended by two of the greatest stride piano players of the day, Fats Waller and James P. Johnson. Basie himself became a fine stride pianist, as well as a proficient organist, learning that instrument while observing Waller's performances at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. Basie left New York in the mid-1920s to work as a touring musician for bands led by June Clark and Elmer Snowden, and as accompanist to variety acts such as those led by Kate Crippen and Gonzelle White. When White's group broke up in Kansas City in 1927, Basie found himself stranded. He supported himself as a theater organist, but more importantly, he also began performing with many of the southwest "territory" bands. In 1928 he joined bassist Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the next year he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City.
After Moten's death in 1935, Basie took over the group, now reorganized as Count Basie and the Barons of Rhythm. Producer John Hammond heard the band on a 1935 radio broadcast from the Reno Club in Kansas City, and the next year brought the band to New York City. During this time the Basie band became one of the country's best-known swing bands, performing at the Savoy Ballroom, at the Famous Door on 52nd Street, and at the Woodside Hotel in Harlem, a stay immortalized in "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (1938). The band's recordings from this time represent the best of the hard-driving, riff-based Kansas City style of big-band swing. Many of these recordings are "head" arrangements, in which the horns spontaneously set up a repeating motif behind the melody and solos. Memorable recordings from this period include "Good Morning Blues" (1937), "One O'Clock Jump" (1937), "Sent for You Yesterday" (1937), "Swinging the Blues" (1938), "Every Tub" (1938), and "Taxi War Dance" (1939). In 1941 the Basie band recorded "King Joe," a tribute to boxer Joe Louis, which had lyrics by Richard Wright and vocals by Paul Robeson. In 1943 the band appeared in two films, Stage Door Canteen and Hit Parade of 1943.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Basie group was primarily a band of soloists. The leading members included tenor saxophonists Herschel Evans and Lester Young, alto saxophonists Buster Smith and Earle Warren, trumpeters Harry "Sweets" Edison and Wilbur "Buck" Clayton, and trombonists Eddie Durham and William "Dicky" Wells. Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, and Billie Holiday provided vocals. In the 1940s Basie also added saxophonists Buddy Tate and Don Byas, trumpeters Clark Terry and Joe Newman, and trombonists Vic Dickenson and J. J. Johnson. Throughout, the band's "all-American rhythm section" consisted of Basie, drummer Jo Jones, bassist Walter Page, and guitarist Freddie Green, who remained with the band for more than fifty years. Together, they provided the sparse and precise, but also relaxed and understated, accompaniment. Basie himself was one of the first jazz pianists to "comp" behind soloists, providing accompaniment that was both supportive and prodding. His thoughtful solos, which became highly influential, were simple and rarefied, eschewing the extroverted runs of stride piano, but retaining a powerful swing. That style is on display on Basie's 1938–1939 trio recordings ("How Long, How Long Blues" and "Oh! Red"). He also recorded on the organ in 1939.
With the rise of the bebop era, Basie had difficulty finding work for his big band, which he dissolved in 1949. However, after touring for a year with a bebop-oriented octet, Basie formed another big band, which lasted until his death. The "second" Basie band was very different from its predecessor. The first was famed for its simple and spontaneous "head" arrangements. In contrast, arrangers Neal Hefti, Johnny Mandel, and Ernie Wilkins, with their carefully notated arrangements and rhythmic precision, were the featured musicians of the second Basie band. The latter also had many fine instrumentalists, including saxophonists Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Paul Quinichette, Frank Wess and Frank Foster playing saxophone and flute, trombonist Al Grey, trumpeter Thad Jones, and vocalist Joe Williams.
Basie's second band toured extensively worldwide from the 1950s through the 1970s. Basie had his first national hit in 1955 with "Every Day I Have the Blues." Other popular recordings from this time include April in Paris (1955, including "Corner Pocket" and "Shiny Stockings"), The Atomic Basie (1957, including "Whirly Bird" and "Lil' Darlin"), Basie at Birdland (1961), Kansas City Seven (1962), and Basie Jam (1973). During this period the Basie band's popularity eclipsed even that of Duke Ellington, with whom they made a record, First Time, in 1961. The Basie band became a household name, playing at the inaugural balls of both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and appearing in such films as Cinderfella (1959), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), and Blazing Saddles (1974).
In the 1980s, Basie continued to record, in solo, small-group, and big-band settings (Farmer's Market Barbecue, 1982; 88 Basie Street, 1984). He lived for many years in the St. Albans section of Queens, New York, with Catherine Morgan, a former dancer he had married in 1942. Health problems induced him to move to the Bahamas in his later years. He died in 1984 in Hollywood, Florida. His autobiography, Good Morning Blues, appeared the next year. Basie's band has continued performing, led by Thad Jones until 1986 and since then by Frank Foster.
See also Holiday, Billie; Robeson, Paul; Savoy Ballroom
Bibliography
Basie, Count, and Albert Murray. Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. New York: Random House, 1985.
Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Da Capo Press, 1980.
Sheridan, C. Count Basie: A Bio-Discography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986.
michael d. scott (1996)
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Count Basie facts for kids
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William James "Count" Basie ( August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.
Biography
Early life and education
William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.
The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation". When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.
Early career
Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band. Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements". He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City). As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.
In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals. A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).
Kansas City years
The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson. Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style. In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music. Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for, was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform. During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted. The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band. A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with Earl Hines, as well as Duke Ellington.
Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump". According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.
John Hammond and first recordings
At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the Grand Terrace Ballroom. Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of Herschel Evans' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the alto players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.
In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with". Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out. He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on Vocalion Records under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44). When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.
By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone). Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".
Basie favored blues, and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, and Joe Williams. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
New York City and the swing years
When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement). Soon, they were booked at the Roseland Ballroom for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing". Compared to the reigning band of Fletcher Henderson, Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.
The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up. His first official recordings for Decca followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "Pennies from Heaven" and "Honeysuckle Rose".
Hammond introduced Basie to Billie Holiday, whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos). The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and Jimmy Rushing getting the most attention. Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.
Next, Basie played at the Savoy, which was noted more for lindy-hopping, while the Roseland was a place for fox-trots and congas. In early 1938, the Savoy was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with Chick Webb's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer Ella Fitzgerald. As Metronome magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:
Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.
The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, Benny Goodman recorded their signature "One O'Clock Jump" with his band.
A few months later, Holiday left for Artie Shaw's band. Hammond introduced Helen Humes, whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years. When Eddie Durham left for Glenn Miller's orchestra, he was replaced by Dicky Wells. Basie's 14-man band began playing at the Famous Door, a mid-town nightspot with a CBS network feed and air conditioning, which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap. Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from Jimmy Mundy (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and Earl Hines), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief". In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first West Coast dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the William Morris Agency, who got them better fees.
On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at Southland in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20. On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a "Command Performance" for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore. Other minor movie spots followed, including Choo Choo Swing, Crazy House, Top Man, Stage Door Canteen, and Hit Parade of 1943. They also continued to record for OKeh Records and Columbia Records. The war years caused a lot of members turn over, and the band worked many play dates with lower pay. Dance hall bookings were down sharply as swing began to fade, the effects of the musicians' strikes of 1942–44 and 1948 began to be felt, and the public's taste grew for singers.
Basie occasionally lost some key soloists. However, throughout the 1940s, he maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists.
Los Angeles and the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts
Count Basie was the featured artist at the first Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field on September 23, 1945, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. Al Jarvis was the Emcee and other artists to appear on stage were Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, Valaida Snow, and Big Joe Turner. They played to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie and his Orchestra played at the tenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field on June 20, 1954. He played along with The Flairs, Christine Kittrell, Lamp Lighters, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Ruth Brown, and Perez Prado and his Orchestra.
Post-war and later years
The big band era appeared to have ended after the war, and Basie disbanded the group. For a while, he performed in combos, sometimes stretched to an orchestra. In 1950, he headlined the Universal-International short film "Sugar Chile" Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet. He reformed his group as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. This group was eventually called the New Testament band. Basie credited Billy Eckstine, a top male vocalist of the time, for prompting his return to Big Band. He said that Norman Granz got them into the Birdland club and promoted the new band through recordings on the Mercury, Clef, and Verve labels. The jukebox era had begun, and Basie shared the exposure along with early rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues artists. Basie's new band was more of an ensemble group, with fewer solo turns, and relying less on "head" and more on written arrangements.
Basie added touches of bebop "so long as it made sense", and he required that "it all had to have feeling". Basie's band was sharing Birdland with such bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Behind the occasional bebop solos, he always kept his strict rhythmic pulse, "so it doesn't matter what they do up front; the audience gets the beat". Basie also added flute to some numbers, a novelty at the time that became widely copied. Soon, his band was touring and recording again. The new band included: Paul Campbell, Tommy Turrentine, Johnny Letman, Idrees Sulieman, and Joe Newman (trumpet); Jimmy Wilkins, Benny Powell, Matthew Gee (trombone); Paul Quinichette and Floyd "Candy" Johnson (tenor sax); Marshal Royal and Ernie Wilkins (alto sax); and Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax). DownBeat magazine reported: "(Basie) has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this." In 1957, Basie sued the jazz venue Ball and Chain in Miami over outstanding fees, causing the closure of the venue.
In 1958, the band made its first European tour. Jazz was especially appreciated in France, The Netherlands, and Germany in the 1950s; these countries were the stomping grounds for many expatriate American jazz stars who were either resurrecting their careers or sitting out the years of racial divide in the United States. Neal Hefti began to provide arrangements, including "Lil Darlin'". By the mid-1950s, Basie's band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for some of the most prominent jazz vocalists of the time. They also toured with the "Birdland Stars of 1955", whose lineup included Sarah Vaughan, Erroll Garner, Lester Young, George Shearing, and Stan Getz.
In 1957, Basie the live album Count Basie at Newport. "April in Paris" (arrangement by Wild Bill Davis) was a best-selling instrumental and the title song for the hit album. The Basie band made two tours in the British Isles and on the second, they put on a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, along with Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, and Mario Lanza. He was a guest on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue also opened to several other black entertainers. In 1959, Basie's band recorded a "greatest hits" double album The Count Basie Story (Frank Foster, arranger), and Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, an album featuring Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones (as arranger) and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records, then later reissued by Capitol Records.
Later that year, Basie appeared on a television special with Fred Astaire, featuring a dance solo to "Sweet Georgia Brown", followed in January 1961 by Basie performing 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 providing four numbers from their play books.
During the balance of the 1960s, the band kept active with tours, recordings, television appearances, festivals, Las Vegas shows, and travel abroad, including cruises. Some time around 1964, Basie adopted his trademark yachting cap.
Through steady changes in personnel, Basie led the band into the 1980s. Basie made a few more movie appearances, such as in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella (1960) and the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles (1974), playing a revised arrangement of "April in Paris".
Marriage, family and death
Basie was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. On July 21, 1930, Basie married Vivian Lee Winn, in Kansas City, Missouri. They were divorced sometime before 1935. Some time in or before 1935, the now single Basie returned to New York City, renting a house at 111 West 138th Street, Manhattan, as evidenced by the 1940 census. He married Catherine Morgan on July 13, 1940, in the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington. In 1942, they moved to Queens. Their only child, Diane, was born February 6, 1944. She was born with cerebral palsy and the doctors claimed she would never walk. The couple kept her and cared deeply for her, and especially through her mother's tutelage, Diane learned not only to walk but to swim. The Basies bought a home in the new whites-only neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946 on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans, Queens.
On April 11, 1983, Catherine Basie died of heart disease at the couple's home in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. She was 67 years old.
Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.
Singers
Basie hitched his star to some of the most famous vocalists of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped keep the Big Band sound alive and added greatly to his recording catalog. Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie in the late 1930s. Joe Williams toured with the band and was featured on the 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, with "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" becoming a huge hit. With Billy Eckstine on the album Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald made some memorable recordings with Basie, including the 1963 album Ella and Basie!. With the New Testament Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from her Songbook recordings and constant touring she did during this period. She even toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and Basie also met on the 1979 albums A Classy Pair, Digital III at Montreux, and A Perfect Match, the last two also recorded live at Montreux. In addition to Quincy Jones, Basie was using arrangers such as Benny Carter (Kansas City Suite), Neal Hefti (The Atomic Mr Basie), and Sammy Nestico (Basie-Straight Ahead).
Frank Sinatra recorded for the first time with Basie on 1962's Sinatra-Basie and for a second studio album on 1964's It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. Jones also arranged and conducted 1966's live Sinatra at the Sands which featured Sinatra with Count Basie and his orchestra at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. In May 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Sinatra later said of this concert "I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting".
Basie also recorded with Tony Bennett in the late 1950s. Their albums together included In Person and Strike Up the Band. Basie also toured with Bennett, including a date at Carnegie Hall. He also recorded with Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah Vaughan. One of Basie's biggest regrets was never recording with Louis Armstrong, though they shared the same bill several times. In 1968, Basie and his Band recorded an album with Jackie Wilson titled Manufacturers of Soul.
Legacy and honors
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalog. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, dryly witty, and always enthusiastic about his music. In his autobiography, he wrote, "I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter."
In Red Bank, New Jersey, the Count Basie Theatre, a property on Monmouth Street redeveloped for live performances, and Count Basie Field were named in his honor.
Received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 1974.
Mechanic Street, where he grew up with his family, has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
In 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmark where Count Basie had also lived.
In 2010, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In October 2013, version 3.7 of WordPress was code-named Count Basie.
In 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Asteroid 35394 Countbasie, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1997, was named after him. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).
6508 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, California is the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Representation in other media
Jerry Lewis used "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy.
"Blues in Hoss' Flat," composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was used by the radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins as his theme song in San Francisco and New York.
In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard Basie in Carnegie Hall.
Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
Since 1963 "The Kid From Red Bank" has been the theme and signature music for the most popular Norwegian radio show, Reiseradioen, aired at NRK P1 every day during the summer.
In the 2016 movie The Matchbreaker, Emily Atkins (Christina Grimmie) recounts the story of how Count Basie met his wife three times without speaking to her, telling her he would marry her some day in their first conversation, and then marrying her seven years later.
The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance have a song titled "Count Bassy" that is included on their 2018 album Artificial Selection.
In his novel This Storm, James Ellroy makes Basie a character who is blackmailed by corrupt Los Angeles police.
In 2021’s “Elvis,” a Count Basie poster is seen about 20 minutes into the movie.
Discography
Count Basie made most of his albums with his big band. See the Count Basie Orchestra Discography.
From 1929 to 1932, Basie was part of Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra:
Count Basie in Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930-1932 (RCA Victor, 1965)
Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932) (Bluebird/RCA, 1989)
The Swinging Count!, (Clef, 1952)
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1958)
The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette, 1958)
Memories Ad-Lib with Joe Williams (Roulette, 1958)
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated with Billy Eckstine ( Roulette 1959)
String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Impulse!, 1962)
Basie Swingin' Voices Singin' with the Alan Copeland Singers (ABC-Paramount, 1966)
Basie Meets Bond (United Artists, 1966)
Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve, 1966)
Basie on the Beatles (Verve, 1969)
Loose Walk with Roy Eldridge (Pablo, 1972)
Basie Jam (Pablo, 1973)
The Bosses with Big Joe Turner (1973)
For the First Time (Pablo, 1974)
Satch and Josh with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1974)
Basie & Zoot with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1975)
Count Basie Jam Session at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo, 1975)
For the Second Time (Pablo, 1975)
Basie Jam 2 (Pablo, 1976)
Basie Jam 3 (Pablo, 1976)
Kansas City 5 (Pablo, 1977)
The Gifted Ones with Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo, 1977)
Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Satch and Josh...Again with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1977)
Night Rider with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Count Basie Meets Oscar Peterson – The Timekeepers (Pablo, 1978)
Yessir, That's My Baby with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Kansas City 8: Get Together (Pablo, 1979)
Kansas City 7 (Pablo, 1980)
On the Road (Pablo, 1980)
Kansas City 6 (Pablo, 1981)
Mostly Blues...and Some Others (Pablo, 1983)
88 Basie Street (Pablo, 1983)
As sideman
With Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1957)
With Harry Edison
Edison's Lights (Pablo, 1976)
With Benny Goodman
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, 1939)
Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1939)
With Jo Jones
Jo Jones Special (Vanguard, 1955)
With Joe Newman
Joe Newman and the Boys in the Band (Storyville, 1954)
With Paul Quinichette
The Vice Pres (Verve, 1952)
With Lester Young
The Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy, 1944)
Filmography
Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) – as himself
Top Man (1943) – as himself
Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet (1950) – as himself
Jamboree (1957)
Cinderfella (1960) – as himself
*** and the Single Girl (1964) – as himself with his orchestra
Blazing Saddles (1974) – as himself with his orchestra
Last of the Blue Devils (1979) – interview and concert by the orchestra in documentary on Kansas City music
Awards
Grammy Awards
In 1958, Basie became the first African-American to win a Grammy Award.
Count Basie Grammy Award history Year Category Title Genre Results 1984 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band 88 Basie Street Jazz Winner 1982 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band Warm Breeze Jazz Winner 1980 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band On The Road Jazz Winner 1977 Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band Prime Time Jazz Winner 1976 Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist (Instrumental) Basie And Zoot Jazz Winner 1963 Best Performance by an Orchestra – For Dancing This Time By Basie! Hits of the 50's And 60's Pop Winner 1960 Best Performance by a Band For Dancing Dance With Basie Pop Winner 1958 Best Performance by a Dance Band Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Pop Winner 1958 Best Jazz Performance, Group Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Jazz Winner
Grammy Hall of Fame
By 2011, four recordings of Count Basie had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
Count Basie Grammy Hall of Fame Awards Year recorded Title genre Label Year inducted 1939 Lester Leaps In Jazz (Single) Vocalion 2005 1955 Everyday (I Have the Blues) Jazz (Single) Clef 1992 1955 April in Paris Jazz (Single) Clef 1985 1937 One O'Clock Jump Jazz (Single) Decca 1979
Honors and inductions
On May 23, 1985, William "Count" Basie was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by Aaron Woodward.
On September 11, 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp. Basie is a part of the Big Band Leaders issue, which, is in turn, part of the Legends of American Music series.
In 2009, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In May 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Memphis, TN, presented by The Blues Foundation.
Count Basie award history Year Category Result Notes 2019 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted 2007 Long Island Music Hall of Fame Inducted 2005 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted 2002 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 1983 NEA Jazz Masters Winner 1981 Grammy Trustees Award Winner 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Honoree 1982 Hollywood Walk of Fame Honoree at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. 1970 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Initiated Mu Nu Chapter 1958 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted
National Recording Registry
In 2005, Count Basie's song "One O'Clock Jump" (1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
See also
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Count Basie
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American jazz musician and composer (1904–1984)
Musical artist
William James "Count" Basie ( ; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984)[1] was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, his minimalist piano style, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams. As a composer, Basie is known for writing such jazz standards as Blue and Sentimental, Jumpin' at the Woodside and One O'Clock Jump.
Biography[edit]
Early life and education[edit]
William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey.[2][3] His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area.[4] Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.[5][6]
The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school[7] but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.[8]
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15.[5] Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation".[9] When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.[10]
Early career[edit]
Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band.[11] Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen.[12][13] His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong.[14] Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.[15]
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements".[16] He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City).[1] As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.[17]
In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals.[18] A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).[19]
Kansas City years[edit]
The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson.[20] Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style.[21] In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music.[22] Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for,[23] was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform.[24] During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted.[25] The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band.[26] A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with Earl Hines, as well as Duke Ellington.
Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump".[27] According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.[28]
John Hammond and first recordings[edit]
At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the Grand Terrace Cafe.[29] Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of Herschel Evans' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the alto players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.[30]
In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with".[31] Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out.[32] He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on Vocalion Records under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44).[33] When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.[34]
By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone).[35] Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".[36]
Basie favored blues, and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, and Joe Williams. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
New York City and the swing years[edit]
When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement).[37] Soon, they were booked at the Roseland Ballroom for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing".[38] Compared to the reigning band of Fletcher Henderson, Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.[39]
The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up.[40] His first official recordings for Decca followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "Pennies from Heaven" and "Honeysuckle Rose".[41]
Hammond introduced Basie to Billie Holiday, whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos).[42] The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and Jimmy Rushing getting the most attention.[43] Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.[44]
Next, Basie played at the Savoy, which was noted more for lindy-hopping, while the Roseland was a place for fox-trots and congas.[45] In early 1938, the Savoy was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with Chick Webb's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer Ella Fitzgerald. As Metronome magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:
Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.[46]
The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, Benny Goodman recorded their signature "One O'Clock Jump" with his band.[47]
A few months later, Holiday left for Artie Shaw's band. Hammond introduced Helen Humes, whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years.[48] When Eddie Durham left for Glenn Miller's orchestra, he was replaced by Dicky Wells. Basie's 14-man band began playing at the Famous Door, a mid-town nightspot with a CBS network feed and air conditioning, which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap.[49] Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from Jimmy Mundy (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and Earl Hines), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief".[50] In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first West Coast dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the William Morris Agency, who got them better fees.[51]
On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at Southland in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20.[52] On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a "Command Performance" for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore.[53] Other minor movie spots followed, including Choo Choo Swing, Crazy House, Top Man, Stage Door Canteen, and Hit Parade of 1943.[54] They also continued to record for OKeh Records and Columbia Records.[55] The war years caused a lot of members turn over, and the band worked many play dates with lower pay. Dance hall bookings were down sharply as swing began to fade, the effects of the musicians' strikes of 1942–44 and 1948 began to be felt, and the public's taste grew for singers.
Basie occasionally lost some key soloists. However, throughout the 1940s, he maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists.[56]
Los Angeles and the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts[edit]
Count Basie was the featured artist at the first Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field on September 23, 1945, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr.[57] Al Jarvis was the Emcee and other artists to appear on stage were Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, Valaida Snow, and Big Joe Turner.[58] They played to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie and his Orchestra played at the tenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field on June 20, 1954. He played along with The Flairs, Christine Kittrell, Lamp Lighters, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Ruth Brown, and Perez Prado and his Orchestra.[59]
Post-war and later years[edit]
The big band era appeared to have ended after the war, and Basie disbanded the group. For a while, he performed in combos, sometimes stretched to an orchestra. In 1950, he headlined the Universal-International short film "Sugar Chile" Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet. He reformed his group as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. This group was eventually called the New Testament band. Basie credited Billy Eckstine, a top male vocalist of the time, for prompting his return to Big Band. He said that Norman Granz got them into the Birdland club and promoted the new band through recordings on the Mercury, Clef, and Verve labels.[60] By 1956, Basie's recordings were also showcased by Ben Selvin within the RCA Thesaurus transcription library.[61] The jukebox era had begun, and Basie shared the exposure along with early rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues artists. Basie's new band was more of an ensemble group, with fewer solo turns, and relying less on "head" and more on written arrangements.
Basie added touches of bebop "so long as it made sense", and he required that "it all had to have feeling". Basie's band was sharing Birdland with such bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Behind the occasional bebop solos, he always kept his strict rhythmic pulse, "so it doesn't matter what they do up front; the audience gets the beat".[62] Basie also added flute to some numbers, a novelty at the time that became widely copied.[63] Soon, his band was touring and recording again. The new band included: Paul Campbell, Tommy Turrentine, Johnny Letman, Idrees Sulieman, and Joe Newman (trumpet); Jimmy Wilkins, Benny Powell, Matthew Gee (trombone); Paul Quinichette and Floyd "Candy" Johnson (tenor sax); Frank Wess (tenor sax and flute); Marshal Royal and Ernie Wilkins (alto sax); and Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax).[64] DownBeat magazine reported: "(Basie) has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this."[65] In 1957, Basie sued the jazz venue Ball and Chain in Miami over outstanding fees, causing the closure of the venue.[66]
In 1958, the band made its first European tour. Jazz was especially appreciated in France, The Netherlands, and Germany in the 1950s; these countries were the stomping grounds for many expatriate American jazz stars who were either resurrecting their careers or sitting out the years of racial divide in the United States. Neal Hefti began to provide arrangements, including "Lil Darlin'". By the mid-1950s, Basie's band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for some of the most prominent jazz vocalists of the time. They also toured with the "Birdland Stars of 1955", whose lineup included Sarah Vaughan, Erroll Garner, Lester Young, George Shearing, and Stan Getz.[67]
In 1957, Basie the live album Count Basie at Newport. "April in Paris" (arrangement by Wild Bill Davis) was a best-selling instrumental and the title song for the hit album.[68] The Basie band made two tours in the British Isles and on the second, they put on a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, along with Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, and Mario Lanza.[69] He was a guest on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue also opened to several other black entertainers. In 1959, Basie's band recorded a "greatest hits" double album The Count Basie Story (Frank Foster, arranger), and Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, an album featuring Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones (as arranger) and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records, then later reissued by Capitol Records.
Later that year, Basie appeared on a television special with Fred Astaire, featuring a dance solo to "Sweet Georgia Brown", followed in January 1961 by Basie performing at one of the five John F. Kennedy Inaugural Balls.[70] That summer, Basie and Duke Ellington combined forces for the recording First Time! The Count Meets the Duke, each providing four numbers from their play books.[71]
During the balance of the 1960s, the band kept active with tours, recordings, television appearances, festivals, Las Vegas shows, and travel abroad, including cruises. Some time around 1964, Basie adopted his trademark yachting cap.[72]
Through steady changes in personnel, Basie led the band into the 1980s. Basie made a few more movie appearances, such as in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella (1960) and the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles (1974), playing a revised arrangement of "April in Paris". In 1982 Basie and his orchestra were the featured entertainment for the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the Pittsburgh Steelers at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.[1]
Basie was a Prince Hall Freemason as a member of Wisdom Lodge No. 102 in Chicago as well as a Shriner.[73]
Marriage, family and death[edit]
Basie was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. On July 21, 1930, Basie married Vivian Lee Winn, in Kansas City, Missouri. They were divorced sometime before 1935. Some time in or before 1935, the now single Basie returned to New York City, renting a house at 111 West 138th Street, Manhattan, as evidenced by the 1940 census. He married Catherine Morgan on July 13, 1940, in the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington. In 1942, they moved to Queens. Their only child, Diane, was born February 6, 1944. She was born with cerebral palsy and the doctors claimed she would never walk. The couple kept her and cared deeply for her, and especially through her mother's tutelage, Diane learned not only to walk but to swim.[74] The Basies bought a home in the new whites-only neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946 on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans, Queens.[75] On April 11, 1983, Catherine Basie died of heart disease at the couple's home in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. She was 67 years old.[76] Daughter Diane Basie died October 15, 2022, of a heart attack.[77]
Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.[1]
Singers[edit]
Basie hitched his star to some of the most famous vocalists of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped keep the Big Band sound alive and added greatly to his recording catalog. Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie in the late 1930s. Joe Williams toured with the band and was featured on the 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, with "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" becoming a huge hit. With Billy Eckstine on the album Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald made some memorable recordings with Basie, including the 1963 album Ella and Basie!. With the New Testament Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from her Songbook recordings and constant touring she did during this period. She even toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and Basie also met on the 1979 albums A Classy Pair, Digital III at Montreux, and A Perfect Match, the last two also recorded live at Montreux. In addition to Quincy Jones, Basie was using arrangers such as Benny Carter (Kansas City Suite), Neal Hefti (The Atomic Mr Basie), and Sammy Nestico (Basie-Straight Ahead).
Frank Sinatra recorded for the first time with Basie on 1962's Sinatra-Basie and for a second studio album on 1964's It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. Jones also arranged and conducted 1966's live Sinatra at the Sands which featured Sinatra with Count Basie and his orchestra stayed at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas at Sinatra's request. In May 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Sinatra later said of this concert "I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting".[78]
Basie also recorded with Tony Bennett in the late 1950s. Their albums together included In Person and Strike Up the Band. Basie also toured with Bennett, including a date at Carnegie Hall. He also recorded with Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah Vaughan. One of Basie's biggest regrets was never recording with Louis Armstrong, though they shared the same bill several times.[79] In 1968, Basie and his Band recorded an album with Jackie Wilson titled Manufacturers of Soul.[80][81]
Legacy and honors[edit]
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalog. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, dryly witty, and always enthusiastic about his music.[82] In his autobiography, he wrote, "I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter."[83]
In Red Bank, New Jersey, the Count Basie Theatre, a property on Monmouth Street redeveloped for live performances, and Count Basie Field were named in his honor.
Received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 1974.[84]
Mechanic Street, where he grew up with his family, has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
In 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmark where Count Basie had also lived.
In 2010, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In October 2013, version 3.7 of WordPress was code-named Count Basie.[85]
In 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Asteroid 35394 Countbasie, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1997, was named after him.[86] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).[87]
6508 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, California is the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Representation in other media[edit]
Jerry Lewis used "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy.
"Blues in Hoss' Flat," composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was used by the radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins as his theme song in San Francisco and New York.
In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard Basie in Carnegie Hall.
Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
Since 1963 "The Kid From Red Bank" has been the theme and signature music for the most popular Norwegian radio show, Reiseradioen, aired at NRK P1 every day during the summer.
In the 2016 movie The Matchbreaker, Emily Atkins (Christina Grimmie) recounts the story of how Count Basie met his wife three times without speaking to her, telling her he would marry her some day in their first conversation, and then marrying her seven years later.
The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance have a song titled "Count Bassy" that is included on their 2018 album Artificial Selection.
In his novel This Storm, James Ellroy makes Basie a character who is blackmailed by corrupt Los Angeles police to play a New Year's Eve concert in exchange for ignoring a marijuana charge.
Discography[edit]
Count Basie made most of his albums with his big band. See the Count Basie Orchestra Discography.
From 1929 to 1932, Basie was part of Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra:
Count Basie in Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930-1932 (RCA Victor, 1965)
Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932) (Bluebird/RCA, 1989)
The Swinging Count!, (Clef, 1952)
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1958)
The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette, 1958)
Memories Ad-Lib with Joe Williams (Roulette, 1958)
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated with Billy Eckstine ( Roulette 1959)
String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Impulse!, 1962)
Basie Swingin' Voices Singin' with the Alan Copeland Singers (ABC-Paramount, 1966)
Basie Meets Bond (United Artists, 1966)
Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve, 1966)
Basie on the Beatles (Happy Tiger, 1970)
Loose Walk with Roy Eldridge (Pablo, 1972)
Basie Jam (Pablo, 1973)
The Bosses with Big Joe Turner (1973)
For the First Time (Pablo, 1974)
Satch and Josh with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1974)
Basie & Zoot with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1975)
Count Basie Jam Session at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo, 1975)
For the Second Time (Pablo, 1975)
Basie Jam 2 (Pablo, 1976)
Basie Jam 3 (Pablo, 1976)
Kansas City 5 (Pablo, 1977)
The Gifted Ones with Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo, 1977)
Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Satch and Josh...Again with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1977)
Night Rider with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Count Basie Meets Oscar Peterson – The Timekeepers (Pablo, 1978)
Yessir, That's My Baby with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Kansas City 8: Get Together (Pablo, 1979)
Kansas City 7 (Pablo, 1980)
On the Road (Pablo, 1980)
Kansas City 6 (Pablo, 1981)
Mostly Blues...and Some Others (Pablo, 1983)
88 Basie Street (Pablo, 1983)
As sideman[edit]
With Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1957)
With Harry Edison
Edison's Lights (Pablo, 1976)
With Benny Goodman
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, 1939)
Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1939)
With Jo Jones
Jo Jones Special (Vanguard, 1955)
With Joe Newman
Joe Newman and the Boys in the Band (Storyville, 1954)
With Paul Quinichette
The Vice Pres (Verve, 1952)
With Lester Young
The Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy, 1944)
Filmography[edit]
Policy Man (1938)[88]
Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) – as himself
Top Man (1943) – as himself
Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet (1950) – as himself
Jamboree (1957)
Cinderfella (1960) – as himself
Sex and the Single Girl (1964) – as himself with his orchestra
Blazing Saddles (1974) – as himself with his orchestra
Last of the Blue Devils (1979) – interview and concert by the orchestra in documentary on Kansas City music
Awards[edit]
Grammy Awards[edit]
In 1958, Basie became the first African-American to win a Grammy Award.[89]
Count Basie Grammy Award history[90] Year Category Title Genre Results 1984 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band 88 Basie Street Jazz Winner 1982 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band Warm Breeze Jazz Winner 1980 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band On The Road Jazz Winner 1977 Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band Prime Time Jazz Winner 1976 Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist (Instrumental) Basie And Zoot Jazz Winner 1963 Best Performance by an Orchestra – For Dancing This Time By Basie! Hits of the 50's And 60's Pop Winner 1960 Best Performance by a Band For Dancing Dance With Basie Pop Winner 1958 Best Performance by a Dance Band Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Pop Winner 1958 Best Jazz Performance, Group Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Jazz Winner
Grammy Hall of Fame[edit]
By 2011, four recordings of Count Basie had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
Count Basie Grammy Hall of Fame Awards[91] Year recorded Title genre Label Year inducted 1939 Lester Leaps In Jazz (Single) Vocalion 2005 1955 Everyday (I Have the Blues) Jazz (Single) Clef 1992 1955 April in Paris Jazz (Single) Clef 1985 1937 One O'Clock Jump Jazz (Single) Decca 1979
Honors and inductions[edit]
On May 23, 1985, William "Count" Basie was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by Aaron Woodward.
On September 11, 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp. Basie is a part of the Big Band Leaders issue, which, is in turn, part of the Legends of American Music series.
In 2009, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[92]
In May 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Memphis, TN, presented by The Blues Foundation.
Count Basie award history Year Category Result Notes 2019 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted 2007 Long Island Music Hall of Fame Inducted 2005 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted 2002 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 1983 NEA Jazz Masters Winner 1981 Grammy Trustees Award Winner 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Honoree 1982 Hollywood Walk of Fame Honoree at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. 1970 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Initiated Mu Nu Chapter 1958 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted
National Recording Registry[edit]
In 2005, Count Basie's song "One O'Clock Jump" (1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.[93] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Jazz portal
References[edit]
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Celebrate 100 years of William “Count” Basie with the Count Basie Orchestra and Nnenna Freelon at the Phillips Center, Tuesday, February 15
Relive the big band era with The World Famous Count Basie Orchestra and multi-Grammy -nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon at the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Tuesday, February 15, 2005 at 7:30 p.m. A pre-performance discussion, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6:45 p.m.
The Count Basie Orchestra’s collaboration with Freelon celebrates Count Basie and his music –- the 100th anniversary of Basie’s birth was last summer –- including the best-known Basie repertoire, and paying homage to the beloved vocalists who have performed with the Orchestra, including Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. In addition to the scintillating Basie sounds, the performance includes new material designed and arranged for Freelon’s unique stylings, including the only tune that Vaughan ever wrote.
Born in 1904, William “Count” Basie began playing the keyboard in the Benny Moten Orchestra in the early 1930s; jazz experts maintain that Basie’s place at the keyboard signaled the beginning of the Moten band’s historical significance. After Moten’s sudden death in 1935, Basie took the reigns as bandleader and the name “The Count” when the group headlined at Kansas City’s Reno Club in 1936. The band’s gigs were broadcasted live on the radio, and Music Corporation of America and Decca signed it shortly afterwards.
Radio airtime and records helped the band’s popularity grow, and The Count Basie Orchestra ushered in the 1940s attracting solo guests and large crowds across the nation. While the Korean War and economic lull eventually sent the demand for “big bands” into decline, the Orchestra played on, with European concert tours in the 1950s, and expanded European and Southeast Asian concert tours and regular television and Las Vegas appearances well into the 1960s.
Even after Count Basie’s death in 1984, The Count Basie Orchestra’s impact on the jazz world remains strong. The band’s lightness and precision set the tone for modern jazz accompanying style with a piano style called “comping,” which refers to a syncopated and highly precise style of playing chords. The band also launched the careers of several musicians, including tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, trumpeter-composer Thad Jones, bassist Walter Page and drummer Jo Jones. Bill Hughes, who sat in the band’s trombone section for nearly 50 years, leads The Count Basie Orchestra today; with the help of drummer Butch Miles and his tight rhythm section, the band continues to win over a new generation of fans and garner awards and special recognitions. The Washington Post notes that in spite of changes in leadership since Basie’s death, “the band is still purring one moment and roaring the next in trademark fashion.”
Jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon joins the Orchestra at the Phillips Center to celebrate 100 years of Count Basie. An accomplished singer, composer, producer and arranger, Freelon has a well-deserved reputation as a captivating live performer. In 2001, she received an enthusiastic standing ovation from 20,000 music industry insiders and celebrities when she took the stage at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. She has performed and toured with several jazz greats, including Ray Charles, Ellis Marsalis, Al Jarreau and Dianne Reeves. Her fifth release on Concord Records, Live (which was recorded live at the Kennedy Center in 2003), marks her decade-long recording career and 20 years on the road.
Saturn of Gainesville sponsors this performance.
Tickets are: $30, front orchestra and mezzanine; $30, mid-orchestra; $25, rear orchestra; $20, balcony. Rush seating in the balcony may be available day of show for $10.
Tickets to University of Florida Performing Arts events are available by calling the Phillips Center Box Office at 352-392-ARTS (2787) or 1-800-905-ARTS (2787) or by faxing orders to 352-846-1562. Tickets are also available at the University Box Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or by calling Ticketmaster at 904-353-3309. Cash, Visa and MasterCard are accepted.
The Phillips Center Box Office is open Monday – Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.
Performance dates, times and programs are subject to change.
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TT 232: Elusive: Thad Jones at 100, by Russell Scarbrough
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"ETHAN IVERSON"
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2023-03-28T10:43:10+00:00
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A guest post about the legendary trumpet player, composer, and arranger
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en
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https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-232-elusive-thad-jones-at-100
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Most jazz fans know Thad Jones for his work with the famous Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band, the house ensemble of the Village Vanguard. I was intrigued by all the non-Thad/Mel material Russell was posting on his socials, and am grateful for the opportunity to repost these fascinating insights here. — e.i.
——
by Russell Scarbrough:
Below are notes I collected while contemplating a book on Thad Jones. All this material first appeared on my Facebook page. Corrections welcome, for accurate and complete information about Thad remains elusive!
Thad Jones, born 100 years ago today in Pontiac, Michigan, recorded “Elusive” on his first record in 1954.
“My Centennial” is number 100 in that fat book of charts at the Village Vanguard.
Thad’s parents had moved to Pontiac from Mississippi in the Great Migration. His siblings included two other great jazz musicians, Hank (older), and Elvin (younger). Their father, Hank Sr. was a deacon at Trinity Baptist Church, within sight of their childhood home (one of Thad's first big band charts was "The Deacon"). By all accounts, his sister was the most talented member of the family, but she died tragically at age 12. Thad apparently didn't pick up a trumpet until he was about 13, and was completely self-taught (his uncle gave him the horn and a book about how to play). No jazz was allowed in the house on Sundays.
Thad played locally until enlisting in WWII in 1943, then ended up in Guam in time to hear Dizzy Gillespie on the radio. After the war, Thad played in Detroit and in the midwest, but didn't arrive in NYC until May 1954. He was 31! Hardly a note of Thad's career was recorded until his life was almost half over.
Since many jazz musicians regularly went through Detroit, Thad was well known along that circuit before he moved east. He joined the Count Basie Orchestra on Frank Wess's recommendation just as Basie was entering one of his most fruitful and enduring periods.
In addition, Thad immediately became part of Charles Mingus's circle of performers and composers for an important three year run.
By the end of the summer of 1954, Thad had recorded his debut LP The Fabulous Thad Jones with Mingus on bass; he also recorded Mingus's "Portrait" (a trumpet solo with orchestra) for10-inch record. An oft-quoted letter by Mingus to Metronome Magazine praises Thad as "Bartók with valves.”
The relationship didn’t last. In Gene Santoro's biography of Mingus Myself When I Am Real, he reports a plausible enough story about Mingus and Thad having a dispute about an appearance Thad made on some album that — due to some contractual matter — caused one of Mingus's records to be held up... so Mingus called Thad's residence, got his wife on the phone instead, and proceeded to subject her to one of Mingus's famous tirades. When Thad heard about this, said to Mingus, "I'll kill you if you ever do that again," and then according to Santoro, they didn't speak for 20 years.
Except — In 1972, for Mingus's big band album Let My Children Hear Music, the CD reissue notes by George Kanzler state: "Mingus conceived of an ambitious project with a large ensemble and hired Thad Jones to do the arranging and scoring. But Jones, in the midst of writer's block, didn't produce any music.”
Say what now? So they were certainly talking. And Thad had "writer's block?" If Thad was getting paid, he would be writing charts: this was a period when Thad did a lot of freelance arranging of all kinds of lesser commercial material (after his day gig with Ed Sullivan at CBS dried up). I really don't believe this.
I have a lot of questions about Thad and Mingus. They worked together during important years for both of them, and clearly there had been mutual respect for each other's music. And them one day it was over? What really happened after that falling out in 1957? What was their relationship like afterwards? What if?
It seems likely that Thad Jones spent time playing, and presumably writing, while serving in the US Army in WWII (from 1943-46). We know practically nothing about Thad in the first half of the 1940's, and practically nothing about when he became interested in writing music or how he developed that craft.
Chris Sheridan's bio-discography of Count Basie notes that the Ernie Wilkins arrangement of "Every Day I Have The Blues” — which was a giant hit — was “written out from riffs and figures supplied by Thad Jones and Frank Wess.” Bill Kirchner is quoted on the Living Jazz Archives website saying that a 1956 arrangement of Denzil Best's "Move" featured on the Hall Of Fame LP was actually co-arranged by Wess and Thad — representing Thad's first chart for Basie, and therefore, the first Thad chart we know about (though he wrote many original tunes for his small group records).
1955-56 were good years for Thad. His first son and daughter were born. He played his iconic "Pop Goes the Weasel" solo on "April In Paris" (another massive hit for Basie). He recorded two more solo albums and won Down Beat's New Star award. And on August 29, 1955, while on the road in Chicago with Basie, he met the drummer from Stan Kenton's orchestra: Mel Lewis.
Apart from that half-a-chart of “Move,” from 1954-58 Thad contributes no other arrangements to the Basie band. Strange but true? According to Sheridan's exhaustive catalog of radio checks and (many) other documented performances at that time, there were no Thad charts in the book. Basie had other great writers, of course: Ernie Wilkins, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Neal Hefti, and others.
This changes in 1958 when the great Chairman Of The Board LP comes out. Thad contributes four charts to the album: "The Deacon", "H.R.H.", "Mutt & Jeff", and the rather progressive "Speaking of Sounds" (also known as "Brushes & Brass”). The kinetic "Counter Block" appears in concerts in the first half of 1959 and may have been written about the same time as the Chairman charts.
(A listing of Thad's charts for Basie is here.)
Thad became very close to Al Grey, who joined the Basie trombone section in 1957 just before a triumphant tour of Great Britain. Sheridan suggests Grey was the "missing link" providing real depth to the Basie band, and his arrival inspired Thad's pen. Indeed, Thad wrote at least three great charts to feature Grey: “H.R.H.," "Bluish Grey,” and "Makin' Whoopie," perhaps the definitive showcase for Grey's plunger technique.
"To You” on the First Time: Basie Meets The Duke (1961) was also originally intended for Grey, but he’d been fired from the Basie band 6 months earlier, so it ended up being a feature for Quintin Jackson's plunger.
(Incidentally, Sheridan also mentions that “H.R.H.," obviously the acronym for Her Royal Highness, was inspired by the British tour. The title specifically refers to Princess Margaret, who was a fan of Basie's and made quite a favorable impression on the band.)
Thad spent almost 8 1/2 years with Basie. In his seniority, he self-promoted himself from "The Deacon" (1957) to "The Elder" (1962).
But other than the concept album projects where Thad was contracted to write most of the arrangements — Dance Along With Basie and Count Basie/Sarah Vaughan — less than a dozen Thad charts were performed regularly.
From this vantage point it seems odd that Thad’s arrangements were so scarce in the Basie book, but there were reasons. Basie had no shortage of great writers for the band; Verve Records wanted to feature Neil Hefti; Basie was notorious for his pickiness regarding charts. In the Hall Of Fame liner notes, Wilkins is quoted: "[Basie] rejects more arrangements than he accepts,” a sentiment echoed by many later voices.
Basie also made no hesitation in changing, cutting, and correcting his arrangers, which naturally led to some tension. It’s possible that Basie simply didn't dig much of Thad's writing. Too hard, too complicated, too modern, not in keeping with the signature Basie style. "Bartók with an arranger's pen" might have too much for the leader, no matter how elegant or progressive the writing may have been.
Thad joined Basie as a relatively unknown voice from the mid-west with practically no documentation of his talent. Over 8+ years he'd become and experienced and widely-admired veteran player, acknowledged as a significant force in progressive jazz. Basie had featured him, shown him how to be a successful leader, and given him a chance to grow as a writer.
But Thad eventually outgrew the limitations of the sideman role, so on January 24, 1963, Thad finally left Count Basie freelance in NYC, writing, arranging, playing, and band-leading. Publicly he said it was to spend more time with his family, which makes sense. Life in a big band like Basie's meant large periods of time on the road, and sometimes grueling schedules.
(An example of a grueling schedule: In May 1959, in the midst of a two-week nightly residency at Birdland in NYC, the band flew to Miami with Joe Williams to play an all-night dance from 2-7am, and flew back to make their Birdland hit later that evening! The Miami performance is captured on the Breakfast Dance & Barbecue LP.)
But was this a good time to stop being a sideman? On one hand, Thad was a seasoned 40-year old and in good artistic company: Roland Hanna, James Moody, Pepper Adams, Shirley Scott, Gerry Mulligan, Ben Webster, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, George Russell... great voices of the past, present, and future. He regarded his week of playing "Night Creature" with Duke Ellington and the Detroit Symphony in March 1963 as one of the high points of his career. (See Mark Stryker's Jazz From Detroit for more about “Night Creature.”)
On the other hand, the scene was changing: The Cold War heating up, instability in Europe, the assassination of JFK, the Civil Rights movement beginning to have wide effects, Vietnam on the horizon….TV was increasingly a focal point for all Americans (most broadcasting was in color by 1965), keeping people at home evenings. and there were fewer young people interested in jazz (no longer the music of rebellion and freedom, but of rarefied modern art). Birdland went bankrupt in 1964 and closed early in 1965, just after a weeklong residency featuring John Coltrane.
Finally, at the encouragement of his brother Hank, he joined CBS as a studio musician in 1964, and began performing regularly on the Ed Sullivan Show. He stayed on the show until it was cancelled in 1971.
Meanwhile, Thad played occasionally with Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band. Unlike Basie, Mulligan's group was not full-time, and was mostly centered in New York. Also unlike Basie, Mulligan tended to feature a limited number of soloists: Mulligan himself, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, and Clark Terry or Conte Candoli on trumpet, giving far less to the other (quite capable) players in the band. And Mulligan's band could be said to have an element of restraint and refinement, perhaps unusually so for a large jazz group at that time, and not necessarily to everyone's taste (which may partially explain why Mulligan didn't keep it together for long). But while less satisfying for Thad to perform in, he made important connections there: composer Brookmeyer would become an important ally, and he built a relationship with the drummer Mel Lewis, whom Thad had previously met on the road. Lewis would then power a quintet with Thad and baritone sax player Pepper Adams (the 1966 LP Mean What You Say is a great document of this group).
Knowing Thad's writing aspirations (and finding no outlet with Mulligan in that regard, it seems), Mel began to encourage Thad to start his own band. Mel was not the first to suggest this: Roland Hanna said the same thing immediately after Thad left Basie. And it's not as if Thad wasn't writing: in fact, Harry James hired Thad for about a chart a month once he had left Basie, resulting in the 1964 LP Harry James Plays New Versions of Down Beat Favorites, containing 12 Thad Jones arrangements. So why not just start writing, get the guys together and start playing? After all, there were other bands in NYC doing just that: besides Mulligan, Duke Pearson had a big band, and there were many other part-time or occasional bands that only played locally. Take a few months, write out a couple of sets, and we're off and running, right? What was Thad waiting for?
In his biography of Mel Lewis The View From The Back Of The Band, Chris Smith gives a hint in passing which may be the key to understanding a lot of Thad's decision making. Regarding this question, why did Thad not write charts for his own use, even when many encouraged him to do so, and logistical pieces were falling into place, Smith writes, "...as Mel later discovered, Thad rarely composed or arranged music unless he had a paid commission to do so.”
Turns out, on principle, Thad didn't write music in his spare time — only when he was on the clock. This perhaps help explain why he didn't write much for Basie, except when there was a project (like a concept album) where he could be contracted to write without the possibility of Basie rejecting his charts (and therefore, not getting paid for the ones Basie didn't accept). On the other hand, Thad did write for Harry James when he was basically on retainer and getting a monthly check. If he was going to write big band charts—which he really wanted to do—Thad needed a way to get paid.
Perhaps this principle is at the heart of one of the strangest chapters in Thad's career: the ill-fated "Basie/Thad" record of 1965.
Somewhere along the line, Thad and Basie spoke. They agreed that Basie would record an album of Thad’s charts. Not a bunch of arrangements dashed off in a hurry for some singer, but a full LP of Thad’s original compositions. The very thing Thad had wanted all those years, but never quite got. And… Basie would pay for it. This is the story as we’ve received it.
So — again, at some point — there was a handshake and Thad got to work writing in Spring 1965. The Beatles toured America, and Birdland closed. The first indoor baseball game happened in the Astrodome, and the US sent 250,000 personnel to Vietnam. “Thad, we’ll bring the band into the hall at the end of the summer and read down what you’ve got so far.”
In September, Thad brought seven charts — about half of what would be needed for an album — to a reading session with Count Basie and the orchestra. The titles are familiar to those who know the future Vanguard band: “Back Bone,” "All My Yesterdays,” “Big Dipper,” “The Little Pixie,” “Low Down,” “A-That’s Freedom,” "The Second Race,” Some of them, like “A-That’s Freedom" (actually composed by Thad’s brother Hank, arranged by Thad) and “The Second Race” were sort of Basie-ish: one could imagine the CBO playing these well. The others were brilliant, modern, thoroughly Thad, and really not much in Basie’s conventional style. In any event, at the end of the reading, Basie gave all seven of them the same response he had given to so many of Thad’s charts when he was in the band: No. Not for me. Not for us.
(Incidentally, some suggest these were “too hard” for the Basie band to play. Nonsense. Basie always had a band full of tremendous all-around players. Perhaps the sight-reading was rough-around-the-edges in the moment, or perhaps Thad felt compelled to make explanatory remarks ahead of some charts that Basie had little patience for. But none of these titles are as technically challenging as, say, Thad’s “Counterblock,” which Basie’s band played perfectly well in a live recording from 1959).
Some claim Basie tried letting Thad down easy with a patronizing, encouraging attitude: “Thad, why don’t you take these and start your own band?” As if the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra was Basie’s idea. Others have Basie throwing the record company (Verve) under the bus: “I’d love to record these but they really want an album of Chico O’Farrill charts, what can I do?” Which is plausible enough, but then why have the reading session in the first place? Still others suggest there was quite a bit more tension in the air as that session progressed.
I admit that none of this makes any sense to me. Basie and Thad knew each other for a decade at that point. Basie knew how Thad wrote—they’d been through all this before. What did he think, after three years away from the band, that Thad would suddenly start writing like Ernie Wilkins, for a whole album? And did Thad think, “Chief never liked this stuff before, but these charts will knock his socks off…they’re so hip he’ll have to record them…”
Both of these guys must have had some purpose going into this session. Without a clear sense of exactly what was said in the months before Thad wrote the music — when the “handshake” was made, “OK, we’ll do this” — it’s impossible to say who got what they wanted out of it. Basie didn’t keep a big band going for decades by being a dummy. Whether or not this day went down the way he’d hoped is another question. But Thad left that September 1965 session with a stack of original charts under his arm: new music, brilliantly conceived, and without a home.
And Basie did not want to pay Thad! They had to go to the union for arbitration over it, and finally Basie begrudgingly paid Thad for only the seven charts completed (this being only the first half of what was originally to come). So much for the warm and fuzzy feelings between them. To his credit, Basie did allow Thad to keep the charts, and the copied-out parts in ink, made from Thad’s scores, weren’t exactly cheap.
On Thanksgiving weekend 1965, Thad called up Mel, Brookmeyer, Pepper, colleagues from the studios at CBS, and other friends, met them all at Phil Ramone’s A&R studios on 48th street, and began to rehearse. The charts had “COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA” stamped on them.
At this point, others have taken up the story. On February 7, 1966, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra premiered at the Village Vanguard. In short order they were considered one of the greatest big bands in the world. From this point until January 1, 1979 (when he didn’t show for the first Monday night back at the Vanguard after an ill-fated European tour), Thad Jones has a thoroughly documented jazz career.
Those who are new to Thad and Mel can start right at that cold winter night in 1966 with All My Yesterdays, a magnificent recording/book package from Resonance Records (2016) documenting the first two performances at the Vanguard and all the characters involved. Mosaic Records reissued their first five instrumental albums in 1994, and all of them are still available as digital downloads. Most of their official albums are still in print, and bootlegs abound. There are also dozens of complete Thad Jones scores published and widely distributed by Kendor Music, most of which were in print during Thad’s lifetime. (In contrast, Duke Ellington’s scores are almost exclusively transcriptions, and only came into print decades after his passing.)
After returning from a grueling European tour, the band was set to resume their usual Monday night performances in the first week of January 1979. The band was there, Mel sat at the drum set.
Thad didn't show.
Bewildered, they played the set without him. The next week, on January 8, Mel went to Thad's place and found him moving out, heading to Copenhagen... peace out, as we now say.
But... the band? The gig? The last 13 years? You and me? Uh, your family? Thad didn't give any explanations, just packed up and left the United States for the next six years. Done.
At the Village Vanguard, each music stand held a fat book of ordered charts. Number 5 was titled, "Don't Ever Leave Me," and they had played it on the first night in 1966.
There are important questions about Thad that will never be answered, especially concerning his move to Europe.
One precipitating event took place in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, early November 1978, after the show, late at night. Thad had been in a dark mood for much of the long European tour, a string of one-nighters that began early in October. He had made some outbursts during the tour, on the bus and in hotel rooms, that perplexed Mel and the band. Like, maybe something was really eating at Thad. Who knows? After playing a recorded concert at the Belgrade Jazz Festival, Thad hails a cab. Maybe—probably—Thad had been drinking. But who knows? What does a Belgrade cab driver think when a large black man enters his cab late at night? Who knows? The only source for this story is Thad. All we know is what he told people, how on a cold Belgrade night, this cab pulled over, and Thad rolled the back seat passenger side window down partially. He made a remark to a young woman on the sidewalk from the cab. What did he say? Who knows? What does a stranger say to a woman on the street late at night from the back of a cab? Then, out of nowhere, her boyfriend (?) was there, and a punch was thrown through the glass and hits Thad in the face. The glass shatters, and Thad has glass shards embedded in his lip.
That's it, that's the story. Presumably, then Thad goes (in the cab?) to the hospital or something, and gets his face and lip patched up the best they could be. There must have been blood everywhere. It's a trumpet player's nightmare.
The band had more than a month of European dates left to play. At least through December 6 in Stockholm, and then Thad was scheduled to lead the Danish Radio Big Band in Copenhagen later in December. There is a bootleg recording of the band in Milan on November 7 in which Thad doesn't play, just directs. Same thing in Paris on November 15 (which according to my research is the final recorded evidence of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra). Everyone eventually got back to NYC by the end of December, in time to take up the Monday nights at the Vanguard again.
Later on, Thad said his lip had become infected.
What does Thad’s lip injury have to do with his flight to Europe? Who knows? Most likely it just made the idea of a hard goodbye that much more dreadful. We know he had a long association with the Danish Radio Big Band — had even made records with them — and that he had been negotiating plans to spend more time with them (many Americans do this, going to Copenhagen several times a year). But later it seemed like he had been planning a more permanent move there for a while, maybe for most of 1978.
But why leave without a word? Why didn’t he just say to Mel and the band in September, this has been great but I have to move on, this is my final tour then I’m going to Denmark? Wouldn’t everyone in the band have understood, been supportive and shown him an outpouring of love — even if they had to keep it quiet? More that one person has said to me, “Thad didn’t like goodbyes.” But we don’t know that answers why he burned every bridge behind him.
Thad also left his wife and family behind in NY. His children had just become adults. I don’t know if his departure was any less a surprise to them than it was to Mel and the band. “Thad never really spoke about his family,” was a remark made in several conversations I’ve had. “He had walls up around his personal life.” Once he settled in Denmark, he quickly married a Danish woman, Lis, and had a child with her, Thaddeus Jr.
Thad didn’t just quit, he ran away from all his responsibilities, his obligations, his accomplishments, and everyone who cared about him and relied on him. With all the time and energy he had previously put into making a solid living, having a steady income, leaving the road for stability on the home front, it does make me wonder if there’s a really big part of this puzzle we have no pieces for. There’s something else. Did he feel like he had to escape? That he couldn’t tell anyone? Sure, there was a job and a woman waiting him half a world away, but…. I don’t think those elements alone all add up. Thad had secrets, and he didn’t reveal all of them even when he left.
The job didn’t work out. Danish Radio wanted Thad to conduct all their programs, and not just play his own music. After a couple of activities with them, he didn’t sign a contract to stay on permanently. It probably didn’t help that he couldn’t play his horn — his lip required corrective surgery more than once over a couple of years. In the meantime, he picked up valve trombone, and by all accounts, sounded much like his old self down an octave.
Even so, within a few months of arriving in Europe, Thad was already putting together another big band, called “Eclipse.”
Meanwhile, Mel did his best to honor the commitments Thad had made for the band without him, and through sheer stubbornness and force of will (and the determination of all the players), Mel kept the band together successfully through the end of his life. That band continues today as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and current members Dick Oatts, Rich Perry, and Doug Purviance were on that last tour with Thad in ‘78. They play every Monday night, and they always play Thad’s music.
By September 1979 the Eclipse band had made a record and begun a Monday night residency at JazzHouse Vognporten in Copenhagen. Despite television appearances and the band including name players like Horace Parlan, Sahib Shihab, Tim Hagans, and Jesper Lundgaard, the ensemble failed to play enough to gain any traction, and by 1981 had disbanded.
A second band, the inexplicably-named “Ball Of Fire” big band, managed to record a short television special in 1981 and can be viewed on You Tube. Packed with regulars from Eclipse, European jazz stars, Jerry Dodgion and Jerome Richardson from the 1966 band at the Vanguard, and Roger Kellaway on piano, it seems like this band could have really been a major draw at festivals and large venues across Europe, but somehow this one did no better than the first. Tim Hagans, a member of both groups, speaks of a week-long recording project sponsored by an Italian promoter, but this recording has never surface, making it a kind of “holy grail” of late Thad, a rumor of lost treasures.
While Thad’s lip was getting treatment, he was writing. Kendor’s catalog of Thad charts practically doubled between 1980-82, resulting in a large number of post-Mel compositions. Thad seemed in some cases to be stretching out from song-form style tunes and writing through-composed work, possibly inspired by Ellington’s longer forms. Occasionally some of these European charts made their way back to the Village Vanguard, at times simply ordered from Kendor.
Rayburn Wright’s seminal textbook Inside The Score was published in 1982, profiling three of Thad’s best works from the Vanguard years, “Three And One,” “Kids Are Pretty People,” and the rock anthem “Us,” alongside examples by Bob Brookmeyer and Sammy Nestico. Thad was reportedly gratified by the inclusion, and Wright’s book has been the standard text for big band writing since its publication.
As more and more of Thad’s music was finding wide distribution, he was becoming more in demand as an educator. The hit-and-run workshop was suited to his spontaneous style, and in ’80-’81 he was a featured artist-in-residence at the Jazz Seminar of Catalonia in Banyoles, Spain, which left a lasting impact on young musicians in the region. His wide, broken-tooth grin reappears in photographs from the seminar.
Between the dashed hopes for big band projects, and trying to heal and rebuild his lip on the one hand, and then his new marriage and son, wide respect and admiration for his past accomplishments on the other, the early 1980’s was a season of dramatic ups and downs for Thad. Perhaps his frustration about not performing often enough is reflected in the sharp uptick in his writing (and the popularity of his published music provided the financial incentive to keep producing). But one gets the impression he felt stagnant, impatient. Thad needed something to happen.
On April 26, 1984, Count Basie passed away in Hollywood, Florida. The longest continuously-running jazz big band in existence was suddenly left without a leader. The Count Basie Orchestra limped along for a few months, and finally came to terms with the fact that they couldn’t survive without a leader. Basie was the beating heart at the center of the organization. Now they needed a transplant. They had name recognition, international tours, prestigious bookings, management, and institutional momentum. The first person they thought to call for leadership was Thad Jones.
So in February 1985, six years after stealing away across the sea without so much as a good bye, with a busted lip, no job, and a string of broken relationships behind him, Thad came back to the United States to be the director of the greatest big band in the world. He had newly-strengthened chops, a trunk full of new music, growing respect for his position as an elder statesman, and little Thad Junior in tow. It was a celebrated, even triumphant homecoming, but no one who knew the history failed to grasp the irony of Thad Jones, of all people, taking control of Basie’s early-1950’s style orchestra.
In the press, he said he was ready to keep the heart of the music beating with all the classics and add stylistically appropriate new works to the rep list. Privately, he wanted to modernize the book, eventually transforming it to something suitable as a vehicle for mostly his own music. He couldn’t do it all at once, though. First he had to take the CBO on the road — and fate again gave Thad one last chance to redeem, for his part at least, one of the most hurtful breakups.
Mel Lewis had kept up the Jazz Orchestra, and they still went to Europe every summer, playing the jazz festival circuit. So did the Basie Orchestra. So it’s not surprising that both ensembles would perform the Stockholm Jazz Festival in the summer of 1985. The scheduling of them on the same show does give one pause….
Thad found Mel, and the two who had frequently described themselves as “soul brothers” looked at each other for the first time in six years. Thad embraced Mel… some who were there say Mel’s arms stayed at his side. It must have been a flood of emotions for Mel, who never really understood what happened in 1978.
But the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, and especially the guys who had been in the band when Thad left, were thrilled to see him and eager to reestablish that comradeship that comes from seeing the old captain again. It seems like Mel wasn’t quite sure what to think, but was relieved that the open hostility was gone. Over the next year, there were rumors and rumblings about some sort of possible reunion. It was not to be, and Thad and Mel never saw each other again.
As a 35-year old during the 1950’s, when Thad was in his prime, and being only a section player in the Basie orchestra, he took the road life in stride. Now, in his early 60’s, and being the leader, it was exhausting. He had high hopes for this gig — finally, everything Thad had always wanted seemed to be within his grasp: a world-renowned ensemble, full schedule of performances, family stability and financial stability, love and recognition.
But the road itinerary for the CBO was grueling. And when they were finally able to take a break in the fall, Thad had an album of charts to write in a little over a month, before flying the band to Tokyo to make a concert video. Upon return, recording sessions with vocalist Caterina Valente would take place through the holidays, so the record would be done for them to tour with her in the spring. Before the album was complete, Thad was sick.
Age, drink, and years of smoking and neglecting his body were catching up with Thad. He was barely able to do the tour with Valente. May 6, 1986 was Thad’s last date leading the Count Basie Orchestra. He led them for 15 months. He immediately left the US, seriously ill, going back to Copenhagen with his family. He died on August 20 at the age of 63 of bone cancer.
Thad is buried in Vestre Kirkegård Cemetery. His headstone bears the title of one of his last compositions: “Live Life This Day.”
— by Russell Scarbrough
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 92 |
https://www.staugustine.com/things-to-do/events/%3F_evDiscoveryPath%3D/event/105328759n-the-legendary-count-basie-orchestra
|
en
|
St. Augustine Record: Local News, Politics & Sports in St. Augustine, FL
|
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[
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[
"St. Augustine Record Staff"
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0001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
|
Get the latest breaking news, sports, entertainment and obituaries in St. Augustine, FL from St. Augustine Record.
|
en
|
St. Augustine Record
|
https://www.staugustine.com/
|
Having computer, app problems this morning? You're not alone
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 90 |
http://stevecovault.com/deadrockstars/1980s.html
|
en
|
Steve's Dead Rock Stars
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[
"Steve Covault"
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Dead Rock Stars Tribute Page
| null |
September 23, 1939 - August 14, 1988
Leroy "Roy" Buchanan was a guitarist and blues musician known as a pioneer of the Telecaster sound. His work as a sideman and as a solo artist is considered to be highly influential.
Buchanan made his recording debut in 1958, accompanying Dale Hawkins and playing the solo on "My Babe" for Chicago's Chess Records. Two years later, during a tour through Toronto, Buchanan left Dale Hawkins to play for his cousin Ronnie Hawkins and tutor Ronnie's guitar player, Robbie Robertson. Buchanan plays bass on the Ronnie Hawkins single "Who Do You Love?"
In the early 1960s, Buchanan often played as a sideman with various rock bands, playing guitar in recording sessions with Freddy Cannon, Merle Kilgore, and others. At the end of the 1960s, with a growing family, Buchanan briefly left the music industry and became a barber.
Buchanan's life changed in 1971, when he gained national notice as the result of an hour-long PBS television documentary. Entitled Introducing Roy Buchanan, leading to a record deal with Polydor Records and praise from John Lennon and Merle Haggard and, allegedly, an invitation to join the Rolling Stones. He turned down the offer, earning him the nickname "the man who turned the Stones down." He recorded five albums for Polydor, one of which, Second Album, went gold, and then three more albums for Atlantic Records, one of which, 1977's Loading Zone, also went gold.
In 1985, be began recording for Alligator Records, releasing When a Guitar Plays the Blues. His second Alligator LP, Dancing on the Edge (with vocals on three tracks by Delbert McClinton), was released in the fall of 1986. He released the twelfth and last album of his career, Hot Wires, in 1987. Buchanan's last show was on August 7, 1988, at Guilford Fairgrounds in Guilford, Connecticut.
In 1988, Buchanan was arrested for public intoxication after a domestic dispute. He was found hanged from his own shirt in his Fairfax County, Virginia jail cell on August 14, 1988. His cause of death was officially recorded as suicide, a finding disputed by Buchanan's friends and family. One of his friends, Marc Fisher, reported seeing Roy's body with bruises on the head.
After his death, compilation and other albums continue to be released, including in 2004 the never-released first album he recorded for Polydor, The Prophet.
Roy Buchanan is interred at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
07/29/198855Pete Drakepedal steel guitaristLung CancerNashville, Tennessee
|
|||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 89 |
https://beta.prx.org/stories/527695/details
|
en
|
PRX
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
//media.prx.org/favicon-16x16.png
| null | ||||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 33 |
https://grammymuseum.org/exhibit/count-basie-the-king-of-swing/
|
en
|
Count Basie: The King Of Swing
|
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2024-06-20T20:57:05+00:00
|
The Count Basie vaults are filled with a treasure trove of both personal and professional assets, telling the story of the jazz icon. We are thrilled that the GRAMMY Museum will exhibit a few of these never-before-seen pieces for the public to learn more about the incredible life of Count Basie.– Joy S. Rosenthal, Trustee, […]
|
en
|
/wp-content/themes/grammy-museum/images/favicon.png
|
grammy museum
|
https://grammymuseum.org
|
The Count Basie vaults are filled with a treasure trove of both personal and professional assets, telling the story of the jazz icon. We are thrilled that the GRAMMY Museum will exhibit a few of these never-before-seen pieces for the public to learn more about the incredible life of Count Basie.
– Joy S. Rosenthal, Trustee, William J. Basie Trust
ABOUT COUNT BASIE
Jazz icon Count Basie was born William James Basie on August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey. Count Basie is considered one of the greatest bandleaders of all time. He was the arbiter of the big-band swing sound and his unique style of fusing blues and jazz established swing as a predominant music style. Basie changed the jazz landscape and shaped mid-20th century popular music, duly earning the title “King of Swing” because he made the world want to dance.
In 1937 Basie took his group, Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, to New York to record their first album with Decca Records under their new name, The Count Basie Orchestra. The Count Basie Orchestra had a slew of hits that helped to define the big-band sound of the 1930s and ’40s. Some of their notable chart toppers included “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “April in Paris,” and Basie’s own composition, “One O’Clock Jump,” which became the orchestra’s signature piece. Basie was a true innovator, leading the band for almost 50 years and recording on over 480 albums. He is credited for creating the use of the two “split” tenor saxophone, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and beautifully layering masterful vocalists. Basie was often recognized for his understated yet captivating style of piano playing and his precise, impeccable musical leadership.
Basie earned nine GRAMMY Awards and made history in 1958 by becoming the first African-American to receive the award. He has had an unprecedented four recordings inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame – “One O’Clock Jump” (1979), “April in Paris” (1985), “Everyday I Have the Blues” (1992), and “Lester Leaps In” (2005), along with a slew of other awards and honors not only for his music, but for his humanitarianism and philanthropy around the world.
Basie died April 26, 1984 in Hollywood, FL but his legacy is still swinging strong.
Count Basie: The King Of Swing will be on display in the GRAMMY Museum’s Mike Curb Gallery on the fourth floor through April 16, 2016.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 86 |
https://www.historylink.org/File/22930
|
en
|
Jackson Street Jazz Scene (Seattle)
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This is a look at Seattle’s legendary Jackson Street jazz scene. Sparked during the Roaring Twenties, it went on to nurture Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, and Quincy Jones, among many other y
|
/Content/i/favicon.png
|
https://www.historylink.org/File/22930
|
This is a look at Seattle’s legendary Jackson Street jazz scene. Sparked during the Roaring Twenties, it went on to nurture Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, and Quincy Jones, among many other young performers. Today historians recognize that musicians of various ethnicities collectively created the music we call jazz, but it is equally true that racial-settlement patterns played a role in the rise of this particular scene in this particular place. The first Black person to settle in Seattle, in 1852, was a drummer (and barber) named Manuel Lopes. As a tiny timber town, Seattle’s original business core was centered at Yesler’s Corner (at Mill Street, Today's Yesler Way) and Commercial Street (today’s 1st Avenue S). Lopes was among the first people to build a cabin just south of Mill Street, a loud and rowdy zone where Seattle’s earliest saloons and bawdyhouses arose. As the population grew, and more cabins were built north of Mill Street, the additional Blacks, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants were "encouraged" to settle farther south of Mill Street. In this area there developed an early Chinatown, a Japantown – and along Jackson Street (and eastward toward what would become known as the Central District), a strip where Blacks ran businesses and built homes. It was here where the fabled Jackson Street jazz scene began.
Washington Hall
Address: 153 14th Avenue
On Site Now: Washington Hall
This Central District venue boasts the deepest cultural history of any vintage venue extant in Seattle. Built in 1908 for the Danish Brotherhood of America Lodge No. 29, it was recast as Washington Hall within a few years and began serving as a hub of Seattle’s growing African American community. This hall was the site of Washington’s "first documented jazz performance by a local band" on June 10, 1918, when Lillian Smith’s Jazz Band made its debut performing at a Grand Benefit Ball for the NAACP. Over subsequent decades it was the site of concerts, dances, lectures, and political events featuring the likes of W. E. B. du Bois, Marian Anderson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Seattle's own pioneering jazz band leader Oscar Holden, whose home was across the street at 1409 Fir Street. In 1960, a local guitar-playing kid named Jimmy Hendrix and his second teenage rock band, the Rocking Kings, rocked the house at a dance. In 1973 the building was bought by the Sons of Haiti Masonic Lodge, which rented it out to various event promoters. When 1970s punk rock emerged, shows by the Avengers, Cheaters, Dead Kennedys, D.O.A., and others took place. From 1978 to 1998 the hall was leased to the On The Boards arts organization. More recently, a consortium including Historic Seattle and 4Culture have been working to restore the hall as an arts hub for Central District organizations including 206 Zulu, Voices Rising, and Hidmo/Cypher Cafe.
The Entertainer’s Cabaret
Address: 1238 S Main Street
On Site Now: Bailey Gatzert Elementary School playfield
Russell Walton and Gillie Richardson’s Entertainer’s Cabaret likely opened here around the time that Prohibition was enacted in 1916. The room was situated near the epicenter of what would become the Jackson Street jazz scene. Still, this early jazz era nightspot’s advertising definitely hinted at the illicit activities going on inside: "Thousands of Barrels of Refreshing, Exhilarating, Intoxicating Music Poured Out Nightly." The owners touted that they had "the Best Syncopated Orchestra on the Coast. DON’T MISS IT." Of particular note, however, was the week in August 1920 when the Cabaret featured a combo headed by pianist Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, America’s self-proclaimed "Inventor of Jazz." Morton lived a famously wild life of whiskey, women, and song – and high-stakes gambling. Legend informs that one night he lost everything gaming, and on a hunch felt like he needed to high-tail it out of town. Maybe that’s why, after signing a recording contract with Victor Records, he cut an original boogie-woogie tune titled "Seattle Hunch." Soon after, the club was moved to 12th and Jackson, where the music-making continued into 1966.
Doc Hamilton’s Barbecue Pit, The 908 Club
Address: 908 12th Avenue
On Site Now: The Chieftain Irish Pub
In this building thrived one of Seattle’s most notorious, elegant, and popular Prohibition-era speakeasies: Doc Hamilton’s Barbecue Pit. African American businessman John Henry "Doc" Hamilton had arrived from Mississippi (presumably with his "secret" BBQ sauce recipe in pocket) in 1914, and proceeded to open a series of illicit nightclubs. This one was his finest; it was considered the local equivalent to Harlem’s Cotton Club. It was a corrupt time, with rum-running from Canada, bootleg liquor stills, and payoffs to police, liquor agents, and government officials. But with Doc manning the pit, gambling underway in the basement, and jazzmen like Oscar Holden – who’d played with Louis Armstrong and is considered the Father of Seattle jazz – tinkling the piano behind singers, the draw was irresistible. As one historian noted: "Limousines lined the curb out front, while Seattle's social elite, including the mayor, ducked in and out of the club." But despite protection money Doc paid authorities, his club was raided repeatedly. In May 1931 he was busted and imprisoned. Later the place was recast by Dick Ruffin as the 908 Supper Club, featuring local Black jazzers such as band-leader Bumps Blackwell (with Ernestine Anderson), and periodic visits by touring stars such as Nat King Cole. Around 1950, Cecil Young’s pioneering bebop quartet gigged here. It became an outpost of beatnik culture and early rockin’ R&B before closing in 1956.
The Blue Note, Local 493 Musicians Union Hall
Address: 1319 E Jefferson Street
On Site Now: Craft Apartments
In 1918, Seattle’s African American players formed their own American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Union Local 458 – because Seattle’s first musicians union (AFM Local 76) did not welcome non-white members. In 1924, Local 458 morphed into Local 493, and over the following two decades held its meetings in various locations (including, awkwardly, in Local 76's office, where 493 members were not allowed to socialize). After holding fundraising concerts, 493 was able to purchase its own modest (circa 1937) building in April 1951. This spot was then used as the Musicians' Blue Note Club, Inc. – both union headquarters and a private nightclub, soon known simply as the Blue Note. It featured a bar, tables and chairs, and a piano. Members of 493, including young trumpeter Quincy Jones (b. 1933), could stop in and jam with fellow players both young and old. Stars dropped by for after-gig jams, including members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras. After long struggles, 493 and 76 finally merged in January 1958, and the hall was sold. By the 1960s, the historic spot had been turned into a nondescript lunch counter, Debbies (later Nellie’s Café).
The Old Rocking Chair
Address: 115 14th Avenue S
On Site Now: Bailey Gatzert Elementary School parking lot
In the Roaring '20s, in the midst of Prohibition, "Big Lewis" Richardson ran the Blue Rose club in a two-story wooden house on this site in the heart of Seattle’s Black community. Among the players who performed here were Creole jazz legend Joe Darensbourg and his pianist Oscar Holden. In 1946, the club was recast as the Old Rocking Chair, a room with a comfortable bar built from glass blocks, a small bandstand, and a not-so-discrete gambling room upstairs. One night in March 1948 a blind, teenaged pianist fresh off a Greyhound bus from Florida named Ray Robinson popped in, wanting to sit in and play a few blues numbers. The crowd was delighted and he was quickly offered a weekly gig nearby at the "Black" Elks Club. Adding guitarist Garcia McKee and bassist Milton Garret, they formed the Maxin Trio and were soon hired as house band at the Old Rocking Chair, where they were heard by a record executive from Los Angeles. Whisked into a recording studio, the trio recorded Seattle’s first R&B record, "Confession Blues." Robinson went on to global fame as Ray Charles (1930-2004), the "Genius of Soul" – but not before he cut another early record: a tribute titled, "Rocking Chair Blues." After Charles split the scene in 1949, the club closed down.
The "Black" Elks Club Lodge No. 109
Address: 662 1/2 S Jackson Street
On Site Now: Medical offices
This fraternal chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (Puget Sound Lodge No. 109) was founded (originally at 18th Avenue and E Madison Street) for the membership of African Americans in the Seattle community by at least 1938. With Prohibition having been repealed, the newer second-floor hall boasted a bandstand, a piano, a dance floor, and plenty of tables and chairs, but because the serving of hard liquor was still forbidden by law, customers had to bring their own bottle and purchase "set-ups" – ice, glasses, and cocktails mixers. Or, if they didn’t (wink, wink), such places often could still accommodate. When the serving of drinks was finally legalized in March 1949, authorities focused on raiding the "bottle clubs" in an effort to drive them out of business. Musically, the energetic Gene Coy and his Eleven Black Aces were a '30s dance favorite, and Ray Charles's Maxin Trio played its first gigs here in 1948. In 1950, the town’s first important be-bop crew, the Cecil Young Quartet, drew steady crowds, and young jazz singer Ernestine Anderson snuck in to sing. After a police raid netted 117 people in 1952, the Elks Club was shuttered.
The Black & Tan
Address: 404 1/2 12th Avenue S
On Site Now: Seattle Herbs & Grocery
Seattle’s early jazz scene arose along S Jackson Street – the area where many of the town’s first African Americans (and Asians) discovered they were allowed to settle. As time went on, that zone extended eastward (on Jackson and surrounding streets), past Chinatown, and into what would become known as the Central District (CD). By the 1940s, dozens of nightclubs were strung along the route – including such fabled spots as the 411 Club (411 Maynard Avenue S), Club Maynard (612 Maynard), the Ebony Café (5th and S Jackson), the Green Dot (509 S Jackson), and the Dumas Club (1040 S Jackson). Local Black nightlife kingpin Russell "Noodles" Smith opened the latter in 1917, and in 1920 he relocated the Entertainers Cabaret to this corner and hired West Coast jazz pioneers Reb Spikes’ So Different Orchestra to play. In 1922, Smith opened the Alhambra Cabaret in this site’s basement, and by 1932 it was given a new name – one intended to convey a policy of racial tolerance: the Black & Tan. The joint had its own Black & Tan Orchestra, and decades of great music followed: in 1929 Joe Darensbourg played here, as did the Harlem Knights in 1933, and ragtime piano ace Eubie Blake in 1934, and Gene Coy in 1937. Others followed, including Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Lucky Millinder, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, and Ray Charles. By the early 1960s, young local R&B/jazz players such as Dave Lewis (1938-1998), Mike Mandel, and Larry Coryell performed here, up until 1966.
Pete’s Poop Deck
Address: 77 S Main Street
On Site Now: Former Flatcolor Gallery
In 1957, 20-year old entrepreneur Pete Barbas decided to open a bohemian/beatnik hangout in Seattle. He scoped out Seattle’s Skid Road, saw that the area was dilapidated, largely boarded-up, bereft of restaurants or other attractions, and thought it was simply perfect. Renting this spot in the shadow of the looming Alaska Way Viaduct, he outfitted the space with apple crates for chairs, wooden slabs on boxes as tables, and a floor covered with peanut shells. Booking local and nationally known jazz artists, along with the requisite beat poetry readings, a bearded and black leotard- or beret-clad clientele began showing up. Among the outside talents who performed here were Ahmad Jamal, Cal Tjader, Shorty Rogers, Chris Connor, and the Horace Silver Quintet. Local stars included Ernestine Anderson, Floyd Standifer, Woody Woodhouse, and Vernon Brown. Soon after the World’s Fair ended in October 1962, Barbas sold the club.
The Penthouse
Address: 701 1st Avenue
On Site Now: 1st & Columbia Parking Garage
Seattle’s newest nightclub was launched here by Charlie Puzzo in January 1962, and it had a profound effect on the town by offering shows by many of the greatest jazz stars including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Anita O’Day. This site originally held the 1884 Merchant’s National Bank Building, which burned in the Great Fire of 1889; soon the seven-story Safe Deposit Building was built, and then in 1956 it was sold and renamed the Reliance Building. Finally, in 1961, with legions of crowds expected in 1962 for Seattle’s Century 21 World’s Fair, Puzzo leased the ground floor space to create The Penthouse. One reason the room got so popular so quickly was that KING-FM radio DJ Jim Wilke broadcast shows live from here for seven years. Among other highlights were shows by comedian Bill Cosby, rocker Little Richard, and young gospel/soul singer Aretha Franklin. Top local jazzers including Ernestine Anderson, Larry Coryell, Carlos Ward, and Joe Brazil played here, as did Seattle folk/pop hit-makers the Brothers Four. Perhaps the most fabled booking of all was the Coltrane combo’s gig from September 27 to October 2, 1965. The night of the 30th was recorded by a local studio engineer and later released as the famous Live In Seattle LP. In 1968 the club was shuttered, the building razed, and a parking lot built.
Ernestine’s, Parnell’s
Address: 313 Occidental Avenue S
On Site Now: Davidson Galleries
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Collection: Count Basie family papers and artifacts
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Overview
William James "Count" Basie (1904 August 21 - 1984 April 26) was an African American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. He was married to Catherine Morgan Basie (1914 December 3 – 1983 April 11), an African American burlesque dancer and singer who later became a community organizer and activist. They had one daughter, Diane Lillian Basie (1944 February 6 – 2022 October 15), who was born with cerebral palsy and lived at home with her parents and caretakers until her death. The Basie family also included several unofficially adopted children: Aaron Woodward III, Rosemary (Holman) Matthews, Olivia (Hasell) Simmons, Pamela Jackson, and Lamont Gilmore.
Count Basie’s early years
Count Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey to Harvey Lee Basie and Lillian “Lilly Ann” Childs Basie. They had one other son, Leroy, who died in childhood. Count Basie’s first musical forays were as a drummer, but he learned to play piano by taking lessons from a local teacher. He left middle school and worked at the nearby movie theater, changing film reels and playing accompaniments for silent films. In 1924 he moved to New York City, where he met and was influenced by stride pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, who helped Basie learn to play the organ, the instrument he preferred when playing at home for fun. Shortly after moving to New York, he obtained work as a vaudeville pianist and toured across the country. In 1928 he started performing with Walter Page’s Blue Devils, eventually landing in Kansas City, where in 1929 he began his association with Bennie Moten’s Orchestra. When Moten died in 1935, Basie formed his own nine-piece group, the Barons of Rhythm, featuring many of Moten’s personnel as well as members of the Blue Devils. He also started using the name “Count Basie.” By 1937, the Barons of Rhythm had grown to 13 members and relocated to New York City, where they made their first recordings as Count Basie and his Orchestra.
Catherine Basie’s early years
Catherine Morgan Basie was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Warren Morgan and Helen Cobb Morgan, and had one sister, Ruby, and two brothers, Leonard and Milton. Catherine graduated from Central High School, and soon thereafter was a contender for the 1936 Olympics as a champion backstroke swimmer. Not being able to afford the training, she instead focused on her career as a dancer, singer, and entertainer, performing with the Whitman Sisters vaudeville act, but soon she was on her own billing as Princess Aloha, appearing in film shorts and touring on the burlesque circuit.
Marriage and family
Catherine and Count Basie first met in 1931 when they were both performing in Philadelphia, but the two did not become romantically involved until Catherine’s five-year marriage to Jimmy Miller ended in 1940. Count Basie was also previously married, from 1930-1935, to Vivian Lee Winn. In his autobiography, Count Basie states the date and location of his and Catherine’s marriage as August 21, 1942 in Seattle, Washington, but contemporary published accounts claim the couple eloped in early 1943. According to the marriage license on file in the Kings County, Washington archives, the Basies were married July 13, 1950.1
In 1944, Catherine gave birth to their daughter, Diane Basie, in Cleveland, Ohio, where Catherine had gone to stay with her mother for the birth and Diane’s infancy. She was born with cerebral palsy, requiring daily full-time care and support for the duration of her life. When Catherine returned to New York City, the family moved to an apartment in Manhattan, and in 1946, they bought a home in Addisleigh Park in Saint Albans, Queens, New York, where they installed a swimming pool, the site of frequent neighborhood gatherings and charitable events. The Basies maintained the swimming pool for neighborhood use even after moving permanently to Freeport, Grand Bahama in 1973. Neighborhood friends included Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Lena Horne, Illinois Jacquet, and Milt and Mona Hinton.
Count Basie toured extensively with the Count Basie Orchestra, more than 300 nights each year, so he was not often home on a daily or even weekly basis. Although Catherine, and sometimes Diane, traveled with the Count Basie Orchestra regularly (particularly on overseas trips) Catherine used her time away from her husband to lead and participate in various social, charitable, and civic organizations and programs; manage the household and family’s budget; and care for Diane with support from family and caretakers, including nurse Dee Dee Williams, neighbor and unofficially adopted daughter Rosemary Matthews, and Catherine’s sister-in-law, Carrie Morgan.
Catherine Basie charitable and civic work
In addition to serving as president of the Rinkeydinks, a charitable organization whose membership consisted primarily of the wives of jazz musicians, Catherine held leadership positions in the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), New York Urban League, Lighthouse for the Blind, South Jamaica Community Council, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, among others. She was a lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and involved with local, regional, and national civic and charitable organizations. Some of her key interests were civil rights, mental and physical health, issues related to children and young people, and public education. She was appointed Community Mayor of Queens, and was the recipient of many honors, including the 1961 NCCJ Brotherhood Award and being named Woman of the Year in 1960 by the Zeta Phi Beta sorority as well as in 1962 by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, Queens County Council Ladies Auxiliary.
Count Basie Orchestra
With the exception of several core musicians who stayed with the band for long stretches, the Count Basie Orchestra’s personnel changed regularly over the years, and musicians would often leave only to return later either as a guest soloist or sometimes again as a permanent member of the lineup. Between 1936 and 1938, Count Basie enlarged the group, adding Buck Clayton on trumpet, singers Jimmy Rushing and Billie Holiday, Earle Warren on alto saxophone, Bennie Morton and Dicky Wells on trombone, Helen Humes (replacing Holiday), and Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpet. They joined band members Oran “Hot Lips” Page on trumpet, Herschel Evans and Lester Young on tenor saxophone, Eddie Durham on trombone and sometimes guitar (also an arranger for the band), Buster Smith on alto saxophone, and the “All American” rhythm section of Walter Page on bass, Jo Jones on drums, and Freddie Green on guitar. (Green was in the Basie Orchestra for fifty years until his death in 1987, longer than any other band member.)
The band’s popularity grew exponentially during the late 1930s and early 1940s, starting with a string of hits for Decca Records, including “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and “One O'Clock Jump.” “Lester Leaps In,” recorded for Vocalion, was another major hit for the band during this period. The group’s performances were regularly broadcast on radio networks across North America, and they recorded frequently, except during the 1942-1944 and 1948 musicians’ strikes by the American Federation of Musicians, which limited recording opportunities for all union members. By the end of the 1940s, big band jazz was declining in popularity and bookings were becoming more difficult to negotiate at the level the band required. In 1950 Count Basie decided to break up the group and instead led smaller combos of six to nine players for a brief stint.
In 1951 he re-formed the sixteen-piece big band, the group that would become his most successful and enduring, which continued to perform and record as “Count Basie and His Orchestra.” By mid-1952 the lineup of the newly-reconfigured ensemble had mostly stabilized and consisted of Paul Campbell, Wendell Culley, Joe Newman, and Reunald Jones on trumpet; Henry Coker, Benny Powell, and Jimmy Wilkins on trombone; Paul Quinichette and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis on tenor saxophone; Marshal Royal as deputy music director, alto saxophonist, and clarinetist; Ernie Wilkins on alto and tenor saxophone; Charlie Fowlkes on baritone saxophone; Gus Johnson on drums; Freddie Green on guitar; Jimmy Lewis on bass (soon to be replaced by Gene Ramey and then Eddie Jones, respectively); Bixie Crawford as frequent vocalist; and Count Basie as pianist and leader. Over the course of coming years, new Count Basie Orchestra personnel would include Thad Jones on trumpet (also an arranger for the band), Joe Wilder on trumpet, Sonny Payne on drums, Bill Hughes on trombone, Frank Foster on various reed instruments, and Frank Wess on tenor saxophone and flute (also an arranger for the band). The group toured internationally and made some of Basie’s most popular recordings, including “April in Paris,” “Shiny Stockings,” “L’il Darling,” and the single “Everyday I Have the Blues” (Basie’s biggest hit) with singer Joe Williams, who performed regularly with the band. Starting in the late 1950s, the Count increasingly recorded with top singers of the day, including Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Billy Eckstine.
As the Count’s fame grew, his and Catherine’s world expanded. The orchestra gave a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II at the London Palladium in 1957, after their first European tour in 1954, and performed at one of the inaugural balls for President John F. Kennedy in 1961. This was also when Count and Catherine Basie operated a nightclub, Count Basie’s Lounge, in New York City, starting around 1957. In 1958, he was first African American musician to win a GRAMMY Award (in fact, he won two that year), and he would win seven more during the next two decades. He was a Downbeat international critics’ poll winner from 1952 to 1956.
Basie recorded for Roulette Records between 1957 and 1962 with producer Teddy Reig and made the first of three tours of Japan in 1963. Throughout the 1960s, the Count Basie Orchestra toured extensively and made numerous television and film appearances and many recordings, including collaborations with Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. The Orchestra also played many new arrangements written by Benny Carter, Chico O’Farrill, Frank Foster, Quincy Jones, Sammy Nestico, Bill Holman, and Eric Dixon.
From 1972 until 1984, Count Basie recorded for Pablo Records, often in small group jam sessions, with musicians including Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald (with whom he frequently toured), Dizzy Gillespie, J.J. Johnson, Zoot Sims, Roy Eldridge, Milt Jackson, Joe Pass, Ray Brown, Louie Bellson, blues singer Joe Turner, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.
Later years
In 1974, one year after the Basies moved permanently to Freeport, Catherine organized a gala fundraiser for a Freeport hospital in honor of the Count’s 70th birthday, inviting Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan to be the guest artists with the Count Basie Orchestra. The Count’s 70th was feted again with a “Royal Salute” at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (his was the first African American band to play the Waldorf, in 1957) to benefit the United Negro College Fund and the Catherine and Count Basie Scholarship Fund for the NCCJ.
As a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors in 1981, the Count was described by President Reagan as "among the handful of musicians that helped change the path of American music in the 30s and 40s.” He received honorary degrees from International University, the Philadelphia Academy of Music, the Berklee College of Music, Montclair State College, Union College, Monmouth College, Dowling College, and the University of Missouri as well as numerous citations and proclamations from local, state, and federal government officials.
Basie persevered through bouts of declining health and took several months off following a heart attack in 1976. His mobility declined in later years, leading to his use of a motorized wheelchair both on the road and at home. Catherine died of a heart attack in 1983 at their home in the Bahamas. Count Basie died the next year of pancreatic cancer in a Florida hospital, shortly after his last performance with the Count Basie Orchestra on April 13th in Burlington, Vermont. Diane Basie died in Florida after suffering a heart attack in 2022.
1. Basie, Count. Good Morning Blues. (Random House: New York, 1985), 259. Walker, Danton. “New York Letter.” The Philadelphia Inquirer Public Ledger (1934-1969), January 12, 1943 (Page 15 of 34), accessed online November 1, 2022. Washington State Archives; Olympia, Washington; Washington Marriage Records, 1854-2013; Reference Number: kingcoarchmc166491, accessed online November 1, 2022.
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By The Associated Press Today in History Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in Histor
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By The Associated Press
Today in History
Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
On this date:
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an anti-Semitic mob in 1915.)
In 1933, Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, was created.
In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”
——
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1984, bandleader Count Basie, 79, died in Hollywood, Florida.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2009, the United States declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand; officials in Mexico City closed everything from concerts to sports matches to churches in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)
In 2013, singer George Jones, believed by many to be the greatest country crooner of all time, died in Nashville at age 81.
In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
In 2022, Russia pounded eastern and southern Ukraine as the U.S. promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needed to repel the new offensive, despite Moscow’s warnings that such support could trigger a wider war.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor-comedian Carol Burnett is 91. R&B singer Maurice Williams is 86. Songwriter-musician Duane Eddy is 86. Actor Nancy Lenehan is 71. Actor Giancarlo Esposito is 66. Rock musician Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) is 64. Actor Joan Chen is 63. Rock musician Chris Mars (The Replacements) is 63. Actor-singer Michael Damian is 62. Actor Jet Li (lee) is 61. Actor-comedian Kevin James is 59. Author and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is 58. Actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste is 57. Rapper T-Boz (TLC) is 54. Former first lady Melania Trump is 54. Actor Shondrella Avery is 53. Actor Simbi Kali is 53. Country musician Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) is 53. Rock musician Jose Pasillas (Incubus) is 48. Actor Jason Earles is 47. Actor Leonard Earl Howze is 47. Actor Amin Joseph is 47. Actor Tom Welling is 47. Actor Pablo Schreiber is 46. Actor Nyambi Nyambi is 45. Actor Jordana Brewster is 44. Actor Stana Katic is 44. Actor Marnette Patterson is 44. Actor Channing Tatum is 44. Americana/roots singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt is 40. Actor Emily Wickersham is 40. Actor Aaron Meeks is 38. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is 32.
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Count Basie >(William) Count Basie (1904-1984) was an extremely popular figure in the >jazz world for half a century. He was a fine pianist and leader of one of >the greatest jazz bands in history.
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Count Basie
Pianist, bandleader
For the Record…
Selected discography
Sources
In his monumental second volume on the history of jazz, The Swing Era, Gunther Schuller delays his attempt to define swing until, some two hundred pages into the book, he introduces Count Basie in a section titled “The Quintessence of Swing.” Schuller states: “That the Basie band has been from its inception a master of swing could hardly be disputed…. For over forty years [Basie] has upheld a particular concept and style of jazz deeply rooted in the Southwest and Kansas City in particular. It draws its aesthetic sustenance from the blues, uses the riff as its major rhetorical and structural device, all set in the language and grammar of swing.”
Indeed, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s the “All-American Rhythm Section” —Walter Page, bass; Jo James, drums; and Freddie Green, guitar—combined with leader and pianist Count Basie to propel Basie’s band from relative obscurity in a Kansas City nightclub to world renown as the leading purveyor of swing. Though blessed with an estimable array of soloists throughout the big band era, the Basie band originated an infectious pulse whose essence was a clean, unified, four-beats-to-the-bar swing. Though celebrated for the simplicity of the riff-oriented, call and response interaction of the brasses and reeds in its head arrangements, the band drew its virility from the rhythm section, even after Page and Jones left (c. 1948). Though energized in later years by brilliant writing and arranging, the Basie band housed a secret ingredient: the leader’s quite but forceful insistence upon an uncluttered, swinging sound, anchored by the rhythm section and accented by his own “less is more” solos.
Page combined a walking bass line with fine tone and a correct choice of notes. Jones, dancing on the high hat cymbal rather than thumping on the bass drum, allowed the lively bass lines to breathe. Green, the latecomer, strummed the chords that inspired two generations of great soloists. Schuller says of Green that he is “a wonderful anacronism, in that he has (almost) never played a melodic solo and seems content to play those beautiful ’changes’ night after night.” Basie quarterbacked, accented, edited, filled, chorded, and prodded, often pitting the soloists against one another to expose their fire. And what a group of soloists it was: tenor saxophonists Lester Young (he of the lean, dry phrases, precursor of the “cool” school), Herschel Evans, Paul Gonsalves, Illinois Jacquet, Lucky Thompson, Charlie Rouse, and Don Byas; trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison; trombonists Vic Dickenson, Dicky Wells, Bennie Morton, and J.J. Johnson; and vocalists Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, and Billie Holiday. Later bands would include trumpeters Clark Terry and Thad Jones, trombonist Al Grey, and reedmen Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Frank Foster, Marshal Royal,
For the Record…
Full name, William James Basie; born August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, N.J. ; died of pancreatic cancer, April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Fla.; ashes interred at Pine Lawn Cemetery, Farmingdale, N.Y.; son of Harvey (a gardener) and Lillian (a domestic; maiden name, Childs) Basie; married Catherine Morgan (manager of Count Basie Enterprises), July 1942; children and adopted children (some informally): Diane, Aaron, Woodward III, Lamont Gilmore, Rosemarie Matthews, Clifford. Education: Attended public schools until about the ninth grade; studied piano during 1920s with Thomas “Fats” Waller.
Pianist with touring group, Gonzell White and the Big Jamboree, 1926-28; pianist with Walter Page’s Blue Devils, 1928-29; pianist with Benny Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra, 1929-35; pianist-leader of the Barons of Rhythm, 1935-36; pianist-leader of the Count Basie Orchestra, 1937-49, and 1952-84; pianist and leader of octet, 1950-51.
Awards: Recipient of Esquire magazine’s All American Band Award, 1945; winner of down beat magazine’s International Critics’ Poll, 1952-56; recipient of Esquire magazine’s Silver Award, 1955; winner of down beat magazine’s readers’ poll, 1955; winner of the Metronome Poll, 1956; Governor of State of New York declared September 22, 1974, Count Basie Day; received honorary doctorate from Philadelphia Music Academy, 1974; named to Ebony magazine’s Black Music Hall of Fame, 1975; named to Playboy magazine’s Hall of Fame, 1976; named to Newport Jazz Hall of Fame, 1976; received Kennedy Center Performing Arts Honors Medal, 1981; recipient of Black Music Association Award, 1982; winner of nine Grammy Awards.
and Frank Wess, and singer Joe Williams. Personnel changes in Basie’s band were gradual as, from 1936 until his death in 1984 (with the exception of 1950-51, when it was reduced to an octet), Count Basie led the quintessential big swing band with which his name will always be associated.
From his Red Bank, New Jersey, home, Basie gravitated to the music parlors of 1920s Harlem, where he met fabled pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, picking up some informal instruction on both piano and organ from the latter. As a piano soloist and accompanist to several acts, he worked his way to Kansas City with a troupe that became stranded there. After some service as a silent film organ accompanist, Basie played with several of the local bands including that of Bennie Moten, the area’s best-known leader. Some time after Moten’s death, Basie assumed command of the nucleus of that band in 1935, and with a nine-piece group embarked on a long run at the Reno Club, making it one of Kansas’s City’s hottest spots. A radio announcer there dubbed Basie “Count” and the title prevailed.
Jazz impresario John Hammond heard one of the band’s regular broadcasts on an experimental radio station and helped to arrange bookings in Chicago and later New York. Basie increased the size of the band to thirteen pieces, trying to retain the feel of the smaller group, but initial reaction was disappointing. Finally, in 1937, several elements coalesced to launch the band on its nearly half-century of success. Freddie Green’s guitar solidified the rhythm section. Booking agent Willard Alexander finessed an engagement at the Famous Door in the heart of New York’s 52nd Street, a booking complete with a national NBC radio wire. Basie’s Decca recordings—” One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Swingin’ the Blues,” “Lester Leaps In” and others—began to catch on. As word fanned outward, Basie’s band attracted wildly cheering audiences, often in excess of the capacity of the venues.
Basie’s bands before and after the 1950-51 octet hiatus were quite different. The early band relied almost exclusively on head arrangements, those that often evolved over a period of time as the leader and the players experimented with short phrases (riffs) and accents that bounced from the trumpets to the reeds to the trombones, showcasing the parade of outstanding soloists. In the early 1940s the band benefited mightily from the writing and arranging of Buster Harding, Buck Clayton, and Tab Smith. Their work no doubt paved the way for the later band’s heavy reliance upon brilliant writing and arranging, chiefly by Neal Hefti, Frank Foster, Ernie Wilkins, and Sam Nestico. It, too, showcased excellent soloists, but the Basie ensemble sound, now grown to sixteen pieces, was its hallmark and the rhythm section, with Basie and Green ever-present, was its heartbeat.
Prolific recording dates, tours to Europe and Asia, regular appearances at Broadway’s Birdland, and an endless stream of dances, festivals, and concerts led to many honors for Basie and his band, including royal command performances in England and recognition by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. In addition to some of the seminal hits, later audiences demanded to hear such new Basie staples as “Li’l Darlin’,” “Cute,” “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “All Right, OK, You Win,” and “April In Paris.” Despite their differences, both bands exhibited a devotion to blues-based swinging and an uncluttered pulse; both also relied on effective use of dynamics, more subtle in the early band, more dramatic in the later, when Green’s unamplified guitar chords often gave way to shouting brass.
Basie’s bandstand demeanor appeared laid-back in the extreme—some called it laissez faire; others just plain lazy. Testimony of his bandmen and arrangers belie this. Perhaps Basie’s greatest skill was that of editor, first in the matter of personnel, then in the selection of repertoire. As John S. Wilson quoted Basie in The New York Times: “I wanted my 13-piece band to work together just like those nine pieces…to think and play the same way…. 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.” Basie told his autobiography collaborator, Albert Murray, “I’m experienced at auditions. I can tell in a few bars whether or not somebody can voice my stuff.”
Francis Davis’s Atlantic tribute column observed, “Basie apparently demanded of his sidemen a commitment to basics as single-minded as his own.” The writers and arrangers for the later band became accustomed to Basie’s editing out all material that he considered contrary to the ultimate goal: to swing. In the case of Neal Hefti’s “Li’l Darlin’,” Basie’s insistence on a much slower tempo than Hefti had envisioned resulted in one of the band’s greatest and most enduring hits. Basie’s conducting arsenal included such simple movements as a pointed finger, a smile, a raised eyebrow, and a nod—all sufficient to shift the “swing machine” into high gear.
Though Basie’s piano did surface significantly in later recordings with smaller groups, including piano duets with Oscar Peterson, he most often considered himself simply a part of the rhythm section. His spartan, unadorned solos, usually brief, cut to the essence of swing. With the full band, increasingly he was content to support and cajole soloists with carefully distilled single notes and chords of introduction and background. A genuine modesty about his pianistic skills combined with Basie’s understanding of the role of the big-band piano to form his style. Several critics and musicologists have observed that Basie’s spare playing inspired such important artists as John Lewis, music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Thelonious Monk, one of the architects of the Bop Era. Additionally, Mary Lou Williams and Oscar Peterson attest to Basie’s influence upon their playing. As many mature jazz practitioners aver, great playing consists not only of the notes one chooses to play, but those that one leaves out. In this respect Count Basie stands out as the acknowledged master.
Whether viewed as its pianist, leader, composer, arranger, paymaster, chief editor, inspiration, or soul—Count Basie will always be inextricably associated with the Basie Band. Despite crippling arthritis of the spine and a 1976 heart attack, Basie continued to call the tune and the tempo until his death from cancer in 1984. It will be the burden of all big bands, past, present, and future, to stand comparison with the Basie band. It has been the standard for half a century. One reason may well be that Count Basie, he of the impeccable taste, was not only its leader, but the bands greatest fan. He would not permit it to play less than its best. He loved it so.
Selected discography
With Bennie Moten
The Complete Bennie Moten, Volumes 3/4, French RCA Victor.
The Complete Bennie Moten, Volumes 5/6, French RCA Victor.
As Leader
The Best of Count Basie, MCA.
The Indispensable Count Basie, French RCA Victor.
One O’Clock Jump, Columbia Special Products.
April in Paris, Verve.
Basie Plays Hefti, Emus.
16 Men Swinging, Verve.
88 Basie Street, Pablo.
With Dizzy Gillespie
The Gifted Ones, Pablo.
With Oscar Peterson
Satch and Josh, Pablo.
Sources
Books
Basie, Count, with Albert Murray, Good Morning Blues, Random House, 1985.
Chilton, John, Who’s Who of Jazz, Time-Life Records, 1978.
Dance, Stanley, The World of Count Basie, Scribner, 1980.
Feather, Leonard, The New Edition of The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Bonanza Books, 1960.
McCarthy, Albert, Big Band Jazz, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974.
Rust, Brian, Jazz Records 1897-1942, 5th Revised and Enlarged Edition, Volume I, Storyville Publications, 1982.
Schuller, Gunther, The Swing Era, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Simon, George T., The Big Bands, Macmillan, 1967.
Periodicals
Atlantic, August, 1984.
down beat, July, 1984.
Ebony, January, 1984.
Newsweek, May 21, 1984; March 17, 1986.
New York Review of Books, January 16, 1986.
New York Times, April 27, 1984.
New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1986.
People, March 22, 1982.
Rolling Stone, June 7, 1984.
—Robert Dupuis
Count Basie 1904–1984
Band leader
At a Glance…
Selected discography
Sources
As leader of his own orchestra for several decades of the twentieth century, William “Count” Basie was considered a member of the swing royalty, along with “king of swing” Benny Goodman and Basie’s longtime rival and friend, Duke Ellington. A talented keyboardist, Basie developed a style rife with loose, rolling cadences and infectious hooks that became synonymous with his name. “His piano work showed that rhythm and space were more important than technical virtuosity,” wrote the Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, while “his composing gave many eminent soloist their finest moments…. Modern jazz stands indubitably in Basie’s debt.”
An only child, William James Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1904 to musically gifted parents. His father, who was a gardener by profession, played horn, while his mother played the piano. Basie began his musical career as a drum player for his high school band. However, because a rival percussionist from Red Bank was earning a great deal of attention for his talents, Basie abandoned the instrument. This rival, Sonny Greer, became the drummer for Duke Ellington’s band in 1919 and remained with the band for the next three decades.
Red Bank was located directly across the Hudson River from New York City. As a teenager, Basie frequently visited Harlem and its African American performance venues to listen to ragtime and other early forms of jazz. He was particularly fascinated with pianists who perfected their own loose style called the “Harlem stride.” Basie also enjoyed listening to Thomas “Fats” Waller perform on the organ at the Lincoln Theater. He would often sit as close to Waller as possible in order to observe his technique. Eventually, Waller noticed Basie watching so intently and began giving him informal lessons on the side.
Waller also recommended Basie for his first job in the music industry, as pianist for a black touring act called Katie Crippen and Her Kids in the early 1920s. During these years, Basie also performed in skits for the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association (T.O.B.A.), an organization that created tours for the black vaudeville circuit. He returned to New York City for a time, but began touring with the Gonzel White vaudeville act in 1926. The White show went bankrupt in 1927, leaving Basie and the other performers stranded in Kansas City.
At a Glance…
Born William James Basie, August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, NJ; died of cancer, April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, FL; son of Harvey (a gardener) and Lillian (a domestic worker) Basie; married, c. 1943; wife’s name, Catherine (died, 1983); five children.
Career: Played pi no in black vaudeville, 1920s; joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils, 1928; formed forerunner of Count Basie Orchestra, 1935; signed to Decca Records, 1937; signed with Vocalion (Columbia) Records, 1939; appeared in the film Stage Door Canteen, 1943; made first tour of Europe, 1954; performed at the inaugural ball for President John F. Kennedy, 1961.
Awards: Congressional Medal of Freedom, 1985.
Kansas City was a rather carefree town during the 1920s. Local vice laws were often loosely enforced, which created a thriving environment for jazz musicians. Basie found work in the city’s movie theaters as a pianist, and his cool demeanor earned him the nickname “Count.” In July of 1928 he joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils, a band which epitomized the so-called Kansas City style of jazz. During his stint with the Blue Devils, Basie met vocalist Jimmy Rushing. The two men became good friends, and often worked together during the course of several decades.
By 1929, Basie had left the Blue Devils to join the Kansas City Orchestra, which was led by Benny Moten. For the next several years, he performed with the orchestra. When Moten died unexpectedly in 1935, Basie and Moten’s nephew Buster reformed the group as The Barons Of Rhythm. “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,” declared The Guinness Encyclopedia. “Duke Ellington’s band may have been more ambitious, but for sheer unstoppable swing Basie could not be beaten.”
The Barons of Rhythm played often at the Kansas City’s Reno Club, and featured Walter Page on bass, Lester Young on tenor sax, Jo Jones on drums, Freddie Green on guitar, and Buck Clayton on trumpet. Basie played the piano and lead the band. The band was eventually renamed the Count Basie Orchestra, and their sound was distinct from the other big bands of the day, with a far more bluesy, less polished feel. Basie and Green’s combined tempo-keeping set the pace for this unique style. “Like all bands in the Kansas City tradition, the Count Basie Orchestra was organized about the rhythm section, which supported the interplay of brass and reeds and served as a background for the unfolding of solos,” explained the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Around 1935, Basie and his orchestra were discovered by producer John Hammond during one of their live radio broadcasts. Hammond, who was one of the first American record executives to foresee the commercial viability of recorded jazz, wrote about the Count Basie Orchestra in Down Beat magazine. He also arranged invitations for the band to play at the Grand Terrace in Chicago and New York’s Roseland Ballroom. Basie and his band completed their first recording, “One O’Clock Jump,” in early 1937, and were signed to a contract with Decca Records. This contract also required Basie to record twenty-four sides (twelve records in all) for the sum of only $750, with no royalties. Hammond would later help Basie renegotiate this unfair contract. In 1939, Basie and his orchestra signed a new contract with the jazz division of Columbia Records.
Both “One O’Clock Jump” and another recording, “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” were huge commercial successes. “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” which featured solos from Earl Warren on alto sax and Herschel Evans on clarinet, “could be taken as a definition of swing,” declared the Guinness Encyclopedia. Another recording, “Taxi War Dance,” also sold well, and epitomized the big-band sound. “The band’s recordings between 1937 and 1941 for Decca and Vocalion (Columbia) are among the finest of the period,” stated the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Fans appeared in droves to dance the jitterbug and listen to Basie’s big band sound, with its characteristically unfettered rhythms. On one occasion, the Count Basie Orchestra performed in a North Carolina warehouse before 16,000 fans. When several thousand fans waiting outside were told that they would not be able to enter, a disturbance erupted and the National Guard was summoned to maintain order.
Basie appeared in musical films during World War II, most notably the 1943 review Stage Door Canteen. Following the end of the war in 1945, the big-band sound began to decline in popularity. The Count Basie Orchestra, which was plagued by financial problems and poor management, broke up for a time. In the interim, Basie formed an eight-member band that included Clark Terry, Wardell Gray on tenor, and Buddy DeFranco on clarinet. However, in 1952, he resurrected the Count Basie Orchestra. With the addition of singer Joe Williams, the band enjoyed success with records like “Every Day (I Have the Blues)” and “April in Paris.” The band embarked on a tour of European cities, and performed before enthusiastic crowds. In 1957, the Count Basie Orchestra became the first African American band to play the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
During the 1950s, Basie’s band remained remarkably steady in its line-up, and he was a well-liked, modest man despite his regal nickname. “Bill Basie’s keyboard style is one of the happiest and most readily identifiable sounds in jazz,” wrote Nat Shapiro in 1957 in The Jazz Makers. “To the casual listener, it is no more than a formless and spontaneous series of interjections, commas, hyphens, underlines, quotation marks and interrogation and exclamation points.” The orchestra had a standing gig at Birdland in New York, and “there was no better place to hear Basie in peak form, surrounded by his most loyal fans,” wrote Dan Morgenstern in Rolling Stone. “Sometimes the band swung so hard that he would lift his hands from the keyboard and just sit there, beaming-the image of a man delighted with his work, which, simply put, was to make people feel good.”
In addition to his musical career, Basie owned a bar on 132nd Street in Harlem. For 25 years, he and his wife Catherine lived in the Queens neighborhood of St. Albans with their five children. Eventually, the Basie family moved to Long Island. Basie performed regularly during the 1960s. He also recorded albums and toured with singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. The Count Basie Orchestra played at the 1961 inaugural ball for President John F. Kennedy, and made frequent television appearances during the decade. In 1965 Basie signed with Reprise, Frank Sinatra’s label, and began adapting pop tunes to the big-band sound, which was a great commercial success.
During the 1970s, Basie signed with Pablo Records and recorded many big-band standards. However, he also began to experience various health problems. In 1976, Basie was forced to retire for a time after suffering a heart attack. He returned to the recording studio in 1979 and released On the Road and Afrique, an avant-garde jazz album. Basie was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and soon lost the ability to walk on his own. He passed away on April 26, 1984. Basie’s funeral at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church was attended by two thousand mourners, and hundreds more stood outside in homage. His ashes were interred at Pine Lawn Cemetery in Farmington, Long Island, New York.
Selected discography
Swinging at the Daisy Chain, Decca, 1937.
One O’Clock Jump, Decca, 1937.
Good Morning Blues, Decca, 1937.
Every Tub, Decca, 1938.
Doggin’ Around, Decca, 1938.
Jumpin’ at the Woodside, Decca, 1938.
Jive at Five, Decca, 1939.
Oh! Lady Be Good, Decca, 1939.
Rock-a-Bye Basie, Vocalion, 1939.
Taxi War Dance, Vocalion, 1939.
Miss Thing, Vocalion, 1939.
Tickle-toe, Vocalion, 1940.
The World Is Mad, Vocalion, 1940.
Diggin’ for Dex, Vocalion, 1941.
The King/Blue Skies, Vocalion, 1945.
The Count, Camden, 1947-49.
Dance Session, Clef, 1953.
Sixteen Men Swinging, Verve, 1953-54.
Basie Plays Hefti, Roulette, 1958.
Chairman of the Board, Roulette, 1959.
The Count Basie Story, Roulette, 1960.
Basie at Birdland, Roulette, 1961.
Basie Jam, Pablo, 1973.
On the Road, Pablo, 1979.
Sources
Books
Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as Told to Albert Murray, Da Capo, 1996.
The Jazz Makers, edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Rinehart, 1957, pp. 232-242.
Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, edited by Colin Larkin, Guinness Publishing, 1992.
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan, 1980, pp. 236-237.
Periodicals
Down Beat, July, 1984, p. 11; February, 1994, p. 31. New York Times, April 27, 1984, p. 1; May 1, 1984, p. 1.
Rolling Stone, June 7, 1984, p. 68.
—Carol Brennan
Count Basie
(William) Count Basie (1904-1984) was an extremely popular figure in the jazz world for half a century. He was a fine pianist and leader of one of the greatest jazz bands in history.
The story of Count Basie is very much the story of the great jazz band that he led for close to 50 years (1935-1984), an orchestra with a distinctive sound, anchored by a subtle but propulsive beat, buoyed by crisp ensemble work, and graced with superb soloists (indeed, a catalogue of featured players would read like a Who's Who of jazz). But perhaps the most startling aspect of the band's achievement was its 50-year survival in a culture that has experienced so many changes in musical fashion, and especially its survival after the mid-1960s when jazz lost much of its audience to rock music and disco.
William Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 21, 1904. His mother was a music teacher, and at a young age he became her pupil. But it was in Harlem, New York City, that he learned the rudiments of ragtime and stride piano, principally from his sometime organ teacher, the great Fats Waller. Basie made his professional debut as an accompanist for vaudeville acts. While on a tour of the Keith vaudeville circuit he was stranded in Kansas City. Here, in 1928, after a short stint as house organist in a silent movie theater, he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and when that band broke up in 1929, he was hired by Bennie Moten's Band and played piano with them, with one interruption, for the next five years.
Moten's death in 1935 altered Basie's career dramatically. He took over the remnants of the band (they called themselves The Barons of Rhythm) and, with some financial and promotional support from impresario John Hammond, expanded the personnel and formed the first Count Basie Orchestra. Within a year or so the band had developed its own variation of the basic Kansas City swing style—a solidly pulsating rhythm underpinning the horn soloists, who were additionally supported by sectional riffing (i.e., the repetition of a musical figure by the non-soloing brass and reeds). This familiar pattern is evident in the band's theme song, "One O'Clock Jump, " written by Basie himself in 1937, which has a subdued, expectant introduction by the rhythm section (piano, guitar, bass, and drums), then bursts into full orchestral support for a succession of stirring solos, and concludes with a full ensemble riffing out-chorus. Like any great swing band, Basie's was exciting in any tempo, and in fact one of the glories of his early period was a lugubrious, down-tempo blues called "Blue and Sentimental, " which featured two magnificent solos (one by Herschel Evans on tenor saxophone and the other by Lester Young on clarinet) with full ensemble backing.
A Huge Success
By 1937 Basie's band was, with the possible exception of Duke Ellington's, the most highly acclaimed African American band in America. In the racially segregated context of the pre-World War II music business, African American bands never achieved the notoriety nor made the money that the famous white bands did. But some (Ellington's, Earl Hines's, Jimmy Lunceford's, Erskine Hawkins's, Chick Webb's, and Basie's, among them) did achieve a solid commercial success. Basie's band regularly worked some of the better big city hotel ballrooms and shared with many of the other 1,400 big bands of the Swing Era the less appetizing one-nighters (a series of single night engagements in a variety of small cities and towns that were toured by bus).
Some of the band's arrangements were written by trombonist Eddie Durham, but many were "heads"— arrangements spontaneously worked out in rehearsal and then transcribed. The band's "book" (repertory) was tailored not only to a distinctive orchestral style but also to showcase the band's brilliant soloists. Sometimes the arrangement was the reworking of a standard tune—"I got Rhythm, " "Dinah, " or "Lady, Be Good"—but more often a bandsman would come up with an original written expressly for the band and with a particular soloist or two in mind: two of Basie's earliest evergreens, "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and "Lester Leaps In" were conceived primarily as features for the remarkable tenor saxophonist Lester Young (nicknamed "Pres, " short for "President") and were referred to as "flagwavers, " up-tempo tunes designed to excite the audience.
Unquestionably the Swing Era band (1935-1945) was Basie's greatest: the superior arrangements (reflecting Basie's good taste) and the sterling performers (reflecting Basie's management astuteness) gave the band a permanent place in jazz history that even severe personnel setbacks couldn't diminish. Herschel Evans's death in 1939 was a blow, but he was replaced by another fine tenorist, Buddy Tate; a major defection was that of the nonpareil Lester Young ("Count, four weeks from tonight I will have been gone exactly fourteen days."), but his replacement was the superb Don Byas; the trumpet section had three giants— Buck Clayton, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Bill Coleman— but only Edison survived the era as a Basie-ite.
Perhaps the band's resilience in the face of potentially damaging change can be explained by its model big band rhythm section, one that jelled to perfection—the spare, witty piano of Basie; the wonderful rhythm guitar of Freddie Green (who was with the band from 1937 to 1984); the rock-solid bass of Walter Page (Basie's former employer); and the exemplary drumming of Jo Jones. Nor was the band's excellence hurt by the presence of its two great blues and ballads singers, Jimmy Rushing and Helen Humes.
"April in Paris"
The loss of key personnel (some to the military service), the wartime ban on recordings, the 1943 musicians' strike, the economic infeasibility of one-nighters, and the bebop revolution of the mid-1940s all played a role in the death of the big band era. The number of 12 to 15 piece bands diminished drastically, and Basie was driven to some soul-searching: despite his international reputation and the band's still first-rate personnel, Basie decided in 1950 to disband and to form a medium-sized band (first an octet and later a septet), juggling combinations of all-star musicians, among them tenorists Georgie Auld, Gene Ammons, and Wardell Gray; trumpeters Harry Edison and Clark Terry; and clarinetist Buddy DeFranco. The groups' recordings (Jam Sessions #2 & #3) are, predictably, of the highest quality, but in 1951 Basie reverted to his first love—the big band— and it thrived, thanks largely to the enlistment of two Basie-oriented composer-arrangers, Neil Hefti and Ernie Wilkins; to the solo work of tenorists Frank Wess and Frank Foster and trumpeters Joe Newman and Thad Jones; and to the singing of Joe Williams. Another boost was provided in the late 1950s by jazz organist Wild Bill Davis's arrangement of "April in Paris" which, with its series of "one more time" false endings, came to be a trademark of the band for the next quarter of a century.
A stocky, handsome, mustachioed man with heavy-lidded eyes and a sly, infectious smile, Basie in his later years took to wearing a yachting cap both off and on the bandstand. His sobriquet, "Count, " was a 1935 promotional gimmick, paralleling "Duke" (Ellington) and "Earl" (Hines's actual first name). He was a shrewd judge of talent and character and, ever the realist, was extremely forbearing in dealing with the behavioral caprices of his musicians. His realistic vision extended as readily to himself: a rhythm-centered pianist, he had the ability to pick out apt chord combinations with which to punctuate and underscore the solos of horn players, but he knew his limitations and therefore gave himself less solo space than other, less gifted, leaders permitted themselves. He was, however, probably better than he thought; on a mid-1970s outing on which he was co-featured with tenor saxophone giant Zoot Sims he acquitted himself nobly.
Among Basie's many recordings perhaps the most essential are The Best of Basie; The Greatest: Count Basie Plays … Joe Williams Sings Standards; and Joe Williams/Count Basie: Memories Ad-Lib. There are also excellent pairings of Basie and Ellington, with Frank Sinatra, with Tony Bennett, with Ella Fitzgerald, with Sarah Vaughan, and with Oscar Peterson.
In 1976 Basie suffered a heart attack, but returned to the bandstand half a year later. During his last years he had difficulty walking and so rode out on stage in a motorized wheelchair, his playing now largely reduced to his longtime musical signature, the three soft notes that punctuated his compositional endings. His home for many years was in Freeport, the Bahamas; he died of cancer at Doctors' Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984. His wife, Catherine, had died in 1983; they had one daughter. The band survived Basie's death, with ex-Basie-ite trumpeter Thad Jones directing until his death in 1986.
Further Reading
The best source for early Basie is Ross Russell's Jazz Style in Kansas City & The Southwest (1971). Two studies of the life of the band are Ray Horricks' Count Basie & His Orchestra and Stanley Dance's The World of Count Basie (1980), the latter a composite study of Basie and the band through bandsmen's memoirs. There is also a short biography, Count Basie (1985), by British jazz critic Alun Morgan. Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray was published posthumously in 1985. □
Count Basie
Born: August 21, 1904
Red Bank, New Jersey
Died: April 26, 1984
Hollywood, Florida
African American bandleader and musician
Count Basie was an extremely popular figure in the jazz world for half a century. He was a fine pianist and leader of one of the greatest jazz bands in history.
Early years
William Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 21, 1904. His parents, Harvey and Lillian (Childs) Basie, were both musicians. Basie played drums in his school band and took some piano lessons from his mother. But it was in Harlem, New York City, that he learned the basics of piano, mainly from his sometime organ teacher, the great Fats Waller (1904–1943).
Basie made his professional debut playing piano with vaudeville acts (traveling variety entertainment). While on one tour he became stranded in Kansas City, Missouri. After working briefly as house organist in a silent movie theater, he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1928. When that band broke up in 1929, he Bennie Moten's band hired him. He played piano with them, with one interruption, for the next five years. It was during this time that he was given the nickname "Count."
After Moten died in 1935, Basie took what was left of the band, expanded the personnel, and formed the first Count Basie Orchestra. Within a year the band developed its own variation of the Kansas City swing style—a solid rhythm backing the horn soloists, who were also supported by sectional riffing (the repeating of a musical figure by the non-soloing brass and reeds). This familiar pattern was evident in the band's theme song, "One O'Clock Jump," written by Basie himself in 1937.
Success in the swing era
By 1937 Basie's band was, with the possible exception of Duke Ellington's (1899–1974), the most famous African American band in America. Basie's band regularly worked some of the better big city hotel ballrooms. With many of the other big bands of the swing era he also shared the less appealing one-nighters (a series of single night performances in a number of small cities and towns that were traveled to by bus).
Many of the band's arrangements were "heads"—arrangements worked out without planning in rehearsal and then written down later. The songs were often designed to showcase the band's brilliant soloists. Sometimes the arrangement was the reworking of a standard tune—"I Got Rhythm," "Dinah," or "Lady, Be Good." Sometimes a member of the band would come up with an original, written with a particular soloist or two in mind. Two of Basie's earliest favorites, "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and "Lester Leaps In," were created as features for saxophonist Lester Young. They were referred to as "flagwavers," fast-paced tunes designed to excite the audience. The swing era band (1935–45) was unquestionably Basie's greatest. The superior arrangements (reflecting Basie's good taste) and the skilled performers (reflecting Basie's sound management) gave the band a permanent place in jazz history.
Later years
The loss of key personnel (some to military service), the wartime ban on recordings, the 1943 musicians' strike, the strain of onenighters, and the bebop revolution of the mid-1940s all played a role in the death of the big-band era. Basie decided to form a medium-sized band in 1950, juggling combinations of all-star musicians. The groups' recordings were of the highest quality, but in 1951 Basie returned to his first love—the big band—and it thrived. Another boost was provided in the late 1950s by the recording of "April in Paris," which became the trademark of the band for the next quarter of a century.
A stocky, handsome man with heavy-lidded eyes and a sly smile, Basie was a shrewd judge of talent and character, and he was extremely patient in dealing with the egos of his musicians. He and his band recorded with many other famous artists, including Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), and Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990). Perhaps the most startling of the band's achievements was its fifty-year survival in a culture that experienced so many changes in musical fashion, especially after the mid-1960s, when jazz lost much of its audience to other forms of music.
In 1976 Basie suffered a heart attack, but he returned to the bandstand half a year later. During his last years he had difficulty walking and so rode out on stage in a motorized wheelchair. He died of cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984. His wife, Catherine, had died in 1983. They had one daughter. The band survived Basie's death, with trumpeter Thad Jones directing until his own death in 1986.
For More Information
Basie, Count. Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. New York: Random House, 1985.
Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1980.
Kliment, Bud. Count Basie. New York: Chelsea House, 1992.
|
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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3
| 27 |
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/10/count-basie-by-alun-morgan-part-1.html
|
en
|
JazzProfiles: Count Basie by Alun Morgan
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Steven Cerra"
] | null |
A blog about Jazz featuring CD,and book reviews and postings about the music and its makers.
|
en
|
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
|
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/10/count-basie-by-alun-morgan-part-1.html
|
Focused Profiles on Jazz and its Creators while also Featuring the Work of Guest Writers and Critics on the Subject of Jazz.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 84 |
https://abc7.com/frank-sinatra-jr-obituary-celebrity-deaths-sinatras-son/1249237/
|
en
|
Frank Sinatra Jr. dies unexpectedly while on tour at 72
|
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[
"frank sinatra jr.",
"obituary",
"celebrity deaths",
"frank sinatras son",
"frank sinatra"
] | null |
[] |
2016-03-17T06:59:00+00:00
|
Frank Sinatra Jr., who carried on his famous father's legacy with his own music career, has died at age 72.
|
en
|
https://cdn.abcotvs.net/abcotv/assets/news/kabc/images/logos/favicon.ico
|
ABC7 Los Angeles
|
https://abc7.com/frank-sinatra-jr-obituary-celebrity-deaths-sinatras-son/1249237/
|
LOS ANGELES -- Frank Sinatra Jr., who carried on his famous father's legacy with his own music career and whose kidnapping as a young man added a bizarre chapter to his father's legendary life, died Wednesday. He was 72.
The younger Sinatra died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest while on tour in Daytona Beach, Florida, the Sinatra family said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The statement said the family mourns the untimely passing of their son, brother, father and uncle. No other details were provided.
His real name was Francis Wayne Sinatra - his father's full name is Francis Albert Sinatra - but went professionally by Frank Sinatra Jr.
Sinatra Jr. was the middle child of Sinatra and Nancy Barbato Sinatra, who was the elder Sinatra's first wife and the mother of all three of his children. Sinatra Jr.'s older sister was Nancy Sinatra, who had a successful musical career of her own, and his younger sister was TV producer Tina Sinatra.
He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1943, just as his father's career was getting started, and he would watch his dad become one of the most famous singers of all time. But he usually watched from a distance, as Sinatra was constantly away on tours and making movies.
He did, however, sometimes get to see him from the wings of the stage, especially when his father performed for long stints in Las Vegas. Sinatra Jr. got to see many other storied performers too, like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Count Basie.
"I saw all the top stars perform," Sinatra Jr. told the AP in 2002. He said one of his favorite memories of his father harks back to a performance in the late 1960s at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
"He was sitting on a little stool, and he sang the Beatles song 'Yesterday' and 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' and 'Didn't We,'" Sinatra Jr. said. "We were all crying and singing."
Sinatra Jr. followed his father into music as a teenager, eventually working for the senior Sinatra as his musical director and conductor.
PHOTOS: Celebrities and notable figures who have recently passed away
The elder Sinatra died of a heart attack May 14, 1998, at 82.
Sinatra Jr. was able to provide a link to his father's music after his death, performing his songs and arrangements on tours and especially in Las Vegas.
"Since my father's death, a lot of people have made it clear that they're not ready to give up the music," Sinatra Jr. said in the 2002 AP interview. "For me, it's a big, fat gift. I get to sing with a big orchestra and get to sing orchestrations that will never be old."
When Sinatra Jr. was 19 in 1963, three men kidnapped him at gunpoint from a Lake Tahoe hotel. He was returned safely after two days when his family paid $240,000 for his release.
Barry Keenan, a high school friend of Nancy Sinatra, was arrested with the other two suspects, Johnny Irwin and Joe Amsler, and convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping.
Keenan masterminded the kidnapping, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to life plus 75 years in prison, but was declared legally insane at the time of the crime, had his sentence reduced and was paroled in 1968 after serving 4 years.
Sinatra Jr. was married in 1998, but divorced in 2000. He is survived by a son, Michael.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 72 |
https://www.berkshireeagle.com/history/today-in-history-for-april-26-2022/article_83da1738-c28d-11ec-b818-b370a806796b.html
|
en
|
Today in History for April 26, 2022
|
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
"ap history"
] | null |
[] |
2022-04-26T07:00:00-04:00
|
On April 26, 1986: An explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed
|
en
|
https://www.berkshireeagle.com/content/tncms/site/icon.ico
|
The Berkshire Eagle
|
https://www.berkshireeagle.com/history/today-in-history-for-april-26-2022/article_83da1738-c28d-11ec-b818-b370a806796b.html
| |||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 45 |
https://www.facebook.com/GPACatAU/videos/talkback-thursday-thursday-may-6-2021/307649530887689/
|
en
|
Our guest this week is Scotty Barnhart, director of the Legendary Count Basie Orchestra.
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Our guest this week is Scotty Barnhart, director of the Legendary Count Basie Orchestra.
|
de
|
https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yT/r/aGT3gskzWBf.ico
|
https://www.facebook.com/GPACatAU/videos/talkback-thursday-thursday-may-6-2021/307649530887689/
| ||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 10 |
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Count-Basie/317082
|
en
|
Count Basie
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(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the…
|
en
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Britannica Kids
|
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Count-Basie/317082
|
(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the simplicity of his arrangements and secured his place in history with such classic numbers as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Basie Boogie.”
William Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. He studied music with his mother and was later influenced by the Harlem pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, receiving informal training on the organ from Waller. He began his professional career as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit. Basie eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and 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 short-wave radio station in Kansas City, the announcer dubbed him “Count” Basie to compete with such other bandleaders as Duke Ellington. The jazz critic John Hammond heard the broadcasts in New York, New York, and promptly launched the band on its career in Chicago, Illinois. Although rooted in the riff style of the 1930s swing-era bands, the Basie band included soloists who reflected the styles of their own periods. In this way the band was a springboard for such artists as tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and trumpeter-composer Thad Jones. Many musicians considered Basie’s to be the major big band in jazz history, a model for ensemble rhythmic conception and tonal balance.
During the late 1930s the accompanying unit for the band (pianist Basie, rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones) was unique in its lightness, precision, and relaxation, becoming the precursor for modern jazz accompanying styles. Basie’s syncopated and spare but exquisitely timed chording, commonly termed comping, became the model for what was expected from combo pianists in their improvised accompaniments for the next 30 years of jazz. Despite its influence on modern piano styles, Basie’s solo technique had roots in the pre-swing-era style of Fats Waller, and Basie continued to display such a “stride style” in performances through the 1970s.
Basie’s autobiography, Good Morning Blues, written with Albert Murray, was published in 1985, one year after his death. Count Basie died on April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Florida, leaving a grand legacy of song that would continue to influence jazz musicians for generations to come.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 12 |
https://bassheadstudios.wixsite.com/positiveblackimages-/historyaug15
|
en
|
Black History
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https://www.wix.com/favicon.ico
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https://www.wix.com/favicon.ico
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The Legacy of Count Basie
|
en
|
https://www.wix.com/favicon.ico
|
positiveblackimages-
|
https://bassheadstudios.wixsite.com/positiveblackimages-/historyaug15
|
AUGUST 2015
C
Basie saw this as a crucial moment in his career since he was beginning to be introduced to a big band sound for the first time. Later in his career he worked for a band led by Bennie Motten for several years. When Motten died suddenly in 1935, the band continued under Buster Motten, but Basie left soon after the occurrence.
Basie created a smaller music group consisting of nine musicians in that same year. During a radio broadcast of one of Basie’s band’s performances, the announcer wanted to give his name some liveliness, keeping in mind other bandleaders existences like Duke Ellington and Earl Hines.
So he called the pianist "Count," without Basie realizing just how quickly the name would catch on as a form of recognition and respect in the world of music. After this occurred,
THE LEGACY OF:
ount Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey.
He played vaudeville as a pianist before creating his own band and defining what was known as the “Swing Era”. Count made several hits from songs like “One O’Clock Jump” and "Blue Skies”. In 1928 He went on to join Walter Page's Blue Devils.
COUNT BASIE
Count Basie's band continued to perform radio broadcasts. In 1936 the group's radio broadcasts led to contracts with Decca Record Company and a national booking agency. Within a year the contract had expanded and the Count Basie Orchestra had become one of the leading bands of the swinging era. Eventually, the band became internationally famous by the end of the 1930s with pieces like Jumpin’ at the Woodside and Taxi War Dance.
Basie was forced to decrease the size of his orchestra due to changing fortunes in the early 1950s. He made a comeback two years later with an even bigger band and made several new hits with vocalist Joe Williams and became a figure internationally. Another big leap came along in 1956 with the release of their album April in Paris.
Basie had created a trendy type of ending that became a signature for the band. Basie recorded with luminaries like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson during the 1960s and '70s.
Basie was forced to decrease the size of his orchestra due to changing fortunes in the early 1950s. He made a comeback two years later with an even bigger band and made several new hits with vocalist Joe Williams and became a figure internationally. Another big leap
came along in 1956 with the release of their album April in Paris. Basie had created a trendy type of ending that became a signature for the band. Basie recorded with luminaries like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson during the 1960s and '70s. Basie ultimately earned nine Grammy Awards throughout his career, but he made history when he won his first, in 1958, as the first African-American man to receive a Grammy. A few of his songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as well, including "April in Paris" and "Every day I Have the Blues."
Count Basie died on April 26, 1984 in Hollywood, Florida, leaving nothing but his legacy and the large amount of albums he had released in his lifetime. Basie had health problems in his later years leading up to his death but ultimately died from cancer.
SOURCE: http://www.biography.com/people/count-basie-9201255
SOURCE:http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_basie_count.htm
SOURCE: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/count-basie-mn0000127044/biography
#positiveblack
#RiseShineRepeat
|
||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 47 |
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/puzzles/crosswords/sally-hoelscher/2024/06/16/daily-crossword-analysis/74101771007/
|
en
|
Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Thinking of You
|
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2024-06-16T00:00:00
|
Explore daily insights on the USA TODAY crossword puzzle by Sally Hoelscher. Uncover expert takes and answers in our crossword blog.
|
en
|
USA TODAY
|
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/puzzles/crosswords/sally-hoelscher/2024/06/16/daily-crossword-analysis/74101771007/
|
There are spoilers ahead. You might want to solve today's puzzle before reading further! Thinking of You (Freestyle)
Constructor: Amanda Rafkin
Editor: Amanda Rafkin
What I Learned from Today’s Puzzle
PENGUIN PEBBLING (20A: Small exchange between two people to show caring and build connection) Some PENGUINs pick up stones and offer them to their partners (or potential partners) as a gift. The pebble can be used to build a nest, but also serves as a token of affection. This behavior led to the term PENGUIN PEBBLING to describe a similar behavior in humans. In people, the gift isn't necessarily a rock (though it could be); it could be any number of things. PENGUIN PEBBLING may even be demonstrated by sending someone a meme that made you think of them. Some autistic individuals use PENGUIN PEBBLING as a way of showing affection.
PANGAEA (4D: "King of ___" (Martin Storrow musical)) Martin Storrow based the King of PANGAEA on his own experience of grief after his mother died. The musical focuses on Christopher Crow, a young man who travels back to the imaginary world of his childhood to cope with the loss of his mother.
TENT (52D: Makeshift shelter in Red Dead Redemption 2) Red Dead Redemption II is a Western-themed action-adventure video game. The game is set in 1899 in a fictionalized version of the United States. I'm not familiar with this game, so I was thankful for the "makeshift shelter" hint in the clue.
Random Thoughts & Interesting Things
BOCA (14A: ___ Raton (Florida city)) BOCA Raton, Florida is located in Palm Beach County, about 45 miles north of Miami. With coastline along the Atlantic Ocean, BOCA Raton is particularly known for its two mile stretch of lifeguard-protected beaches. BOCA Raton's motto is "A City for All Seasons."
BEE (34A: Insect in the board game Apiary) The premise of the board game Apiary, published in 2023, is that hyper-intelligent BEEs are headed to outer space.
SPECIAL INTEREST (47A: Topic an autistic person is intensely focused on and passionate about) Many autistic people have certain topics that they become intensely focused on. Encouragement of SPECIAL INTERESTs can help people interact with others and engage with the world. A wide variety of things can become SPECIAL INTERESTs, such as trains, elevators, animals, maps, and music.
EVAN (58A: "Dear ___ Hansen") The Broadway musical Dear EVAN Hansen won six Tony Awards in 2017. The musical was adapted into a movie of the same name in 2021. Ben Platt originated the role of EVAN Hansen in the musical, and reprised that role for the movie.
MOVIES (11D: The Academy Museum's subject) The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in Los Angeles, California in 2021. The focus of the museum is the history, science and cultural impact of MOVIES. The museum is home to over 13 million objects related to the film industry.
BASIE (22D: Jazz bandleader Count) Count BASIE (1904-1984) was a jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. In 1936 he formed the Count BASIE Orchestra, a band that became one of the most prominent performing groups of the swing era.
SMALL TALK (33D: Idle chatter that might use up a lot of someone's spoons) The word "spoons" in this clue is a reference to the spoon theory created by Christine Miserandino as a way to explain what it's like to live with a chronic illness. The metaphor is used in a wide range of situations to represent expenditure of personal energy. In spoon theory, spoons represent energy, and each person has so many spoons a day. Once the spoons have all been used, there's little energy left for anything else. For some people, SMALL TALK is energizing. For others, the effort of making SMALL TALK may use up a lot of spoons.
SCI-FI (35D: "The Fifth Element" genre) The Fifth Element is a 1997 SCI-FI movie. It is set in the 23rd century, and its plot involves the survival of planet Earth. (This seems to be a common emphasis in SCI-FI stories.) Bruce Willis. Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, and Chris Tucker starred in The Fifth Element.
THEMES (41D: Features of some crosswords (but not this one)) Ha! I appreciate a self-referential clue, and this is a fun one. No THEMES here.
A few other answers I especially enjoyed:
SOCIAL CUE (5D: Nonverbal signal expressed via the face, body, voice, etc.)
I'M ALL IN (10D: "So ready to do this with you forever")
THE NERVE (36D: "How dare they!")
Crossword Puzzle Theme Synopsis
No theme today, as this is a freestyle, or themeless puzzle. The title, THINKING OF YOU, is a nod to PENGUIN PEBBLING (20A: Small exchange between two people to show caring and build connection).
Although there are no THEMES to be found in this puzzle, I appreciate that the two grid-spanning answers – PENGUIN PEBBLING and SPECIAL INTEREST – both relate to behaviors often associated with autistic individuals. Thank you, Amanda, for this stellar puzzle.
For more on USA TODAY’s Crossword Puzzles
USA TODAY’s Daily Crossword Puzzles
Sudoku & Crossword Puzzle Answers
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 48 |
https://www.miningjournal.net/news/records/2024/04/today-in-history-april-26-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-disaster/
|
en
|
Today in History: April 26, Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster
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2024-04-26T00:00:00
|
By The Associated Press Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On April 26, 1
|
en
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https://www.miningjournal.net/wp-content/themes/coreV2/favicon.ico
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miningjournal.net
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https://www.miningjournal.net/news/records/2024/04/today-in-history-april-26-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-disaster/
|
By The Associated Press
Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
On this date:
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an anti-Semitic mob in 1915.)
In 1933, Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, was created.
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1984, bandleader Count Basie, 79, died in Hollywood, Florida.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2009, the United States declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand; officials in Mexico City closed everything from concerts to sports matches to churches in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)
In 2013, singer George Jones, believed by many to be the greatest country crooner of all time, died in Nashville at age 81.
In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
In 2022, Russia pounded eastern and southern Ukraine as the U.S. promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needed to repel the new offensive, despite Moscow’s warnings that such support could trigger a wider war.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor-comedian Carol Burnett is 91. R&B singer Maurice Williams is 86. Songwriter-musician Duane Eddy is 86. Actor Nancy Lenehan is 71. Actor Giancarlo Esposito is 66. Rock musician Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) is 64. Actor Joan Chen is 63. Rock musician Chris Mars (The Replacements) is 63. Actor-singer Michael Damian is 62. Actor Jet Li (lee) is 61. Actor-comedian Kevin James is 59. Author and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is 58. Actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste is 57. Rapper T-Boz (TLC) is 54. Former first lady Melania Trump is 54. Actor Shondrella Avery is 53. Actor Simbi Kali is 53. Country musician Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) is 53. Rock musician Jose Pasillas (Incubus) is 48. Actor Jason Earles is 47. Actor Leonard Earl Howze is 47. Actor Amin Joseph is 47. Actor Tom Welling is 47. Actor Pablo Schreiber is 46. Actor Nyambi Nyambi is 45. Actor Jordana Brewster is 44. Actor Stana Katic is 44. Actor Marnette Patterson is 44. Actor Channing Tatum is 44. Americana/roots singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt is 40. Actor Emily Wickersham is 40. Actor Aaron Meeks is 38. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is 32.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 7 |
https://monmouthtimeline.org/timeline/count-basie/
|
en
|
The Legendary William "Count" Basie
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[] |
1904-08-21T14:12:19+00:00
|
William James “Count” Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank. A pianist, he played vaudeville before eventually forming his own big band and helping to define the era of swing with hits like “One O’Clock Jump” and “Blue Skies.” In 1958, Basie became the first African-American male recipient of a Grammy Award....
|
en
|
Monmouth Timeline
|
https://monmouthtimeline.org/timeline/count-basie/
|
William James “Count” Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank. A pianist, he played vaudeville before eventually forming his own big band and helping to define the era of swing with hits like “One O’Clock Jump” and “Blue Skies.” In 1958, Basie became the first African-American male recipient of a Grammy Award. One of jazz music’s all-time greats, he won many other Grammys throughout his career and worked with a plethora of artists, including Joe Williams and Ella Fitzgerald. Basie died in Florida on April 26, 1984.
Basie is honored in Red Bank with a monument at the train station, and the former Carlyle Theater was renamed in his honor, The Count Basie Theater.
For an outstanding full bio of Count Basie, visit the Rutgers University website devoted to all things Basie, at https://countbasie.rutgers.edu/.
Source: https://countbasie.rutgers.edu/
Featured image credit: James J. Kriegsmann, 1955. Library of Congress, LCCN 00650704.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 51 |
https://thebasie.org/history/
|
en
|
Count Basie Theatre History
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2017-04-28T18:46:47+00:00
|
Originally opened in 1926 as Reade’s Carlton Theater, the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank has grown to become of the nation’s most celebrated performing arts centers. The Basie Center’s 1,568-seat historic theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in America, consistently recognized by Pollstar magazine as one […]
|
en
|
Count Basie Center for the Arts
|
https://thebasie.org/history/
|
Originally opened in 1926 as Reade’s Carlton Theater, the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank has grown to become of the nation’s most celebrated performing arts centers. The Basie Center’s 1,568-seat historic theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in America, consistently recognized by Pollstar magazine as one of the nation’s top-performing live event venues, and everyone from Tony Bennett and Bruce Springsteen, to Ringo Starr and William J. “Count” Basie himself have performed on its historic stage.
In fact, Bennett has called the Basie “my favorite place.” Art Garfunkel once remarked, “This hall is to a singer what Steinway is to a pianist.” And Lyle Lovett, a frequent Basie Center performer, has long praised the theater, making a point to tell his audiences “this is one of the nicest sounding rooms in the whole United States of America.”
For 40+ years, Reade’s Carlton Theater hosted everything from vaudeville to films, local theater and touring productions, concerts and more. By the mid-1960s, like so much treasured, architectural wonders of the gilded age, the Carlton fell into disrepair, forgotten against the rise of shopping malls, home television and multi-theater cineplexes.
In 1971, funding from the Junior League of Monmouth County and New Jersey State Council on the Arts helped create the Monmouth County Arts Council (MCAC). With an eye on preserving the past, the MCAC almost immediately focused on preserving the Carlton.
The effort proved harder than planned. However, in 1973, an anonymous donation allowed the MCAC to purchase the Carlton for just $96,665 — several hundred thousand dollars less than it cost to construct 47 years earlier. A press release heralded, “The Monmouth County Arts Council has received an anonymous gift from a foundation enabling it to purchase the Carlton Theatre in Red Bank, with the stipulation that the theatre be renovated into an attractive and functional arts center for the entire county.” Along with the donation came a new name: the Monmouth Arts Center.
Thanks to the MCAC and an ever-growing area music scene, the Monmouth Arts Center became viable. In August 1974, just months after then-Rolling Stone journalist Jon Landau proclaimed him the future of rock and roll, local musician Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band took the historic stage. A year later, just weeks after Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines, the band returned for a performance dubbed “The Homecoming.”
Decades before Bruce Springsteen, however, another area musician – jazz great William J. “Count” Basie – established himself as one of music’s all-time greats. In 1961, just weeks after performing for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Basie made a homecoming performance at the Carlton, drawing more than 1700 fans in the theater’s seats and glass-lined lobby. Basie made several returns in the years to follow: in 1974 for a concert held in honor of his 70th birthday, and for a 1979 performance to benefit Shrewsbury’s A.M.E. Zion Church.
Just weeks after the death of his wife Catherine in 1983, Basie made his final appearance at the theater. Less than a year later, the jazz legend succumbed to cancer.
In November 1984, just six months removed from his death, the Monmouth Arts Center was renamed to honor Basie, then wholly recognized as Red Bank’s most famous son.
In years to come, the Basie would establish itself as a nonprofit organization, with a mission to serve the people of the State of New Jersey by providing a broad spectrum of quality entertainment and education programs that reflect and celebrate the diversity of the region.
The Basie Center’s Academy of the Arts has yielded stars in music and Broadway, and its work in area schools to promote the arts in education has been recognized throughout the state of New Jersey.
A monumental interior restoration was completed in 2008, funded in part by a performance by Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The project restored the theater to its original, Spanish-influenced 1926 luster. Two years later, the building’s iconic façade was restored.
And today, the Count Basie Theatre has become the Count Basie Center for the Arts, reflecting its celebrated $26 million capital campaign and the goal of expanding the facility into a true, regional center for the performing arts. Construction is underway on the west side of the facility, with the Jay And Linda Grunin Arts and Education Building set to house rehearsal spaces, additional classrooms and the Basie Center’s as-yet-unnamed second performance space. On the facility’s east side, plans are in place to create a spacious, glass-lined lobby, barrier-free amenities and upgrades, and the Stillwell-Larkin Pavilion, which will serve as the entrance to a new outdoor public arts plaza.
At 90 years old and growing stronger, the Count Basie Center for the Arts aims to be the premier center for the performing and visual arts, inspiring, educating and entertaining through its diverse and engaging offerings and reflecting the diversity of the region. As a nonprofit organization, the Basie is committed to creating opportunities for participation and understanding the arts by collaborating with creators, organizations, and schools, and as a catalyst to harnessing the economic vitality of the arts and enriching our region’s quality of life.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 53 |
https://saramoulton.com/show/saras-weeknight-meals-season-9/episode-901-havana-weeknights/
|
en
|
Episode 901: Havana Weeknights | Sara Moulton
|
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2019-09-04T13:11:48+00:00
|
en
|
https://saramoulton.com/wp-content/themes/jpdstudio/favicon.ico
|
Sara Moulton
|
https://saramoulton.com/show/saras-weeknight-meals-season-9/episode-901-havana-weeknights/
|
Me with Lucila Jimenez
Lucila Venet Jimenez
I don’t want to claim that I am one one of those glamorous model-like cooks that now seem to recall that their grandmothers taught them all they know. Every one in Cuba was exposed to grandmothers, mothers, aunts and nannies and “tatas”. Nothing unusual about that.
What was different about me is that I had a mother that was a frequent flyer to all the cooking classes that she could find and that somehow she took me along and I happily followed. We were both pleasantly plump, as opposed to skinny cooks. Of course many Cuban girls had chosen the schools of home economics (Escuela del Hogar), an excellent idea, by the way, that was part of the pre-1959 school system. In exile, I traded memories and classes with the teachers and survivors such as Ana Dolores Gomez de Dumois, more about her below, and my old teacher Marta Bosque, who died in her nineties and was still cranky.
And I must have learned something when I was able to save myself from starvation when I lived with Margarita Lacedonia Mitchell in Key West. A wonderful woman and my inspiration in many ways, but I had to teach her to remove the covering from the ham before she put it in the oven. But that is all kiddie stuff.
In 1969, I took cake decorating classes at the Lindsay-Hopkins school. It was located in an old building in or near downtown Miami in the NW section. My husband drove me there and studied in the library while I took the classes. With a cousin of my husband and a relative we had a carpool and they took classes with me, along with a Haitian couple who were planning to open a bakery. Why did I do that? By now you can tell that anything having to do with cooking pulls me as a lightbulb pulls the moths.
My real learning happened when I was the apprentice to Ana Dolores Gomez de Dumois. She was kind of like the Cuban version Julia Child and had a TV show of her own. After she came from Puerto Rico she gave cooking classes, but I went beyond that. I stayed as her sort of apprentice for four years, day in and day out, to the point that I helped her with the weekly dinners that she took to the embryonic “Big Five Club”, an enclave of the nostalgic former members of the most renowned country clubs of the old Havana elite . At the end of those four years I helped her put together much of her work and she and I created the first edition of Ana Dolores Cocina con Usted. My name is on the first edition.
Then sometime 1975-76 I took the Wilton cake decorating courses, first to learn and then to teach. I taught for a year or two at the Sears store in Coral Gables.
I also worked briefly for Lawry’s products applying and demonstrating their products in Hispanic dishes.
And throughout all that time I was attending classes all over the place. Some of them in stores and others in more formal cooking school settings, such as Bobby and Carole’s Cooking School that later became Ariana’s Cooking School. In those settings I had the memorable experience of seeing first hand the arts of people such as Julia Child, James Beard, Ken Hom and Jacques Pepin. In the case of Chef Jacques Pepin I took week-long classes with him for ten years. My children came to dread and my husband to love those week-long gastronomic experiences when I practiced everything I learned in the evening.
I started making cakes out of my house in 1987 when my oldest son graduated from high school. When I started doing this, my efforts gravitated more toward the field of pastries. I started attending classes with well-known masters in the field of cake decorating, including Geraldine Randlesome on a cold January in Toronto. I was also enrolled in a course with Colette Peters.
When I opened the business in 1992, I started going to shows and conventions in several places including Las Vegas, Italy and France. While in France I met Sylvain Leroy who was then the Pastry Chef for Valrhona and more recently was the Captain of the US Team at the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie in Lyon, France. Of course I could not miss that. Sylvain introduced me to Valrhona chocolates and I took a course in their headquarters in Tain-L’Hermitage in France. I also took pastry classes with the Matinox company then very prominent in France. Both Sylvain Leroy and the Matinox technicians came to Miami to teach at our store. Also in France I attended courses at the Lenotre school (Ecole Lenotre) and an observer course at the Ritz-Carlton.
I have been retired from active business activities but I remain as a friend and consultant to Lucila Cakes, the bakery that I founded and which has continued to make the most excellent rum cake in the area, and my husband would say, in the world.
There are two bakeries now and the correct website for the bakeries is:
www.lucilacakesmiami.com
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 67 |
https://www.mysticstamp.com/3096-fdc-1996-32c-big-band-leaders-count-basie/
|
en
|
3096 FDC - 1996 32c Big Band Leaders: Count Basie
|
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[] | null |
Buying and Selling U.S. and worldwide postage stamps for stamp collectors.
|
en
|
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-9xwo1raw7u/product_images/favicon.ico?t=1671623276
|
Mystic Stamp Company
|
https://www.mysticstamp.com/3096-fdc-1996-32c-big-band-leaders-count-basie/
|
US #3096
1996 Count Basie
First Day Cover
Part of set featuring four legendary Big Bank Leaders
7th pane in the Legends of Music series
Stamps were issued on same day as Songwriters stamps in same series
Stamp Category: Commemorative
Set: Big Band Leaders, American Music series
Value: 32¢, First-Class mail rate
First Day of Issue: September 11, 1996
First Day City: New York, New York
Printed by: Ashton-Potter (USA) Ltd.
Printing Method: Lithographed
Format: Panes of 20 (4 across, 5 down) from plates of 120 (12 across, 10 down)
Perforations: 11.1 x 11
Why the stamp was issued: The five stamps in the Big Band Leaders set honor talented individuals who contributed to the sound of Big Band music. They include Count Basie, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman.
About the stamp design: The portraits of the four big band leaders were made by Bill Nelson, who works in colored pencils on recycled charcoal paper. He had previously designed album covers for big band recordings compiled by Time-Life Records.
First Day City: The set of five Big Band Leaders stamps was dedicated at Shubert Alley in New York City. The Songwriters stamps from the same series were issued at the same time. It kicked off the US Postal Service’s American Music Stamp Festival 1996. Family members of the men featured on the stamps were present at the ceremony.
About the Legends of American Music Series: The Legends of American Music Series debuted on January 8, 1993, and ran until September 21, 1999. More than 90 artists are represented from all styles of music: rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, country and western, jazz and pop, opera and classical, gospel and folk. In addition to individual singers and Broadway musicals, subjects include band leaders, classical composers, Hollywood songwriters and composers, conductors, lyricists, and more. The Legends of American Music Series was a huge advancement for diversity because it honored many Black and female artists.
History the stamp represents: The success of the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1935 led to the formation of other big bands led by such talented individuals as Count Basie, Tommy and jimmy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller.
Basie’s mother taught him to play piano when he was young and he began performing in his hometown as a young teenager. He learned to accompany the silent films that played at the local theatre. Basie preferred drums at first, but by the time he was 15 he realized his true talent was on the piano.
The band, with Basie’s musical contributions, began playing a style of music that soon became known as swing. After playing with Moten’s band for a number of years, Basie formed his own. One night they were broadcasting on a local radio station and had some time to fill at the end of the program. The group began improvising, and that session produced a song Basie called “One O’Clock Jump.” It became the band’s signature songs for many years.
By 1936, his band was called Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm. They became known for their strong rhythm section and for using two tenor saxophones instead of just one. Other bands were soon copying the sound. That October, the band recorded some of their music. The producer later called it “the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I’ve ever had anything to do with.”
Count Basie was able to continue playing his piano and leading bands for decades. He played for such great soloists as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett. During his career the Count earned nine Grammy awards and made a permanent mark on American music. He passed away on April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Florida. The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank is one of several places named in his honor.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 91 |
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/2016/02/07/thad-jones-mel-lewis-jazz/79845538/
|
en
|
Thad Jones: 50 years of big band jazz in present tense
|
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"Mark Stryker"
] |
2016-02-07T00:00:00
|
Rare 1966 recordings document birth of influential band co-led by innovative Pontaic-born composer, arranger, trumpeter
|
en
|
Detroit Free Press
|
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/2016/02/07/thad-jones-mel-lewis-jazz/79845538/
|
Thad Jones was stuck in neutral at the start of 1966. A few months shy of his 43rd birthday, the Pontiac-born trumpeter was toiling in the CBS studios and freelancing around New York. He had recently left the cozy nest of the Count Basie band, where he spent nine years from 1954-63. He contributed some potent arrangements to Basie, though his greatest fame came from inserting a mischievous quote of “Pop Goes the Weasel” to start his solo on “April in Paris” (1955).
Jones was the second of three brothers from Pontiac who became jazz royalty. Hank, the oldest, was an elegant pianist. Younger brother Elvin was one of the most innovative drummers in jazz history. By early 1966, Thad Jones was known as a versatile modernist, highly regarded by insiders as a thinking man’s improviser and an imaginative composer-arranger. But there was also a feeling that for a musician who bassist Charles Mingus had once celebrated as “Bartok with valves,” Jones’ career remained less noteworthy than his talent had predicted.
That began to change 50 years ago today. On Monday, Feb. 7, 1966, in a pie-shaped basement 15 steps below 7th Avenue in Manhattan, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra made its debut at the Village Vanguard. The band, co-led by an A-list drummer, was an instant smash, and Jones was soon recognized as one of the most important and influential composer-arrangers in jazz. More than anyone else, as critic-musician Bill Kirchner once put it, Jones revitalized post-war big band writing for the conventional ensemble of saxophones, trumpets, trombones and rhythm section. Jones created a new template. On top of a Basie and Ellington foundation he added all the harmonic and rhythmic advances since bebop, even venturing into modal territory mapped out by John Coltrane. It was big band music in the present tense. In some ways it still is.
Jones, who died in 1986, and Lewis created an institution. They parlayed a handshake deal with Vanguard owner Max Gordon for a couple Monday nights into the longest running gig in jazz history. Fifty years and roughly 2,500 Mondays later, the band — which survived Jones’ decampment to Europe in 1979 and Lewis’ death in 1990 — lives on as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. The band has been celebrating its anniversary with an extended eight-night stand at the club.
Another piece of the anniversary party arrives on Feb. 19: Resonance Records is issuing a remarkable 2-CD set, “All My Yesterdays,” which documents the birth of the band, including six tracks recorded on that first Monday night 50 years ago and 11 more taped six weeks later.
These seminal recordings open a window on a critical chapter in modern jazz history. It's a rich, multi-layered story that begins with Jones' influential genius and the long-shadow of the orchestra he and Lewis created a half century ago. But the tale also reflects the explosion of jazz talent in Detroit in the middle of the 20th Century and the odd-couple partnership of an African-American trumpeter-composer and white drummer, whose integrated ensemble offered an inspiring model for the promise of American culture at its best
The music on the Resonance set, including such Jones classics as “The Little Pixie,” “Mean What You Say” and “Big Dipper,” practically explodes out of the speakers. Execution is not nearly as polished as it would become, but the excitement, electricity and spontaneity in the club are off the charts — you can hear Jones clapping and shouting encouragement to the band. The audience is shouting too, and you can feel the feedback loop inspiring the players.
The recordings were engineered by George Klabin, then a 19-year-old student at Columbia, who was hired by disc jockey Alan Grant, an early champion of the band, to help provide Jones and Lewis with a demo tape that they could use to secure a record deal. About 15 years ago, Grant released a shoddy bootleg of some of this music, obscuring the fact that there were two recording dates. Now Klabin, who owns Resonance, and co-producer Zev Feldman have done right by the material, meticulously sorting out the details and including an 88-page booklet featuring fresh interviews with surviving original band members and others. The sound quality is crystal clear.
There's one regrettable misstep. Because the original tape ran out before the end of "The Little Pixie," the producers had to engineer a fade-out. But they have also surreptitiously spliced the opening chorus onto the end of the performance, clumsily re-arranging Jones' masterpiece.
Still, the opening-night performance of “The Little Pixie” offers a distillation of Jones' art. Like a lot of his classics, it’s based on a simple form: a 32-bar “I Got Rhythm”-derived tune in A-flat that Jones transforms into a dazzling symphony of melody and swing. It begins with a surprising burst of muted brass, an ambiguous chord suspended in midair. Saxophones announce the jabbing theme, heavily syncopated and sparkling like pixie dust. Three scampering ensemble choruses follow as reeds and brass (in cup mutes to start, then open) chase after each other in a game of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better. They trade 16-bar phrases, then 8s, then 4s. The writing is virtuosic and witty, filled with clever melodic pirouettes, breathless triplets, driving rhythmic accents and colorful chord extensions. Joyous swing is built into every phrase. Harmonies bite with dissonance. Tension builds. Fingers fly. Emotions soar. The ensemble merges in a rocking climax.
Wow!
The band included mostly midcareer pros from the studios, players with big band experience but also vibrant personalities as soloists, among them the section leaders Snooky Young, a peerless lead trumpeter, Jerome Richardson on alto saxophone and Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone. Hank Jones was on board, though another Detroit pianist, Roland Hanna, would soon assume his chair. Marvin (Doc) Holladay, who in the 1970s established the jazz program at Oakland University, played baritone sax on opening night, though the fire-breathing Pepper Adams, Jones’ first choice for the baritone chair, plays on the March 21 date and shortly thereafter replaced Holladay permanently. Hot young tenor Joe Farrell was in the sax section
Jones, more than 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker, played unpredictable solos on cornet and flugelhorn and conducted with a charismatic smile and homemade karate-chop gestures. The sidemen made $17 a night to start, though the band was so successful the members quickly got a raise — to $18. The Vanguard charged a $2.50 cover.
“When word got out about the band, a crowd of musicians started showing up at rehearsals,” alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, an original member, said in an interview. “That first night the place was packed. Jazz was alive in New York, but it wasn’t thriving. Max wasn’t doing great. He said, ‘Mondays are a good night to try — nothing’s happening.’ Pretty soon, Mondays were sustaining him. It was good timing. The band exploded and the people were ready for it.”
Jones, who was 63 when he died, has been gone 30 years. While he's in the canon, his brilliance as an improviser and composer-arranger are not as widely understood or appreciated as they should be these days. Still, as great a trumpet soloist as Jones was — and he remains a vastly underrated school unto himself — his ultimate destiny was the big band. “The epitome of everything we’re trying to do musically — sounds, fury, distance, dissonance, space — happens in a big band,” Jones told Down Beat magazine in 1970.
Coming of age as a musician and man
Born Thaddeus Joseph Jones in 1923, he took up the trumpet at 13 or 14 after hearing Louis Armstrong on the radio, and he taught himself to play from method books. He played cornet at Pontiac High School and retained a lifelong preference for the instrument’s darker sound compared to the trumpet. Being self-taught reinforced his individuality.
“There are certain things I do in certain ways that nobody else does,” Jones told Down Beat in 1955. “A schooled musician has, I imagine, a crisper style than mine, but there is a freedom in the way I play.”
Jones was raised on a rich diet of big bands. Duke Ellington's puckish cornetist Rex Stewart, who loved bent notes and half-valve effects, left the biggest imprint until Jones latched onto his most significant influence, Dizzy Gillespie. Jones assimilated the swift attack, complex syncopation and chromatic melodies that defined the emerging bebop style spearheaded by Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker.
Jones played with territory bands, revues, carnivals and burlesque shows in the late '40s. The trips to the segregated south were rough: “We were having pistols stuck in our faces by cops,” he told Chip Deffaa in the 1985 book “Swing Legacy.” Those experiences and others like them left scars. Friends remember Jones as generous, gregarious, self-effacing and funny, but his mood and countenance could turn on a dime if he sensed any hint of racism, disrespect or condescension.
“He had antennae up for that,” said trumpeter John McNeil. “It came close to having a chip on his shoulder, but if you were cool, he was cool with you.” McNeil said Jones told him about an incident on the street in front of Birdland in New York in the ‘50s in which Jones, wearing a suit and holding his horn case, was standing with friends when two cops approached. One said, “Hey, boys, break it up.” Jones, his temperature rising at the demeaning tone, replied sternly, “I don’t see no boys here!” The cops roughed him up. “I didn’t make it easy on them,” Jones told McNeil. “They had to call for backup. It took four of them to get me in that car. I got a few bruises, but it was worth it. They charged me with disorderly conduct or some bull, and I had to pay a fine.”
Jones retained an intense dislike for the south, especially Florida, where on a couple of occasions he left for home in the middle of tours with his own band because he perceived racist treatment. He was a complicated man. Mel Lewis told Bob Rusch in Cadence magazine in an interview published in 1990 that Jones created some scenes himself, situations exacerbated by Jones' issues with alcohol abuse.
Jones settled in Detroit, joining the house band in 1952 that tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell led at the Blue Bird Inn on the West Side. It was the hippest modern jazz group at the hippest club in Detroit. The rest of the band was pianist-vibraphonist Terry Pollard (who was replaced by pianist Tommy Flanagan when she joined Terry Gibbs in 1953), bassist James (Beans) Richardson and drummer Elvin Jones.
Mitchell’s quintet became the stuff of legend, working on its own and backing visiting stars like Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Miles Davis. Several of Jones’ enduring originals date from this period, including “Zec,” “Elusive,” “Bitty Ditty,” “Scratch” and “50-21." In May 1954, Jones was hired out of Detroit by Basie, and he hit New York running.
The highlights of Jones’ early discography are the three LPs he made for Blue Note in 1956-57: “Detroit-New York Junction,” “The Magnificent Thad Jones,” “The Magnificent Thad Jones, Vol. 3.” Half the sidemen were colleagues from home, among them emerging stars like guitarist Kenny Burrell and bassist Paul Chambers, and these were among the first records to draw attention to the burgeoning pipeline of world-class talent from Detroit.
Jones’ initial LPs were part of an emerging hard bop mainstream, but they also stand apart. Unlike the loose blowing sessions coming into vogue, there is a wealth of organizational detail. Jones' compositions and improvisations are filled with what colleagues would come to call "Jonesisms” — melodic surprises and dissonance, sudden harmonic shifts, rhythmic displacements, curious sequences and intervals —that keep the ear in a state of wonder. Jones’ solos are models of tension-and-release, each risky dissonance ingeniously resolved — like Gillespie taken to a higher level of abstraction.
Jones' tone was uniquely burnished and warm, and he didn’t rely on preconceived patterns and formulas. “If you talk about the percentage of true improvisation in a solo — or an entire career of solos — then Thad had one of the highest percentages in jazz history,” said trumpeter Tim Hagans. “The quality and percentage of literally new stuff that came out of his horn was astounding. That creative melodic language is what informs all his lead lines in his big band writing. That’s why his music has so much warmth and humor.”
Jones balanced organization and unpredictability. “I remember hearing him play night after night on tunes that I knew really well, and I would think: Why did he just play that?" said John McNeil. “Then five or six seconds later I’d wonder why I never did! He could make a sequence out of anything. He would play a phrase, then play it a minor 3rd away, then maybe a step down; he would move it all over the place. And he would make changes to it as he went along, throwing other notes in or changing the rhythm.”
Jones told the New York Times in 1973: “There are no bad notes, just bad organization.”
Jones’ first big band arrangements with Basie in the late '50s fit comfortably into the Basie mold, but there are also Jonesisms: A trombone playing lead over the saxes on “H.R.H.” is as alluring as it is unusual. The ambitious “Speaking of Sounds” folds flute, clarinet and bass clarinet into the orchestration and a cutesy soft-shoe beat.
At a 1961 recording session that paired the Ellington and Basie bands, Duke’s ears perked up when he heard Jones’ sumptuous ballad “To You.” Ellington hired Jones in August 1963 for what turned out to be just a week. Jones joined the band at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit for performances of Ellington’s symphonic “Night Creature” with the Detroit Symphony led by associate conductor Walter Poole. Jones regarded the experience as one of the greatest musical highlights of his life. But he would later recall that he couldn’t keep the gig because he had just left Basie to spend more time with his wife and two children.
Jones revered Ellington. One Monday in 1968, Ellington veterans Britt Woodman and Jimmy Hamilton dropped by the Vanguard. When they left, Jones turned to David Berger, an aspiring composer-arranger: “Duke Ellington — greatest band in the world,” said Jones.
Berger protested: “Your band's the greatest!”
“No, no, no!” Jones said. “My band's not one-tenth of what Duke Ellington and Count Basie are and never will be.”
Jones elaborated on Ellington in Deffaa’s “Swing Legacy”: “I can’t think of anybody who was able to use the material available and to mold it and create such fantastic musical tapestries. It’s almost like watching a moving mural to listen to one of his arrangements. All of the different colors. All of the different intangibles that you feel emotionally.”
The birth of a band
Jones and Mel Lewis first met in Detroit on a sweltering July night in 1955 when Jones was with Basie and Lewis was with Stan Kenton. The groups were booked for a battle-of-the-bands dance at the Graystone Ballroom. After talking on a break, Jones invited Lewis to the West End Hotel, an after-hours jam session spot in southwest Detroit. They pair remained friendly, later crossing paths in the studios and the fertile Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band in 1964. That’s when they began plotting their own band.
The demise of the Mulligan band set the stage for the Jones-Lewis orchestra. So did fate. Basie commissioned an album’s worth of material from Jones in 1965, but the arrangements proved too adventurous for Basie and the LP was scuttled. Jones and Lewis now had the foundation of a book of their own. Bob Brookmeyer, who found inspiration in Jones’ progressive dissonance and would become a highly influential writer himself, also contributed several key charts.
The co-leaders were a curious pair: One black and raised Baptist, the other white and Jewish; Jones was genial, Lewis rather brusque and a talker of Rabbinical proportion. But they were as close as brothers. They insisted on rooming together on the road, even though Jones was an inveterate ladies’ man and Lewis was often left to bide his time in hotel lobbies while Jones entertained a new friend upstairs. But Jones and Lewis shared musical values. Each wanted a disciplined band committed to the grandeur of the ensemble but with unfettered freedom granted to soloists.
They also insisted on an integrated band. From the start the group was half-black and half-white, a potent symbol of harmony in an era in which black-power politics were gaining currency. When the personnel tilted increasingly toward white players in the ‘70s, Jones and Lewis candidly complained to critic Leonard Feather in 1978 about the relative scarcity of young black musicians willing to commit to straight-ahead jazz in the fusion era and the irony that increasing opportunities for blacks in previously closed studios and pit bands were siphoning away potential sidemen.
For all of Jones’ originality, one of the most striking things about many of his compositions and arrangements is how basic the forms are and how saturated they are with the blues. On the new Resonance release, “Big Dipper,” “Backbone” and "A-That's Freedom" (Hank Jones' tune, but Thad's chart) are all 12 or 16-bar variations on the blues. Jones’ melodic imagination and reservoir of swing are inexhaustible. The theme of “Mean What You Say,” as memorable as a Gershwin tune, gives way to oodles of adroit counter-melodies, ornamentation, interludes and backgrounds. You could draw a frame around any detail and call it a song.
There were many other innovations and Jonesims. He set a new standard for the saxophone “soli” — a written passage for the section that mirrors an improvised solo. He reintroduced the soprano saxophone into a big band tapestry.His climatic shout choruses roar in gnarly yet swinging glory. In the '70s, he explored woodwind colors and even denser harmony. When you take the scores apart, you can see the craftwork. But there’s a soulful resonance far beyond technique. Jones tells stories. He gets under your skin where your emotions live. He excites the imagination, elevates the spirit.
“I try to write it as I’m building a house, adding as I go, maybe bypassing one section and coming back to it, rather than go from level to level,” Jones told Down Beat in 1974.
Lewis was the band's secret weapon. The most musical big band drummer of the modern era, he swung in relaxed fashion at any tempo or volume, set up the ensemble with a minimum of fuss, and morphed into a fine small-group drummer behind solos. He teamed with idiosyncratic bassist Richard Davis to forge a groove unlike any other. Lewis’ drums laid behind the beat and Davis’ bass pushed ahead: Imagine the back and front legs of a chair moving in unison, the band riding on a wide cushion in between.
The audience never knew what was going to happen. Neither did the players. Jones would spontaneously cue the rhythm section in and out, letting a soloist go it alone for a few choruses or putting a horn player in motion with, say, just bass behind him. The two versions of “Big Dipper” on the new recording begin with hilariously heated unaccompanied discussions between Jerome Richardson’s baying alto sax and Jimmy Nottingham’s growling, plunger-muted trumpet. Background riffs behind soloists were often improvised on the spot, and Jones would mix and match them on the fly.
The Vanguard was Jones' living room. He had fun, and if you were in his orbit, you did too. One night Miles Davis was in the club and between tunes walked up to the band and asked Jones to play a ballad. “Sure!” said Jones. He turned to the band and counted off one of the fastest tunes in the book. The next tune was a ballad.
The original band recorded five indispensable LPs between 1966-70 — “Presenting Thad Jones-Mel Lewis & the Jazz Orchestra,” “Live at the Village Vanguard,” “Monday Night,” “Central Park North” and “Consummation.” There are also studio dates with Ruth Brown and Joe Williams and killer bootlegs of European concerts in 1969 with the added attraction of Joe Henderson (another former Detroiter) blowing up a storm on tenor sax. There’s a lot of great video from Europe floating around YouTube too.
A legacy of individualism
The ‘70s on the whole were frustrating for Jones. He and Lewis were unable to parlay their acclaim into higher fees, steady recordings and more consistent touring. A New York Times story in 1973 gives a picture of Jones’ harried professional life: He taught at William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J., on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Five nights a week, plus matinees on Wednesday and Saturdays, were spent in the pit for “Two Gentlemen of Verona” on Broadway. On Fridays he flew to Boston to teach at the New England Conservatory. Monday nights were reserved for the Vanguard. “America makes a mockery of higher aesthetic yearning,” Jones told Jazz Journal International in 1979.
He had reached another crossroads. Beyond his gnawing restlessness, his marriage was breaking up, and there was a new woman in his life from Denmark. He began a relationship with the Danish Radio Big Band in 1977 that called for well-paid two-month residencies in Copenhagen in the fall and spring, including recording. He re-upped the next year, quietly laying the groundwork for a permanent move. Then came a bizarre incident whose details still remain elusive.
While on tour with the Jones-Lewis band in 1978, Jones was in a taxi cab in Yugoslavia when a bystander shoved his fist through the window. The shattered glass cut Jones’ lip, and it would take three years and several surgeries before he could return to the cornet. He took up valve trombone for a while, because the larger mouthpiece required less muscle strength. In interviews Jones blamed the incident on a random act of violence by a drunk, but given his own volatile history it’s just as likely that words had been exchanged before the punch. Jones left the states without warning in January 1979 to start a new life in Denmark. “Thad and Mel got a divorce — and Mel got the kids” was a popular line at the time.
Lewis had been deeply hurt when Jones left. The drummer never really got over the bitterness, although he and Jones eventually reached a détente. The brief final chapter of Jones’ life began in 1985, when he returned to America to take over the Count Basie band after Basie’s death. The marriage got off to a promising start, but within a year an exhausted Jones returned to Copenhagen. He died of cancer in August 1986.
Jones’ music remains central to the big-band tradition. His arrangements are performed regularly and studied like Shakespeare in universities. Almost all of the mainstream big band arrangers and composers to emerge in the 1970s and ‘80s bore his influence, among them Jim McNeely, John Clayton and Bob Mintzer. The avant-garde hero Muhal Richard Abrams took something from Jones’ dissonance and angularity and dedicated a piece to him, “Big T.” Of the younger generation, the eclectic composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue grew up worshiping Jones. Countless once-a-week big bands all over the country grew out of the Jones-Lewis model. Jones' trumpet playing remains far less celebrated, but a goldmine of ideas and inspiration awaits anyone who discovers it.
Ultimately, however, Jones’ legacy transcends aesthetic bloodlines and musicology. The key lesson of his career is that his body of work defines a spirit of individualism as adamantly as any in jazz. “Each person has his or her own voice that they have to speak with if they want to speak the truth,” Jones said about a year before he died. That’s it exactly: The music of Thad Jones spoke the truth. The whole truth and nothing but.
This essay was adapted from Mark Stryker’s forthcoming book, “Made in Detroit: Jazz from the Motor City” (University of Michigan Press), to be published in 2017.
Contact Mark Stryker: 313-222-6459. [email protected]
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A CONVERSATION WITH MARY MARDIROSIAN
by Toni Ballard
July 28, 1989
Anyone who lives within earshot of Worcester's two public radio stations WICN and WCUW and who is at all interested in jazz, knows that familiar voice. The first time you hear it, you're surprised. It's not that slick, "I'm hip" voice that most jazz radio announcers adopt. It's more like well, it's like talking to your best friend on the phone. You know she can't lie to you, and you always know, just by the sound of her voice, whether or not she likes something. Mary Mardirosian has been the host of the most popular jazz radio show in Worcester for ten years. Five of thosewere spent doing a Saturday afternoon mainstream jazz show on WCUW. She has spent the last five years of Saturdays at WICN, a National Public Radio affiliate. At both stations, her show has brought in the most money during fund-raising. Mary went to WCUW ten years ago looking for something to do after the death of her husband. The two had been avid jazz fans, and, in fact, had been friends of Count Basie and had traveled to various cities around the country to hear his band. Her love of music, combined with her need to brush up on some office skills, led her to WCUW. After doing a guest spot with host Tom Reney, who was doing a Basie special,the station offered her the chance to do her own show.
Toni: What motivates you to do those jazz shows?
Mary: In the beginning, it was very therapeutic for me, because, when I lost my husband, I was lost completely. I was a person who was very shy and never thought that I could do this. And that's why it's been rewarding. It's proved to me that I can do something, however it comes through.
Toni: It does come through. So, why jazz?
Mary: Why jazz? That's been my love all my life. I grew up with jazz. I was born on a farm, and when you're brought up on a farm, you do a lot of work. My only source of entertainment was the radio, and every spare moment that I had, my ear was tuned into the radio. And the music of that day was big band music and vocalists. So, I became tuned into that music. And I loved it! I loved it so much. My first favorite big band was the Benny Goodman Band. My first favorite vocalist was Ella Fitzgerald. I saw something and heard something in her at the time that I loved. It's always been that music that has been fulfilling for me. (My husband) got interested in the music to please me, and practically every week, there was a big band at the auditorium here in Worcester. Once in a while we'd dance, but I was there to listen to the music. It was fantastic. I saw all the bands there. The first time I saw the Count Basie band, it was at the auditorium. And, of course, they used to have the bands come to the theaters, so we'd go to those things, too. And we used to go to Boston to hear the different artists at Storyville. . . Chris Connor, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn. The very first time I heard Dakota Staton, it was at Storyville. Then we used to go to the Jazz Workshop, and Paul's Mall, Lennie's, places like that.
In the late fifties, my husband came in and said he had gotten tickets, and we were going to the auditorium again to hear this Birdland review show. And it was the Count Basie Orchestra, Billy Eckstein, Sarah Vaughn, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, Chet Baker -- who did not show -- , Terry Gibbs, Gerry Southern, Joe Williams. All these people were on the one show. I enjoyed it tremendously. And it was after this that we started to go into Boston to Storyville, and all those other places that I mentioned. One day my husband came and said to me the Basie band was going to be appearing at the Crystal Room in Milford and that we were going. We sat right up front, and the band members had friends sitting at the same table that we were sitting at. So, when the band members would come off for a break, they were all at the table. And they were all very friendly. And so, about a month or two later, they came back to the Crystal Room, and we went again. And this time we really met some of the guys. The first person that we became friendly with was Sonny Cohn, who I'm still friendly with. I think he became friendly with us because he was new in the band. By then, that second time, Joe Williams had left the band, so we didn't get to know Joe at that particular time. So, then, if we heard the band was around the area, we'd go to hear them. My husband loved that band. I liked it too, very much. Anyway, this is how we started to follow that band around. It took us a while to get to meet Count Basie himself. He'd see us, but you just didn't approach him. He was not that approachable. It wasn't that he was stuck up or anything. It was just that -- well, you just knew . . . you just didn't. And it took a while. And then, we finally did get to know him.
Toni: Was it more your being shy about approaching him, or his not being receptive?
Mary: I think it was both. He wasn't an overly friendly type. He was not like Duke Ellington. Duke, if you met Duke, he'd be putting you on, and friendly, and all that. He was a different personality. Basie was not like that. But once you became friendly with Basie, you were his friend for life.
Toni: So, eventually, you started to plan vacations around where the band was playing. Where did you follow them to?
Mary:Well, to Florida, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, an awful lot. To Florida we would fly, or to Chicago, or Kansas City. But to New York, we would drive. And we'd be in touch with them. We knew where they stayed. So, if they were doing gigs, say in Philadelphia, or around the New York area, we'd go on the bus with them. We always sat in the seat opposite Count Basie. The fellow who had that seat would always relinquish it to us. They treated us very nicely and allowed us to go with them as part of their entourage into any gig they played. If we went by car to someplace in New York or, if we met up with them, we were told to say that we were from the office. And if we dared to pay, they'd say, "What did you do that for? You know you're part of us." I just felt very priviledged to be able to do this. I got to go more places because of that man that I never, ever would have seen. I mean, they played some ritzy places, and they placed some dumps, you know, and we just got to go everywhere. They were very protective of us, and after Mardy died, they were still protective of me, and have been very nice to me. When Mardy died, (Basie) was told about it, and he sent flowers, and he used to send him telegrams at the hospital. The first time Mardy was in the hospital, he sent him a telegram -- "What the hell are you doing there? Get the" -- I still have it -- "get the hell out of there!" And then afterwards, when he knew Mardy was not going to make it, he used to call up at the hospital, just to check in with him, which was very nice. After they knew that Mardy was dying, we still used to go around to hear the band. And the last time that he went, we went to the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. He went backstage, and he got autographs of the guys, and he never did that, and they all wrote something nice, because they knew -- they all knew. He hadn't let on to me that he knew he was dying, but he knew he was dying at that time.
Toni: Do you ever wonder how Mardy would react to your doing a radio show?
Mary:I know he'd be very proud of me. I know I never would have done it, had he lived, because I would have been living my other life. And I wouldn't have been thrown out into the world. So, you wonder about things happening the way they do. And I got into an environment that I've always loved -- the music environment, and that's always been fascinating for me. I've lost a lot, but what I have gained has been rewarding. You know, I have met some very young musicians -- like Chris Hollyday -- growing, watching them grow. I've seen Marshall Wood grow. I've seen Makoto Ozone grow. I've seen Becky [Parris] come along. I've seen you come along. And I like to think that I have helped in my little way, in trying to bring their music out. As I was saying to someone that I interviewed on my program Saturday -- he wanted to know why some people make it and some don't. And I said, "Well, first of all, you have to be true to yourself." And it's a question of being at the right place at the right time -- who you know, luck, fate -- I believe in all those things. "But", I said, "basically, it's being true to yourself." I mean, that's how I do my program. There'll always be some people that will not like everything I do. You can't please everyone. You can't play every cut that will please the majority of the people. You hope you're pleasing and reaching a lot people. For instance, we know there are people who like small groups, and we know there are people who like big bands; and we know there are people who love vocalists. I know people who hate vocalists.
Toni:Like musicians, for instance.
Mary:Yeah. (Laughs.) People have told me, "I love your show, but I hate when you do that lady vocalists set." Well, it's too bad. There are a lot of people who just wait for that portion of the program. So, what can I do? I'm doing what I think is best, and, hopefully, people are enjoying what I'm doing. And I know there are some people that I'm not able to please, but, well, I've said many times, just turn the dial.
Toni:So, what's been the most exciting, or fulfilling part of doing the show? Has it been discovering and watching these new talents like Christopher Hollyday seeing him starting out, and then watching him blossom into, maybe, this major force?
Mary:I don't know what is the most exciting. But in doing the show, I have gotten to meet so many nice people -- all the local musicians and the Boston people -- Dave McKenna, Grey Sargent -- and all the great talents I have admired throughout the years -- Arthur Prysock, Jackie and Roy, Carmen McRae. She's always been one of my very favorite vocalists, and she's been to my house for dinner! And I've gotten to know everyone. And that's kind of exciting. I think the interviews I've done have been quite exciting. I'm always under a lot of tension to do them, and sometimes very apprehensive about doing certain people. But when it works well, that makes you feel so good. I have gotten to meet a lot of the different people who come to the El Morocco. I met Toshiko Akiyoshi recently. She was lovely -- funny and fun, and I loved her playing. I met Cedar Walton about a month ago. He's a darling, and can he play! After my husband died, the El became a great outlet for me -- someplace right at my doorstep where I could go to hear the music I love. Then, when I had started doing the radio show, Charlie Lake called me and asked me if I wanted to interview Scott Hamilton, who was appearing at the El. That was my first interview -- by phone. Phil Wilson was the first person that came in live to 'CUW, and he brought in Makoto Ozone. I've had the opportunity of introducing all these musicians that come to the El Morocco. I'm still scared to death of doing that, and I am determined to overcome it. I perhaps never will, but I keep trying, because I do want to overcome that shyness. I have to tell you, the first time that I introduced the Basie band at the end of last August, I was shaking in my boots hours before -- before I even got to the El! I was so bad. I was so scared, because they're my people. And I never, ever dreamt that I would be standing in front of that Count Basie band to introduce them. I mean, that was something unthinkable for me to do. You know, I'm in awe of them, as much as I've traveled around with them. To be able to get up and introduce that band, to me -- you said, what is the most exciting thing? Maybe that is.
Toni: Some of the same guys in that band were in the band when you traveled on the bus?
Mary:Yes. They're old friends.
Toni: I want to ask you a little more about the interviews. What kind of preparation do you do? Do you have the questions planned out in advance?
Mary:Not if they're coming in live. If they're coming in live, I sort of wing it, unless they're there to speak about a specific thing. And I'll know that and lead into that. But generally I wing those. By having someone in live, you can watch their face, and you kind of know where you're going with it, because you have the eye contact. So, that's a little bit easier for me to handle. But when it's a telephone interview, that's pretty difficult -- especially when you don't know the person. So, then, I do prepare some basic questions. Some people are very easy to do. They'll take it and roll with it, and it just goes. And I let them go where they want to go with it. But there are some people that you just don't get that much out of, and it's pretty difficult. You're doing everything live, and you just hope it comes off well. I did Bob Flanagan of the Four Freshman two weeks ago. I thought that one came off very well. He had a lot to say. I didn't have to struggle with him at all. I had some questions planned to ask him, and he floored them very nicely. I feel that when a person has been around quite a bit, they have a lot to say. Some have been around, and they're kind of -- well, the word I'm going to use is "jaded". They've been asked the same darn questions so many times that -- "Oh, God, do I have to answer that again?" It just depends on the individual. Some are too shy, too, and I realize that. So, you never know when you start one how it's going to go. But I still enjoy doing them. I love doing Dick Johnson because he's very easy to talk to. The first time I did him, it went beautifully, and I was very happy with it. And I'd love to have Dick on live. I've been trying to get him. We had it all worked out once, and we had a bad ice storm. So, he cancelled, and I didn't blame him because I didn't know how I was going to get in to the station myself that day. I somehow made it, but I certainly didn't want him to travel in from Brockton. I'd love to have him in live because I know it would be a ball. I love having Herb Pomeroy come in live. He's just a joy.
Toni:I saw him recently. He was the guest artist at Zachary's at the Colonade with Mike Jones and Peter Kontrimas.
Mary:Sir Charles Thompson used to be the host pianist there for awhile. And when Basie used to play in Boston, that's where he used to stay -- at the Colonade. So, once, after my husband had died -- the year after -- the band was playing at, well, it's the Wang Center now -- they were working there with Sarah Vaughn. I had gone down for that. And Joe Williams was there. He wasn't on the bill, but he happened to be there. So, a whole bunch of us were going back to the Colonade to hear Sir Charles Thompson. So, Joe rode in the car with us. And Joe Williams was the first guy I danced with after my husband had passed away. Talk about Joe -- I got to meet Joe after he left the Basie band. He was playing at Lennie's. I always loved Joe Williams when he was with the [Basie] band. Anyway, he had left the band, and I was extremely disappointed. So, when he played around the area, we'd always go to hear him. And we did, eventually get to meet him. And, of course, he has appeared at various times with the band as a guest, so I know him very well. I still love his work, and I'm very happy that he's finally making it after all these years.
Toni:Have you ever interviewed Carmen McRae?
Mary:Yes, I have interviewed her. I saw her and I asked her if I could interview her -- it was at Great Woods, exactly two years ago. She said, "Do you have your tape recorder with you? Come back to the room." I said I didn't have one with me. Furthermore, I couldn't go because I had come in with the Basie band again, and I had to come back home. But I said, "I'd love to do one by telephone with you sometime." And she said, "O.K. I'll give you my telephone number. Don't give it out! Call me and we'll set up something." And I said, "Fine." So, we did do a telephone interview. Ironically, I never got to do one with Count Basie, but I'm sure he would have been very willing. But I think he would have been a poor interview. He did a promo for my show -- you know, "Listen to Mary Mardirosian" -- but that's when I was at 'CUW.
Toni:How did you do that?
Mary: I had my tape recorder, and he really wanted to do that for me. But I never pursued him to do an interview, which I know he would have done, because I used to sit in on other interviews that he did with other people. We'd be different places, and they were always interviewing him. And we'd sit in and listen. He's kind of evasive, so it wouldn't have worked out too well, I'm afraid.
Toni: Did he think the music should speak for itself?
Mary:Yeah. And he never commits himself. If we went to gigs, we were always in his dressing room. There'd be three or four different conversations going on around the room. That man -- you could be talking to him, but he used to hear everything that was going on in the room. He was that foxy. He'd pretend like he didn't know anything or hear anything, but he heard everything and knew everything. He was a man of few words, but when he said something, it meant something. It was a great joy to know him. And it was a great joy for me to have met Duke Ellington and to have gotten to know him because he was a completely different type of person. But so much -- so much charisma. I've said this before about him -- he'd be putting you on, and you knew he was putting you on, but it was fun to be put on by him. He used to be so flattering to all the women. He'd go into his dressing room. There'd be about eight or nine women around, and Duke would sit there holding court, so to speak. He was fun to know.
Toni: How did you feel when you found out that Basie had died?
Mary:I felt very badly about it because, although I knew that was going to happen -- I knew he was sick, there at the end, I knew he was pretty bad -- naturally, I felt very badly because, for one thing, you lost a friend; for another thing, you lost a legend in the music world. And to go to hear the band, it was never the same for me without him there. It still isn't. I want to see him sitting up there. I remember I did a five hour show after he passed away. Gene [Petit, WICN program manager] allowed me to go the extra hours because I had so much to say with his music. And I remember the statement I made. I said, "I knew this day was eventually coming, and I dreaded to have it come, but here it is. And I'm doing what I knew I was going to do." And I made a vow on that program that day, and I said I will never do a show without playing one Basie cut. And some people say, "She plays a lot of Basie." I don't play a lot of Basie, but I do play one Basie a week, because I said I was going to do it, and I'm going to do it. I feel that Igot so much out of his music that I want to give that out to the people. He made me happy, and I feel like I'm going to do my little part -- as many people are doing -- in keeping his music alive. It deserves to be alive. And I think Frank Foster's doing a very nice job fronting the band. I think they floundered around for awhile there, after Basie passed away, but I think they've got their act together. I've met so many nice people. It's nice to meet the listeners. It makes you feel good to have people come up and say to you, "You made my day. You make my Saturdays. I do my housework to your show." Those are the exciting things, I think. I've worked with some nice people in doing my show. I've had some terrific engineers, right down the line. They've all been very loyal to me -- each and every one that I have worked with. I had quite a few at 'CUW. They were lovely people to work with. Never did anyone leave me hanging. They always were there. And, going on to WICN, I had the same feeling there with whomever I worked with. We've always gotten along well. I think I'm hard on myself because I want to please, and I want to do a good show. I know I screw up a lot when I'm talking, but that's me! And it wouldn't be Mary if I didn't screw up! I think people get a kick out of it.
On one of her visits to Kansas City, Mary visited the Charlie Parker Institute. She was given a souvenir a gold coin bearing Parker's image with the inscription, "Bird lives." Several years ago, after hearing Christopher Hollyday play his second engagement at the El Morocco, she handed him the coin. "This belongs to you," she said.
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http://www.a-great-day-in-harlem.com/musicians.html
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Musicians
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Allen, Henry “Red.” Born in Algiers, Louisiana, in 1908, Allen first played trumpet in his father’s brass band. In 1927 he joined King Oliver, as had Louis Armstrong before him. After working with the already well-known leader Luis Russell, he worked with Fletcher Henderson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, and with Luis Russell’s band again, now fronted by Armstrong. He recorded several wonderful 78s with his own band in the late Twenties and early Thirties. His period of greatest influence was in the late Thirties, when perhaps only Armstrong and Roy Eldridge were more popular and more critically acclaimed. His powerful style, though derived at first from Armstrong, later developed idiosyncratically to the point where his long, melodic lines and original ideas were admired by many modern players as well as devotees of older styles. In the Forties he formed his own sextet and worked at prominent clubs in New York into the Fifties. He was featured in the epochal CBS-TV show “The Sound Of Jazz,” which aired not long before the Big Picture was taken. Later he was still a very powerful mainstream player, though he often performed in Dixieland groups. Allen died in 1967.
Basie, William “Count.” Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1904, Basie was a pianist, leader, composer and leading figure in the swing era with a long string of successful releases. After studying piano with his mother, he went as a young man to New York where he met and learned from James P. Johnson, Fats Waller (from whom he also learned to play the organ) and other stride piano giants. By the time Basie was 20 he was touring vaudeville circuits as a solo performer and working as an accompanist for blues singers, dancers and comedians. Stranded in the late Twenties in Kansas City with an out-of-work touring group, he decided to stay there, playing piano in a silent-film theatre. In July 1928 he joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils, which included another sometime pianist, blues shouter Jimmy Rushing. About two years later Basie left the Blue Devils with others to join the Bennie Moten Orchestra. When Moten died suddenly in 1935, Basie left and organized a band with several former members of the Moten band, including Jo Jones and Lester Young, calling themselves the Barons of Rhythm. It was this band which legendary record producer and talent finder John Hammond heard on the radio. Hammond went to Kansas City to scout, and brought the band to New York for eventual stardom as the Count Basie Orchestra. Basie came to New York in 1936 with a small band which he soon enlarged to the standard swing band size of five or six brass, four or five saxophones, and four rhythm. The band continued to thrive during World War II as one of the greatest of swing bands. Despite many personnel changes, it dropped down to a septet for only two years, 1950 through 1952. The band’s recordings and radio broadcasts from New York and other big cities brought Basie international fame for “One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumping at the Woodside” and many other classics. The band was particularly successful with its use of arrangements featuring Basie’s minimalist piano style (often using only one or two fingers) and the spectacular playing of its stars. Among them were saxophonists Lester Young, Herschel Evans and Buddy Tate; trumpeters Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Harry Edison and Buck Clayton; trombonists Dickie Wells and Benny Morton; and the legendary rhythm section of Jo Jones on drums, Freddy Green on guitar and Walter Page on bass. During and after the War Basie recruited younger, inspired soloists, including saxophonists Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, Paul Gonsalves and Illinois Jacquet; trombone players J.J. Johnson and Vic Dickenson; and trumpeters Al Killian, Joe Newman and Emmett Berry. In 1954 the band made its first tour of Europe. In 1955, Basie’s 20th year as a leader, it repeated the European tour. The band featured new stars Thad Jones and Joe Wilder on trumpets; Benny Powell and Henry Coker on trombones; and arrangements by Ernie Wilkins, Neal Hefti, Johnny Mandel and Manny Albam. In September 1957 the band became the first black group to play the Waldorf-Astoria, working there a record-setting 13 weeks. It began to make yearly overseas tours and appeared at major clubs. In addition to the many Basie band recordings, Basie made a number of records as a sideman, starting in 1929 with Walter Page and Bennie Moten and with blues singer Joe Turner. Basie remained a popular and permanent institution on the national and international scene until his death. Even today his band continues to play under the leadership of longtime veteran Frank Foster. The Basie band and its stars have garnered many awards, including several from the readers of Down Beat and Metronome. Basie died in 1984.
Blakey, Art. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1919, this drummer and bandleader was an important figure in the history of modern jazz, particularly hard bop. Blakey was known to many musicians by his Muslim name “Buhaina.” Early in his career he was a sideman in the later years of the famous Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1939-1944). He also led his own big band briefly in the Boston area. In 1944 he joined the seminal Billy Eckstine band, an incubator of bop which sprang from the Earl Hines big band. It included many innovative musicians, notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and Fats Navarro. In 1947, when the Eckstine group disbanded, Blakey formed a big rehearsal band he called the Jazz Messengers. The many incarnations of Jazz Messengers were proving grounds for a long list of important musicians, including Donald Byrd, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Woody Shaw, and Branford and Wynton Marsalis. His later Messenger groups were smaller, usually quintets. Blakey’s first band, co-led with Horace Silver, featured trumpeter Kenny Dorham and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. When Silver left to form his own band, Blakey took over the group. In 1971-1972 he toured in the Giants of Jazz with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt and Kai Winding. Blakey, an innovative and influential drummer, fronted an unbroken series of Jazz Messengers until his death in 1990.
Clayton, Buck. Born in Parsons, Kansas, in 1911, Clayton was a trumpet player, composer and arranger. He learned piano from his father, who taught various instruments. He moved to California at 21, but left shortly thereafter to take a 21-piece band to Shanghai for two years. Back in the U.S. he replaced the prominent Hot Lips Page in Count Basie’s band in 1936, when promoter Joe Glaser attempted to make Page into another Louis Armstrong. Clayton is best known for his work with Basie from 1936 through 1943, as well as his excellent arrangements in mainstream swing style. His trumpet work was always inventive and inspired, showing great range and taste. As a result, he was chosen to play on many of the important Teddy Wilson-led Billie Holiday recordings of the late Thirties and early Forties. As an exciting but thoroughly logical and lyrical trumpeter, he was rivaled only by his contemporaries Roy Eldridge and Red Allen. After seven years with the Basie band as it rose to fame in the late Thirties and early Forties, Clayton joined the army in 1943. Discharged in 1946, he became a member of Norman Granz’ Jazz At The Philharmonic, touring France in 1949 and again in 1953. He was a member of Joe Bushkin’s quartet in New York from 1951 through 1953 and later made numerous records with bands assembled for specific occasions. He worked with Benny Goodman at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 and with Eddie Condon’s groups beginning in 1959. He toured Japan and Australia and made several annual tours of Europe in the Sixties, appearing at jazz festivals. In the mid-Sixties lip problems curtailed his trumpet playing, but he continued to arrange and compose, and fronted his own bands frequently into the late Eighties. Clayton died in New York in 1993.
Eldridge, Roy. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1911, Eldridge was a bridge between Louis Armstrong’s style and bop, and one of the most significant trumpet players and leaders of the Thirties and Forties. He was self-taught except for some instruction in theory from his elder brother Joe. He started playing semi-professionally at the age of 16, and within a couple of years was on the road with well-known bands, including those of Horace Henderson, Speed Webb, Zack Whyte and Elmer Snowden. Eldridge worked with Teddy Hill’s band in New York in 1935, where he teamed up with tenor star Chu Berry (Coleman Hawkins’ main challenger). Next, he joined Fletcher Henderson, one of the premier swing bands of its time, where he followed Red Allen as the principal trumpet soloist. Eldridge left Henderson in 1936 to lead his own explosive little band—three saxophones, four rhythm—in a famous extended stay at the historic Three Deuces Club in Chicago. For many months the band broadcast nightly at 1:00 A.M. During this period Eldridge says he “left the band business to study radio engineering for eight months,” a claim which turned out to be only wishful rewriting of history. (“I know because I was his electronics mentor for the rest of his life,” reports Charles Graham.) After a second stint with his band at the Three Deuces, Eldridge went on to national prominence both as horn player and vocalist with Gene Krupa’s big band, where he replaced his friend and admirer, the phenomenal trumpet player Shorty Sherock. He made memorable recordings with Krupa, two of which would be identified with him for the rest of his life: “Let Me Off Uptown” and “Rockin’ Chair.” Later Eldridge formed a larger band which played at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York and at Kelly’s Stable. He subsequently worked with many popular big bands, including those of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and was on staff at CBS. During this time he toured for more than a year in Europe. In the Fifties he frequently performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic where he teamed with Coleman Hawkins, an association that continued as long as he traveled. Eldridge worked briefly with Count Basie’s band but found it too confining. Finally in 1970 he settled, for the rest of his performing life, at Jimmy Ryan’s club in New York. Even in this format, he managed to remain the surging, vital swing star he had always been. The Ryan’s job lasted for about 10 years, and though the club had been known as a 52nd Street Dixieland stronghold, during Eldridge’s long tenure it became a home of swing. Eventually doctor’s orders forced him to stop playing the trumpet. However, he continued to appear throughout the Eighties, singing on occasion and playing a little drums and piano (a role he had frequently filled while with Gene Krupa) and at school clinics. In 1989, three weeks after his wife of 52 years died, Eldridge stopped eating and was taken to a hospital where, according to the medical diagnosis, he died of malnutrition. Many who knew him consider loneliness to be the cause of his death.
Freeman, Bud. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1906, Freeman was a tenor saxophonist most often associated with Chicago-style jazz. Although the tenor saxophone had previously not been considered a proper instrument in Dixieland music, he made it acceptable. His style derived partly from the sound of prominent C-melody saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, longtime partner of Bix Beiderbecke. Lester Young often cited Freeman as one of his influences. Freeman’s solos were usually bouncy, as demonstrated in his original composition “The Eel,” which he recorded several times. He was part of the famous Austin High School Gang of Chicago, which often included guitarist, raconteur and promoter Eddie Condon as well as Gene Krupa, Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy and Dick McPartland. As early as 1928 Freeman played in Paris with his close friend, drummer Dave Tough. Later he was part of the saxophone sections of many famous big bands, led by such notables as Paul Whiteman, Ray Noble, Art Kassell, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack, Red Nichols, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. In 1939 Freeman formed a small recording band which he called the Summa Cum Laude Orchestra. After a relatively brief stint on the road with this group, he worked primarily as a soloist. Beginning in 1969 he played in The World’s Greatest Jazz Band. Freeman died in Chicago in 1988.
Gillespie, John Birks “Dizzy.” Born in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917, Gillespie was a trumpeter, leader and composer. At the time of the Big Picture, he was well on his way to becoming one of the premier jazz musicians in the world. He studied trombone in his early teens but soon switched to trumpet. Gillespie first came to prominence in the late Thirties when he was hired by Teddy Hill to replace Roy Eldridge. Lionel Hampton’s first recording for RCA Victor in 1939 starred Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Chu Berry and Benny Carter on saxophones, Cozy Cole and Milt Hinton in the rhythm section, and a 22-year-old Gillespie on trumpet. He was in the Cab Calloway band for more than two years before being fired for cutting up—both figuratively and literally. When he was about 26 or 27, Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, along with a few other musicians, began to evolve swing into the complicated music called bebop (later bop). Gillespie worked for a while in the big band of Earl Hines and later with singer Billy Eckstine’s band, where he was the musical director. Both bands were strongly influenced by his ideas. After that he led his own groups, several radical large bands in the late Forties and early Fifties. Upon discovering that big bands were economically impractical, he spent the rest of his life leading small groups, although he often fronted big bands on special occasions. He had an unusually outgoing personality that radiated good humor, mimicry and self-parody in equal parts. His humorous stage manner, incredible trumpet improvisations and innovative compositions were the basis of his fame. At the time of his death, Gillespie was the most popular—and the most important—jazz musician in the world. His numerous works include “A Night in Tunisia,” “Manteca,” “Groovin’ High,” “Woody ‘n You” and many others among today’s jazz standards. Although he had joined the Baha’i religion, his wife Lorraine was a devout Catholic and kept a small Catholic chapel in their home. When he died in 1993, two major memorial ceremonies were held in New York. The first was in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church at 53rd Street in Manhattan (where Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge and scores of other musicians’ final rites had taken place) attended by an overflow congregation of several hundred mourners. The second, a few days later, was held in the huge Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in upper Manhattan, attended by several thousand people.
Glenn, Tyree. Born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1912, Glenn played trombone and vibraphone. His professional career began in Washington, D.C., where he played with the Tommy Mills band from 1934 through 1936. By 1937 he was playing in New York City with Eddie Barefield, then Eddie Mallory and later Benny Carter (1937-1939). He joined Cab Calloway’s orchestra in 1940, where he remained until 1946. He toured Europe with Don Redman in 1946, and in 1947 joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra for five years. In 1953 he went to WPIX in New York as a staff musician. Next, he joined CBS radio, where he appeared daily on the Jack Sterling show and later on Arthur Godfrey’s daily radio show. Subsequently he worked at New York Studios and again for Ellington. While playing with Eddie Mallory, Glenn accompanied Ethel Walters on her U.S. tour. It was she who encouraged him to take up the vibes by giving him his first set, which he kept and used for the rest of his life. Soon after joining Ellington, Glenn added to his repertoire the growl and wah-wah sounds featured on many Ellington numbers, and used them in all his playing thereafter to great effect. In addition to his exceptionally clear ringing tone, special effects and fine vibraphone solos, Glenn’s easy, outgoing personality made him very popular in his frequent night club and radio appearances. During his last years (1965-1968) Glenn performed with Louis Armstrong & his All-Stars. While on the road with Armstrong, Glenn served as the band’s musical director, often going on ahead of the group to rehearse local rhythm sections for the band. Glenn died in New Jersey in 1972.
Hawkins, Coleman. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1904, this great tenor saxophonist went on the road with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds in 1922 while still in his teens. In 1923 he joined Fletcher Henderson, at that time one of the hottest bands in the country, and stayed there for 10 years. Believing there was nowhere else for him to go in the U.S., Hawkins sent the leading English bandleader, Jack Hylton, a telegram saying, “I would like to come to England.” Hylton wired back at once, hiring him. Hawkins intended to stay only a year or so but stayed almost five. By the time he returned to the States, he was widely acknowledged to be one of the best tenor players in the world. In late 1939 Hawkins made his famous recording of “Body and Soul.” It was a runaway hit that remains a favorite of musicians. Consisting of a four-bar piano intro followed by several choruses of tenor sax and a protracted ending, it had no vocal chorus and was not arranged. Less than three minutes long, it is arguably the most admired saxophone solo of all time and a true masterpiece. Hawkins was associated with that tune for the rest of his life. After the record’s success, he quickly assembled a nine-piece band and went on the road for several years. He never again worked under any leader. At the time of the Big Picture, he was one of the best-regarded older jazzmen, reigning as “The Champ” until his decline in the mid-Sixties. Some assume that Lester Young had long ago challenged him and even toppled him from preeminence, but the two were exponents of widely differing schools—Hawkins “hot” and Young “cool”—and were never really in competition. Hawkins died in 1969.
Hinton, Milt. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1910, Hinton was an excellent amateur photographer as well as a consummate bass player. Hinton grew up in Chicago and started playing with prominent bands in the Thirties. In the mid-Thirties he worked for Zutty Singleton at the Three Deuces Club in Chicago, until he was hired away in 1936 by Cab Calloway, with whom he stayed until 1951. From then on he freelanced extensively, working with such top leaders as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. One of the most sought-after bassists in jazz, Hinton has appeared on innumerable recordings, often under his own name. Many of his thousands of photographs, taken over the course of 50 years, have been published in two books coauthored with his friend David Berger, Bass Line and Overtime, where some of the pictures in this film first appeared. Though active into the Nineties, Hinton was slowing down by 1997. His health continued to fail until he died in the year 2000.
Jackson, Chubby. Born in New York City in 1918, bass player Jackson was playing bass in popular bands by 1937, including those of Mike Reilly (“The Music Goes Down and Around”), Johnny Messner, Raymond Scott, Jan Savitt and Henry Busse. From 1941 through 1943 he was with Charlie Barnet before starting his greatest association, the first of several stints with various Woody Herman “herds.” As a key member of Herman bands, Jackson was widely regarded to be their spark plug. He composed several of the bands’ hits, including “Northwest Passage.” Jackson went to Europe with his own quintet in 1947 and led a band in New York in 1949. His ebullient personality and great drive made him a valuable addition to any group he played with during the bop era. He won numerous awards, including Esquire’s New Star award in 1945, its Gold Award in 1946 and 1947, and the Down Beat poll in 1945. It is interesting to note that Jackson’s son Duffy is an outstanding drummer who worked for years with various Count Basie bands and other bands around the world. Chubby died in 2003.
Jones, Hank. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1918, pianist Jones was the elder brother of jazz musicians Thad (trumpet) and Elvin (drums). He started playing in Michigan and later moved to Buffalo, New York. He arrived in New York in 1944 and played in the groups of Hot Lips Page, Andy Kirk and John Kirby, and he also accompanied Billy Eckstine. In addition, Jones worked with Coleman Hawkins, and in 1947 was on one of the first Jazz At The Philharmonic tours. He accompanied Ella Fitzgerald from 1948 through 1953, including a tour of Europe, and made several great recordings with Charlie Parker for Norman Granz. He freelanced in New York until 1956, then joined with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. He did more freelancing until 1958, just before the Big Picture was taken. After that he joined the CBS network orchestra and stayed there until it disbanded 17 years later. Jones is the epitome of “session” musicians because he can readily fit into any musical style—old or new, traditional, swing or modern. He can read anything with great precision, a must in top professional work. He performed on the Ed Sullivan Show many times, and has played on hundreds of recordings. In the Seventies he was pianist and assistant to the conductor for the Broadway show “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” In recent years he has appeared and toured with innumerable prominent groups and has been a longtime member of a group called the New York Rhythm Section, consisting of Milt Hinton (bass), Barry Galbraith (guitar) and Osie Johnson (drums).
Krupa, Gene. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1909, Krupa is probably the most famous drummer ever, certainly in the era of swing music, starting with his place in the Benny Goodman band of the late Thirties and later with his own band. Apart from the many records he made with his own band and with Goodman, he was the nominal leader of an extraordinary 1935 recording called “Swing Is Here,” featuring Roy Eldridge, Chu Berry and Goodman. Supplementing Krupa’s own solid musical style was his superb showmanship. His remarkable work with Goodman at the beginning of the swing era and Goodman’s own meteoric rise to stardom combined to propel Krupa to a similar stardom himself. It is unfortunate that he is better remembered for his heavy drumming in “Sing, Sing, Sing” with Goodman than for his superb drumming with his own band. Hollywood made “The Gene Krupa Story” based loosely on his career, with the actor Sal Mineo as Krupa. When the picture failed to include Roy Eldridge, through no fault of Krupa’s, he gave Eldridge an expensive set of drums. Krupa’s group disbanded permanently in 1951 whereupon he performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic and later with his own small groups. In 1951 Krupa and Cozy Cole started a drum school in New York. He continued teaching, studying classical drumming and playing in small groups intermittently for the next 12 years. Krupa died in 1973.
McPartland, Marian. Born in Windsor, England, in 1920, this fine pianist came from a family of musicians, including a great-uncle, Sir Frederick Dyson (Mayor of the City of Windsor), who played cello. McPartland debuted as part of a traveling four-piano group, then, just before World War II, she formed a duo with the prominent British pianist Billy Mayerl. She married trumpeter Jimmy McPartland during World War II, and the couple came to the U.S. after the war in 1946 to start a group led by Jimmy. This band broke up in 1951. Marian then formed her first trio and worked at many popular spots, starting with The Hickory House. Gradually that club became a well-known musicians’ hangout and was Duke Ellington’s regular dining spot whenever he was in New York. McPartland became widely known, continuing to lead her trio as the house band there for a number of years. She also worked at The Composer in New York and at the London House in Chicago. She has appeared widely at jazz festivals and concerts all over the world and has made many recordings on her own label. She is currently known for her weekly radio program, “Piano Jazz,” on which she interviews and plays with pianists and other musicians. The program has been heard regularly for many years on hundreds of public radio stations throughout the U.S.
Mingus, Charles. Born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1922, Mingus was an extremely creative and innovative composer as well as a bass player, leader and pianist. His compositions were recorded on his own short-lived labels as well as on Columbia and Atlantic. He first came to national attention as a member of Red Norvo’s trio with guitarist Tal Farlow in 1950-1951. He also participated in the memorable Massey Hall concert in Toronto with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-Fifties Mingus ran the Jazz Composers’ Workshop and was a key member, with Max Roach, of the Jazz Composers’ Guild, a successor to the Rebels’ Festival in Newport in the summer of 1960. He was noted for his egocentric yet generous personality, his habit of admonishing audiences and his self-destructive tendencies. In 1971 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship award and published his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog. “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Better Git Your Soul” are two of the best-known titles among his immense body of original work. His life was stormy, and his legacy, carried on musically by The Mingus Dynasty and other orchestras in the Eighties and Nineties, continues to grow. Mingus died in 1979.
Monk, Thelonious Sphere. Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1917, this pianist, composer and leader moved to New York at a young age. At first a disciple of the great stride pianist James P. Johnson, he later became an early experimenter in what was to become bop, along with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and others at Minton’s and other uptown hangouts. He led his own quartet in relative obscurity for years, finally achieving recognition in the Fifties. His eccentric speech and onstage persona, combined with his unique, jagged piano style and offbeat titles for compositions, gained him much notice, even notoriety, for years. He was scheduled to appear on the cover of Time magazine in late November 1963, but was bumped from there by coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (He did make the cover several months later, however.) Monk made many overseas tours with his quartet and traveled around the world with other leaders as The Giants of Jazz in the Seventies. He wrote numerous compositions, including “Epistrophy,” “Well You Needn’t” and “Crepuscule with Nellie.” In the Seventies he gradually faded from public view and became a recluse, living at the home of his most prominent champion, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Since his death, his work has attracted ever-increasing attention. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards, most notably “Round Midnight.” Monk died in 1982.
Pettiford, Oscar. Born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in 1922, this noted bass and cello player, leader and composer was part of a large musical family. He learned to play several instruments at an early age, and by 1943, when he was not yet 20, had worked with Charlie Barnet’s big band and Roy Eldridge’s quintet. Soon afterward he joined the emerging bop scene in New York as co-leader with Dizzy Gillespie of a group on 52nd Street. From 1944 onward he was in many groups, large and small, including those of Woody Herman and Duke Ellington. By the mid-Fifties he had his own band but was not temperamentally suited to be a leader. A very important musician on bass as well as cello, he introduced much innovation to the playing of both instruments. More than anyone except perhaps the very short-lived Jimmy Blanton (and later Charles Mingus and Ray Brown), Pettiford established the bass as a solo instrument in addition to its role in the rhythm section. Pettiford in 1960.
Rushing, Jimmy. Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1902, Rushing was a singer and pianist. He began singing in after-hours clubs in the mid-Twenties, and first met with success in and around Kansas City with Walter Page and his Blue Devils (1927-1928) and Bennie Moten’s band (1929-1934). In 1935 Rushing joined Count Basie and accompanied him to New York. It was as a member of that orchestra in the late Thirties that he came to national prominence. Known as “Mr. Five-by-Five” because of his girth, he was an entirely original and forceful blues singer and was greatly responsible for the popularity of the Basie band in its early years. Due to the exposure that band gave him, he was able to go out on his own in the Fifties, being replaced in Basie’s band by vocalist Joe Williams. Rushing toured and recorded solo and with his own groups, and appeared at many jazz festivals and on overseas tours, including one with Benny Goodman in 1958. He later performed with Eddie Condon and Buck Clayton. He recorded prolifically with the Basie band and one time with Goodman. His distinctive, high-pitched blues-shouting style was as instantly recognizable as Louis Armstrong’s. Among Basie’s many stars, none was more responsible for its early popular success than Rushing. He died in 1972.
Russell, Pee Wee. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Russell was a clarinetist with the Austin High School Gang in Chicago in the early Twenties, and with numerous Dixieland groups thereafter. During the Twenties he also played with Jack Teagarden in Texas and with Bix Beiderbecke in St. Louis. In 1927 he moved to New York to play with Red Nichols & his Five Pennies, and from 1935 through 1937 he was with trumpeter Louis Prima. From the mid-Forties onward he played most often in groups led by Eddie Condon, frequently at New York Dixieland hangouts like Nick’s and Condon’s. Russell was famous for his plaintive tone smears, very unusual timbres and wandering melody lines. His unique, complex and inimitable style included a great variety of odd squeaks and growls, alternating soft and hard notes, rasping attacks and soaring, long-held or abruptly terminated phrases and notes. He played greatly contrasting rhythms, often widely varying the time values as well as the notes. Almost no one has attempted to emulate him, nor consciously demonstrated being influenced by his style. Nevertheless Russell was one of the best-known and widely admired clarinet players for years. He died in 1969.
Silver, Horace. Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1928, Silver has been a pianist, composer and leader of his own quintets since the early Fifties. He started playing tenor saxophone in high school but gave it up when he heard Lester Young on records. He is recognized as one of the most important founders of the hard bop school. When Stan Getz made an appearance in 1950 in Hartford, Silver’s hometown, he heard Horace and his trio play and offered them a job then and there. The job lasted about a year and launched Silver’s career. In 1951 he moved to New York and worked with such important and prominent musicians as Lester Young, Oscar Pettiford and Coleman Hawkins. From 1953 until 1955 he was with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In addition to his importance in establishing hard bop, he fused elements of rhythm & blues, gospel music and jazz, influencing pianists such as Ramsey Lewis, Bobby Timmons and Les McCann. He was largely responsible for setting what would become the standard instrumentation of bop groups in the late Fifties and Sixties: trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums. He also nurtured many important younger players who joined his groups, including Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Benny Golson and Joe Henderson. He carried his piano style, hard “comping” (accompaniment), to a high level of musicianship while developing his own style of composing and arranging. He is one of the few musicians in jazz who records his own compositions almost exclusively. He has had numerous hit records and a number of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “The Preacher,” “Doodlin’,” “Sister Sadie” and “Song for My Father.” Since the mid-Sixties he has experimented with large ensembles, including voices, woodwinds, strings and other combinations. Although frequently plagued with arthritis of the hands, he has maintained a busy schedule well into the 21st century.
Smith, Willie “the Lion.” Born in Goshen, New York, in 1897, Smith was a pianist. Though he’s not in the Big Picture—he was tired and had sat down on steps next door—he appears in many other pictures taken that day. “The Lion” was almost always seen, as he was on that day, with a cigar clenched firmly in his teeth and wearing his derby hat. A most colorful individual, he sometimes bragged that he was Hebrew and even a cantor. He was one of the best known of the Harlem stride school, along with James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Luckey Roberts. His style was particularly individual in that he adapted the flavor of 19th century impressionist composers Ravel and Debussy, whom he greatly admired, to stride piano. He penned many beautiful miniatures that combined impressionism with stride. In the late Thirties Smith became known to a wider public through several recordings. Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey performed memorable arrangements of his compositions, especially “Echo of Spring.” Smith was an early mentor to Ralph Sutton, Mel Powell and Duke Ellington, the latter of whom composed and recorded “Portrait of the Lion” in tribute to Smith. In the Fifties Smith performed often at the Central Plaza and elsewhere in New York. He toured Europe several times and appeared at many jazz festivals. His life was documented in an autobiography (with George Hoefer), Music on My Mind, published in 1964. Smith died in 1973.
Stewart, Rex. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1907, Stewart played cornet and trumpet. In his early years he played several instruments, but cornet was always his main focus. His most important early work was with Fletcher Henderson’s band as the replacement for Louis Armstrong (at Armstrong’s suggestion), who was leaving to form his own band. Initially Stewart felt uneasy about his ability to fill the shoes of his idol, and soon left Fletcher to join the band of Fletcher’s younger brother Horace. After a year or so with Horace, the now better-prepared Stewart rejoined Fletcher Henderson. He stayed with Fletcher more than four years this time, until 1934 when he left to join Duke Ellington’s band. By that time Ellington was in his golden era, well on his way to becoming what he would be ever after: the most original and longest-playing band leader ever. Stewart, a true master, stayed 10 years with the band for what would be his longest and most important job. There he invented the unique growling, almost human, half-valve sound featured nightly in the extended piece “Boy Meets Horn.” This was also the title of Stewart’s autobiography, published posthumously by Claire Gordon in 1982. Stewart wrote a number of other well-known Ellington numbers, but he remained forever identified with “Boy Meets Horn.” After Ellington, Stewart worked primarily with his own groups and made several U.S. and worldwide appearances, including Jazz At The Philharmonic. In the late Forties he stayed in France long enough to study at the famous cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu. While there, he also delivered several lectures on jazz at the Paris Conservatory of Music. Later he delivered similar ones at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In 1957 and 1958 he became musical director for a festival at Great South Bay, Long Island, celebrating the music of Fletcher Henderson with the Henderson Alumni Orchestra. He also played for two years at Eddie Condon’s jazz club in New York. Stewart went into semi-retirement in the Sixties, though he wrote frequently for Down Beat magazine and often appeared briefly at night spots blowing his incomparable cornet. A number of extremely interesting articles on music and musicians by Stewart were collected in Jazz Masters of the 30s, published by MacMillan as part of a series. Stewart died in 1972 in Los Angeles.
Ware, Wilbur. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1923, Ware was an extraordinary bass player whose strong tone and harmonic inventiveness made him much sought-after by a wide variety of groups, small and large. Even in his later years he worked with experimental groups while continuing to play in established mainstream and bop groups. Beginning in the mid-Forties he worked with such prominent leaders as Roy Eldridge, Joe Williams and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. By the Fifties he had worked with Johnny Griffin, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonious Monk. Later, as house bassist at Riverside Records, Ware could be heard on many important recordings. In New York he played with John Coltrane in Monk’s quartet at the Five Spot. He also led his own small groups and played with the Sonny Rollins trio at the Village Vanguard. Being in great demand, he worked steadily in a wide variety of groups. In the early Sixties he joined Max Roach, Charles Mingus and others in the Newport Rebels, a group formed in protest against the Newport Jazz Festival. A number of significant recordings by this group and associated musicians were released later. In the mid-Sixties illness forced him to return to Chicago, but in the Seventies he returned to New York, where he was active with mainstream as well as avant-garde groups. Ware died in 1979.
Wilkins, Ernie. Born in St. Louis in 1922, Wilkins is recognized as a saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is best known for his arrangements for big bands, including those of Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Count Basie. He began playing professionally in a famous Navy band during World War II with such budding stars as Clark Terry, Gerald Wilson, Major Holley and earlier stars like alto saxophonist Willie Smith. In 1949 he was in the last Earl Hines big band. In 1951 he joined the Count Basie band, playing both alto and tenor saxophones. He gained prominence in the Fifties for his compositions and arrangements. He performed and arranged for Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and went overseas with it for the U.S. State Department in 1956. He then wrote for Harry James and was greatly instrumental in modernizing that band. His arrangements were largely responsible for the success of the Count Basie band in the Fifties. After that he worked for Earl Hines and others, concentrating mainly on arranging, and served as musical director for A & R Records. In the late Sixties Wilkins went to Europe with Clark Terry’s big band as musical director, and he settled in Copenhagen. In his later years, he was confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke, finally passing away in 1999.
Young, Lester “Pres.” Born in Woodville, Mississippi, in 1909, Young played tenor saxophone. By 1930 he was playing with various Midwest bands and in 1934 worked briefly with Count Basie. After short stays with several other bands he rejoined Basie, where he remained until he became a solo star. During his time with Basie he developed a very wide following among tenor men. He was perceived as the founder of a new, light, soaring way of playing tenor. It was very different from the husky, aggressive, punchy playing style of Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry and Ben Webster, the most widely admired tenor players in the Thirties and early Forties. In the late Thirties Young made a number of historic recordings with Billie Holiday. In late 1944 he was drafted into the Army for what turned out to be a very harsh period in his life. He was released about a year later after months of Army confinement for using drugs. He then returned to playing music, and made his first solo recordings in addition to working every year with Jazz At The Philharmonic. Between his discharge from the Army in 1945 and the taking of the Big Picture, late 1958, he continued to drink and use drugs heavily, and in the late Fifties he was rarely at the peak of his powers. During and after the early years of bebop, Young continued to win admirers, most notably Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. Ultimately he developed even more adherents to his lyrical style of legato tenor. Although never really a bebop musician, Young was an important transitional figure between swing and bop, along with Roy Eldridge, Charlie Christian and others. He died in early 1959.
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10 celebrities who died in Florida, from the famous to the infamous
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2015-06-16T00:00:00
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You probably remember that Anna Nicole Smith died at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. (in Room 607, to be exact), and\u00a0Bob Marley passed away at what is now University of Miami Hos…
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Palm Beach Post
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https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/entertainment/local/2015/06/16/10-celebrities-who-died-in/7226347007/
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You probably remember that Anna Nicole Smith died at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. (in Room 607, to be exact), and Bob Marley passed away at what is now University of Miami Hospital.
And, of course, Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami Beach home, and Dale Earnhardt died while racing the Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach.
But did you know about these celebrities who exited the world stage on Florida soil?
1. Al Capone: The notorious Chicago crime boss died in his Palm Island estate in Miami Beach on Jan. 21, 1947. After a long, syphilis-induced slide into poor health years earlier, he suffered a stroke a few days before his death, then contracted pneumonia, then had a heart attack. He was 48 years old.
2. Joe DiMaggio: The Yankee Clipper (and heavy smoker) underwent surgery for lung cancer at Hollywood’s Memorial Regional Hospital in October 1998 and died in his Hollywood, Fla., home on March 8, 1999. He was 84.
3. Count Basie: The jazz pianist, bandleader and composer died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Fla., on April 26, 1984. He was 79.
4. Maurice Gibb: One of the voices of the disco generation, the Bee Gee died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach on Jan. 12, 2003. The 53-year-old awaiting surgery for a twisted intestine.
5. Norman Schwarzkopf: The general known as “Stormin’ Norman” died of complications following a bout of pneumonia on Dec. 27, 2012, in Tampa. He was 78.
6. Donna Summer: The Queen of Disco died May 17, 2012 from complications related to lung cancer — although she didn’t smoke — at her Naples, Fla., home. She was 63 years old.
7. Evel Knievel: The 1970s daredevil didn’t crash and burn. After suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for many years, the 69-year-old died on Nov. 30, 2007 in Clearwater.
8. Dave Thomas: The Wendy’s founder died at the age of 69 in his home in Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 8, 2002. He’d battled liver cancer for a decade and had quadruple heart bypass surgery.
9. Davy Jones: At the age of 66, the Monkees front man suffered a heart attack at his home in Stuart, Fla., on Feb. 29, 2012.
10. Leslie Nielsen: The “Naked Gun” actor died of complications from pneumonia on Nov. 28, 2010 in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale. He was 84 years old.
Looking for more Florida-related celebrity dish?
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https://www.miningjournal.net/news/records/2024/04/today-in-history-april-26-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-disaster/
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Today in History: April 26, Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster
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"Today in History: April 26",
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"Today in History: April 26",
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2024-04-26T00:00:00
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By The Associated Press Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On April 26, 1
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https://www.miningjournal.net/news/records/2024/04/today-in-history-april-26-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-disaster/
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By The Associated Press
Today is Friday, April 26, the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
On this date:
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an anti-Semitic mob in 1915.)
In 1933, Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, was created.
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1984, bandleader Count Basie, 79, died in Hollywood, Florida.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2009, the United States declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand; officials in Mexico City closed everything from concerts to sports matches to churches in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)
In 2013, singer George Jones, believed by many to be the greatest country crooner of all time, died in Nashville at age 81.
In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
In 2022, Russia pounded eastern and southern Ukraine as the U.S. promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needed to repel the new offensive, despite Moscow’s warnings that such support could trigger a wider war.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor-comedian Carol Burnett is 91. R&B singer Maurice Williams is 86. Songwriter-musician Duane Eddy is 86. Actor Nancy Lenehan is 71. Actor Giancarlo Esposito is 66. Rock musician Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) is 64. Actor Joan Chen is 63. Rock musician Chris Mars (The Replacements) is 63. Actor-singer Michael Damian is 62. Actor Jet Li (lee) is 61. Actor-comedian Kevin James is 59. Author and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is 58. Actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste is 57. Rapper T-Boz (TLC) is 54. Former first lady Melania Trump is 54. Actor Shondrella Avery is 53. Actor Simbi Kali is 53. Country musician Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) is 53. Rock musician Jose Pasillas (Incubus) is 48. Actor Jason Earles is 47. Actor Leonard Earl Howze is 47. Actor Amin Joseph is 47. Actor Tom Welling is 47. Actor Pablo Schreiber is 46. Actor Nyambi Nyambi is 45. Actor Jordana Brewster is 44. Actor Stana Katic is 44. Actor Marnette Patterson is 44. Actor Channing Tatum is 44. Americana/roots singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt is 40. Actor Emily Wickersham is 40. Actor Aaron Meeks is 38. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is 32.
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https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2021/05/lester-young-in-washington-dc-swing-or.html
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JazzProfiles: Lester Young in Washington, D.C. "Swing, or I'll Kill You"
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A blog about Jazz featuring CD,and book reviews and postings about the music and its makers.
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https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2021/05/lester-young-in-washington-dc-swing-or.html
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An absurdity perpetuated in Jazz literature is that in the final decade and a half of his life [he died in 1959], Lester Young was a shadow of his former self and was no longer the “protean originator” who changed the soloist art while a member of the Count Basie Band in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The Jazz fan can find evidence to the contrary in a 4 CD set on Pablo Records which were recorded in performance at Olivia Davis’s Patio Lounge in Washington D.C. in December 1956.
On any given night with the right rhythm section, “Prez” [vocalist Billie Holiday’s nickname for “the president of the tenor saxophone] could burn with swing and lyricism “to surpass his multitude of imitators and all but the most inspired creations of his youth.”
The Bill Potts rhythm section with bassist Norman Williams and drummer Jim Lucht was the right rhythm section for Prez when he worked at Olivia Davis’s nightspot in December 1956. Fortunately, too, Potts taped the gig.
More music from the December 1956 Prez gig at the Patio Lounge was subsequently found which included trombonist Earl Swope on four tracks and these were issued as a 5th volume in the set. “Swope was one of the first modern stylists and a section-mate of the great Bill Harris in Woody Herman’s Second Herd.”
The following article about this splendid Lester Young night club appearance in Washington, D.C. was written by Eddie Dean and published under the heading - “Swing, or I'll Kill You" in the August 8, 2003 edition of The Washington City Paper.”
© Copyright ® Eddie Dean and The Washington City Paper, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“Before Bill Potts made his 1959 classic, The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess, he and his trio made musical history in a D.C. nightclub.
It was the winter of 1956, and Bill Potts had to talk to his boss. He had just finished a gig with the house band at Olivia Davis’ Patio Lounge when the club’s owner pulled the group aside. A regal, domineering woman, Davis could pass for a senator’s wife or a salty madam. First and foremost, though, she was a businesswoman, a survivor in the cutthroat downtown nightclub scene.
And just now, she had business to discuss with her employees, three musicians young enough to be her sons. It had been a decent year at the Patio Lounge, but things always dropped off around the holidays. “Well, gentlemen,” Davis said, “it’s so near Christmas I’m not going to spend a lot of money. So we hired a guy named Lester Young.”
Lester Young. That was a magic name to Potts and his bandmates.
With Count Basie’s orchestra in the ’30s, Young had changed the way the sax was played. Instead of blowing the roof off, he coaxed a lyrical, intimate tone from his tenor, like the sweetest soothsayer whispering secrets in your ear. His music had inspired an entire generation; all the current tenor men, from Stan Getz to Dexter Gordon to Zoot Sims, were disciples. And Young’s reach went well beyond musicians: His solo flights on such songs as “Lester Leaps In” had helped Allen Ginsberg find the rhythms for “Howl.”
At the time, though, the standard line on Young was that he was washed up. A stint in the Army during World War II had damaged him mentally and physically, and many dismissed him as a shell of his former self. In 1955, a nervous breakdown landed him in Bellevue. These days, he often worked gigs with whatever rhythm section a club offered. That was how Davis could hire him for a weeklong engagement at a bargain rate. After revolutionizing jazz, the 47-year-old Prez, as Young was known, was now a low-budget fill-in on a slow week during the holidays.
Potts and his group had heard all the sad tales about Young, but they didn’t dampen their spirits. Their hero was coming to town, and they were going to be his band. “We were flabbergasted when she told us Prez was going to be here,” remembers Potts, now retired and living in Florida. “Our mouths just dropped. We told her that he was God. Of course, she was happy that we were happy.”
Six nights with Lester Young. What more could anybody could ask for?
If Young was on his way down, Potts was headed in the other direction. At 28, he was already a veteran musician, not only as both leader and sideman, but also as a writer and arranger for the best-known big band in Washington, an all-star ensemble known as THE Orchestra. Earlier that year, his friend Norman “Willie” Williams, a 27-year-old graduate of Petworth’s Theodore Roosevelt High, had called him about an opening for a pianist with the Patio Lounge house band.
A bass player, Williams had never been in front of the microphone, and he asked his buddy to lead the trio. “I loved the way Bill played,” Williams says, “and I thought he was a nut because he’d eat lit cigarettes or I thought he was eating ’em. He’d act like he’d chewed it and swallowed it. He was just mouthing ’em, but he was pretty slick with it. I’d call people over and say, ‘Show ’em, Bill.’”
Potts had recently left the Army after a six-year hitch and was working a day job as a technician at the U.S. Recording Co. on Vermont Avenue NW. “There were a lot of pianists that played better than I did,” says Potts. “Piano playing was more of a sideline, because I spent most of the time writing. But Willie wanted me because I had led so many groups and I could kick off the tempos and call the tunes.”
Olivia Davis’ Patio Lounge it sounded classy and sophisticated, even if there was no patio and the lounge was a second-floor walk-up without windows. It was in a turn-of-the-century building on 13th Street NW, in the shadow of the neon strip of clubs along 14th Street known as the Block.
The Block was where you took your girl for a big night on the town: dinner and a show and some slow dancing to a champagne-bubble orchestra. But the Patio Lounge was where you took your mistress to hear some jazz. It was a hideaway, a low-lit refuge where you could catch Art Tatum taming a piano in a room so quiet you could hear his feet working the pedals. Davis wasn’t peddling sequined showgirls or pop singers; she was hawking jazz. Not the quaint trad jazz you could hear over at the Mayfair, or the retro Dixieland of the Bayou, or even the sort of pedestrian local jazz Davis had featured at the Merry-Land, the club she ran before opening the Patio Lounge in 1955.
No, this time Davis was more serious. She billed her new club as “Washington’s Only Showplace for Jazz” and brought in rising stars such as Chet Baker; acts in their prime such as Max Roach, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Art Blakey; and such future legends as a young Charles Mingus, who accompanied the Teddy Charles Trio in the summer of 1955.
The Bill Potts Trio worked the Patio Lounge six nights a week, mostly as the intermission band, sometimes backing the headliner. Davis paid top dollar to get the big names, but for the house band, the pay was lousy. It was union scale peanuts, really and the players’ bar tab often matched what they made. The house piano wasn’t in the best shape, either. “It was the worst piano in the world,” says Potts. “It was awful.”
But none of that mattered. Potts and his band were getting free lessons from the greats who came through town, and they were teaching each other, too. “Bill was always my idol,” says Williams. “I learned my harmony from him, more than anyone else.”
Potts, in turn, had found a bassist who complemented his “arranger’s-style” piano playing. “He was my left hand for a long time. And he was such a fast learner that I just forgot about using my left hand, because, in no time at all, Willie was playing all the right notes. He was a helluva bass player, and we were musically compatible.” It was a great time: Along with drummer Jim Lucht, Potts and Williams had a steady gig doing what they loved - playing
It was Basie’s orchestra with Young that first captivated Potts. He grew up in Arlington, the son of a government worker who gave him a Hawaiian guitar, which was all the rage in the ’30s. But Potts didn’t take to the instrument, and he soon switched to accordion. Northern Virginia, like much of the area around Washington, was a hotbed of hillbilly music, and that’s what Potts was exposed to as a youngster, along with what he now calls “pop trash.”
At 15, Potts played a rendition of “Twilight Time” that won him first prize in a talent show sponsored by WWDC AM and MC’d by celebrity DJ Willis Conover. But Potts’ taste had already changed. “My sister got a phonograph, and she’d play Gene Autry 78s, some Bill Monroe,” he recalls. “That’s all there was in the house until one day on the radio I heard Count Basie and nearly had an orgasm. That’s when I flipped. Now, Bill Basie, the secret to his piano playing was simplicity. He’d leave open spaces and play one note, but exactly the right note at the right place was just a ding.”
Potts was hooked for life, and he was on the road with a jazz band before he had his driver’s license. Ira Sabin, founder of JazzTimes, was in Marvin Scott’s big band with Potts when they were teenagers, in the mid-’40s. “They had auditions in a studio around Thomas Circle, and we went down there,” says Sabin, a drummer at the time. “And the first thing [Scott] did was play a bebop tune way up, you know, and bam! We played and we had a fucking ball for about 15 minutes. Then he walked up to us and said, ‘Now, we will not play any of this kind of music, and if you want to come with me, you’re hired.’ He was booking a commercial band, and bebop was not commercially viable.” In the ’40s, Potts made several tours of the South.
It was in the Army that Potts received his most valuable musical education. At the start of the Korean War, he enlisted and got a position as copyist with the U.S. Army Band at Fort Myer. Potts had already started composing songs when he was a student at Washington-Lee High School (“The first chart I wrote was to ‘Hey Bop a Rebop’ - it was terrible”); his new job was the perfect apprenticeship to hone his craft. “Being a copyist was a great way to learn how to write,” he says. “You learn from the arrangers, because you copy their scores and hear them performed at rehearsals, and certain things you like, you take note of. You can examine how the man did it, how he voiced it.”
By 1951, Potts had joined THE Orchestra, a group of seasoned musicians who’d been on the road with top big bands. The leader was drummer Joe Timer. A veteran of the Elliot Lawrence band, Timer had played with John Coltrane when they were Navy men stationed together in Hawaii. Other members included the Swope brothers, Earl and Rob. An alumnus of Woody Herman’s legendary Second Herd band, Earl was regarded as the premier modern-jazz trombonist, the first to apply bebop stylings to the instrument. Rob was also a trombone player and had replaced Earl in Buddy Rich’s band. And there were saxophonist Angelo Tompros and two young trumpeters, Charlie Walp and Markie Markowitz.
Back in their hometown, they were itching to play for kicks, a break from their routine of saloon and society-dance gigs. On Sunday afternoons, THE Orchestra played Club Kavakos, a decades-old neighborhood joint at 8th and H Streets NE in a blue-collar section of town. Operated by Bill and Johnny Kavakos, it was a rough-and-tumble place for locals to blow off steam. Kavakos wasn’t strictly a jazz club at all. Most nights featured a couple of floor shows, with guest singers and comedians, tap dancers, and strippers such as Irene Boyd, “the Cream of Canada.”
The peak season for these Sunday-afternoon shows was the fall and winter months, when the games at Griffith Stadium boosted attendance. “Everybody would go to the Redskins games,” recalls Bill Mayhugh, a regular at Kavakos and a DJ at WMAL AM for 24 years. “And when the game was over, at 4 o’clock or so, all the musician-loving people would flock over to Kavakos to see Joe Timer and THE Orchestra.”
The group’s high profile was also in part due to the presence of Conover, who agreed to “present” THE Orchestra. Conover’s show, on WMAL AM, had made jazz converts of countless listeners; he had impeccable taste, employed artful segues of classic and modern jazz, and didn’t affect any pseudo-hip slang. And he seduced his audience with an ultra-mellifluous, made-for-radio voice, a mesmerizing blend of professor, raconteur, and elocution teacher. The late poet Joseph Brodsky, who heard Conover’s Voice of America broadcasts as a youngster in Russia, hailed it as “the richest-in-the-world bass baritone of Willis Conover.”
When Conover put out a call for arrangements for THE Orchestra in 1951, Potts contributed new material. Soon the 14-piece ensemble was showcasing such Potts compositions as “Pill Box,” “Willis,” and “Light Green.” This was bold, textured, polyphonic jazz full of nuance and sly humor, a far cry from the shrill, screaming brass of the big-band sound popular at the time. “Potts is an extremely creative writer in a lot of areas, and not just in the Basie bag,” says Mayhugh. “We always described Potts’ writing as ‘happy.’ It made you want to snap your fingers, shake your head, and tap your foot.”
At the Sunday matinees, Potts didn’t perform with THE Orchestra, but he was a constant presence. He set up the microphones and often recorded the shows with equipment borrowed from the U.S. Army Band. Along with Conover, Potts became synonymous with THE Orchestra. The two men helped the group gain a cult following among local jazz fans, but more importantly, they made THE Orchestra a band that other musicians clamored to hear and wanted to play with.
Conover exploited this situation to bring special guests to Kavakos. In February 1953, he invited Charlie Parker to the club, and the saxophonist’s unadvertised appearance stunned the Sunday crowd. THE Orchestra was onstage, working off its sheet music, and here came Parker, with no time to rehearse. “He showed up with a plastic saxophone,” says Potts. “He was always hocking his horn, and I think somebody gave it to him. It was clear plastic you could see right through it. Bird had no music stand, no guide, nothing except a great pair of ears. Everybody gave up their solos for Bird.”
Two years later, Dizzy Gillespie fronted THE Orchestra at Kavakos. Potts captured both shows on tape, and the subsequently released albums have garnered critical raves. In a snippet of post-concert dialogue from the Gillespie tape, Potts captured the camaraderie that was part of those Sunday afternoons:
Packing up, Gillespie yells to Conover: “How ’bout the bread, Willis?”
“Dizzy, when I make it,” intones Conover, ever the straight man, “you’ll make it.”
“I’ll make it upside your head,” shouts Gillespie.
Not long after, THE Orchestra dissolved, mostly because of the death of Timer. Billed as musical director, he had put more into the ensemble than anyone else finding new material, rehearsing the band at his house, preparing for shows. Though barely 40, he had been worn down by decades of hard living. After his wife ran off with another musician, he went into a tailspin.
“I was moving in with him because his wife had left him,” says Willie Williams. “He was very upset, and in frustration he kicked his foot through a glass door, and infection set in.” Timer checked into a VA hospital for surgery, and he succumbed to complications.
The Lester Young who arrived in Washington in December 1956 was an ailing man who reserved every ounce of his declining strength for his music. He had just completed a fall tour of Europe with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic. Despite some positive reviews, there were also reports of drunken shows, such as this one, from Stockholm: “The minutes he spent on stage were among the most embarrassing I have experienced in large public gatherings, and a man in the condition Lester was in then ought never be allowed in front of an audience,” wrote the Orkester Jornalen, a Swedish jazz magazine. “But he could still play!”
In 1956, Young was actually on the rebound musically. After Bellevue, he’d made some of the best recordings of his late years. And Young had come to prefer some of those local rhythm sections over the big-time revues he also still toured with. The small-combo setting allowed him some breathing room to relax and explore. “Give me my little trio and me,” he once said in an interview. “That’s happiness.”
It was this Lester Young who greeted Potts and the band at the Patio Lounge. He was wearing a dapper suit, and he carried a worn canvas bag that held his saxophone. He was warm and cheerful and looked to be in relatively good health all things considered without a trace of vanity or bitterness. And he had many reasons to be bitter: all those disciples mostly white who’d found success with the sound he’d developed. Getz, for example, could make $5,000 in a week at the Patio, and here was Prez, lucky to take home $500 and saddled with yet another bunch of white kids.
But the Bill Potts Trio turned out to be just the right fit. There were no rehearsals, just a talk-over in the band room. “He didn’t lecture us at all,” says Potts. “We knew all the tunes Prez wanted to play, and we knew how to play ’em in the key he played in. We had been working together a lot as a trio, and we idolized him. We were his cup of tea.”
The first evening went off beautifully, and the trio was in Dreamland. “We knew on the first tune,” says Potts. “It was heaven.” It was clear to everybody, including Young, that something special was going on. He would shout out “Cousin Willie!” or “Cousin Billy!” when something gave him particular delight. “It really seemed to fall in together very nicely,” recalls Williams. “He was very much in command, and he played very strong. All the sax players I was working with were disciples of his, and every now and then, I’d think, Oh, so that’s where that phrase comes from that so-and-so plays.”
The understated, workmanlike style of Lucht especially pleased Young, because he’d gotten tired of showboaters who bashed all over their kits. “He hated for a drummer to drop bombs behind his solos,” says Potts. “He just wanted a little bit of ‘tinkety-boom,’ he called it. Lester’s vocabulary was a world of its own. He had an expression for everything.” Lucht, naturally, became “Cousin Jimmy.”
As the week went on, the old master and his students bonded between sets as well. They would hole up in the third-floor band room, drinking and listening to Young reminisce about the old days. “He was such a nice man with such a great sense of humor the nicest man we’d ever met,” says Potts. “I don’t remember him saying anything to belittle anybody. Prez fell in love with us because he realized there was no bullshit there. We were so gassed at the privilege of playing with him. We were totally in awe, and we were bending over backwards to do everything we could to please him musically.”
“We were all tasting it pretty good all week,” says Williams. “It just felt so damn good. It was just like party time every night, and we were on a high all week. Everybody was smiling. We were a very happy little band.” It was going so well that the trio hatched a plan to make some home recordings of the shows; Williams had a portable recorder in the band room. “We said something like, ‘We’d sure like to tape some of this,’ and Lester shrugged his shoulders like ‘OK.’”
Potts’ day job at U.S Recording gave him access to state-of-the-art equipment. The young musician had befriended some German co-workers who’d stayed in Washington after coming here to assist in the 1949 trial of American-born Mildred Gillars, dubbed “Axis Sally,” who was convicted of treason for her Nazi propaganda broadcasts on Radio Berlin during the war. “These German girls, they were editors and technicians, and they’d take old tapes and put them through the bulk eraser and splice them together,” says Potts. “I told them what I wanted to do, so they gave some blank tapes to me. They were super nice; they did it as a favor.”
On Friday afternoon, Potts went to the Patio Lounge early to set up the rig: two professional Magnecorders, three microphones, a mixer, a set of earphones, and 1,500 feet of reel-to-reel tape. “I had two machines so we wouldn’t miss a note,” he says. “Lester walked in and saw all the recorders and microphones and said, with a very sad look on his face, ‘Oh no, Billy, no. Norman will kill me.’” Young was referring to producer Norman Granz, to whom he was under contract; he couldn’t afford to jeopardize his most important business relationship.
Young wasn’t going to budge, but the band wasn’t about to give up, either. “We had about a half-hour before showtime, so we put our heads together. There was a liquor store across the street. We got him the biggest bottle of Hennessy we could find and got it gift-wrapped and put a card on it and gave it to him.” The card read: “We thank you for the pleasure of working with the greatest saxophone player in the world.” Lester unveiled his gift and studied the message; after a couple of sips of cognac, he was still staring at the equipment. Then he smiled and said, “I don’t think Norman will really kill me.”
The next two nights’ performances, as well as a matinee, were captured on 13 reels of salvaged 10-inch tape. Earl Swope joined the band for several numbers, and he and Lester hit it off, trading solos like two old friends catching up. “They loved each other,” says Potts. “It wasn’t the first time they had played together.”
When the tapes were released, more than two decades later on Granz’s Pablo label, they helped rehabilitate the reputation of Young’s later years. Here was proof that he was not the “broken man” of jazz lore. “That time in Washington was one of the relatively few surprises for Lester toward the end and he seized it,” wrote Nat Hentoff. “These players in their mid-20s Potts, Williams and Lucht so palpably appreciated Lester that their affectionate respect kept coming back to him on the stand. And for this time anyway, he was able to put aside whatever specters of loneliness and fading powers hovered over him in these autumnal years.”
Critic Gary Giddins called Lester Young in Washington D.C. 1956: Volume Three “one of the best Lester Young albums ever….Young’s cool imitators in the ’50s frequently suffocated swing with an airless preciosity, but Young never sacrifices vitality for lyricism….Like Yeats, Lester found the strength to ‘wither into the truth.’”
During the week, the bandmates had dropped by the room at the black hotel where Young was staying. After the gig was over, several days passed and Young paid a surprise visit to the U.S. Recording Co. Potts had assumed that Young would have already left town, but there was Prez standing in his pressed suit looking bemused. Potts was working late, dubbing tapes. “I was surprised he knew where I worked. I said, ‘Prez, what in the world are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I just wanted to be with you, Billy.’”
It wasn’t the last time that Potts saw Lester Young. That spring, the trio drove up to Philadelphia, where Prez was playing at the Blue Note. On the way, they passed the bottle around, and by the time they arrived, they were all pretty juiced. Young was backed by a band including Slam Stewart on bass, but when he saw Potts and the boys at the bar, he asked them to sit in for the standard “Talk of the Town.” It was his way of thanking them for the good time he’d enjoyed at the Patio Lounge.
“He announced us as his rhythm section from Washington and invited us up, which was very nice of him,” says Williams. “We got started off wrong, and the drummer got the beat turned around. Jim was pretty bombed out; we were all drunk and that got me so goofed up I couldn’t think of the chords. It didn’t click at all. And we only had the one tune, and Lester politely closed it out and we got down from the bandstand and I was totally embarrassed. We left pretty shortly after that.”
A week after Young’s appearance at the Patio Lounge, the Bill Potts Trio suddenly found itself out of a job. Don Hearn’s column in the Washington Daily News, “Tips on Tables,” made the announcement to local night owls: “Demise Dept.: Olivia Davis’ Patio Lounge shutters tonight. Meaning, of course, D.C. loses its best showcase for top jazz names. Possibly the moral of it all could be: There is no business like the nightclub business. And where are YOU going tonight?”
“I remember being sort of surprised,” says Williams. “I know it was a slow time of year, but everybody goes through that. And then we heard she opened the Merry-Land Club.” Not far from the Patio Lounge, at 14th and L Streets NW, the Merry-Land was a smaller venue and definitely a step down for Davis; she had run the club before, in the early ’50s.
Williams and Lucht still worked the club scene and sometimes rejoined Potts. But a new version of the Bill Potts Trio was soon the house band at the Merry-Land. It included bassist John Beal and drummer Freddy Merkle, another Roosevelt High grad who’d been playing since he was a teen. “Freddy was a very funny guy,” says Potts. “He was great to work with. We did more laughing than swinging, we were so happy to work together. Everybody would ask him all the time where the men’s room was, and he got tired of it. He had a big bass drum, so he had painted on the front of his drum “MEN’S ROOM,” with an arrow.”
In May 1957, the trio, augmented by a horn section, cut a record at the RCA Victor studio in New York. The 11-piece band, featuring the Swope brothers, was called the Freddy Merkle Group, but it was a Bill Potts production all the way. He wrote, arranged, and conducted all 10 compositions, and he played piano as well. Many deem the result, Jazz Under the Dome, the finest big-band album by a Washington ensemble.
Ted Efantis, who played sax on the album, considers it the apotheosis of D.C.’s postwar jazz sound. “This was the ultimate Bill Potts. If you’re talking about the mid-’50s in Washington, D.C., we had our own little golden era. We were original, and we had our geniuses. Potts was an important figure, the most prolific arranger we had, and this town owes him a lot. And Earl Swope, he was the innovator of modern-jazz trombone; nobody played trombone like Earl.
“Washington, D.C., was never a Dixieland town; it was always a modern-jazz town, and it started with Lester Young with Basie. We didn’t dig Ellington, because his band didn’t swing worth a shit. He had great musicians, but it was more of an orchestra. Count Basie and the Woody Herman band the Second Herd, the one Earl played with, were the bands that this town dug. Basie’s band swung - the time was the thing with that band. It swung.”
Potts acknowledges the Basie influence, but he says that Duke Ellington was a crucial figure as well. “The town loved Basie. Nothing touched the Basie band. There were a lot of 'swing’ bands, if you want to use that word but none of them really came close to having the feel that the Basie band did. But this town loved Ellington, too. Christ, Duke was from Washington, you know? I remember one tune by Duke in particular - Clark Terry was in the band then. It was called ‘The Champ,’ and it swung so fucking hard it’s unbelievable.”
Jazz Under the Dome revealed a new maturity in Potts’ arrangements, which he wrote for the big band and also for quintet. A handful of the new tunes earned a permanent place in the Potts songbook: “555 Feet High,” “Shhhhhhhh!,” and “Pottsville U.S.A.”
Conover, by that time a worldwide phenomenon thanks to his program on Voice of America, which boasted 70 million listeners, penned the liner notes: “For a town where most jazz musicians work day gigs to eat, Washington D.C. raises a lot of awfully good musicians. Earl Swope was about the first one to make it nationally playing modern jazz, and before, well, there was Duke Ellington, of course, but there have been hundreds less famous. Drummer-leader Freddy Merkle, who caused this LP to happen, gives the impression of a man unwilling to resign himself to neglect. Under thinning wisps of blond hair, Merkle directs a detective’s quiet, hot stare into one’s eyes: ‘Everybody was in town at the time,’ he says. ‘I figured it was time to see if anybody would be interested in something from Washington again….This is like a diploma to some people. Just to be on this album!…You’ve got to find the right cats to play with.’ Among the cats one finds in Washington is Bill Potts, a craggy, frosted-black-wire-haired iconoclast and post-cynic whose writings for THE Orchestra showed him to be as good as any big band composer-arranger around, and better than most. His piano playing is as good as his writing.”
Potts’ work gained him the attention of Herman, who hired him as pianist for several cross-country tours. Herman’s was one of the last classic big bands still on the road, at a time when it was hard to break even traveling with such a large outfit. Potts bonded with Bill Harris, a veteran of the Earl Swope-era trombone section in the Second Herd and one of jazz’s legendary practical jokers.
“We were playing the Cherry Hill Country Club in Philadelphia, and one of the waitresses took a liking to us and we got free martinis,” remembers Potts. “They gave us dinner afterward, and everybody got a steak. And Bill took a sugar bowl and started pouring it on my head, and he took a glass of water and poured that over the sugar, and it was running down my face. We made such a mess of that country club that Woody made a speech afterward: ‘Thanks to Bill Harris and Bill Potts, we’ve been told that we’re never invited back to Cherry Hill Country Club.’”
Herman was one of the most beloved big-band leaders, a generous and fun-loving guy adored by his men. But once Potts, spurred by more free rounds of martinis, pushed him too far. “We were in Texas, playing some bar, and Woody said to me, ‘Play like Count Basie.’ And I said, ‘I am Count Basie.’ And he said, ‘You’re also fired.’ There was an awful lot of drinking going on, including his. But I went back with him a couple more times. We hit just about every state there was.”
Back in Washington, Potts continued to find steady work on the club scene. He sometimes played the Merry-Land with his first wife, Marge Potts, who backed him up on a bongo Potts had made out of a pickle barrel. He even briefly revived a new version of THE Orchestra with Shirley Horn on piano; the band appeared at the Spotlite Room on Rhode Island Avenue NE.
Leading her own trio, Horn had been a regular intermission act at the Patio Lounge. She eventually joined Davis at her new digs at the Merry-Land, but things weren’t the same. By late 1957, Davis didn’t have the budget or the venue to book national acts on a regular basis anymore. To survive, she finally did what many club owners of the era did when they needed to get customers in the door: She went burlesque.
The downtown scene was changing, and Davis was simply changing with the market. Vibraphone player Lennie Cuje is one of many jazz musicians who worked at the burlesque clubs. “Anything to pay the bills,” he says. “If you’re a musician, you learn to play anything.”
By the late ’50s, says Cuje, the downtown jazz scene was in its death throes. “The scene here crumbled. The rock ‘n’ roll took out the jazz. The titty bars with those topless dancers took out the strippers, the girls like Natasha and Trudine the Quiver Queen. Those girls were real performers. They had a real show, with expensive clothes. But that was the end of the strip scene, too. By the early ’60s, I moved to New York. Most of the cats left town, went to New York or on the road, because the scene here was gone.”
In the spring of 1958, Potts and his girlfriend, Barbara Kleinkopf, went to hear Billy Eckstine at a club on U Street NW. A secretary for a downtown law firm, Kleinkopf was a jazz fan. She loved Eckstine’s singing and she loved Potts’ music, too; she was soon to become Potts’ second wife. After the show, they walked over to Potts’ 1952 MG TD, and he gave her the keys. “I had a little too much to drink, and I had a couple of half-pints in the glove compartment,” he recalls. “So I asked her to drive.”
They headed back across the river to Arlington, where Potts lived. Not far from his house off Wilson Boulevard, Kleinkopf lost control of the convertible. “She had never driven an MG, and she didn’t realize how little you had to turn the wheel to corner,” Potts says. “She went around a curve and spun off the road and crashed the right side of the car, and it threw me out. I slid under the car, and it parked right on my chest.”
Though in shock, Potts managed to roll the car off himself; Kleinkopf emerged from the wreck unscathed except for her broken glasses. “The funny bit was,” Potts says, “it made a helluva noise when we hit the concrete embankment and all of the dogs in the neighborhood were barking, but not a soul in any of the houses came out. It was 2 or 3 in the morning. As soon as I got out from under the car, I told her to get those half-pints and throw them into the woods.”
Then Potts realized he couldn’t walk. The X-rays at Arlington Hospital revealed a crushed vertebra. He had also temporarily lost use of his right leg, the one he’d used to push the MG over. For the next three months, he wore a body cast.
During his convalescence, Potts got a call from New York. Producer Jack Lewis was looking for an arranger for a new version of Porgy and Bess. George Gershwin’s folk opera was in the midst of a large-scale revival. A big-budget Hollywood film starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, and with a score by André Previn, was in the works, spurring a deluge of records, mostly interpretations by pop singers: Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr. and Carmen McRae, plus dozens of others.
Lewis wanted something different: a jazz treatment, fully orchestrated, performed by the best soloists in the business, a “completely musical version,” he later said. “Lyrically, the opera is so restricted. The songs have always been sung in the same way.” Potts’ fiery arrangements for Washington bands had impressed Lewis, and he knew he’d found the man for the job.
Thirty years old, with a broken back and newly grown beard, the body cast made shaving a chore, Potts embarked on the biggest project of his career. He had a pay advance, a copy of Gershwin’s score, and a stack of recordings of the opera that Lewis had gotten for him. “I wasn’t familiar with it at all,” Potts says. “So I really studied that score. I wore out the records. I listened and studied for six weeks before I wrote the first note.” Potts decided to follow the sequence of Gershwin’s story line. “I wrote from front to back,” he says, “because I wanted to preserve the feel of the opera.”
By the end of the year, Potts had finished his score. In January 1959, he was in New York, the reams of sheet music stuffed into a suitcase that Kleinkopf had bought him, to bring it to life. As chief jazz A&R man for United Artists, Lewis had a lot of pull, and he had assembled a 19-piece band that boasted some of the greatest jazzmen of the era. Some were Potts’ old buddies from Washington, such as Earl Swope and Markie Markowitz. Others were pals from the New York scene: Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and Phil Woods and Gene Quill, acclaimed sax players of the young generation. Then there were grizzled legends such as trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Harry “Sweets'' Edison, star soloist with Basie’s classic late-’30s band. The rhythm section was Charlie Persip on drums and George Duvivier on bass. On piano was Bill Evans, soon to make his name on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.
The sessions for The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess were held three consecutive mornings at Webster Hall, a studio renowned for its acoustics. In later years, when Potts worked as a jazz instructor at Montgomery College, he’d often exhort his students, “Swing, or I’ll kill you.” No such threats were necessary at the Porgy and Bess sessions: These musicians could swing in their sleep, and they were accomplished enough to tackle the complicated arrangements. “It was a crackerjack band,” says Potts. “They were all five-star sight-readers and five-star improvisers. Those charts are hard. They’re very difficult to read, let alone play. That’s why we did it at 9 in the morning, when they hadn’t already done three other sessions that day, when everybody’s chops were fresh.”
Despite the ungodly a.m. hour, the sessions had a festive atmosphere. Shavers and Edison were always cutting up, keeping things loose between takes. “They were very funny,” says Potts. “I remember that the first person to get there every morning was Charlie Shavers, with a quart of Cutty Sark. He was feeling no pain.” After the morning’s work, the musicians would celebrate at a nearby bar, Charlie’s Tavern or Junior’s. It was like those magical nights with Young at the Patio Lounge: Everything seemed to be clicking.
“By holding his sessions at 9 a.m., Lewis broke the myth that great jazz can only be blown late at night in darkened studios,” wrote Don Cerulli, editor of the Jazz Word.
One of Potts’ greatest skills as an arranger was his ability to bring out individual voices in the big-band setting. For Porgy and Bess, he wrote with certain soloists in mind. He found a spot for Earl Swope on “A Woman Is a Sometimes Thing,” and for Shavers and Woods on “Bess, You Is My Woman.”
On the arrangement for the plaintive “My Man’s Gone Now,” Potts gambled on trumpeter Markowitz, an alumnus of THE Orchestra. It was a plum assignment, and it caused some grumbling. “I wanted Markie to do it, because I knew what he could do with it,” says Potts. “And all these name musicians, they were wondering why I had given that part to him. When we finished, we had a good take, but I said, ‘One more time.’ And he played it just as beautiful as he did the first time. I was trying to prove a point to the musicians in the band who had a much bigger name than Markie did. They all fell in love with him. He moved to New York after that and got very busy in the studios.”
Evans was another given the chance to shine. He lived in New Jersey, had no car and didn’t drive anyhow, and had no idea how to get to Webster Hall, which was on East 11th Street. “Jack Lewis had to go across the George Washington Bridge and pick him up and bring him over,” Potts recalls. “And he was absolutely amazing.” On the ballad “I Loves You Porgy,” Potts spotlighted Evans, and it is one of the most moving moments on the record. Later, on his 1961 classic Live at the Village Vanguard, Evans re-created this shimmering passage in homage to Potts’ arrangement.
From the opening romp Potts made of “Summertime,” it was gangbusters all the way. In fact, the band just barely beat the clock. “We got to the last tune, ‘Oh Lawd, I’m on My Way,’” says Potts. “This is a very, very hard chart, and it features solos for everybody in the band except the pianist. And we had seven minutes until we went into overtime. The president of United Artists is there, and he says, ‘No overtime we’re already over budget.’ So we did that in one take and finished right before the second hand hit.”
In the fall of 1958, with Potts still recovering and immersed in the work on his Porgy score, he was visited in Washington by Previn, who recounted their meetings in the liner notes. “[I]t was Bill’s habit to begin these musical discussions with me while seated in his small open sports car [Potts’ MG, which he had had rebuilt] and considering that I, as a Californian, have grown more and more thin-blooded, I can think of no better compliment to Bill’s ideas and opinions than to say that I hardly noticed the cold….Bill Potts is an originator in the truest and best sense of that word. It is impossible to hear more than eight bars of any of his arrangements without recognizing the man behind the pencil….The personnel of the orchestra conducted by Bill Potts is indeed a gleaming one…and the band plays with an esprit and a precision hardly ever encountered in a ‘one-time-together’ studio ensemble.”
When the recordings were released the next year, reviewers agreed with Previn’s preliminary assessment. The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess was hailed as an instant classic, in the same league as the 1958 masterpiece by Gil Evans and Miles Davis. Down Beat gave the record its highest rating, five stars: “An immediate and obvious comparison will arise between this album and Miles Davis’ Porgy album. It should be dismissed. All they have in common is that they are the two outstanding instrumental Porgy performances in the rash of recent releases of discs inspired by the movie….Their purposes are different and so are their final effects. This LP…is actually truer to the spirit of the Gershwin music than the Miles-Gil album was or was meant to be. And it establishes Washingtonian Bill Potts as a major arranger….This is a beautiful, beautiful album.”
The decades since have only reinforced the early acclaim. The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess has been reissued twice and has achieved cult status, especially among musicians. In 2000, Dr. John gave a testimonial in a column for the British music magazine MOJO: “This was the first real concept album I’d heard, a bunch of guys playing these songs, staying true to them but making a picture of it….This was a sound you could get into when you were loaded. It was a big band record but it didn’t have a real big band sound. It was real warm, a personal kind of record that didn’t sound like any other record at the time….A record like this meant a lot to us because it was a guy who’d slipped it through the record company bullshit.”
In last year’s Stardust Melodies: The Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs, Will Friedwald wrote, “There have been other occasions when Gershwin’s lullaby has been reborn as an up-tempo…but the Potts version, with solos by Sweets Edison and the two-tenor team of Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, is a rare instance in which ‘Summertime’ can be said to kick butt.”
It’s a fitting remark, especially given that it was Edison who played alongside Young in the same Count Basie band that had first cast a spell on the teenage Potts. Using what he’d learned from his idols, Potts had taken one of the most familiar tunes in the American songbook that languid lullaby everybody has hummed at one time or another and found a way to make it swing. And swing hard.
Potts says he later realized that Young would have made the perfect foil for the sax section at the Porgy and Bess sessions. At the time, Young was living nearby at the Alvin Hotel, drinking heavily and seeing few visitors. “I was living at 52nd and Broadway, just a few doors down, but I didn’t know he was there,” says Potts. “I’m still kicking myself in the ass because I didn’t think of trying to get him to play for us.”
In the early spring of 1959, not long before The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess was released, Young died in his room at the Alvin. He had suffered an esophageal hemorrhage, the result of chronic alcohol abuse. “I read in the paper that he had died,” recalls Potts. “It was a very sad story. They were fighting about where the body was going to go. It just made me remember what a sweet man he was.”
|
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correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
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3
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https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Count-Basie/317082
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en
|
Count Basie
|
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(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the…
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en
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Britannica Kids
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https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Count-Basie/317082
|
(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the simplicity of his arrangements and secured his place in history with such classic numbers as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Basie Boogie.”
William Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. He studied music with his mother and was later influenced by the Harlem pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, receiving informal training on the organ from Waller. He began his professional career as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit. Basie eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and 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 short-wave radio station in Kansas City, the announcer dubbed him “Count” Basie to compete with such other bandleaders as Duke Ellington. The jazz critic John Hammond heard the broadcasts in New York, New York, and promptly launched the band on its career in Chicago, Illinois. Although rooted in the riff style of the 1930s swing-era bands, the Basie band included soloists who reflected the styles of their own periods. In this way the band was a springboard for such artists as tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and trumpeter-composer Thad Jones. Many musicians considered Basie’s to be the major big band in jazz history, a model for ensemble rhythmic conception and tonal balance.
During the late 1930s the accompanying unit for the band (pianist Basie, rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones) was unique in its lightness, precision, and relaxation, becoming the precursor for modern jazz accompanying styles. Basie’s syncopated and spare but exquisitely timed chording, commonly termed comping, became the model for what was expected from combo pianists in their improvised accompaniments for the next 30 years of jazz. Despite its influence on modern piano styles, Basie’s solo technique had roots in the pre-swing-era style of Fats Waller, and Basie continued to display such a “stride style” in performances through the 1970s.
Basie’s autobiography, Good Morning Blues, written with Albert Murray, was published in 1985, one year after his death. Count Basie died on April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Florida, leaving a grand legacy of song that would continue to influence jazz musicians for generations to come.
|
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FactBench
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https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-18810311
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en
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Nat King Cole's widow, Maria, dies at 89
|
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2012-07-12T10:02:44+00:00
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Maria Cole, widow of Nat King Cole and mother to singer Natalie Cole dies in Florida aged 89.
|
en
|
BBC News
|
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-18810311
|
Maria Cole, widow of Nat King Cole and mother to singer Natalie Cole, has died in Florida aged 89.
A family spokesperson said she died at a Boca Raton hospice after suffering from cancer.
Before and after marrying Nat in 1948, Maria Cole had her own singing career, performing with greats such as Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
After her husband died in 1965, also from cancer, she created the Cole Cancer Foundation.
Born in Boston in 1922, Maria moved to North Carolina as child after her mother died. She later moved to New York to pursue a music career.
Duke Ellington heard recordings of her singing and hired her as a vocalist with his orchestra.
She stayed with him until 1946 when she went solo at the city's Club Zanzibar as an opening act for the Mills Brothers.
It was there she met her future husband, and she continued to travel and perform with Nat throughout the 1950s.
Her children, Natalie, Timolin and Casey Cole, said in a joint statement: "Our mum was in a class all by herself.
"She epitomised class, elegance, and truly defined what it is to be a real lady. She died how she lived - with great strength, courage and dignity, surrounded by her loving family."
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
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Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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2009-09-03T11:52:24+00:00
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https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
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William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. He was one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time. He led his popular Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years. Many important musicians came to became popular and successful with his help, like tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's famous songs were "One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris".
William James Basie was born in 1904 in New Jersey. His parents were Harvey Lee Basie and Lillian Ann Childs, who lived on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, New Jersey.[1] His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a rich judge. After automobiles (cars) became more popular than using horses to get around, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for some families in the area.[2] His mother was a piano player and she gave Basie his first piano lessons. To earn money, she took in laundry to wash and baked cakes for sale.[3]
Basie was not very interested in school. He dreamed of a traveling, inspired by the carnivals which came to town. He only got as far as junior high school.[4] He helped out at the Palace theater in Red Bank, to get into the shows for free. He also learned to use the spotlights for the vaudeville shows. One day, when the pianist did not arrive in time for the show, Basie played instead. He soon learned to improvise music for silent movies.[5]
Basie was very good at the piano, but he liked drums better. There was another drummer in Red Bank who was better, called Sonny Greer, so Basie stopped playing drums and just played piano.[3] They played together until Greer started his professional career. Basie played with different groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, like Harry Richardson’s "Kings of Syncopation".[6] When he was not playing a gig, he spent time at the local pool hall with other musicians. He got some jobs in Asbury Park, playing at the Hong Kong Inn, until a better player took his place.[7]
Around 1924, Basie went to Harlem, New York City. A lot of jazz was being played there. He liced down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Soon after he went to Harlem, he met Sonny Greer again, who was now the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band.[8] Soon, Basie met many Harlem musicians, like Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in some acts between 1925 and 1927, as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers Katie Krippen and Gonzelle White.[9][10] He went to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. He met many great jazz musicians, like Louis Armstrong.[11]
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie got his first regular job at Leroy’s, a place known for its piano players, where lots of celebrities went. The band usually played without sheet music.[12] He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater, accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play the organ.[13] Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out when there was not much work, arranging gigs at house-rent parties, where he met other important musicians.[14]
In 1928 Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which had Jimmy Rushing singing.[15] A few months later, Basie was asked to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. He began to be known as "Count" Basie.[16]
In 1929, Basie started playing with the Bennie Moten band, Kansas City.[17] The Moten band was classier and more respected than the Blue Devils. They played in a style called the Kansas City stomp.[18] As well as playing piano, Basie also arranged music with Eddie Durham.[19] When they were staying in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He sometimes played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten.[20] The band got better when they added a saxophone player called Ben Webster.
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.facebook.com/countbasiejazz/
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Facebook
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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https://www.steinway.com/music-and-artists/featured/steinway-artist-mike-longo
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en
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Steinway Artist
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Mike Longo (1937–2020) was the consummate jazz man — a pianist, composer, and educator whose career spanned almost seven decades.
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https://www.steinway.com/music-and-artists/featured/steinway-artist-mike-longo
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Mike Longo (1937–2020) was the consummate jazz man — a pianist, composer, and educator whose career spanned almost seven decades. He is best known for his long association with Dizzy Gillespie, the legendary bebop trumpeter, who appointed Longo to be the bandleader of the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet from 1966 through 1975, and later as the pianist in the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band. This musical relationship forever shaped Longo’s approach to jazz and life. In an interview with Jazzbeat, he credited Gillespie being a “messenger” who uncovered an organic change in music.
Longo had a fertile solo career, as the leader of a trio, a funky sextet, and the 18-piece New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble. He was a subtle player, grounded in deep harmonic knowledge, and a solid rhythmic sense that meant he could swing hard. In more recent years, Longo gained a reputation as a great jazz piano teacher in New York City, imparting the wisdom of his years on the bandstand with Dizzy and other greats.
Born in 1937 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Mike Longo showed early promise as a pianist. His father was a businessman who also played the bass, and his mother played piano and organ in the church. He was first smitten with the jazz bug (around the age of four) after seeing a show in downtown Cincinnati starring the Count Basie band, which also featured a child prodigy jazz pianist called Sugar Chile Robinson who played boogie-woogie piano. When Longo played what he heard on the piano at home, his parents recognized his talent and got him a teacher. After the family moved to Fort Lauderdale in Florida, Longo had a fortuitous encounter with the not-yet-famous Cannonball Adderley, the jazz alto saxophonist who at the time was the band director at the black high school. At the age of 15, he played behind Adderley in a jam session and was stunned by beauty of the playing. It was the first of many formative experiences that shaped Longo’s belief that jazz music is best learned through apprenticeship, what he called “osmosis on the bandstand.”
Although Longo studied classical music formally — he graduated from Western Kentucky University in 1959 with a B.A. in music — it was his associations with jazz musicians that would continue to shape him. He refined his chops on the road with a small combo, the Salt City Six, and then in New York. Significantly, in 1961, he spent six months at Oscar Peterson’s Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto. In a 2006 interview with the website All About Jazz, Longo recalled it as the most intense period of his musical life where he learned “how to be a jazz pianist — textures, voicings, touch, time conception, tone on the instrument.”
Soon after, he started gigging in New York City, first at the Metropole, where he first encountered Dizzy Gillespie. It didn’t take long for Gillespie to recognize his talent and he quickly hired him. Over the years, Longo flexed his musical muscles not only as pianist, but arranger and composer, including an orchestral work in 1980 called A World of Gillespie, a composition that was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with Gillespie as soloist.
Longo kept the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie’s legacy alive as the leader of his New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble. The band released several critically-acclaimed studio albums that showcased his talents as arranger and pianist. Remarkably the band kept performing in New York City, with its last performance on March 10, just twelve days before Longo’s death on March 22 from complications caused by COVID-19. An important part of Longo’s legacy was his pedagogical belief that younger musicians learn the secret of the art from the veterans. His ensemble reflected this belief, employing musicians of all different jazz backgrounds, ranging in age from 20 to 70. In an interview with All About Jazz, Longo summed up his life lesson for aspiring musicians: “Swing hard and get to the people.”
—Damian Fowler
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FactBench
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https://www.allmusic.com/artist/count-basie-mn0000127044
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Music Search, Recommendations, Videos and Reviews
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AllMusic provides comprehensive music info including reviews and biographies. Get recommendations for new music to listen to, stream or own.
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AllMusic
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https://www.allmusic.com/updated
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FactBench
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https://apnews.com/article/today-in-history-april-26-bc227c356c62f0f5f4b43697dde438a4
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Today in History: April 26, Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster
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2022-04-26T04:00:10
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On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
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AP News
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https://apnews.com/article/today-in-history-april-26-bc227c356c62f0f5f4b43697dde438a4
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Today in History:
On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
On this date:
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an anti-Semitic mob in 1915.)
In 1933, Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, was created.
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1984, bandleader Count Basie, 79, died in Hollywood, Florida.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2009, the United States declared a public health emergency as more possible cases of swine flu surfaced from Canada to New Zealand; officials in Mexico City closed everything from concerts to sports matches to churches in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)
In 2013, singer George Jones, believed by many to be the greatest country crooner of all time, died in Nashville at age 81.
In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jazz-trumpeter-bandleader-pauly-cohen-98-diesmy-fredric-j-cohen-md
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Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies...MY BROTHER
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https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/6dwv6w0gvj6q3ye8o19b99or2
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2021-02-17T01:43:21+00:00
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2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/12 OBITUARIES Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies By BEN CRANDELL SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL | FEB 09, 2021 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - Sou
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https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jazz-trumpeter-bandleader-pauly-cohen-98-diesmy-fredric-j-cohen-md
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2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/12 OBITUARIES Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies By BEN CRANDELL SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL | FEB 09, 2021 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 2/12 Pauly Cohen arrives to lead his big band in a rehearsal at the Northwest Focal Point Senior Center in Margate in 2013. Cohen died on Monday, Feb. 8, at 98. (Amy Beth Bennett, Sun Sentinel) Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen — a diminutive “force of nature” who shared the stage and offstage friendships with the likes of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Jackie Gleason, Quincy Jones, Ava Gardner and Judy Garland — died at his home in Tamarac Monday night. Cohen was 98. Paul Cohen and I, Fredric J. Cohen, MD were born in the same house, he on October 3, 2022 and I December 10, 1942 . We shared the same father, WWI distinguished dough boy Master Sergeant Louis Cohen who lost several fingers from artillery barrages and was awarded the Purple Heart. He was hiding under a truck during this barrage and the oil pan was leaking into his eyes. He used his combat knife to stop the leak.The next day he was cited by the Scranton, PA Company D Captain for a Bronze Star for "repairing a truck under shell fire, above and beyond the call of duty" what a stretch. At age 8 Paul picked up the trumpet, I at age 4...our first teacher was our dad who was the company bugler as well as a Sharpshooter sniper. Paul Graduated Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway Brooklyn in 1940. 3/12 Advertisement I graduated from the University of Louisville School of I had no idea that in 1970, after Medicine , on a trumpet and academic scholarship ,that as an intern rotating through Coney Island Hospital on Ocean Parkway, I was the third baseman in a softball game House staff vs. the Attending Staff. Well I had my greatest day in sports hitting two home runs over the hand ball courts, about 290 feet and made some lucky plays in the field. I drove in 9 runs and dedicated my MVP trophy to my Brother Paul. I never met Paul's mother because it was impossible! She died in 1941 and since the house was in two names, Dad had to have the deed changed. His lawyer was in the Empire State Building and the four lawyers shared one Legal Secretary, today called a paralegal. He dated this woman, Clara Ida Venetek and on the occasion of Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, he proposed to this 26 year old became his fiancee. He was 52 years old, like a deck of cards, 26 and 52. They were married February 1, 1942 at the Twin Cantor's Synagogue on Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, now a Crown Heights Church. Therefore we were brothers with the same father and a different mother, Paul was upset about this marraige due to the short mourning period and the young age of my mother. I bear no guilt because we can not choose our parents but dad tried to mend this estrangement between Paul and took me and my younger sister Francine Bauer (nee Cohen) as we attended dozens of Broadway Musicals where Paul was playing in the pit. He always took all four of us to Dinner at Sardi's We took a long time to bury the hatchet and eventually I got his hand me down trumpets and my dad got his old suits. Our dad was extremely proud of Paul's Musical pedigree as he matriculated at the Julliard School for the performing arts, then in Harlem and not at the present Lincoln Center locale. Paul joined the Count Basie band as the lead trumpet and arranged music for Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for many years. I believe the Harlem milieu gave Paul the skills to fraternize with his African American colleagues. Time to toot my own horn. In Brooklyn Technical High School I played first trumpet in the dance band, orchestra and sports marching bands. I did not have Paul's chops, nobody did his range was an octave above high C but I was still a "squeaker". Pauly Cohen with his swing band performing at the Margate Center in 1990. My wife Anna and his wife Paula Cohen and our children Lori, Carson and Mikey attended. I was practicing plastic surgery in Palm Beach at the time. When we asked Paula how they met she said, "My father was his agent, so instead of paying 10% he paid 50%" Paul tapped the lectern with his conductor baton and strolled over to a saxophonist, he said""I just wanted to make sure that we are playing the same music". A while later He returned ans asked in a sarcastic tone, "Is there any reqason you felt like getting up today and getting dressed and coming here For my music scholarship in medical school, I was required to perform in the Louisville Philharmonic, and I wore brown pants as I was third trumpet and still sucked. The Pep band traveled with the top ranked mens basketball team and one occasion we had a game vs. Syracuse at the Madison Square Garden in 1968. Dad was front row center and heard every note I played, he has that ear. Dating, cars and other personal items were earned by moonlighting. Above is my 'Chicago" style band doing a gig at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville on Broadway..still there. 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 8/12 “He felt a great responsibility in making sure he fit into the band, to carry on the spirit of that music,” Dr. Michael Petrie, a Chiropractor and friend recanted to me“There was such a history with the Basie band. You have to be aware of the history of that music.” I told Mike that when I was five years old I was placed in the Pride of Judea Children's Home that summered in Long Beach NY. There was a Cap Callaway benefit that I jumped up to the stage and told Cap that I was Pauly Cohen's Brother. He recognized the resemblance and I sat on the piano chair with him and had a snack with the band afterwards. In the midst of a USTA tennis tournament at Roosevelt Island in 1986, paul called me to get a urologist referral, itol him that, " he was not at my brith but I sure will be there for your prostatectomy". I can still hear him cracking up on the phone Cohen was not a jazz trumpet soloist on the order of Gillespie, Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, but his skills in setting the tone for the musicality of a band as a lead trumpet player was widely respected. “As the lead trumpet player, he was playing the really hard, high parts all night, every night. [In that role] he was very exposed. You couldn’t hide his mistakes,” said Mike Ragan, himself a friend and trumpet player. “Within the pantheon of trumpet players who know that, pretty much everyone knows Pauly.” Cohen’s storytelling prowess was a result of having so many stories to tell from a life embedded in a unique corner of mid-20th century pop culture. Memories came easily, rich in detail and a generous spirit. This photographic memory and 170+ IQ put all the males in our family in the one in seven million range...really nuts too. We were known as raconteurs, story tellers and perhaps BS artists as well. Despite my office hours Thursday February 18th and the snow, I will be at his internment at Sharon Gardens Cemetery 273 Lakeview Avenue Valhalla NY 10595. I will wear a kippa, say some words to celebrate his life and tearfully play taps on HIS TRUMPET He witnessed Billie Holiday walk onstage at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street in the ’60s with schoolboy awe: “She wouldn’t move a muscle until the audience kept quiet. No clinking of glasses. You could hear a pin drop. She waited for the pin to drop. Then she started with ‘Strange Fruit,’ and the place went [gasp] … She could command you.” When Artie Shaw was his boss, Shaw’s girlfriend, Ava Gardner “was so beautiful…She was a woman who could make a man feel more like a man. That’s a talent. And she had it like nobody had it.” Cohen had an eight-week run with Sinatra in the mid-’60s at the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach, and recalled late-night basement chats: “I respected him tremendously. Always giving the credit to the musicians and arrangers. That was my kind of man.” 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 9/12 He recalled leaping from the orchestra for an impromptu jitterbug with Judy Garland at the old Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood in 1966: “Every tune she did had a special meaning to her, that she wanted to give to the people. They did a lot of bad things to her out in Hollywood [Calif.] … I felt sorry for her. She was a great person.” When he turned 90, Cohen’s music and stories were captured by filmmaker Bret Primack in a documentary, “Taking Charge,” that would be shown the next year at the 2013 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The screening was part of a birthday celebration for Cohen that included a video message for “my brother Pauly” from Quincy Jones. “As Sinatra used to tell us every night, live every day like it’s your last and one day you’ll be right,” Jones said, with a small smile. “Happy birthday my brother. I’m gonna be right behind you. I love you.” The FLIFF screening included a performance by the Pauly Cohen Big Band before a packed house of 300 people at the Sunrise Civic Center Theater. Cohen introduced the concert with uncommon brevity: “I’m Pauly Cohen. I’m lucky to be here. Let’s play some music!” Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at [email protected].
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Count_Basie
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Count Basie facts for kids
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Learn Count Basie facts for kids
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Count_Basie
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William James "Count" Basie ( August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.
Biography
Early life and education
William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.
The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation". When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.
Early career
Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band. Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements". He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City). As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.
In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals. A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).
Kansas City years
The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson. Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style. In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music. Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for, was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform. During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted. The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band. A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with Earl Hines, as well as Duke Ellington.
Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump". According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.
John Hammond and first recordings
At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the Grand Terrace Ballroom. Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of Herschel Evans' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the alto players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.
In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with". Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out. He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on Vocalion Records under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44). When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.
By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone). Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".
Basie favored blues, and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, and Joe Williams. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
New York City and the swing years
When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement). Soon, they were booked at the Roseland Ballroom for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing". Compared to the reigning band of Fletcher Henderson, Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.
The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up. His first official recordings for Decca followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "Pennies from Heaven" and "Honeysuckle Rose".
Hammond introduced Basie to Billie Holiday, whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos). The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and Jimmy Rushing getting the most attention. Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.
Next, Basie played at the Savoy, which was noted more for lindy-hopping, while the Roseland was a place for fox-trots and congas. In early 1938, the Savoy was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with Chick Webb's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer Ella Fitzgerald. As Metronome magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:
Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.
The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, Benny Goodman recorded their signature "One O'Clock Jump" with his band.
A few months later, Holiday left for Artie Shaw's band. Hammond introduced Helen Humes, whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years. When Eddie Durham left for Glenn Miller's orchestra, he was replaced by Dicky Wells. Basie's 14-man band began playing at the Famous Door, a mid-town nightspot with a CBS network feed and air conditioning, which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap. Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from Jimmy Mundy (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and Earl Hines), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief". In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first West Coast dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the William Morris Agency, who got them better fees.
On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at Southland in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20. On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a "Command Performance" for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore. Other minor movie spots followed, including Choo Choo Swing, Crazy House, Top Man, Stage Door Canteen, and Hit Parade of 1943. They also continued to record for OKeh Records and Columbia Records. The war years caused a lot of members turn over, and the band worked many play dates with lower pay. Dance hall bookings were down sharply as swing began to fade, the effects of the musicians' strikes of 1942–44 and 1948 began to be felt, and the public's taste grew for singers.
Basie occasionally lost some key soloists. However, throughout the 1940s, he maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists.
Los Angeles and the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts
Count Basie was the featured artist at the first Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field on September 23, 1945, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. Al Jarvis was the Emcee and other artists to appear on stage were Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, Valaida Snow, and Big Joe Turner. They played to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie and his Orchestra played at the tenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field on June 20, 1954. He played along with The Flairs, Christine Kittrell, Lamp Lighters, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Ruth Brown, and Perez Prado and his Orchestra.
Post-war and later years
The big band era appeared to have ended after the war, and Basie disbanded the group. For a while, he performed in combos, sometimes stretched to an orchestra. In 1950, he headlined the Universal-International short film "Sugar Chile" Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet. He reformed his group as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. This group was eventually called the New Testament band. Basie credited Billy Eckstine, a top male vocalist of the time, for prompting his return to Big Band. He said that Norman Granz got them into the Birdland club and promoted the new band through recordings on the Mercury, Clef, and Verve labels. The jukebox era had begun, and Basie shared the exposure along with early rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues artists. Basie's new band was more of an ensemble group, with fewer solo turns, and relying less on "head" and more on written arrangements.
Basie added touches of bebop "so long as it made sense", and he required that "it all had to have feeling". Basie's band was sharing Birdland with such bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Behind the occasional bebop solos, he always kept his strict rhythmic pulse, "so it doesn't matter what they do up front; the audience gets the beat". Basie also added flute to some numbers, a novelty at the time that became widely copied. Soon, his band was touring and recording again. The new band included: Paul Campbell, Tommy Turrentine, Johnny Letman, Idrees Sulieman, and Joe Newman (trumpet); Jimmy Wilkins, Benny Powell, Matthew Gee (trombone); Paul Quinichette and Floyd "Candy" Johnson (tenor sax); Marshal Royal and Ernie Wilkins (alto sax); and Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax). DownBeat magazine reported: "(Basie) has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this." In 1957, Basie sued the jazz venue Ball and Chain in Miami over outstanding fees, causing the closure of the venue.
In 1958, the band made its first European tour. Jazz was especially appreciated in France, The Netherlands, and Germany in the 1950s; these countries were the stomping grounds for many expatriate American jazz stars who were either resurrecting their careers or sitting out the years of racial divide in the United States. Neal Hefti began to provide arrangements, including "Lil Darlin'". By the mid-1950s, Basie's band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for some of the most prominent jazz vocalists of the time. They also toured with the "Birdland Stars of 1955", whose lineup included Sarah Vaughan, Erroll Garner, Lester Young, George Shearing, and Stan Getz.
In 1957, Basie the live album Count Basie at Newport. "April in Paris" (arrangement by Wild Bill Davis) was a best-selling instrumental and the title song for the hit album. The Basie band made two tours in the British Isles and on the second, they put on a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, along with Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, and Mario Lanza. He was a guest on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue also opened to several other black entertainers. In 1959, Basie's band recorded a "greatest hits" double album The Count Basie Story (Frank Foster, arranger), and Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, an album featuring Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones (as arranger) and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records, then later reissued by Capitol Records.
Later that year, Basie appeared on a television special with Fred Astaire, featuring a dance solo to "Sweet Georgia Brown", followed in January 1961 by Basie performing 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 providing four numbers from their play books.
During the balance of the 1960s, the band kept active with tours, recordings, television appearances, festivals, Las Vegas shows, and travel abroad, including cruises. Some time around 1964, Basie adopted his trademark yachting cap.
Through steady changes in personnel, Basie led the band into the 1980s. Basie made a few more movie appearances, such as in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella (1960) and the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles (1974), playing a revised arrangement of "April in Paris".
Marriage, family and death
Basie was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. On July 21, 1930, Basie married Vivian Lee Winn, in Kansas City, Missouri. They were divorced sometime before 1935. Some time in or before 1935, the now single Basie returned to New York City, renting a house at 111 West 138th Street, Manhattan, as evidenced by the 1940 census. He married Catherine Morgan on July 13, 1940, in the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington. In 1942, they moved to Queens. Their only child, Diane, was born February 6, 1944. She was born with cerebral palsy and the doctors claimed she would never walk. The couple kept her and cared deeply for her, and especially through her mother's tutelage, Diane learned not only to walk but to swim. The Basies bought a home in the new whites-only neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946 on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans, Queens.
On April 11, 1983, Catherine Basie died of heart disease at the couple's home in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. She was 67 years old.
Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.
Singers
Basie hitched his star to some of the most famous vocalists of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped keep the Big Band sound alive and added greatly to his recording catalog. Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie in the late 1930s. Joe Williams toured with the band and was featured on the 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, with "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" becoming a huge hit. With Billy Eckstine on the album Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald made some memorable recordings with Basie, including the 1963 album Ella and Basie!. With the New Testament Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from her Songbook recordings and constant touring she did during this period. She even toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and Basie also met on the 1979 albums A Classy Pair, Digital III at Montreux, and A Perfect Match, the last two also recorded live at Montreux. In addition to Quincy Jones, Basie was using arrangers such as Benny Carter (Kansas City Suite), Neal Hefti (The Atomic Mr Basie), and Sammy Nestico (Basie-Straight Ahead).
Frank Sinatra recorded for the first time with Basie on 1962's Sinatra-Basie and for a second studio album on 1964's It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. Jones also arranged and conducted 1966's live Sinatra at the Sands which featured Sinatra with Count Basie and his orchestra at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. In May 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Sinatra later said of this concert "I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting".
Basie also recorded with Tony Bennett in the late 1950s. Their albums together included In Person and Strike Up the Band. Basie also toured with Bennett, including a date at Carnegie Hall. He also recorded with Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah Vaughan. One of Basie's biggest regrets was never recording with Louis Armstrong, though they shared the same bill several times. In 1968, Basie and his Band recorded an album with Jackie Wilson titled Manufacturers of Soul.
Legacy and honors
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalog. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, dryly witty, and always enthusiastic about his music. In his autobiography, he wrote, "I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter."
In Red Bank, New Jersey, the Count Basie Theatre, a property on Monmouth Street redeveloped for live performances, and Count Basie Field were named in his honor.
Received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 1974.
Mechanic Street, where he grew up with his family, has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
In 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmark where Count Basie had also lived.
In 2010, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In October 2013, version 3.7 of WordPress was code-named Count Basie.
In 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Asteroid 35394 Countbasie, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1997, was named after him. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).
6508 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, California is the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Representation in other media
Jerry Lewis used "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy.
"Blues in Hoss' Flat," composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was used by the radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins as his theme song in San Francisco and New York.
In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard Basie in Carnegie Hall.
Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
Since 1963 "The Kid From Red Bank" has been the theme and signature music for the most popular Norwegian radio show, Reiseradioen, aired at NRK P1 every day during the summer.
In the 2016 movie The Matchbreaker, Emily Atkins (Christina Grimmie) recounts the story of how Count Basie met his wife three times without speaking to her, telling her he would marry her some day in their first conversation, and then marrying her seven years later.
The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance have a song titled "Count Bassy" that is included on their 2018 album Artificial Selection.
In his novel This Storm, James Ellroy makes Basie a character who is blackmailed by corrupt Los Angeles police.
In 2021’s “Elvis,” a Count Basie poster is seen about 20 minutes into the movie.
Discography
Count Basie made most of his albums with his big band. See the Count Basie Orchestra Discography.
From 1929 to 1932, Basie was part of Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra:
Count Basie in Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930-1932 (RCA Victor, 1965)
Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932) (Bluebird/RCA, 1989)
The Swinging Count!, (Clef, 1952)
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1958)
The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette, 1958)
Memories Ad-Lib with Joe Williams (Roulette, 1958)
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated with Billy Eckstine ( Roulette 1959)
String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Impulse!, 1962)
Basie Swingin' Voices Singin' with the Alan Copeland Singers (ABC-Paramount, 1966)
Basie Meets Bond (United Artists, 1966)
Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve, 1966)
Basie on the Beatles (Verve, 1969)
Loose Walk with Roy Eldridge (Pablo, 1972)
Basie Jam (Pablo, 1973)
The Bosses with Big Joe Turner (1973)
For the First Time (Pablo, 1974)
Satch and Josh with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1974)
Basie & Zoot with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1975)
Count Basie Jam Session at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo, 1975)
For the Second Time (Pablo, 1975)
Basie Jam 2 (Pablo, 1976)
Basie Jam 3 (Pablo, 1976)
Kansas City 5 (Pablo, 1977)
The Gifted Ones with Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo, 1977)
Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Satch and Josh...Again with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1977)
Night Rider with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Count Basie Meets Oscar Peterson – The Timekeepers (Pablo, 1978)
Yessir, That's My Baby with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Kansas City 8: Get Together (Pablo, 1979)
Kansas City 7 (Pablo, 1980)
On the Road (Pablo, 1980)
Kansas City 6 (Pablo, 1981)
Mostly Blues...and Some Others (Pablo, 1983)
88 Basie Street (Pablo, 1983)
As sideman
With Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1957)
With Harry Edison
Edison's Lights (Pablo, 1976)
With Benny Goodman
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, 1939)
Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1939)
With Jo Jones
Jo Jones Special (Vanguard, 1955)
With Joe Newman
Joe Newman and the Boys in the Band (Storyville, 1954)
With Paul Quinichette
The Vice Pres (Verve, 1952)
With Lester Young
The Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy, 1944)
Filmography
Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) – as himself
Top Man (1943) – as himself
Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet (1950) – as himself
Jamboree (1957)
Cinderfella (1960) – as himself
*** and the Single Girl (1964) – as himself with his orchestra
Blazing Saddles (1974) – as himself with his orchestra
Last of the Blue Devils (1979) – interview and concert by the orchestra in documentary on Kansas City music
Awards
Grammy Awards
In 1958, Basie became the first African-American to win a Grammy Award.
Count Basie Grammy Award history Year Category Title Genre Results 1984 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band 88 Basie Street Jazz Winner 1982 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band Warm Breeze Jazz Winner 1980 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band On The Road Jazz Winner 1977 Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band Prime Time Jazz Winner 1976 Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist (Instrumental) Basie And Zoot Jazz Winner 1963 Best Performance by an Orchestra – For Dancing This Time By Basie! Hits of the 50's And 60's Pop Winner 1960 Best Performance by a Band For Dancing Dance With Basie Pop Winner 1958 Best Performance by a Dance Band Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Pop Winner 1958 Best Jazz Performance, Group Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Jazz Winner
Grammy Hall of Fame
By 2011, four recordings of Count Basie had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
Count Basie Grammy Hall of Fame Awards Year recorded Title genre Label Year inducted 1939 Lester Leaps In Jazz (Single) Vocalion 2005 1955 Everyday (I Have the Blues) Jazz (Single) Clef 1992 1955 April in Paris Jazz (Single) Clef 1985 1937 One O'Clock Jump Jazz (Single) Decca 1979
Honors and inductions
On May 23, 1985, William "Count" Basie was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by Aaron Woodward.
On September 11, 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp. Basie is a part of the Big Band Leaders issue, which, is in turn, part of the Legends of American Music series.
In 2009, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In May 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Memphis, TN, presented by The Blues Foundation.
Count Basie award history Year Category Result Notes 2019 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted 2007 Long Island Music Hall of Fame Inducted 2005 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted 2002 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 1983 NEA Jazz Masters Winner 1981 Grammy Trustees Award Winner 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Honoree 1982 Hollywood Walk of Fame Honoree at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. 1970 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Initiated Mu Nu Chapter 1958 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted
National Recording Registry
In 2005, Count Basie's song "One O'Clock Jump" (1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
See also
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Pianist, jazz great Oscar Peterson dies at 82
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2007-12-25T04:30:23+00:00
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TORONTO (AP) _ Oscar Peterson, whose speedy fingers, propulsive swing and melodic inventiveness made him one of the world's best known and influential jazz pianists, has died. He was 82.Peterson died at his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga on Sunday, said Oliver Jones, a family friend and jazz musician. He said Peterson's wife and daughter were with him during his final moments.
|
https://www.statesboroherald.com/local/associated-press/pianist-jazz-great-oscar-peterson-dies-at-82/
|
TORONTO (AP) _ Oscar Peterson, whose speedy fingers, propulsive swing and melodic inventiveness made him one of the world's best known and influential jazz pianists, has died. He was 82.
Peterson died at his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga on Sunday, said Oliver Jones, a family friend and jazz musician. He said Peterson's wife and daughter were with him during his final moments. The cause of death was kidney failure, said Mississauga's mayor, Hazel McCallion.
"He's been going downhill in the last few months," McCallion said, calling Peterson a "very close friend."
During an illustrious career spanning seven decades, Peterson played with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He is also remembered for the trio he led with Ray Brown on bass and Herb Ellis on guitar in the 1950s.
Peterson's impressive collection of awards include all of Canada's highest honors, such as the Order of Canada, as well as seven Grammys and a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1997.
"I've always thought of him as Canada's national treasure. All of Canada mourns for him and his family," said Jones.
"A jazz player is an instant composer," Peterson once said in a CBC interview. "You have to think about it, it's an intellectual form."
Peterson's stature was reflected in the admiration of his peers. Duke Ellington referred to him as the "Maharajah of the keyboard," while Count Basie once said "Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I've ever heard."
Peterson's keyboard virtuosity, propulsive sense of swing, and melodic inventiveness influenced generations of jazz pianists who followed him.
Herbie Hancock, another legendary jazz pianist, said Peterson's impact was profound.
"Oscar Peterson redefined swing for modern jazz pianists for the latter half of the 20th century up until today," Hancock said in an e-mail message. "I consider him the major influence that formed my roots in jazz piano playing. He mastered the balance between technique, hard blues grooving, and tenderness. ... No one will ever be able to take his place."
Jazz pianist and educator Billy Taylor said Peterson "set the pace for just about everybody that followed him. He really was just a special player."
The 20-year-old jazz pianist, Eldar Djangirov, said he wouldn't have become a jazz musician if he hadn't heard Peterson's records as a boy growing up in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.
"He was the first I ever heard and my main artistic influence," said Djangirov, who included the fast-tempo Peterson tune "Place St. Henri" on his Grammy-nominated album "re-imagination."
Peterson's death also brought tributes from notable figures outside the jazz world.
In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was adored by the French. "One of the bright lights of jazz has gone out."
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a fan and friend of the pianist for decades, reminisced about inviting Peterson to a 2001 Ottawa event honoring South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Chretien recalled that Mandela glowed upon meeting the piano great.
"It was very emotional," said Chretien. "They were both moved to meet each other. These were two men with humble beginnings who rose to very illustrious levels."
Born on Aug. 15, 1925, in a poor neighborhood of Montreal, Peterson got his passion for music from his father. Daniel Peterson, a railway porter and self-taught pianist, bestowed his love of music to his five children, offering them a means to escape from poverty.
At 5 years old, Oscar Peterson learned to play trumpet and piano, but after a bout with tuberculosis, he chose to concentrate on the keyboards. During his high school years, he studied with an accomplished Hungarian-born classical pianist, Paul de Marky, who helped develop his technique and "speedy fingers."
He became a teen sensation in his native Canada, playing in dance bands and recording in the late 1930s and 1940s.
He quickly made a name for himself as a jazz virtuoso, often earning comparisons to jazz piano great Art Tatum, his childhood idol, for his speed and technical skill. He was also influenced by Nat "King" Cole, whose piano trio recordings he considered "a complete musical thesaurus for any aspiring Jazz pianist."
Jazz pianist Marian McPartland, who called Peterson "the finest technician that I have seen," recalled first meeting Peterson when she and her husband, jazz cornetist Jimmy McPartland, opened for him at the Colonial Tavern in Toronto in the 1940s.
"From that point on, we became such good friends, and he was always wonderful to me and I have always felt very close to him," she said.
American jazz impresario Norman Granz was so impressed after hearing him play at a Montreal club that he invited Peterson to come to New York for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1949.
Jazz impresario and record producer Quincy Jones said it was a blessing to have worked with Peterson.
"He was one of the last of the giants, but his music and contributions will be eternal," Jones said.
In 1951, the pianist formed the Oscar Peterson Trio with a guitarist and bassist. When Ellis left the group in 1958, he replaced the guitarist with a series of drummers.
Peterson never stopped calling Canada home despite his growing international reputation, and probably his best known major composition is the "Canadiana Suite" with jazz themes inspired by the cities and regions of his native country.
But at times he felt slighted in Canada, where he was occasionally mistaken for a football player, at 6 foot 3 inches and weighing more than 250 pounds.
In 2005 he became the first living person other than a reigning monarch to be honored with a commemorative stamp in Canada, where streets, squares, concert halls and schools have been named after him.
Peterson suffered a stroke in 1993 that weakened his left hand, but not his passion or drive for music. After a two-year recuperation, he gradually resumed performances, and made a series of recordings for the U.S. Telarc label.
He kept playing and touring, despite worsening arthritis and difficulties walking, saying in a 2001 interview that "the love I have of the instrument and my group and the medium itself works as a sort of a rejuvenating factor for me."
"Until the end, Oscar Peterson could tour the world and fill concert halls everywhere," said Andre Menard, artistic director and co-founder of the Montreal International Jazz Festival where Peterson often performed.
"This is something that never diminished. His drawing power, his mystique as a musician, was so big that he remained at the top of his game until the end."
Peterson is survived by his wife, Kelly, and daughter, Celine.
———
AP writers Charles J. Gans and Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this story.
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Arts Investigation: Mortality and Jazz Artists – Do We Honor the Dead?
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2024-07-19T00:00:00
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How well or how poorly are we paying homage to our jazz ancestors? Some graves are worthy places of pilgrimage. Others are neglected . . . or unknown.
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The Arts Fuse
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https://artsfuse.org/292288/arts-investigation-mortality-and-jazz-artists-do-we-honor-the-dead/
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By Steve Elman
How well or how poorly are we paying homage to our jazz ancestors? Some graves are worthy places of pilgrimage. Others are neglected . . . or unknown.
Bud Powell”s body lies in an unmarked grave in a poorly-kept cemetery in Pennsylvania.
Does this shock you? Are you amazed that one of the great artists of the twentieth century, a pianist who influenced countless others after him, has one more ignominy added to his troubled life?
It shocked me when Peter Pullman, Bud’s biographer, told me about it. I went back to his Wail: the Life of Bud Powell (Bop Changes, 2013) and found it as compelling as it was when I reviewed it almost eleven years ago.
Wail does not linger at Powell’s deathbed. But Pullman is so thorough in his devotion to his subject that he has begun a campaign to raise funds supporting reburial of the pianist’s remains in one of the sites best-known to jazzpeople, the “Jazz Corner” of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. To learn more about the campaign and how you can help, see “More” below.
It is understandable that one would want to visit the grave of an artist one reveres, and to see it well-marked and well-cared-for. I remember my visit to Copenhagen’s Assistens Cemetery in 2013, when I was easily able to find the plot where Ben Webster’s ashes are interred and where I was able to stand in a few moments of silent homage to an artist whose work still means a lot to me.
Pullman’s discovery fired up my curiosity about other jazz graves, so I set out to investigate how well or how poorly we are honoring our jazz ancestors. I was surprised to learn how well-documented some tombs are and how mysteriously others are said to be “unknown,” which often means “undocumented” or even “unresearched.”
It seems that for the great majority of jazz performers, what had been a life lived substantially in public becomes suddenly private after death. The postmortem decisions pass out of the deceased’s hands into those of his or her survivors. These people – and sometimes the funeral directors they employ – determine where and how the remains are to be memorialized. Some artists are remembered in keeping with their importance, and their graves can legitimately be said to be places worthy of pilgrimage. Some deaths are mysterious and the places of interment even more so. And money is always a factor.
What follows are some notable postmortem anomalies. We should begin with Bud Powell. His story may be an example of the kinds of issues that interfere with worthy recognition.
Powell died of tuberculosis, alcoholism, and malnutrition on July 31, 1966 at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. His funeral took place on August 8 of that year, and several thousand witnessed his funeral procession. Rev. John Gensel, who made service to the jazz community in New York his life’s work, paid for Powell’s remains to be transported to Fairview Cemetery in Willow Grove, PA, where his body was buried next to those of his mother Pearl and his brother Richie. But no stone was erected, despite good will from Powell’s fellow musicians like Max Roach. It appears that no one had enough money to provide the stone Powell should have had. When Peter Pullman visited Powell’s grave, he noted, “Fairview is a very poor facility, poorly maintained,” and he received approval from Powell’s heirs to begin an effort to give Powell a fitting memorial.
Another bebop master, Dizzy Gillespie himself, is also buried in an unmarked grave, “next to his mother,” in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, NY, according to findagrave.com. In March 2019, Andy Senior of The Syncopated Times noted this and said, “To our knowledge, Dizzy never expressed the wish that his grave be left unadorned.” This may be another example of time gnawing away at chances for appropriate recognition.
Bassist Paul Chambers was one of the busiest sidemen in jazz at the height of his career, and a member of one of the great rhythm sections of all time, in Miles Davis’s first great quintet, with Red Garland on piano and Philly Joe Jones on drums. He was an invaluable contributor to dozens of classic LPs, like Davis’s Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain; John Coltrane’s Giant Steps; Sonny Clark’s Sonny’s Crib; and Abbey Lincoln’s That’s Him. Chambers fought addictions to heroin and alcohol, and his ability as a musician decayed as the years passed. Eventually his substance abuse led to tuberculosis, a coma, and death in New York City in 1969. The news barely rated a ripple in the mainstream press (or even in the jazz press), and it took years before he began to receive his due. Only one source (a feature on Chambers by David Yearsley) identifies his place of burial as The Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, where Lester Young, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and producer Bob Thiele are also buried. The cemetery itself does not even mention him among its notable “residents.”
On the other hand, Elvin Jones, the drummer in another great band, John Coltrane’s so-called “classic quartet,” with McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison, played brilliantly and was lionized to the very end of his career. There was even a public memorial service in New York City after his death from heart failure in Englewood, New Jersey in 2004. But assiduous searches of the net do not turn up any information about whether he was cremated or where he was buried. Presumably, his family knows, but it is surprising that there appears to be no lasting memorial – whether a gravestone, a statue or even a plaque – to one of the great percussionists of all time.
Possibly the most notorious death in jazz history was that of the tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray, whom fans in the bebop era expected to become the Charlie Parker of the tenor saxophone. But like many other beboppers, Gray became addicted to heroin. After he died of an overdose in Las Vegas in 1955, friends brought his body to the desert and left it there. What happened to the remains has not yet been documented in any source I can find.
The death of saxophonist Albert Ayler, like that of Gray, was a tragedy. His body was found in the East River in New York City in November 1970, and it was common speculation that he had committed suicide, although there was some suspicion that he had been murdered. His grave is in Highland Park Cemetery, Highland Hills, Ohio, near his birth city of Cleveland Heights.
There must be an unequivocal story of suicide, of course. Disappointment and frustration dog the lives of many jazzpeople, but the name of one who killed himself may be a surprise to many: J. J. Johnson, an unqualified success by any measure. Johnson’s amazing control of the notoriously difficult trombone is documented on dozens of recordings, and he was also an accomplished composer. Ultimately, suicides are unexplainable to the survivors, but perhaps Johnson felt despair at the decay of his abilities resulting from his battle with spinal stenosis, which can be so painful that it consumes a person’s life. He was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in his home town of Indianapolis, Indiana.
There are some stories that add appropriate twists to distinctive careers. Fats Waller was a master showman who loved his birthplace and stomping ground of Harlem. He specified that his ashes were to be strewn over Harlem from a plane, and his wish was granted after he died in 1943, with the plane piloted by an aviator known as “The Black Ace,” possibly the first African-American pilot in World War I, Eugene Bullard.
Paul Desmond’s story provides a wry postscript for a man who loved subtle humor. It’s told by Paul Cerra in his Jazz Profiles blog: Desmond’s remains were cremated, and his friend, “Jimmy Lyons, the one-time San Francisco disc jockey and founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival, took the urn containing Paul’s ashes and a pitcher of martinis up in an airplane over the sea off the rugged coastal stretch known as Big Sur, which Paul loved. He opened the plane’s window to scatter the ashes and drink a last martini to Paul, and the wind blew both in his face. ‘Thanks a lot, Paul,’ Jimmy said, and laughed.”
For relatively recent jazz deaths, the memory may be too fresh or too painful for the musician’s survivors yet to consign their loved ones to history. For example, there are no records on line regarding the graves or cremations of Chick Corea (died 2021), Roy Hargrove (died 2018), Barry Harris (died 2021), Bobby Hutcherson (died 2016), Ahmad Jamal (died 2023), Steve Lacy (died 2004), Pharoah Sanders (died 2022) or Horace Silver (died 2014).
In some cases, the public record is simply silent. For example, I was unable to find any reference to the cremation or grave of pianist Tommy Flanagan, perhaps in keeping with a life as a consummate accompanist who rarely sought the spotlight for himself.
There also are glories. Louis Armstrong’s grave in Flushing NY is a site that sees many visitors. Miles Davis (“Sir Miles” on his tombstone, recognizing the honor given him by the government of France) has an honored place in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx near that of Duke Ellington, and many other lights have joined them nearby in what Woodlawn calls its “Jazz Corner.” Jackie McLean’s tombstone In Woodlawn captures his ebullience and fire. Sam Rivers’s stone, in Florida National Cemetery, Bushnell, FL, eloquently says “Jazz Icon” after his military service record. And the mutual love of trumpeter Art Farmer and his twin brother bassist Addison, who died suddenly in 1963, 35 years before his brother, is touchingly memorialized on their joint tombstone in Greenwood Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Phoenix: “Together forever.”
Cemeteries and gravestones are for the living, of course. But the sad truth is that if too much time passes after a person dies, they become a footnote or a question mark, and the living are the losers.
We jazzpeople should not allow this to happen to Bud Powell, or to any of those who continue to give us joy and enlightenment through their recordings. I, for one, am making a contribution to help Peter Pullman give Bud Powell the final honor he very much deserves.
More:
The campaign to move Bud Powell’s remains from the unmarked grave in Fairview Cemetery in Pennsylvania to the Jazz Corner of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx with an appropriate headstone is being managed by Powell’s biographer Peter Pullman. Pullman has secured a location for the new grave at Woodlawn and has found an anonymous donor who will put $15,000 in matching funds towards the campaign. Pullman’s goal is to complete the reburial and the erection of the new headstone before September 27 of this year, which will be the 100th anniversary of Powell’s birth.
Pullman is partnering with a fiscal sponsor, FJC, to allow donors to make tax-deductible contributions. To date, the Bud Powell Centenary project has raised about two-thirds of its goal. Gifts are tax-deductible, and they may be doubled in value if the donor works for a company that participates in charitable fundraising efforts. More information can be found at the Bud Powell Centenary page on the non-profit website fjc.givingfuel.com
Below is an idiosyncratic list of jazzpeople who have inspired reverence, devotion, or passion from their fans, in an attempt to satisfy readers’ curiosity about where their graves might be visited. Each listing shows information about the person’s burial or cremation in so far as I have been able to find such information from on-line research. Additions to the list are (of course) welcome – please feel free to add a comment below if you have information to share.
“Woodlawn” signifies burial in Woodlawn Cemetery, 4199 Webster Avenue, Bronx, NY. Woodlawn’s “Jazz Corner” is located at the crossroads of Knollwood and Heather Avenues (internal “streets” of Woodlawn)
# indicates a person of particular interest to jazzpeople in eastern Massachusetts
(“findagrave,” “Krelnik,” “Lamere,” and “Wilson” refer to the sources of information shown after the list of names.)
A list of other notable jazzpeople follows this list, compiled with the help of Fuse writers and readers. See Addenda below.
Cannonball Adderley (1928 – 1975) – Southside Cem., Tallahassee FL; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Nat Adderley (1931 – 2000) – Southside Cem., Tallahassee FL; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Ivie Anderson (1904 -1949) – Angelus Rosedale Cem, Los Angeles;exact location in findagrave listing
Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971) – Flushing [NY] Cem; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
# Mae Arnette (1931 – 2023) – Mt. Hope Cem, Boston, per Bryan Marquard (Arnette obituary), Boston Globe, August 6, 2023
Albert Ayler (1936 – 1970) – found dead in East River, NYC – Highland Park Cem, Highland Hills, OH; exact location in findagrave listing
Chet Baker (1929 – 1988) – Inglewood Park Cem, Los Angeles; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Billy Bang (1947 – 2011) – Woodlawn (Hillcrest Plot) – findagrave listing
Count Basie (1904 – 1984) – Pinelawn Memorial Park, East Farmingdale, NY; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Sidney Bechet (1897 – 1959) – Cimetière des Garches, Haute-de-Seine, France – Lamere
Bix Beiderbecke (1903 – 1931) – Oakdale Cem, Davenport IA –Lamere
Eubie Blake (1883 – 1983) – Cypress Hills Cem, Brooklyn NY; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Art Blakey (1919 -1990) – Cremated at Uptown Manhattan Trinity Cem, NYC; ashes returned “to the family” – Wilson
Buddy Bolden (1877 – 1931) – Holt Cemetery, New Orleans; exact location in findagrave listing (under “Charles ‘Buddy’ Bolden”)
Clifford Brown (1930 – 1956) – Mount Zion Cem, Wilmington, DE; exact location in findagrave listing
Ray Brown (1926 – 2002) – Forest Lawn Cem, Hollywood CA; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Dave Brubeck (1920 – 2012) – Umpawaug Cem, Redding CT – Wikipedia biography
# Jaki Byard (1922 – 1999) – St. Charles Cem, E Farmingdale NY – exact location in findagrave listing (under “John Arthur Byard”)
Benny Carter (1907 – 2003) – Died in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles; cremated, ashes donated to “Jazz Center in Harlem” – Wilson; this may refer to The Jazz Center of New York, which ceased operations c. 2023. The current location or disposition of Carter’s ashes has not been documented.
Betty Carter (1929 – 1998) – Private funeral, followed by memorial serviceat Riverside Church, NYC, and cremation, per Chrisena Coleman in New York Daily News, Oct 2, 1998; ashes given to family (many thanks to John H.)
# Harry Carney (1910 – 1974) – Ferncliff Cem, Hartsdale, NY – exact location in findagrave listing (under “Harry Howell Carney”)
# Margaret Stedman Chaloff (1896 – 1977) – Forest Hills Cem, Jamaica Plain, MA (perhaps near her son Serge); Madame Chaloff is included here because she is revered by pianists as a gifted teacher and a transmitter of technique that opened doors for George Shearing, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Ran Blake, Donal Fox, Kenny Werner, Steve Kuhn, and many others.
# Serge Chaloff (1923 – 1957) – Forest Hills Cem, Jamaica Plain, MA – exact location in finadgrave listing
Paul Chambers (1935 – 1969) – Died of tuberculosis, exacerbated by heroin and alcohol, per Wikipedia; buried at The Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, per David Yearsley, “Bass on Top: the Genius of Paul Chambers,” Anderson Valley Advertiser, May 1, 2024.
# Arni Cheatham (1944 – 2023) – The Gardens of Gethsemane Cem, West Roxbury, MA (many thanks to saxophonist Peter Bloom)
Don Cherry (1936 – 1995) – Died in Malaga, Spain per Wikipedia; buried in Fuengirola Cem, Malaga per encyclopedia.com.
Ornette Coleman (1930 – 2015) – Woodlawn (Hillcrest Plot) – Woodlawn website
Buddy Collette (1921 – 2010) – Forest Lawn Cem, Glendale CA, in an unmarked grave per Wikipedia list of notable burials there
John Coltrane (1026 – 1967) – Pinelawn Memorial Park, East Farmingdale NY; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
# Chick Corea (1941 – 2021) died in Tampa, FL per Wiki bio; “Burial details unknown” per findagrave.com
Miles Davis (1926 – 1991) – Woodlawn (Hillcrest Plot) – Woodlawn website; “Sir Miles Davis” is on his headstone, recognizing Davis’s decoration in 1991 with the Knight’s Cross of the French Légion d’Honneur, awarded to him by Jack Lang, French Minister of Culture.
Paul Desmond (1924 – 1977) – Cremated, ashes scattered at sea over Big Sur, CA, per Paul Cerra, Paul Desmond – Another Perspective, Jazz Profiles, blogspot.com, February 4, 2019
Eric Dolphy (1928 – 1964) – Angelus Rosedale Cem, Los Angeles; exact location in findagrave listing
Harry “Sweets” Edison (1915 – 1999) – Glen Rest Memorial Estate, Reynoldsburg, OH; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Roy Eldridge (1911 – 989) Pinelawn Memorial Park, East Farmingdale NY; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974) – Woodlawn (Wild Rose Plot, near Jazz Corner); exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Gil Evans (1912 – 1988) – Died in Cuernavaca Mexico,per Wikipedia biography; cremated, per findagrave listing; ashes probably given to wife Anita and son Miles
Herschel Evans (1909 – 1939) – Angelus Rosedale Cem, Los Angeles – findagrave
Art Farmer (1928 – 1999) and Addison Farmer (1928 – 1963) – Greenwood Memorial Lawn Cemetery, Phoenix, AZ. The twin brothers of jazz – trumpeter Art and bassist Addison – share a headstone with the epitaph “Together Forever.”
Maynard Ferguson (1928 – 2006) – Cremated in Ojai, CA; ashes given to his son Jacob Wilder Ferguson, per Wilson
Ella Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996) – Inglewood Park Cem, Los Angeles; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Tommy Flanagan (1930 – 2001) – died at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Manhattan; burial or cremation details are not documented in any online source
Erroll Garner (1921 – 1877) – Homewood Cem, Pittsburgh PA; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
George Gershwin (1898 – 1937) – Westchester Hills Cem, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY – Lamere. He is included here because of his impact on jazz and his pioneering work combining formal composition with jazz elements.
# Ron Gill (1935 – 2020) – Cremated, ashes scattered (many thanks to Tessil Collins)
Dizzy Gillespie (1917 – 1993) – unmarked grave, “next to his mother,” Flushing [NY] Cem; exact location not given by findagrave listing
Stan Getz (1927 – 1991) – Cremated, ashes scattered at sea – findagrave
Benny Goodman (1909 – 1986) – Long Ridge Union Cem, Stamford CT; exact location in Krelnik / findagrave listing
Dexter Gordon (1923 -1990) – Cremated; ashes scattered over Hudson River by his wife, Maxine Gordon, per Wilson
Wardell Gray (1921 – 1955) – Died of a heroin overdose in Las Vegas; friends brought his body to the desert; what happened to the remains is not yet documented
Sonny Greer (c. 1895 – 1982) – Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) – Woodlawn site
# Bob Gullotti (1949 – 2020) – Cremated, ashes given to family (many thanks to bassist John Lockwood)
Lionel Hampton (1908 – 2002) — Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) — Woodlawn site
W. C. Handy (1873 -1958) – Woodlawn (southwest corner, near Jerome Avenue gate) – Woodlawn site
Barry Harris (1929 – 2021) – no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Coleman Hawkins (1904 -1969) – Woodlawn (Yew Plot) – Woodlawn site
Earl Hines (1903 – 1983) – Evergreen Cem, Oakland, CA – Lamere
Johnny Hodges (1907 – 1970) – Flushing [NY] Cem – Lamere
Billie Holiday (1915 – 1959) – St. Raymond’s Cem, Bronx NY – Lamere
Roy Hargrove (1969 – 2018) – no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Joe Henderson (1937 – 2001) – Dayton [OH] National Cem – exact location in findagrave listing
Bobby Hutcherson (1941 – 2016) – no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Milt Jackson (1923 – 1999) – Woodlawn (Brookside Community Mausoleum) – Woodlawn site
Illinois Jacquet (1922 – 2004) – Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) – Woodlawn site
Ahmad Jamal (1930 – 2023) – Died Ashley Falls, MA per DownBeat; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
# Dick Johnson (1925 – 2010) – Calvary Cem, Brockton, MA – findagrave listing
J. J. Johnson (1924 – 2001) – Suicide at his home in Indianapolis, IN;
buried in Crown Hill Cem (exterior garden, Mausoleum 1), Indianapolis – Wilson
Elvin Jones (1927 – 2004) – Died Englewood NJ, per corrected obituary by Peter Keepnews on New York Times website, May 19, 2004. ”Burial details unknown” per findagrave and other online sources
Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917) – St. Michael’s Cem, Queens NY – Lamere
# Steve Lacy (1934 – 2004) – Died at New England Baptist Hospital; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
# Sabby Lewis (1914 – 1994) – Mashpee Town Cem, Mashpee, MA – findagrave listing
# Charlie Mariano (1923 – 2009) – Cremated; ashes interred in Mariano family plot per Google Groups post, possibly Fairview Cem, Hyde Park
Jackie McLean (1931 – 2006) – Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) – Woodlawn site
Abbey Lincoln (1930 – 2010) – Cremated, “ashes scattered” – findagrave
# Dave McKenna (1930 – 2008) – “Burial details unknown” per findagrave; possibly buried in State College PA, where he died
Marian McPartland (1918 – 2013) – Arlington Cem, Elmhurst, IL – findagrave
Carmen McRae (1920 – 1994) – Cremated, “ashes scattered at sea” – findagrave
Charles Mingus (1922 – 1979) – Cremated, “ashes scattered” – findagrave
Thelonious Monk (1917 – 1982) – Ferncliff Cem, Hartsdale, NY – Lamere
Jelly Roll Morton (1890 – 1941) – New Calvary Catholic Cem, East Los Angeles – Lamere
Gerry Mulligan (1927 – 1996) – Cremated, “location of ashes is not known” per findagrave
King Oliver (1881 – 1938) – Woodlawn – Woodlawn site
Charlie Parker (1920 – 1955) – Lincoln Cem, Kansas City, MO – Lamere
# Rebecca Parris (1951 – 2018) – Cremated, ashes scattered in the White Mountains and in other locations she loved (many thanks to Marla Kleman)
Jaco Pastorius (1951 – 1987) – Queen of Heaven Cem, North Lauderdale FL
# Herb Pomeroy (1930 – 2007) – Dolliver Memorial Cem, Gloucester, MA – findagrave
Bud Powell (1924 – 1966) – Unmarked grave in Fairview Cem, Willow Grove PA
# Sam Rivers (1923 – 2011) – Florida National Cem, Bushnell, FL – findagrave
Max Roach (1924 – 2007) – Woodlawn – Woodlawn site
# George Russell (1923 – 2009) – Cremated, “ashes given to family” – findagrave
Pharoah Sanders (1940 – 2022) – Died at his home in Los Angeles; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
# Ray Santisi (1933 – 2014) – Saint Joseph Cem, W. Roxbury, MA – findagrave
Horace Silver (1928 – 2014) – Died in New Rochelle, NY of natural causes after a long period of Alzheimer’s Disease; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Nina Simone (1933 – 2003) – Cremated, “ashes scattered” per findagrave
# Carol Sloane (1937 – 2023) – Cremated; ashes scattered in locations significant to her and to her fans (many thanks to Sue Auclair)
Bessie Smith (1894 – 1937) – Mount Lawn Cem, Sharon Hill PA; exact location in findagrave listing
# Sonny Stitt (1924 – 1982) – Fort Lincoln Cem (wall crypt), Brentwood MD, per Wikipedia biography
Billy Strayhorn (1915 – 1957) – Cremated, ashes “scattered” – Krelnik / findagrave listing
Sun Ra (1914 – 1993) – Elmwood Cem & Mausoleum, Birmingham, AL; headstone reads “Herman Sonny Blount aka Le Sony’r Ra.”
Art Tatum (1909 -1956) – originally buried at Angelus Rosedale Cem, Los Angeles, where a memorial cenotaph remains; reinterred at Forest Lawn Cem, Glendale, CA in 1991
Cecil Taylor (1929 – 2018) – Woodlawn – Woodlawn site
Clark Terry (1920 – 2015) – Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) – Woodlawn site
Sarah Vaughan (1924 – 1990) – Glendale Cem, Bloomfield CA per Wikipedia biography
Fats Waller (1904 – 1943) – Cremated, ashes “scattered over Harlem by ‘The Black Ace,’” a WWI aviator [possibly Eugene J. Bullard] – Lamere, Wikipedia biography, Askhistorians on reddit.com, National Air and Space Museum website
Dinah Washington (1924 – 1963) – Burr Oak Cem, Alsip, IL per Wikipedia bio
Ben Webster (1909 – 1973) – Cremated; ashes interred at Assistens Cem, Copenhagen, Denmark
Cootie Williams (1911 – 1985) – Woodlawn (Jazz Corner) – Woodlawn site
# James Williams (1951 – 2004) – Forest Hills Cem South, Memphis TN – findagrave
# Tony Williams (1945 – 1997) – Holy Cross Catholic Cem, Colma, CA – exact info in findagrave listing (under “Tillmon Anthony ‘Tony’ Williams”)
# Teddy Wilson (1912 – 1986) – Fairview Cem, New Britain, CT; exact info in findagrave listing
Phil Woods (1931 – 2015) – “Burial details unknown” per findagrave
Lester Young (1909 – 1959) – The Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, per Evergreens website
Addenda (as of May 27, 2024):
Here is a second list of more well-known jazzpeople with information about their graves or cremations. Many thanks to readers for their suggestions and my colleagues David Daniel and Steve Provizer at the Fuse for their kind contributions:
Don Byas (1912 – 1972) – Died of lung cancer in Amsterdam, Netherlands per Wikipedia biography and findagrave; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Eddie Condon (1905 – 1973) – Christ Church Episcopal Graveyard, Shrewsbury, NJ – findagrave (under “Albert Edwin Condon”)
Bill Evans (1929 – 1980) – Died in Mount Sinai Hospital, NYC, of peptic ulcer, cirrhosis, bronchial pneumonia and untreated hepatitis; Roseland Memorial Park, Baton Rouge LA, next to his brother Harry. The Louisiana Music Trail (LINK: https://www.explorelouisiana.com/music/bill-evans-gravesite) identifies the site as a tourist attraction and provides the street address.
Bud Freeman (1906 – 1991) – Graceland Cem, Chicago IL – exact location in findagrave listing (under “Lawrence Jacob Freeman”)
Red Garland (1923 – 1984) – Lincoln Memorial Park, Dallas, TX – findagrave (under “William McKinley Garland”)
Vince Guaraldi (1927 – 1976) – Holy Cross Cem, Colma, CA – Wikipedia biography
Freddie Hubbard (1938 – 2008) – Died of complications from heart attack in Sherman Oaks, CA; cremated, ashes given to family – findagrave listing, Wikipedia biography
Art Pepper (1925 – 1982) – Died of stroke in Los Angeles; Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum in Hollywood Forever Cem, Hollywood CA – Wikipedia biography
Esther Phillips (1935 – 1984) – Died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of liver failure and kidney failure attributed to drug abuse; originally buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave at Lincoln Memorial Park in Compton, CA; reinterred in 1985 in the Morning Light section of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, with a tombstone reading, “Legendary vocalist, style original, unique teen superstar, ‘Little Esther’[.] Her career spanned spanned four decades[.] Grammy Award and NAACP Image Award”; exact location and photo of tombstone in findagrave listing – Wikipedia biography, findagrave
David Sanborn (1945 – 2024) – Died in Tarrytown, NY of complications from prostate cancer; no documentation of grave or cremation yet available from any online source
Cal Tjader (1925 – 1982) – Died of heart attack while on tour with his band in Manila, Philippines; The Italian Cem, Colma, CA – findagrave listing, Wikipedia biography
Dave Tough (1907 – 1948) – Died of a fall caused by an epileptic attack, Newark, NJ; Forest Home Cem, Forest Park, IL – Wikipedia biography; exact location in findagrave listing
Stanley Turrentine (1934 – 2000) – Died of stroke in New York City; Allegheny Cem, Pittsburgh PA – Wikipedia biography
McCoy Tyner (1938 – 2020) – Died at his home in Bergenfield, NJ; no documentation of grave or cremation in any online source
Here are some sources of information for those interested in doing more research:
Scott Wilson, Resting Places: the Burial Sites of More than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3rd edition (McFarland, 2003)
This is an amazing resource and work of research. The text is partially available via Google Books. (A search in this form will lead to pages in Wilson’s text – “vaughan, sarah” scott wilson google books)
Findagrave.com has much valuable data, and is easily searchable. All too often, though, you will find ”Burial details unknown” in the listing. These words do not mean that no one knows where the person is buried; it means that this particular site does not have any more information.
List of the graves of jazzpeople compiled by “Krelnik” using findagrave data
List of the graves of jazzpeople compiled by Cliff Lamere, with some links to photos.
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is a genuine tourist attraction, not only for the graves of jazz people (in its “Jazz Corner” and elsewhere) and other artists in many genres, but for the burial sites of famous scientists, politicians, humanitarians, writers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. Detail on Woodlawn Cemetery “residents” with jazz connections, posted for Jazz Appreciation Month, April 2024.
Video feature on Woodlawn’s “Jazz Corner” from Fox 5, NYC, June 11, 2014, with views of many gravestones; reported by Stacey Delikat
List of notable people in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles
List of notable people in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale CA:
This article details the distinctive traditions of jazz funerals and graves in New Orleans: Helen Anders, “Visiting the spirits of jazz past in New Orleans,” Austin American-Statesman, August 31, 2012
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 27 |
https://www.tpl.org/blog/wellsbuilt-museum
|
en
|
Discover African American Heritage in Orlando's Harlem
|
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2024-02-07T16:41:30+00:00
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To visit the Wells'Built Museum is to step inside the story of America's music and the Black artists who shaped it.
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Trust for Public Land
|
https://www.tpl.org/blog/wellsbuilt-museum
|
“Musicians are like weeds,” says Jeff Rupert. “You can’t stop them. They just keep growing through the cracks of the sidewalk, you know?” This is how Rupert, a saxophonist and director of Jazz Studies at the University of Central Florida, explains the tenacity of Black musicians who toured the South during the Jim Crow era of legalized segregation. In Orlando, one of the only places these artists could safely perform and lodge was at the South Street Casino and Wells’Built Hotel, respectively.
The latter is now a museum of African American history and culture, and the building is still standing today thanks in part to Trust for Public Land. Opened by its namesake, Dr. William Monroe Wells, in 1929, the Wells’Built hosted an almost absurdly impressive list of talents, including Ray Charles, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, Illinois Jacquet, Cab Calloway, Memphis Slim, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong. (And its list of famous lodgers goes beyond musicians; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and baseball star Jackie Robinson also stayed there.)
These influential musicians played what was known as the Chitlin’ Circuit, a tour route through the South that author Preston Lauterbach described on NPR’s Code Switch as “African Americans making something beautiful out of something ugly, whether it’s making cuisine out of hog intestines or making world-class entertainment despite being excluded from all of the world-class venues.”
CeCe Teneal, an Orlando-based soul singer who travels worldwide with her Aretha Franklin tribute act, says visiting the museum and seeing evidence of those who paved the way for musicians of color gives her own role as a performer new meaning: “They jeopardized their lives to play music, to do the thing they loved,” she says. “Because of the things that these people did for me, I am required to give it my all.”
From 1936 to 1966, Black travelers relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book, a publication that listed restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and other establishments that served African Americans. The Wells’Built Hotel, a two-story brick building opened by one of Orlando’s first African American physicians, was the only lodging listed in Orlando. “I’m sure there’s no way to outline the amount of obstacles he encountered,” Teneal says of Dr. Wells, noting his persistence and courage must have been incredible.
The South Street Casino—which, despite the name, was an entertainment venue and community event center rather than a gambling establishment—was damaged by a fire and demolished in 1987. But the hotel remains. Located in the Holden-Parramore Historic District, what some term Orlando’s Harlem, and situated directly across the street from the Amway Center (where the Orlando Magic play), it almost wasn’t saved at all.
Learn more about our work to preserve sites that tell the story of the Black experience in America.
“It was a bit of a stretch,” says Will Abberger, an Orlando native and director of TPL’s conservation finance program. “The building was in horrible shape, dilapidated; the roof was falling in. I think we ended up hauling 13 dumpster loads of garbage out of it. There were homeless people living there. It’s a wonder it didn’t burn down.”
But former Florida Representative Alzo J. Reddick and current Florida State Senator Geraldine Thompson had a vision for the hotel—and they knew TPL could help see it through. “We were known in the historic preservation world here in Florida,” says Abberger, who was a TPL project manager in Florida at the time. Reddick connected Abberger with Thompson, who is also founder of the Association to Preserve African American Society, History and Tradition (PAST), the nonprofit that runs the Wells’Built Museum.
In a previous, administrative position at Orlando’s Valencia College, Thompson started collecting artifacts and memorabilia related to Black history. She says it got to the point where her collection was taking over the shipping and receiving department, so she started thinking about a museum.
“Then I learned about Dr. Wells and how important both of those structures were in terms of the history of Central Florida,” she says. So she wrote a grant proposal to acquire the hotel, but there wasn’t much time: it was slated for demolition. In 1994, Trust for Public Land purchased the building. Meanwhile, PAST raised funds to cover the cost plus repairs. (TPL and PAST later received various grants to fund renovations and acquire exhibits.)
After being abandoned for 25 years, the Wells’Built Museum—which displays memorabilia of Orlando’s African American community and the civil rights movement as well as African art and artifacts—opened in February 2001, in celebration of Black History Month. “This is my calling,” says Thompson, “I’ve been given the privilege to share this information. There are so many stories that have been obscured and omitted, and they need to be brought to the forefront.”
Dr. Jocelyn Imani, TPL’s director of Black History and Culture, says good preservation work “goes down to the individual players, individual people.” TPL is creating a national mosaic of stories, but it’s “hyperlocal pieces” like the Wells’Built Museum that make up the greater narrative.
And it’s not just the interior of the hotel that holds meaning: the Wells’Built’s geography tells a racial story, too. “Like in so many other cities in the United States,” explains Abberger, “the interstate cuts right through downtown—on one side you’ve got the white, affluent, old Orlando, and on the other side is Parramore, which, like many African American urban areas, has suffered from years and years of disinvestment.” And Parramore is bordered to the east by South Division Avenue, a street “long associated with the dividing line between white and Black Orlando,” according to the Orange County Regional History Center.
Thompson’s favorite part of the collection? Dr. Wells’s ledgers, which were discovered in his former home. Also slated for demolition, the house was saved and relocated next to the museum (and will eventually become part of it). “The Wells’Built was one of Ray Charles’s favorite places,” says Thompson, pointing to a record of the venue’s performers and guests. “He would come into the building, register for his room . . . climb the stairs to the second floor, and enter the hallway. He would turn left, and he knew that when he ran into the wall, his room was right there to the left. We know when he was there and when Louis Armstrong was there. That’s one of my favorites because those books were intact.”
Jeff Rupert mentions the ledgers, too: “It’s incredible seeing some of the legendary names on there,” he says. “Count Basie and Duke Ellington, Louie Armstrong—a lot of important vocalists. Count Basie’s band was the first band I ever heard when I was 10 years old,” he adds. “To me, the Wells’Built is as vital as going to Beethoven’s house in Bonn or Wagner’s home in Lucerne. It’s really important. This is a profound place. This is America’s music.”
Beyond the stack of ledgers, exploring the museum feels like walking through a Black history textbook—a raw, honest textbook. Many displays are inspiring: paintings by Floridian Odell Etim depicting performers and crowds at the South Street Casino; an epic panoramic photo of an early African Methodist Episcopal (AME) gathering in Chicago; or a plain white shirt covered in campaign buttons for Thompson, Reddick, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama. But much is hard to take in, such as countless “mammy” figurines depicting a toxic stereotype of Blackness.
“You feel this sense of heaviness,” says Teneal, “but then you also feel a sense of freedom.” Expressing gratitude for the people and stories represented by the museum, she adds, “As a Black woman, they’ve given me the opportunity to have a better life.”
At the time of the Chitlin’ Circuit, this was no easy feat. But musicians, like weeds, are also tenacious—hard to keep down. Teneal, who’s opened for Wells’Built lodger B.B. King, agrees: “That’s the thing about music,” she says. “It kind of chooses you. If you don’t do it, you may not die a physical death, but you die inside. So I can imagine that drive in them. It’s probably what made them brave enough to actually just push forward and keep doing it.”
Amy McCullough is senior writer and editor for Trust for Public Land and managing editor of Land&People magazine. She is also the author of The Box Wine Sailors, an adventure memoir.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
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2
| 25 |
http://www.myblackhistory.net/Count_Basie.htm
|
en
|
Count Basie: African American Musicians
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From the time Count Basie’s “Old Testament Band” surged out of Kansas City in 1936 and brought his irrepressible mixture of blues and riff-based head arrangements to New York until his death in 1984, Basie and the bands he led were a touchstone of jazz history.
|
en
| null |
Count Basie
From the time Count Basie’s “Old Testament Band” surged out of Kansas City in 1936 and brought his irrepressible mixture of blues and riff-based head arrangements to New York until his death in 1984, Basie and the bands he led were a touchstone of jazz history. Nowhere else have blues musicians ever been more firmly dedicated to the proposition that "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" than in Kansas City in the early 1930s.
William James Basie was born to Harvey Lee Basie, and Lillian Ann Childs, who lived on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several families in the area. His mother, a piano player who gave Basie his first piano lessons, took in laundry and baked cakes for sale and paid 25 cents a lesson for piano instruction for him.
Basie was not much of a scholar and instead dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by the carnivals which came to town. He only got as far as junior high school. He would hang out at the Palace Theater in Red Bank and did occasional chores for the management, which got him free admission to the shows. He also learned to operate the spotlights for the vaudeville shows. One day, when the pianist failed to arrive by show time, Basie took his place. Playing by ear, he quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to silent movies.
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. However, the obvious talents of another young Red Bank area drummer, Sonny Greer (who was Duke Ellington's drummer from 1919 to 1951), discouraged Basie and he switched to piano exclusively by age 15. They played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation". When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park, New Jersey, playing at the Hong Kong Inn, until a better player took his place
Before he was 20 years old, Basie toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career. Stranded in Kansas City in 1927 while accompanying a touring group, he remained there, playing in silent-film theaters.
Count Basie 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.
After Moten's death, 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.
The Count Basie 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. In less than a year the big band had become internationally famous.
The 1940s were a period of transition for Basie as it was for all big bands facing the challenges that would end their heyday after the war. The bands were hurt by the first of two recording bans imposed by the American Federation of Musicians of the decade, from August 1942 and lasting up to July 1944. Thus much of the band’s best work from this period can be found on transcriptions, air checks, or the V-Discs and Jubilee broadcasts recorded for the armed forces during and after World War II.
A reconstituted Count Basie big band was born in 1952 with the encouragement of singer-bandleader Billy Eckstine, who needed a big band for a tour and wanted Basie at the helm. Eckstine, whose pioneering bebop band had folded in 1947, provided Basie with music stands and other equipment left over from his three years as a bandleader.
Other key ingredients of the Basie revival included his signing with Norman Granz and his Clef label in 1952 when long playing albums were catching on; the electrifying arrival two years later of singer Joe Williams; appearances at Birdland in New York and Basie’s friendships with record producer Teddy Reig and Morris Levy leading to his recordings for Roulette Records between 1957 and 1962. It was only in the 1950s that Basie became an enduring jazz institution, according to critic Whitney Balliett, who wrote in 1956 that the band was in the remaining tall hedges populated only by the bands of Ellington, Kenton and Herman.
More importantly, Balliett claimed that jazz audiences were only then becoming fully aware of what Basie had stood for musically since 1936. In 1958 Count Basie was elected to the Down Beat Hall Of Fame.
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.
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correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 86 |
https://www.miltonfh.com/obituary/Jim-Grant
|
en
|
Jim Grant Obituary
|
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2021-06-18T21:48:31-04:00
|
Obituary for Jim ("Mudcat") Grant | On August 13, 1935, God blessed James and Viola Grant with twins, James "Mudcat" Grant and Johnniemae Grant in Lake Butler, Florida. In his early years,...
|
en
|
Jim Grant Obituary | June 11, 2021 | Dade City, FL
|
https://www.miltonfh.com/obituary/Jim-Grant
|
On August 13, 1935, God blessed James and Viola Grant with twins, James "Mudcat" Grant and Johnniemae Grant in Lake Butler, Florida. In his early years, James attended church at Mt. Moriah in Lacoochee, Florida, under the leadership of Reverend Lewis Waddell, where he was baptized. He received his education from Moore Academy in Dade City, Florida, where he played baseball, football, and basketball. In 1954, James signed at age 18 with the Cleveland Indians following a stellar career at Florida A & M University. Mudcat became the first African American pitcher to win 20 games and world series games in the American League. He pitched the greatest season of his career in 1965 and was part of the best teams in baseball, with the Minnesota Twins. He was a two-time All-Star and was named The Sporting News American League Pitcher of the Year. He also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburg Pirates, Oakland A's, St. Louis Cardinals, and Montreal Expos. He played his final major league on September 29, 1971, at the age of 36. The success he experienced on the mound put Grant's celebrity on an entirely different level. James was more than another baseball player. He was a gifted performer. James was an accomplished musician, with a talent for the blues. He sang and danced in his own nightclub act, "Mudcat and the Kittens". He performed across the country, sang the national anthems at baseball games, and gave plenty of interviews, reliving some of the experiences and memories of his past. He also performed with the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands. During his four seasons with Minnesota, he had his own song and dance TV gig entitled, "The Jim Grant Show". James was a game-changer on and off the field. He helped coin the term "Black Acres", in reference to the group of African American pitchers who have won 20 games in a season. He co-wrote a book published in 2006, "The Black Aces", chronicling the 13 black pitchers who were members of that elite club. After retiring from the mound, James worked in Cleveland's community relations department and as a broadcaster while becoming an activist and advocate for Black participation in sports. Grant threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day at Progressive Field in Cleveland on April 14, 2008, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his major league debut; he also was awarded the key to the city to honor the occasion. He was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2012. Four years later, he was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (D.H.L.) from Whittier College in 2016. James "Mudcat" Grant said, "I had two great teachers, life and baseball". He threw his final pitch in life on June 11, 2021. He was surrounded by love and family. He will always be remembered for his tremendous effort on the field, love for the arts, enjoying the simple pleasures of life at Sizzler and Hometown Buffet, and for being a pillar in his family. James was preceded in death by his parents, James and Viola Grant; his brother, Julious Grant Jr.; and his sister, Katrena Morgan. He leaves to cherish his loving memories: his wife, Gertrude Grant; a devoted sister, Johnniemae Grant-Lopey and Altamese Wrispus both of Lacoochee, FL; his loving daughters, Gloria Grant-Sanon (Augu) of Lakeland, FL and Joi Grant of Los Angeles, CA; beloved son, James Timothy Grant III (Lenae) of Los Angeles, CA. He will always be lovingly remembered by his adoring grandkids, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, and friends.
*Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have implemented necessary procedures during Visitations, Funeral Ceremonies, Gravesides, and other public and private ceremonies. We do ask that all visitors of these services to please continue to wear your masks and please remember to social distance. These new policies may be inconvenient, but due to the severity of the virus, we ask that everyone be considerate, patient, and safe with others as we try to get through this most difficult time. Seating during services may be limited so please be considerate of the immediate family especially.
*If you are attending a Graveside service or an Outdoor Celebration you are welcomed to bring your own chair as seating will be limited! We will provide water to make everyone as comfortable as possible. We thank you in advance for your cooperation during this time. We pray that everyone stays safe and cooperative with the current CDC rules. "
To view Mr. Jim "Mudcat" Grant's memorial service on July 3, 2021 copy the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/zdKCMM8LXpk2UUktVqtQhe-88ZqJmaQfJLgjVQTZmsZZOAa3Nyxduck2wgehILvX.OtVT838r2XhXkwNR
Passcode: ErNfv%m2
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 69 |
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/frank-sinatra-jr-dies-in-florida-during-tour/
|
en
|
Frank Sinatra Jr. Dies In Florida During Tour
|
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[] |
[] |
[
"Frank Sinatra"
] | null |
[] |
2016-03-17T08:32:19-04:00
|
The son of legendary crooner Frank Sinatra has died in Florida while on tour. Frank Sinatra Jr., died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest while on tour in Daytona Beach.
|
en
|
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/frank-sinatra-jr-dies-in-florida-during-tour/
|
Follow CBSMIAMI.COM: Facebook | Twitter
MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) — The son of legendary crooner Frank Sinatra has died in Florida while on tour.
Frank Sinatra Jr., died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest while on tour in Daytona Beach. He was 72.
His real name was Francis Wayne Sinatra — his father's full name was Francis Albert Sinatra — but he went professionally by Frank Sinatra Jr.
Sinatra Jr. was the middle child of Sinatra and Nancy Barbato Sinatra, who was the elder Sinatra's first wife and the mother of all three of his children. Sinatra Jr.'s older sister was Nancy Sinatra, who had a successful musical career of her own, and his younger sister was TV producer Tina Sinatra.
He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1944, just as his father's career was getting started, and he would watch his dad become one of the most famous singers of all time. But he usually watched from a distance, as Sinatra was constantly away on tours and making movies.
He did, however, sometimes get to see him from the wings of the stage, especially when his father performed for long stints in Las Vegas. Sinatra Jr. got to see many other storied performers too, like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Count Basie.
"I saw all the top stars perform," Sinatra Jr. told the AP in 2002. He said one of his favorite memories of his father was a show in the late 1960s at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
"He was sitting on a little stool, and he sang the Beatles song 'Yesterday' and 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' and 'Didn't We,'" Sinatra Jr. said. "We were all crying and singing."
Sinatra Jr. followed his father into music as a teenager, eventually working for the senior Sinatra as his musical director and conductor.
The elder Sinatra died of a heart attack May 14, 1998, at 82.
Sinatra Jr. was able to provide a link to his father's music after his death, performing his songs and arrangements on tours and especially in Las Vegas.
"Since my father's death, a lot of people have made it clear that they're not ready to give up the music," Sinatra Jr. said in the 2002 AP interview. "For me, it's a big, fat gift. I get to sing with a big orchestra and get to sing orchestrations that will never be old."
When Sinatra Jr. was 19 in 1963, three men kidnapped him at gunpoint from a Lake Tahoe hotel. He was returned safely after two days when his family paid $240,000 for his release.
Barry Keenan, a high school friend of Nancy Sinatra, was arrested with the other two suspects, Johnny Irwin and Joe Amsler, and convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping.
Keenan masterminded the kidnapping, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to life plus 75 years in prison, but was declared legally insane at the time of the crime, had his sentence reduced and was paroled in 1968 after serving 4 ½ years.
Sinatra Jr. had nearly two dozen TV and movie credits as an actor, including appearances on "The Love Boat" and "Marcus Welby, M.D." most recently providing his own voice for two episodes of "Family Guy."
Last year he performed the national anthem at Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees games in celebration of the centennial of his father's birth.
He was scheduled to perform Thursday night in St. Petersburg, Florida, in a show featuring his father's songbook. The venue's website mentioned Sinatra Jr.'s death in canceling the show. He had other tour dates booked for May, September and October in the Midwest and East Coast.
Sinatra Jr. was married in 1998, but divorced in 2000. He is survived by a son, Michael.
(TM and © Copyright 2016 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
|
||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 33 |
https://www.wbgo.org/music/2021-03-04/duffy-jackson-ebullient-drummer-with-lionel-hampton-count-basie-and-others-dies-at-67
|
en
|
Duffy Jackson, Ebullient Drummer with Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and Others, Dies at 67
|
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[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Nate Chinen",
"www.wbgo.org",
"nate-chinen"
] |
2021-03-04T00:00:00
|
Duffy Jackson, a drummer whose swinging exuberance propelled him from child stardom to a prolific career behind Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena…
|
en
|
WBGO
|
https://www.wbgo.org/music/2021-03-04/duffy-jackson-ebullient-drummer-with-lionel-hampton-count-basie-and-others-dies-at-67
|
Duffy Jackson, a drummer whose swinging exuberance propelled him from child stardom to a prolific career behind Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne and many others, died on Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn. He was 67.
The cause was complications from hip surgery, Sandra Anton, his first cousin, tells WBGO.
Show business was a proud birthright for Jackson, who began to learn his craft before he was in grade school. His father, Chubby Jackson, was a bass player and bandleader who became a popular children’s television host, and Duffy earned a reputation as a boy wonder — initially through his appearances on Chubby Jackson's Little Rascals, which aired on ABC. At age 5, his picture appeared in DownBeat magazine, with a caption noting that “Duff, who has nicknamed himself Jazz Jackson, has only one ambition in life: to run away with Count Basie’s band.”
He realized that dream in his 20s, when he became the youngest member hired by Basie at the time. His bedrock time and tasteful embellishments were a natural fit for the band; here he is on the 1980 Pablo album Kansas City Shout, playing a tune cowritten by Basie and saxophonist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.
Basie’s was just one of the many swinging bands that Jackson played with over the years. He worked with saxophonists Benny Carter, Sonny Stitt and Illinois Jacquet, along with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and bassist Ray Brown. He also powered the band behind Sammy Davis, Jr. on network television for two years, and spent a year on tour with Lena Horne.
Among Jackson’s other close affiliations was one with Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander, beginning in the early 1970s with Here Comes the Sun. On that album’s title track, the Beatles hit by George Harrison, Jackson shows the ease with which he can hold down a funkier groove.
Still, Jackson considered himself something of a specialist. “I can play beautifully in a trio or whatever,” he said in a 2019 interview with the Nashville publication Music Mecca, “but when I’m in the driver’s seat of a big band, that’s where I can take you to places that you’ve probably never been before.”
Duff Clark Jackson was born on July 3, 1953 in Freeport, N.Y. The first indication of his musical talent came when he was a toddler, keeping time to records on a set of bongos. At 4, he began taking lessons with his first drum teacher — Don Lamond, who’d played alongside Chubby Jackson in the Woody Herman Orchestra. He also received encouragement from master big band drummers like Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson and Sonny Payne.
Jackson developed his precocious talent on the most public platform available at the time: by his own estimation, made 300 television appearances between the ages of 5 and 12. The primary outlet was his father’s Little Rascals show, airing in Chicago and New York. “My dad had access to the ABC local musicians on staff,” he recalled, “so at eight in the morning, you’d hear an 18-piece band swingin’ so hard. Now all the guys were all drunk or stoned or stayed up all night, but the thing is my dad had little kids dancing and singing in front of the band.”
The razzle-dazzle of an entertainer was always something Jackson could access musically, and in his later career he made it a trademark, as a drummer and a scat singer. Though there’s just one album under his name — Swing! Swing! Swing! on the Milestone label, made in the mid-‘90s — he was a seasoned bandleader, and a cornerstone of the jazz ecology in Nashville.
Jackson moved to Nashville in the late 2000s, from his previous home base in South Florida. He quickly found a niche in Music City — playing residencies at Rudy’s Jazz Room and Acme Feed and Seed; sitting in with the Time Jumpers at 3rd & Lindsley; and engaging with the Nashville Jazz Workshop, as both an instructor and a featured artist.
“Playing with Duffy felt like a glove,” pianist Lori Mechem, cofounder of the Nashville Jazz Workshop, tells WBGO. “His groove was infectious, and his sense of swing was flawless. He truly lived to play and loved everyone to the fullest.”
He is survived by his wife, Marina, and two sisters, Myno Tayloe and Jai Jackson.
Jackson often talked about his relationship to an audience in terms of crackling excitement. “Sometimes an audience will sit very quietly like an oil painting, and be subservient to the jazz musicians that demand your respect by not talking,” he told Music Mecca. “I want people to go nuts when I’m playing, as long as I can still hear myself. I want people to react.”
|
|||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 90 |
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/on-jazz/count-basie/78941F9732D91B834435B20619E5F0F0
|
en
|
Count Basie (Chapter 8)
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Alyn Shipton"
] | null |
On Jazz - May 2022
|
en
|
/core/cambridge-core/public/images/favicon.ico
|
Cambridge Core
|
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/on-jazz/count-basie/78941F9732D91B834435B20619E5F0F0
|
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 66 |
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/john-a-torres/2020/09/25/jazz-radio-host-jack-simpson-and-local-theater-legend-arlon-ropp-die/3530192001/
|
en
|
Torres: Local arts scene loses two giants of jazz and theater as lousy year starts winding down
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"John A. Torres, Florida Today",
"John A. Torres"
] |
2020-09-25T00:00:00
|
Whatever remaining light there was shining on a tough year just grew dimmer as Jack Simpson and Arlon Ropp died this week.
|
en
|
Florida Today
|
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/john-a-torres/2020/09/25/jazz-radio-host-jack-simpson-and-local-theater-legend-arlon-ropp-die/3530192001/
|
Whatever remaining light there was shining on this impossibly tough year just grew a little dimmer.
A "gentleman" and a "godfather" are no longer with us as Brevard County and Central Florida lost two giants this week, champions of the arts who inspired countless with their passion for music and community theater.
Legendary WUCF FM 89.9 Jazz on the Beach host Jack Simpson, "the Gentleman of Jazz," died Sunday at the age of 96. His passing was followed four days later by that of 85-year old Arlan Ropp, known affectionately as the "Godfather of Theater."
More: Love vinyl? Titusville music enthusiast picks 10 albums every audiophile should own
Normally the arts are a perfect escape from the realities of everyday life. But in a year rocked by pandemic, social unrest and economic uncertainty, the arts have really taken a hit. Only recently have theaters and music venues begun to re-open cautiously to offer a respite from the world. Now we lose these two celebrated icons of the local arts scene.
I had the honor of knowing Ropp a bit these last few years, having met him during an event I emceed naming the annual Surfside Playhouse Playwriting contest after him, at meetings of the Playwrights Workshop of Brevard where he encouraged inexperienced authors, and finally being cast alongside him in his last performance in the Surfside Playhouse Production of "Arsenic and Old Lace."
I got to share his final curtain call.
He was a marvel to watch and a calming presence for those less-experienced thespians like myself. I remember castmate Peter Olander and myself nervously searching for Ropp as his entrance neared. We were to follow him on stage and oftentimes couldn't find him anywhere.
But our worry was for naught as Ropp would slowly shuffle to make his perfect entrance like clockwork. And, naturally his small scene stole the show as he was chased off the stage by Mortimer Brewster to raucous laughter and applause. Then he would calmly shuffle back to the green room where he would do puzzles, talk about his grandchildren or regale us with theater stories or his barbershop quartet.
Ropp was a fixture for 30 years in Brevard Community College's theater and communications departments, before retiring in 1998. He always said if he were to write his autobiography, he'd title it 'From Tractor to Actor.'
That's because Ropp was born and raised on a farm in Illinois. He told me the home was so cold and drafty that as a child he could sometimes see his breath during the winter. So, it was no surprise that he wound up in Brevard County in 1968 when he was hired to teach English, Speech, Television Production and Drama at what was then called Brevard Junior College.
It wasn't long before he was acting and directing on local stages.
More: The shows go on: Brevard theaters announce 2020-21 seasons
In 1992, he joined what is now called the Barbershop Harmony Society and performed with them until the pandemic.
Despite his age, news of Ropp's death took the local theater community by surprise. I guess he was one of those people we assumed would be around forever. Longtime actor Terrence Girard described Ropp as "encouraging and generous."
"I'd only been acting at Surfside a short while when Arlan gave me an opportunity to perform in a dinner theatre project he was spearheading at one of the Cocoa Beach hotels — the lead in Neil Simon's 'Barefoot in the Park.' Imagine how stoked I was to be paid a stipend, to act!" Girard said.
"(Arlan) worked with all the theater groups, so was universally beloved by our theater community. He'll be greatly missed."
Like Girard, Bryan Bergeron, artistic director at the Surfside Playhouse, also landed his first paid acting gig thank to Ropp, whom he first met in 1972 at BCC.
Bergeron said in many ways he owes his own 45-year career in theater to Ropp and his kind, steady tutelage.
"And the amazing thing is he never stopped. Arlan was truly a force of nature," Bergeron said. "I owe so much to that man. I for one will feel his loss deeply."
I never had the pleasure of meeting Jack Simpson in person but heard of him often and his affinity for and expertise in jazz. A native of north England, Simpson never fell in with the boys from Liverpool or the psychedelic sounds of Syd Barrett. Even as a child, he told my colleague Lynn Dowling in 2017 that he was drawn to jazz.
After a stint in the Royal Air Force, Simpson moved to the U.S. where he married his wife Lorraine and settled in Brevard County. Frustrated by the lack of jazz on the radio, he contacted FLORIDA TODAY's Help! column in 1967 asking for help to put jazz on the radio. Shortly after, WKRT, a station in Cocoa, gave him an hour a week to play jazz recordings from his own collection.
That was the beginning of his more than 50-year run of his "Jazz on the Beach" radio show. Simpson co-founded the Space Coast Jazz Society, wrote a jazz column for FLORIDA TODAY, served as master of ceremonies for numerous jazz festivals and hosted his radio show for more than 50 years.
More: Satellite Beach plaza hoping for picture-perfect comeback with new movie theater and more
The station continued running previously broadcast shows and occasionally Simpson would pop in do a live show.
“Jack Simpson was so special to so many people. We all loved him," said Kayonne Riley, WUCF Director of Radio. "We often referred to Jack as our “gentleman of jazz” since he was always respectful, patient, kind, thoughtful, passionate and caring in every aspect of his life – the way he spoke on air, how he interacted with you, and how he lived his life. We will never forget him.”
Simpson died only three months after the passing of his wife, Lorraine.
Local jazz musician Shannon Cherry (who I've seen do incredible things with his saxophone) said he first met Simpson when he was a music student at then Brevard Community College.
"He was incredibly and even persistently encouraging to me, always had recommendations of who to listen to," Cherry said. "Later I’d learn that he was the immortal Jack Simpson — who I’d heard all the years of my youth with 'Jazz on the Beach'. "
More: COVID-19 has all but silenced live music. Can it bounce back, and will it be the same?
Incredibly, Cherry also had a close relationship with Ropp.
"The craziness in all of this was we have lost Arlan Ropp this week as well, who was a friend, a senior mentor, a former professor of mine and a fellow actor, writer and singer," Cherry said.
Is it New Year's Eve yet? 2021 can't come quick enough.
Tribute for Simpson
WUCF FM 89.9 Jazz & More will air a tribute to its long-time Jazz On The Beach host Jack Simpson on Saturday, September 26 at noon. WUCF's special tribute to Jack Simpson will include listener memories and stories of the Central Florida Jazz icon as well as some of the best of moments of Jack's Jazz On The Beach program on 89.9 Jazz & More.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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0
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https://www.facebook.com/DailyBlackHistoryFacts/photos/april-26-1984-count-basie-died-of-pancreatic-cancer-in-hollywood-florida-at-the-/435067289997689/
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Facebook
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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https://www.facebook.com/login/
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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0
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https://www.eltangoysusinvitados.com/2008/08/biografia-de-count-basie-en-espaol-and.html
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en
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El Tango y sus invitados: Count Basie en español and in English
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Count Basie Count Basie Count Basie and you Big Band El hombre que iba a ser líder de una de las mas extraordinarias orquestas de jazz de to...
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https://www.eltangoysusinvitados.com/2008/08/biografia-de-count-basie-en-espaol-and.html
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Esta pagina ha sido creada para difundir y hacer conocer nuestra música ciudadana "El TANGO" y sus artistas. Compartimos el lugar con otros géneros, debido a que toda la música es arte, placer y ......
Aquellos que gusten de estos últimos y no conozcan el Tango, lo descubrirán y posiblemente lo empezaran a disfrutar.
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FactBench
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1
| 31 |
https://towertheatre.ticketsauce.com/e/count-basie-orchestra/tickets
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en
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Count Basie Orchestra
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“The real innovators did their innovating just by being themselves”— Count Basie
In the history of Jazz music, there is only one bandleader that has the distinction of having his orchestra still performing sold out concerts all over the world, with members personally chosen by him, for nearly 40 years after his passing. Pianist and bandleader William James “Count” Basie was and still is an American institution that personifies the grandeur and ...
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https://towertheatre.ticketsauce.com/e/count-basie-orchestra
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Details
“The real innovators did their innovating just by being themselves”
— Count Basie
In the history of Jazz music, there is only one bandleader that has the distinction of having his orchestra still performing sold out concerts all over the world, with members personally chosen by him, for nearly 40 years after his passing. Pianist and bandleader William James “Count” Basie was and still is an American institution that personifies the grandeur and excellence of Jazz. The Count Basie Orchestra, today directed by Scotty Barnhart, has won every respected jazz poll in the world at least once, won 18 Grammy Awards, performed for Kings, Queens, and other world Royalty, appeared in several movies, television shows, at every major jazz festival and major concert hall in the world. The most recent honor is a 2024 Grammy Win of Best Large Jazz Ensemble for Basie Swings the Blues! Other honors include their 2022 Grammy Nomination for Live At Birdland, a 2018 Grammy Nomination for All About That Basie, which features special guests Stevie Wonder, Jon Faddis, and Take 6 among others, and the 2018 Downbeat Readers Poll Award as the #1 Jazz Orchestra in the world. Their critically acclaimed release in 2015 of A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas! is the very first holiday album in the 80-year history of the orchestra. Released on Concord Music, it went to #1 on the Jazz charts and sold out on Amazon! Special guests include vocalists Johnny Mathis, Ledisi, our own Carmen Bradford and pianist Ellis Marsalis. A BBC TV produced documentary on Mr. Basie and the orchestra entitled Count Basie: Through His Own Eyes premiered on PBS in the US and UK in 2019 coinciding with the orchestra’s 85th Anniversary. It features interviews by Quincy Jones, Scotty Barnhart, Dee Askew, John Williams, and several other important members and associates of Mr. Basie and the orchestra.
Some of the greatest soloists, composers, arrangers, and vocalists in jazz history such as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, Sonny Payne, Freddie Green, Snooky Young, Frank Wess, and Joe Williams, became international stars once they began working with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra. This great 18-member orchestra is still continuing the excellent history started by Basie of stomping and shouting the blues, as well as refining those musical particulars that allow for the deepest and most moving of swing.
William “Count” Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1904. He began his early playing days by working as a silent movie pianist and organist and by eventually working with the Theater Owners Booking Agency (TOBA) circuit. In 1927, Basie, then touring with Gonzelle White and the Big Jazz Jamboree, found himself stranded in Kansas City, Missouri. It was here that he would begin to explore his deep love of the Blues and meet his future band mates including bassist Walter Page.
Walter Page’s Blue Devils and Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra caught Basie’s ear and soon he was playing with both and serving as second pianist and arranger for Mr. Moten. In 1935, Bennie Moten died, and it was left to Basie to take some of the musicians from that orchestra and form his own, The Count Basie Orchestra, which is still alive and well today some 86 years later. His orchestra epitomized Kansas City Swing and along with the bands of Fletcher Henderson, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, Basie’s orchestra would define the big band era.
While the media of the period crowned Benny Goodman the “King of Swing”, the real King of Swing was undoubtedly Count Basie. As the great Basie trumpeter Sweets Edison once said, “we used to tear all of the other bands up when it came to swing”. The Basie orchestra evolved into one of the most venerable and viable enterprises in American music with the highest levels of continued productivity rivaling any musical organization in history.
With the April In Paris recording in 1955, the orchestra began to set standards of musical achievement that have been emulated by every jazz orchestra since that time. One of the things that set Mr. Basie’s orchestra apart from all others and is one of the secrets to its longevity, is the fact the Basie allowed and actually encouraged his musicians to compose and arrange especially for the orchestra and its distinctive soloists such as Snooky Young, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Frank Wess on flute, who recorded the very first jazz flute solo in history. The orchestra also began to become the first choice for the top jazz vocalists of the day including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony
Bennett, and of course, Basie’s “Number One Son”, the great Joe Williams.
During the 1960s and throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, the orchestra’s sound, swing feel, general articulation and style began to become more laid back and even more relaxed. As 30-year veteran trumpeter Sonny Cohn once stated, “this is a laid...back...orchestra....a...laid...back...orchestra”. With very few personnel changes, the orchestra members were able to blend into one sound and one way of phrasing that is now known as the “Basie way”.
Since Basie’s passing in 1984, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, Grover Mitchell, Bill Hughes, Dennis Mackrel, and since September 2013, Scotty Barnhart, have led the Count Basie Orchestra and maintained it as one of the elite performing organizations in Jazz.
Current members include musicians hired by Basie himself: Frequent guest vocalist Carmen Bradford (joined in 1983) and trombonist Clarence Banks (1984). Long-time members include Doug Miller (1989, formerly w/Lionel Hampton), guitarist Will Matthews from Kansas City (1996), and members who have 15-25 years of service; trombonist Mark Williams, trumpeters Shawn Edmonds and Endre Rice, saxophonists Doug Lawrence (formerly w/Benny Goodman) and returning on lead alto, David Glasser.
Newer members include bassist Trevor Ware, lead trumpeter Frank Greene III and trumpeter Brandon Lee, pianist Reginald Thomas, lead trombonist Isrea Butler, bass trombonist Ronald Wilkins, alto sax and flute Stantawn Kendrick and the youngest members, drummer Robert Boone and baritone saxophonist Josh Lee.
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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3
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
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Count Basie
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[] |
[] |
[
"Count Basie"
] | null |
[
"IMDb"
] | null |
Count Basie. Soundtrack: Pearl Harbor. The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in...
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en
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IMDb
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
|
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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3
| 53 |
https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-232-elusive-thad-jones-at-100
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en
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TT 232: Elusive: Thad Jones at 100, by Russell Scarbrough
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https://substackcdn.com/image/youtube/w_728,c_limit/wlO8aTYxvLU
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https://substackcdn.com/image/youtube/w_728,c_limit/wlO8aTYxvLU
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[
"ETHAN IVERSON"
] |
2023-03-28T10:43:10+00:00
|
A guest post about the legendary trumpet player, composer, and arranger
|
en
|
https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-232-elusive-thad-jones-at-100
|
Most jazz fans know Thad Jones for his work with the famous Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band, the house ensemble of the Village Vanguard. I was intrigued by all the non-Thad/Mel material Russell was posting on his socials, and am grateful for the opportunity to repost these fascinating insights here. — e.i.
——
by Russell Scarbrough:
Below are notes I collected while contemplating a book on Thad Jones. All this material first appeared on my Facebook page. Corrections welcome, for accurate and complete information about Thad remains elusive!
Thad Jones, born 100 years ago today in Pontiac, Michigan, recorded “Elusive” on his first record in 1954.
“My Centennial” is number 100 in that fat book of charts at the Village Vanguard.
Thad’s parents had moved to Pontiac from Mississippi in the Great Migration. His siblings included two other great jazz musicians, Hank (older), and Elvin (younger). Their father, Hank Sr. was a deacon at Trinity Baptist Church, within sight of their childhood home (one of Thad's first big band charts was "The Deacon"). By all accounts, his sister was the most talented member of the family, but she died tragically at age 12. Thad apparently didn't pick up a trumpet until he was about 13, and was completely self-taught (his uncle gave him the horn and a book about how to play). No jazz was allowed in the house on Sundays.
Thad played locally until enlisting in WWII in 1943, then ended up in Guam in time to hear Dizzy Gillespie on the radio. After the war, Thad played in Detroit and in the midwest, but didn't arrive in NYC until May 1954. He was 31! Hardly a note of Thad's career was recorded until his life was almost half over.
Since many jazz musicians regularly went through Detroit, Thad was well known along that circuit before he moved east. He joined the Count Basie Orchestra on Frank Wess's recommendation just as Basie was entering one of his most fruitful and enduring periods.
In addition, Thad immediately became part of Charles Mingus's circle of performers and composers for an important three year run.
By the end of the summer of 1954, Thad had recorded his debut LP The Fabulous Thad Jones with Mingus on bass; he also recorded Mingus's "Portrait" (a trumpet solo with orchestra) for10-inch record. An oft-quoted letter by Mingus to Metronome Magazine praises Thad as "Bartók with valves.”
The relationship didn’t last. In Gene Santoro's biography of Mingus Myself When I Am Real, he reports a plausible enough story about Mingus and Thad having a dispute about an appearance Thad made on some album that — due to some contractual matter — caused one of Mingus's records to be held up... so Mingus called Thad's residence, got his wife on the phone instead, and proceeded to subject her to one of Mingus's famous tirades. When Thad heard about this, said to Mingus, "I'll kill you if you ever do that again," and then according to Santoro, they didn't speak for 20 years.
Except — In 1972, for Mingus's big band album Let My Children Hear Music, the CD reissue notes by George Kanzler state: "Mingus conceived of an ambitious project with a large ensemble and hired Thad Jones to do the arranging and scoring. But Jones, in the midst of writer's block, didn't produce any music.”
Say what now? So they were certainly talking. And Thad had "writer's block?" If Thad was getting paid, he would be writing charts: this was a period when Thad did a lot of freelance arranging of all kinds of lesser commercial material (after his day gig with Ed Sullivan at CBS dried up). I really don't believe this.
I have a lot of questions about Thad and Mingus. They worked together during important years for both of them, and clearly there had been mutual respect for each other's music. And them one day it was over? What really happened after that falling out in 1957? What was their relationship like afterwards? What if?
It seems likely that Thad Jones spent time playing, and presumably writing, while serving in the US Army in WWII (from 1943-46). We know practically nothing about Thad in the first half of the 1940's, and practically nothing about when he became interested in writing music or how he developed that craft.
Chris Sheridan's bio-discography of Count Basie notes that the Ernie Wilkins arrangement of "Every Day I Have The Blues” — which was a giant hit — was “written out from riffs and figures supplied by Thad Jones and Frank Wess.” Bill Kirchner is quoted on the Living Jazz Archives website saying that a 1956 arrangement of Denzil Best's "Move" featured on the Hall Of Fame LP was actually co-arranged by Wess and Thad — representing Thad's first chart for Basie, and therefore, the first Thad chart we know about (though he wrote many original tunes for his small group records).
1955-56 were good years for Thad. His first son and daughter were born. He played his iconic "Pop Goes the Weasel" solo on "April In Paris" (another massive hit for Basie). He recorded two more solo albums and won Down Beat's New Star award. And on August 29, 1955, while on the road in Chicago with Basie, he met the drummer from Stan Kenton's orchestra: Mel Lewis.
Apart from that half-a-chart of “Move,” from 1954-58 Thad contributes no other arrangements to the Basie band. Strange but true? According to Sheridan's exhaustive catalog of radio checks and (many) other documented performances at that time, there were no Thad charts in the book. Basie had other great writers, of course: Ernie Wilkins, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Neal Hefti, and others.
This changes in 1958 when the great Chairman Of The Board LP comes out. Thad contributes four charts to the album: "The Deacon", "H.R.H.", "Mutt & Jeff", and the rather progressive "Speaking of Sounds" (also known as "Brushes & Brass”). The kinetic "Counter Block" appears in concerts in the first half of 1959 and may have been written about the same time as the Chairman charts.
(A listing of Thad's charts for Basie is here.)
Thad became very close to Al Grey, who joined the Basie trombone section in 1957 just before a triumphant tour of Great Britain. Sheridan suggests Grey was the "missing link" providing real depth to the Basie band, and his arrival inspired Thad's pen. Indeed, Thad wrote at least three great charts to feature Grey: “H.R.H.," "Bluish Grey,” and "Makin' Whoopie," perhaps the definitive showcase for Grey's plunger technique.
"To You” on the First Time: Basie Meets The Duke (1961) was also originally intended for Grey, but he’d been fired from the Basie band 6 months earlier, so it ended up being a feature for Quintin Jackson's plunger.
(Incidentally, Sheridan also mentions that “H.R.H.," obviously the acronym for Her Royal Highness, was inspired by the British tour. The title specifically refers to Princess Margaret, who was a fan of Basie's and made quite a favorable impression on the band.)
Thad spent almost 8 1/2 years with Basie. In his seniority, he self-promoted himself from "The Deacon" (1957) to "The Elder" (1962).
But other than the concept album projects where Thad was contracted to write most of the arrangements — Dance Along With Basie and Count Basie/Sarah Vaughan — less than a dozen Thad charts were performed regularly.
From this vantage point it seems odd that Thad’s arrangements were so scarce in the Basie book, but there were reasons. Basie had no shortage of great writers for the band; Verve Records wanted to feature Neil Hefti; Basie was notorious for his pickiness regarding charts. In the Hall Of Fame liner notes, Wilkins is quoted: "[Basie] rejects more arrangements than he accepts,” a sentiment echoed by many later voices.
Basie also made no hesitation in changing, cutting, and correcting his arrangers, which naturally led to some tension. It’s possible that Basie simply didn't dig much of Thad's writing. Too hard, too complicated, too modern, not in keeping with the signature Basie style. "Bartók with an arranger's pen" might have too much for the leader, no matter how elegant or progressive the writing may have been.
Thad joined Basie as a relatively unknown voice from the mid-west with practically no documentation of his talent. Over 8+ years he'd become and experienced and widely-admired veteran player, acknowledged as a significant force in progressive jazz. Basie had featured him, shown him how to be a successful leader, and given him a chance to grow as a writer.
But Thad eventually outgrew the limitations of the sideman role, so on January 24, 1963, Thad finally left Count Basie freelance in NYC, writing, arranging, playing, and band-leading. Publicly he said it was to spend more time with his family, which makes sense. Life in a big band like Basie's meant large periods of time on the road, and sometimes grueling schedules.
(An example of a grueling schedule: In May 1959, in the midst of a two-week nightly residency at Birdland in NYC, the band flew to Miami with Joe Williams to play an all-night dance from 2-7am, and flew back to make their Birdland hit later that evening! The Miami performance is captured on the Breakfast Dance & Barbecue LP.)
But was this a good time to stop being a sideman? On one hand, Thad was a seasoned 40-year old and in good artistic company: Roland Hanna, James Moody, Pepper Adams, Shirley Scott, Gerry Mulligan, Ben Webster, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, George Russell... great voices of the past, present, and future. He regarded his week of playing "Night Creature" with Duke Ellington and the Detroit Symphony in March 1963 as one of the high points of his career. (See Mark Stryker's Jazz From Detroit for more about “Night Creature.”)
On the other hand, the scene was changing: The Cold War heating up, instability in Europe, the assassination of JFK, the Civil Rights movement beginning to have wide effects, Vietnam on the horizon….TV was increasingly a focal point for all Americans (most broadcasting was in color by 1965), keeping people at home evenings. and there were fewer young people interested in jazz (no longer the music of rebellion and freedom, but of rarefied modern art). Birdland went bankrupt in 1964 and closed early in 1965, just after a weeklong residency featuring John Coltrane.
Finally, at the encouragement of his brother Hank, he joined CBS as a studio musician in 1964, and began performing regularly on the Ed Sullivan Show. He stayed on the show until it was cancelled in 1971.
Meanwhile, Thad played occasionally with Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band. Unlike Basie, Mulligan's group was not full-time, and was mostly centered in New York. Also unlike Basie, Mulligan tended to feature a limited number of soloists: Mulligan himself, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, and Clark Terry or Conte Candoli on trumpet, giving far less to the other (quite capable) players in the band. And Mulligan's band could be said to have an element of restraint and refinement, perhaps unusually so for a large jazz group at that time, and not necessarily to everyone's taste (which may partially explain why Mulligan didn't keep it together for long). But while less satisfying for Thad to perform in, he made important connections there: composer Brookmeyer would become an important ally, and he built a relationship with the drummer Mel Lewis, whom Thad had previously met on the road. Lewis would then power a quintet with Thad and baritone sax player Pepper Adams (the 1966 LP Mean What You Say is a great document of this group).
Knowing Thad's writing aspirations (and finding no outlet with Mulligan in that regard, it seems), Mel began to encourage Thad to start his own band. Mel was not the first to suggest this: Roland Hanna said the same thing immediately after Thad left Basie. And it's not as if Thad wasn't writing: in fact, Harry James hired Thad for about a chart a month once he had left Basie, resulting in the 1964 LP Harry James Plays New Versions of Down Beat Favorites, containing 12 Thad Jones arrangements. So why not just start writing, get the guys together and start playing? After all, there were other bands in NYC doing just that: besides Mulligan, Duke Pearson had a big band, and there were many other part-time or occasional bands that only played locally. Take a few months, write out a couple of sets, and we're off and running, right? What was Thad waiting for?
In his biography of Mel Lewis The View From The Back Of The Band, Chris Smith gives a hint in passing which may be the key to understanding a lot of Thad's decision making. Regarding this question, why did Thad not write charts for his own use, even when many encouraged him to do so, and logistical pieces were falling into place, Smith writes, "...as Mel later discovered, Thad rarely composed or arranged music unless he had a paid commission to do so.”
Turns out, on principle, Thad didn't write music in his spare time — only when he was on the clock. This perhaps help explain why he didn't write much for Basie, except when there was a project (like a concept album) where he could be contracted to write without the possibility of Basie rejecting his charts (and therefore, not getting paid for the ones Basie didn't accept). On the other hand, Thad did write for Harry James when he was basically on retainer and getting a monthly check. If he was going to write big band charts—which he really wanted to do—Thad needed a way to get paid.
Perhaps this principle is at the heart of one of the strangest chapters in Thad's career: the ill-fated "Basie/Thad" record of 1965.
Somewhere along the line, Thad and Basie spoke. They agreed that Basie would record an album of Thad’s charts. Not a bunch of arrangements dashed off in a hurry for some singer, but a full LP of Thad’s original compositions. The very thing Thad had wanted all those years, but never quite got. And… Basie would pay for it. This is the story as we’ve received it.
So — again, at some point — there was a handshake and Thad got to work writing in Spring 1965. The Beatles toured America, and Birdland closed. The first indoor baseball game happened in the Astrodome, and the US sent 250,000 personnel to Vietnam. “Thad, we’ll bring the band into the hall at the end of the summer and read down what you’ve got so far.”
In September, Thad brought seven charts — about half of what would be needed for an album — to a reading session with Count Basie and the orchestra. The titles are familiar to those who know the future Vanguard band: “Back Bone,” "All My Yesterdays,” “Big Dipper,” “The Little Pixie,” “Low Down,” “A-That’s Freedom,” "The Second Race,” Some of them, like “A-That’s Freedom" (actually composed by Thad’s brother Hank, arranged by Thad) and “The Second Race” were sort of Basie-ish: one could imagine the CBO playing these well. The others were brilliant, modern, thoroughly Thad, and really not much in Basie’s conventional style. In any event, at the end of the reading, Basie gave all seven of them the same response he had given to so many of Thad’s charts when he was in the band: No. Not for me. Not for us.
(Incidentally, some suggest these were “too hard” for the Basie band to play. Nonsense. Basie always had a band full of tremendous all-around players. Perhaps the sight-reading was rough-around-the-edges in the moment, or perhaps Thad felt compelled to make explanatory remarks ahead of some charts that Basie had little patience for. But none of these titles are as technically challenging as, say, Thad’s “Counterblock,” which Basie’s band played perfectly well in a live recording from 1959).
Some claim Basie tried letting Thad down easy with a patronizing, encouraging attitude: “Thad, why don’t you take these and start your own band?” As if the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra was Basie’s idea. Others have Basie throwing the record company (Verve) under the bus: “I’d love to record these but they really want an album of Chico O’Farrill charts, what can I do?” Which is plausible enough, but then why have the reading session in the first place? Still others suggest there was quite a bit more tension in the air as that session progressed.
I admit that none of this makes any sense to me. Basie and Thad knew each other for a decade at that point. Basie knew how Thad wrote—they’d been through all this before. What did he think, after three years away from the band, that Thad would suddenly start writing like Ernie Wilkins, for a whole album? And did Thad think, “Chief never liked this stuff before, but these charts will knock his socks off…they’re so hip he’ll have to record them…”
Both of these guys must have had some purpose going into this session. Without a clear sense of exactly what was said in the months before Thad wrote the music — when the “handshake” was made, “OK, we’ll do this” — it’s impossible to say who got what they wanted out of it. Basie didn’t keep a big band going for decades by being a dummy. Whether or not this day went down the way he’d hoped is another question. But Thad left that September 1965 session with a stack of original charts under his arm: new music, brilliantly conceived, and without a home.
And Basie did not want to pay Thad! They had to go to the union for arbitration over it, and finally Basie begrudgingly paid Thad for only the seven charts completed (this being only the first half of what was originally to come). So much for the warm and fuzzy feelings between them. To his credit, Basie did allow Thad to keep the charts, and the copied-out parts in ink, made from Thad’s scores, weren’t exactly cheap.
On Thanksgiving weekend 1965, Thad called up Mel, Brookmeyer, Pepper, colleagues from the studios at CBS, and other friends, met them all at Phil Ramone’s A&R studios on 48th street, and began to rehearse. The charts had “COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA” stamped on them.
At this point, others have taken up the story. On February 7, 1966, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra premiered at the Village Vanguard. In short order they were considered one of the greatest big bands in the world. From this point until January 1, 1979 (when he didn’t show for the first Monday night back at the Vanguard after an ill-fated European tour), Thad Jones has a thoroughly documented jazz career.
Those who are new to Thad and Mel can start right at that cold winter night in 1966 with All My Yesterdays, a magnificent recording/book package from Resonance Records (2016) documenting the first two performances at the Vanguard and all the characters involved. Mosaic Records reissued their first five instrumental albums in 1994, and all of them are still available as digital downloads. Most of their official albums are still in print, and bootlegs abound. There are also dozens of complete Thad Jones scores published and widely distributed by Kendor Music, most of which were in print during Thad’s lifetime. (In contrast, Duke Ellington’s scores are almost exclusively transcriptions, and only came into print decades after his passing.)
After returning from a grueling European tour, the band was set to resume their usual Monday night performances in the first week of January 1979. The band was there, Mel sat at the drum set.
Thad didn't show.
Bewildered, they played the set without him. The next week, on January 8, Mel went to Thad's place and found him moving out, heading to Copenhagen... peace out, as we now say.
But... the band? The gig? The last 13 years? You and me? Uh, your family? Thad didn't give any explanations, just packed up and left the United States for the next six years. Done.
At the Village Vanguard, each music stand held a fat book of ordered charts. Number 5 was titled, "Don't Ever Leave Me," and they had played it on the first night in 1966.
There are important questions about Thad that will never be answered, especially concerning his move to Europe.
One precipitating event took place in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, early November 1978, after the show, late at night. Thad had been in a dark mood for much of the long European tour, a string of one-nighters that began early in October. He had made some outbursts during the tour, on the bus and in hotel rooms, that perplexed Mel and the band. Like, maybe something was really eating at Thad. Who knows? After playing a recorded concert at the Belgrade Jazz Festival, Thad hails a cab. Maybe—probably—Thad had been drinking. But who knows? What does a Belgrade cab driver think when a large black man enters his cab late at night? Who knows? The only source for this story is Thad. All we know is what he told people, how on a cold Belgrade night, this cab pulled over, and Thad rolled the back seat passenger side window down partially. He made a remark to a young woman on the sidewalk from the cab. What did he say? Who knows? What does a stranger say to a woman on the street late at night from the back of a cab? Then, out of nowhere, her boyfriend (?) was there, and a punch was thrown through the glass and hits Thad in the face. The glass shatters, and Thad has glass shards embedded in his lip.
That's it, that's the story. Presumably, then Thad goes (in the cab?) to the hospital or something, and gets his face and lip patched up the best they could be. There must have been blood everywhere. It's a trumpet player's nightmare.
The band had more than a month of European dates left to play. At least through December 6 in Stockholm, and then Thad was scheduled to lead the Danish Radio Big Band in Copenhagen later in December. There is a bootleg recording of the band in Milan on November 7 in which Thad doesn't play, just directs. Same thing in Paris on November 15 (which according to my research is the final recorded evidence of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra). Everyone eventually got back to NYC by the end of December, in time to take up the Monday nights at the Vanguard again.
Later on, Thad said his lip had become infected.
What does Thad’s lip injury have to do with his flight to Europe? Who knows? Most likely it just made the idea of a hard goodbye that much more dreadful. We know he had a long association with the Danish Radio Big Band — had even made records with them — and that he had been negotiating plans to spend more time with them (many Americans do this, going to Copenhagen several times a year). But later it seemed like he had been planning a more permanent move there for a while, maybe for most of 1978.
But why leave without a word? Why didn’t he just say to Mel and the band in September, this has been great but I have to move on, this is my final tour then I’m going to Denmark? Wouldn’t everyone in the band have understood, been supportive and shown him an outpouring of love — even if they had to keep it quiet? More that one person has said to me, “Thad didn’t like goodbyes.” But we don’t know that answers why he burned every bridge behind him.
Thad also left his wife and family behind in NY. His children had just become adults. I don’t know if his departure was any less a surprise to them than it was to Mel and the band. “Thad never really spoke about his family,” was a remark made in several conversations I’ve had. “He had walls up around his personal life.” Once he settled in Denmark, he quickly married a Danish woman, Lis, and had a child with her, Thaddeus Jr.
Thad didn’t just quit, he ran away from all his responsibilities, his obligations, his accomplishments, and everyone who cared about him and relied on him. With all the time and energy he had previously put into making a solid living, having a steady income, leaving the road for stability on the home front, it does make me wonder if there’s a really big part of this puzzle we have no pieces for. There’s something else. Did he feel like he had to escape? That he couldn’t tell anyone? Sure, there was a job and a woman waiting him half a world away, but…. I don’t think those elements alone all add up. Thad had secrets, and he didn’t reveal all of them even when he left.
The job didn’t work out. Danish Radio wanted Thad to conduct all their programs, and not just play his own music. After a couple of activities with them, he didn’t sign a contract to stay on permanently. It probably didn’t help that he couldn’t play his horn — his lip required corrective surgery more than once over a couple of years. In the meantime, he picked up valve trombone, and by all accounts, sounded much like his old self down an octave.
Even so, within a few months of arriving in Europe, Thad was already putting together another big band, called “Eclipse.”
Meanwhile, Mel did his best to honor the commitments Thad had made for the band without him, and through sheer stubbornness and force of will (and the determination of all the players), Mel kept the band together successfully through the end of his life. That band continues today as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and current members Dick Oatts, Rich Perry, and Doug Purviance were on that last tour with Thad in ‘78. They play every Monday night, and they always play Thad’s music.
By September 1979 the Eclipse band had made a record and begun a Monday night residency at JazzHouse Vognporten in Copenhagen. Despite television appearances and the band including name players like Horace Parlan, Sahib Shihab, Tim Hagans, and Jesper Lundgaard, the ensemble failed to play enough to gain any traction, and by 1981 had disbanded.
A second band, the inexplicably-named “Ball Of Fire” big band, managed to record a short television special in 1981 and can be viewed on You Tube. Packed with regulars from Eclipse, European jazz stars, Jerry Dodgion and Jerome Richardson from the 1966 band at the Vanguard, and Roger Kellaway on piano, it seems like this band could have really been a major draw at festivals and large venues across Europe, but somehow this one did no better than the first. Tim Hagans, a member of both groups, speaks of a week-long recording project sponsored by an Italian promoter, but this recording has never surface, making it a kind of “holy grail” of late Thad, a rumor of lost treasures.
While Thad’s lip was getting treatment, he was writing. Kendor’s catalog of Thad charts practically doubled between 1980-82, resulting in a large number of post-Mel compositions. Thad seemed in some cases to be stretching out from song-form style tunes and writing through-composed work, possibly inspired by Ellington’s longer forms. Occasionally some of these European charts made their way back to the Village Vanguard, at times simply ordered from Kendor.
Rayburn Wright’s seminal textbook Inside The Score was published in 1982, profiling three of Thad’s best works from the Vanguard years, “Three And One,” “Kids Are Pretty People,” and the rock anthem “Us,” alongside examples by Bob Brookmeyer and Sammy Nestico. Thad was reportedly gratified by the inclusion, and Wright’s book has been the standard text for big band writing since its publication.
As more and more of Thad’s music was finding wide distribution, he was becoming more in demand as an educator. The hit-and-run workshop was suited to his spontaneous style, and in ’80-’81 he was a featured artist-in-residence at the Jazz Seminar of Catalonia in Banyoles, Spain, which left a lasting impact on young musicians in the region. His wide, broken-tooth grin reappears in photographs from the seminar.
Between the dashed hopes for big band projects, and trying to heal and rebuild his lip on the one hand, and then his new marriage and son, wide respect and admiration for his past accomplishments on the other, the early 1980’s was a season of dramatic ups and downs for Thad. Perhaps his frustration about not performing often enough is reflected in the sharp uptick in his writing (and the popularity of his published music provided the financial incentive to keep producing). But one gets the impression he felt stagnant, impatient. Thad needed something to happen.
On April 26, 1984, Count Basie passed away in Hollywood, Florida. The longest continuously-running jazz big band in existence was suddenly left without a leader. The Count Basie Orchestra limped along for a few months, and finally came to terms with the fact that they couldn’t survive without a leader. Basie was the beating heart at the center of the organization. Now they needed a transplant. They had name recognition, international tours, prestigious bookings, management, and institutional momentum. The first person they thought to call for leadership was Thad Jones.
So in February 1985, six years after stealing away across the sea without so much as a good bye, with a busted lip, no job, and a string of broken relationships behind him, Thad came back to the United States to be the director of the greatest big band in the world. He had newly-strengthened chops, a trunk full of new music, growing respect for his position as an elder statesman, and little Thad Junior in tow. It was a celebrated, even triumphant homecoming, but no one who knew the history failed to grasp the irony of Thad Jones, of all people, taking control of Basie’s early-1950’s style orchestra.
In the press, he said he was ready to keep the heart of the music beating with all the classics and add stylistically appropriate new works to the rep list. Privately, he wanted to modernize the book, eventually transforming it to something suitable as a vehicle for mostly his own music. He couldn’t do it all at once, though. First he had to take the CBO on the road — and fate again gave Thad one last chance to redeem, for his part at least, one of the most hurtful breakups.
Mel Lewis had kept up the Jazz Orchestra, and they still went to Europe every summer, playing the jazz festival circuit. So did the Basie Orchestra. So it’s not surprising that both ensembles would perform the Stockholm Jazz Festival in the summer of 1985. The scheduling of them on the same show does give one pause….
Thad found Mel, and the two who had frequently described themselves as “soul brothers” looked at each other for the first time in six years. Thad embraced Mel… some who were there say Mel’s arms stayed at his side. It must have been a flood of emotions for Mel, who never really understood what happened in 1978.
But the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, and especially the guys who had been in the band when Thad left, were thrilled to see him and eager to reestablish that comradeship that comes from seeing the old captain again. It seems like Mel wasn’t quite sure what to think, but was relieved that the open hostility was gone. Over the next year, there were rumors and rumblings about some sort of possible reunion. It was not to be, and Thad and Mel never saw each other again.
As a 35-year old during the 1950’s, when Thad was in his prime, and being only a section player in the Basie orchestra, he took the road life in stride. Now, in his early 60’s, and being the leader, it was exhausting. He had high hopes for this gig — finally, everything Thad had always wanted seemed to be within his grasp: a world-renowned ensemble, full schedule of performances, family stability and financial stability, love and recognition.
But the road itinerary for the CBO was grueling. And when they were finally able to take a break in the fall, Thad had an album of charts to write in a little over a month, before flying the band to Tokyo to make a concert video. Upon return, recording sessions with vocalist Caterina Valente would take place through the holidays, so the record would be done for them to tour with her in the spring. Before the album was complete, Thad was sick.
Age, drink, and years of smoking and neglecting his body were catching up with Thad. He was barely able to do the tour with Valente. May 6, 1986 was Thad’s last date leading the Count Basie Orchestra. He led them for 15 months. He immediately left the US, seriously ill, going back to Copenhagen with his family. He died on August 20 at the age of 63 of bone cancer.
Thad is buried in Vestre Kirkegård Cemetery. His headstone bears the title of one of his last compositions: “Live Life This Day.”
— by Russell Scarbrough
|
||||
correct_death_00034
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FactBench
|
2
| 48 |
https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/fullcredits
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en
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Count Basie
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[] |
[] |
[
"Count Basie"
] | null |
[
"IMDb"
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Count Basie. Soundtrack: Pearl Harbor. The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in...
|
en
|
IMDb
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0059831/
|
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 51 |
https://www.prestomusic.com/jazz/artists/5257--count-basie
|
en
|
Count Basie - Buy jazz recordings
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A profile of Count Basie (Piano & Bandleader) and details of their recordings available to browse and buy.
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Presto Music
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https://www.prestomusic.com/jazz/artists/5257--count-basie
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William James "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.
Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
Classic Recordings, The Atomic Mr. Basie
Matt explores the origins behind the Count Basie Band's 1957 comeback album The Atomic Mr. Basie, a big band tour de force with state of the art compositions by Neal Hefti... the man who would go on to write the Batman theme!
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Composer Biography, Facts and Music Compositions
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Count Basie Biography - William James Basie, also known by his stage name Count Basie, was an American Jazz Pianist and Bandleader. He was one of the most influential bandleaders
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FAMOUS COMPOSERS
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https://www.famouscomposers.net/count-basie
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William James Basie, also known by his stage name Count Basie, was an American Jazz Pianist and Bandleader. He was one of the most influential bandleaders of the modern swing era.
William Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey on August 21, 1904. Both of his parents had some basic knowledge about music theory. His father was a mellophone player whereas his mother was a pianist. Thus, music became a part of young Basie’s early childhood education. Basie was not very interested in school; however, he took his music very seriously. He would often spend time at the Palace Theatre of Red Bank; there he observed the various improvisation techniques that were used at those times and he soon incorporated them in his playing. When Basie was fifteen, his talent was noticed and he ultimately start performing at amateur gigs, clubs, resorts and dances with fellow drummer Sonny Greer. He continued this way of life until 1927, when the troupe that he was part of broke up at Kansas City. He then joined Walter Page’s legendary Blue Devils in 1928, and it was with this band that he developed the stage name “Count Basie”. With the fame that Basie achieved with the Blue Devils, he went on to play with Benny Moten in 1929. Moten’s bands were known to play in the “Kansas City Stomp” style. Basie often played four hand piano with Benny Moten and the band’s electric performances earned Basie and Moten the reputation as the masters of swing music.
However, Benny Moten’s death in 1935 meant that Basie would have to come up with a new band of his own, which he did in 1936. Basie called it “Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm”. The band had many members from Benny Moten’s band and it earned widespread acclaim and attention. Their releases “Shoe Shine Boy”, “Boogie Woogie”, “Evening”, and “Oh, Lady Be Good” were highly successful. The band moved to New York City in 1937 and he was introduced to Billie Holiday by his band’s producer John Hammond. The band performed at the famous Apollo Theatre multiple times. The band was also famous for performing at the Roseland Ballroom and at the Savoy. Basie received plenty of positive reviews for his performances at Roseland.
Count Basie won a total of nine Grammy Awards during his lifetime, these included four awards for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, and one award for Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist. Four of his records were inducted to the highly prestigious Grammy Hall of Fame. These records included the 1937 record “One O’clock Jump”,1939 record “Lester Leaps In”, the 1955 records “Every day I have the blues” and “April in Paris”. He also received many honors posthumously, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.
William James Basie died on April 26, 1984 in Hollywood, Florida.
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Count Basie facts for kids
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Learn Count Basie facts for kids
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Count_Basie
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William James "Count" Basie ( August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.
Biography
Early life and education
William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.
The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation". When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.
Early career
Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band. Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements". He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City). As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.
In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals. A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).
Kansas City years
The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson. Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style. In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music. Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for, was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform. During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted. The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band. A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with Earl Hines, as well as Duke Ellington.
Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump". According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.
John Hammond and first recordings
At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the Grand Terrace Ballroom. Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of Herschel Evans' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the alto players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.
In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with". Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out. He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on Vocalion Records under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44). When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.
By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone). Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".
Basie favored blues, and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, and Joe Williams. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
New York City and the swing years
When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement). Soon, they were booked at the Roseland Ballroom for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing". Compared to the reigning band of Fletcher Henderson, Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.
The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up. His first official recordings for Decca followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "Pennies from Heaven" and "Honeysuckle Rose".
Hammond introduced Basie to Billie Holiday, whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos). The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and Jimmy Rushing getting the most attention. Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.
Next, Basie played at the Savoy, which was noted more for lindy-hopping, while the Roseland was a place for fox-trots and congas. In early 1938, the Savoy was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with Chick Webb's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer Ella Fitzgerald. As Metronome magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:
Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.
The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, Benny Goodman recorded their signature "One O'Clock Jump" with his band.
A few months later, Holiday left for Artie Shaw's band. Hammond introduced Helen Humes, whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years. When Eddie Durham left for Glenn Miller's orchestra, he was replaced by Dicky Wells. Basie's 14-man band began playing at the Famous Door, a mid-town nightspot with a CBS network feed and air conditioning, which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap. Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from Jimmy Mundy (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and Earl Hines), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief". In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first West Coast dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the William Morris Agency, who got them better fees.
On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at Southland in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20. On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a "Command Performance" for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore. Other minor movie spots followed, including Choo Choo Swing, Crazy House, Top Man, Stage Door Canteen, and Hit Parade of 1943. They also continued to record for OKeh Records and Columbia Records. The war years caused a lot of members turn over, and the band worked many play dates with lower pay. Dance hall bookings were down sharply as swing began to fade, the effects of the musicians' strikes of 1942–44 and 1948 began to be felt, and the public's taste grew for singers.
Basie occasionally lost some key soloists. However, throughout the 1940s, he maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists.
Los Angeles and the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts
Count Basie was the featured artist at the first Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field on September 23, 1945, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. Al Jarvis was the Emcee and other artists to appear on stage were Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, Valaida Snow, and Big Joe Turner. They played to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie and his Orchestra played at the tenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field on June 20, 1954. He played along with The Flairs, Christine Kittrell, Lamp Lighters, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Ruth Brown, and Perez Prado and his Orchestra.
Post-war and later years
The big band era appeared to have ended after the war, and Basie disbanded the group. For a while, he performed in combos, sometimes stretched to an orchestra. In 1950, he headlined the Universal-International short film "Sugar Chile" Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet. He reformed his group as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. This group was eventually called the New Testament band. Basie credited Billy Eckstine, a top male vocalist of the time, for prompting his return to Big Band. He said that Norman Granz got them into the Birdland club and promoted the new band through recordings on the Mercury, Clef, and Verve labels. The jukebox era had begun, and Basie shared the exposure along with early rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues artists. Basie's new band was more of an ensemble group, with fewer solo turns, and relying less on "head" and more on written arrangements.
Basie added touches of bebop "so long as it made sense", and he required that "it all had to have feeling". Basie's band was sharing Birdland with such bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Behind the occasional bebop solos, he always kept his strict rhythmic pulse, "so it doesn't matter what they do up front; the audience gets the beat". Basie also added flute to some numbers, a novelty at the time that became widely copied. Soon, his band was touring and recording again. The new band included: Paul Campbell, Tommy Turrentine, Johnny Letman, Idrees Sulieman, and Joe Newman (trumpet); Jimmy Wilkins, Benny Powell, Matthew Gee (trombone); Paul Quinichette and Floyd "Candy" Johnson (tenor sax); Marshal Royal and Ernie Wilkins (alto sax); and Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax). DownBeat magazine reported: "(Basie) has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this." In 1957, Basie sued the jazz venue Ball and Chain in Miami over outstanding fees, causing the closure of the venue.
In 1958, the band made its first European tour. Jazz was especially appreciated in France, The Netherlands, and Germany in the 1950s; these countries were the stomping grounds for many expatriate American jazz stars who were either resurrecting their careers or sitting out the years of racial divide in the United States. Neal Hefti began to provide arrangements, including "Lil Darlin'". By the mid-1950s, Basie's band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for some of the most prominent jazz vocalists of the time. They also toured with the "Birdland Stars of 1955", whose lineup included Sarah Vaughan, Erroll Garner, Lester Young, George Shearing, and Stan Getz.
In 1957, Basie the live album Count Basie at Newport. "April in Paris" (arrangement by Wild Bill Davis) was a best-selling instrumental and the title song for the hit album. The Basie band made two tours in the British Isles and on the second, they put on a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, along with Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, and Mario Lanza. He was a guest on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue also opened to several other black entertainers. In 1959, Basie's band recorded a "greatest hits" double album The Count Basie Story (Frank Foster, arranger), and Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, an album featuring Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones (as arranger) and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records, then later reissued by Capitol Records.
Later that year, Basie appeared on a television special with Fred Astaire, featuring a dance solo to "Sweet Georgia Brown", followed in January 1961 by Basie performing 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 providing four numbers from their play books.
During the balance of the 1960s, the band kept active with tours, recordings, television appearances, festivals, Las Vegas shows, and travel abroad, including cruises. Some time around 1964, Basie adopted his trademark yachting cap.
Through steady changes in personnel, Basie led the band into the 1980s. Basie made a few more movie appearances, such as in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella (1960) and the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles (1974), playing a revised arrangement of "April in Paris".
Marriage, family and death
Basie was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. On July 21, 1930, Basie married Vivian Lee Winn, in Kansas City, Missouri. They were divorced sometime before 1935. Some time in or before 1935, the now single Basie returned to New York City, renting a house at 111 West 138th Street, Manhattan, as evidenced by the 1940 census. He married Catherine Morgan on July 13, 1940, in the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington. In 1942, they moved to Queens. Their only child, Diane, was born February 6, 1944. She was born with cerebral palsy and the doctors claimed she would never walk. The couple kept her and cared deeply for her, and especially through her mother's tutelage, Diane learned not only to walk but to swim. The Basies bought a home in the new whites-only neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946 on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans, Queens.
On April 11, 1983, Catherine Basie died of heart disease at the couple's home in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. She was 67 years old.
Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.
Singers
Basie hitched his star to some of the most famous vocalists of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped keep the Big Band sound alive and added greatly to his recording catalog. Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie in the late 1930s. Joe Williams toured with the band and was featured on the 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, with "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" becoming a huge hit. With Billy Eckstine on the album Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald made some memorable recordings with Basie, including the 1963 album Ella and Basie!. With the New Testament Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from her Songbook recordings and constant touring she did during this period. She even toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and Basie also met on the 1979 albums A Classy Pair, Digital III at Montreux, and A Perfect Match, the last two also recorded live at Montreux. In addition to Quincy Jones, Basie was using arrangers such as Benny Carter (Kansas City Suite), Neal Hefti (The Atomic Mr Basie), and Sammy Nestico (Basie-Straight Ahead).
Frank Sinatra recorded for the first time with Basie on 1962's Sinatra-Basie and for a second studio album on 1964's It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. Jones also arranged and conducted 1966's live Sinatra at the Sands which featured Sinatra with Count Basie and his orchestra at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. In May 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Sinatra later said of this concert "I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting".
Basie also recorded with Tony Bennett in the late 1950s. Their albums together included In Person and Strike Up the Band. Basie also toured with Bennett, including a date at Carnegie Hall. He also recorded with Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah Vaughan. One of Basie's biggest regrets was never recording with Louis Armstrong, though they shared the same bill several times. In 1968, Basie and his Band recorded an album with Jackie Wilson titled Manufacturers of Soul.
Legacy and honors
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalog. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, dryly witty, and always enthusiastic about his music. In his autobiography, he wrote, "I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter."
In Red Bank, New Jersey, the Count Basie Theatre, a property on Monmouth Street redeveloped for live performances, and Count Basie Field were named in his honor.
Received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 1974.
Mechanic Street, where he grew up with his family, has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
In 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmark where Count Basie had also lived.
In 2010, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In October 2013, version 3.7 of WordPress was code-named Count Basie.
In 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Asteroid 35394 Countbasie, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1997, was named after him. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).
6508 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, California is the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Representation in other media
Jerry Lewis used "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy.
"Blues in Hoss' Flat," composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was used by the radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins as his theme song in San Francisco and New York.
In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard Basie in Carnegie Hall.
Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
Since 1963 "The Kid From Red Bank" has been the theme and signature music for the most popular Norwegian radio show, Reiseradioen, aired at NRK P1 every day during the summer.
In the 2016 movie The Matchbreaker, Emily Atkins (Christina Grimmie) recounts the story of how Count Basie met his wife three times without speaking to her, telling her he would marry her some day in their first conversation, and then marrying her seven years later.
The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance have a song titled "Count Bassy" that is included on their 2018 album Artificial Selection.
In his novel This Storm, James Ellroy makes Basie a character who is blackmailed by corrupt Los Angeles police.
In 2021’s “Elvis,” a Count Basie poster is seen about 20 minutes into the movie.
Discography
Count Basie made most of his albums with his big band. See the Count Basie Orchestra Discography.
From 1929 to 1932, Basie was part of Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra:
Count Basie in Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930-1932 (RCA Victor, 1965)
Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932) (Bluebird/RCA, 1989)
The Swinging Count!, (Clef, 1952)
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1958)
The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette, 1958)
Memories Ad-Lib with Joe Williams (Roulette, 1958)
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated with Billy Eckstine ( Roulette 1959)
String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Impulse!, 1962)
Basie Swingin' Voices Singin' with the Alan Copeland Singers (ABC-Paramount, 1966)
Basie Meets Bond (United Artists, 1966)
Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve, 1966)
Basie on the Beatles (Verve, 1969)
Loose Walk with Roy Eldridge (Pablo, 1972)
Basie Jam (Pablo, 1973)
The Bosses with Big Joe Turner (1973)
For the First Time (Pablo, 1974)
Satch and Josh with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1974)
Basie & Zoot with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1975)
Count Basie Jam Session at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo, 1975)
For the Second Time (Pablo, 1975)
Basie Jam 2 (Pablo, 1976)
Basie Jam 3 (Pablo, 1976)
Kansas City 5 (Pablo, 1977)
The Gifted Ones with Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo, 1977)
Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Satch and Josh...Again with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1977)
Night Rider with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Count Basie Meets Oscar Peterson – The Timekeepers (Pablo, 1978)
Yessir, That's My Baby with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Kansas City 8: Get Together (Pablo, 1979)
Kansas City 7 (Pablo, 1980)
On the Road (Pablo, 1980)
Kansas City 6 (Pablo, 1981)
Mostly Blues...and Some Others (Pablo, 1983)
88 Basie Street (Pablo, 1983)
As sideman
With Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1957)
With Harry Edison
Edison's Lights (Pablo, 1976)
With Benny Goodman
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, 1939)
Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1939)
With Jo Jones
Jo Jones Special (Vanguard, 1955)
With Joe Newman
Joe Newman and the Boys in the Band (Storyville, 1954)
With Paul Quinichette
The Vice Pres (Verve, 1952)
With Lester Young
The Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy, 1944)
Filmography
Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) – as himself
Top Man (1943) – as himself
Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet (1950) – as himself
Jamboree (1957)
Cinderfella (1960) – as himself
*** and the Single Girl (1964) – as himself with his orchestra
Blazing Saddles (1974) – as himself with his orchestra
Last of the Blue Devils (1979) – interview and concert by the orchestra in documentary on Kansas City music
Awards
Grammy Awards
In 1958, Basie became the first African-American to win a Grammy Award.
Count Basie Grammy Award history Year Category Title Genre Results 1984 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band 88 Basie Street Jazz Winner 1982 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band Warm Breeze Jazz Winner 1980 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band On The Road Jazz Winner 1977 Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band Prime Time Jazz Winner 1976 Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist (Instrumental) Basie And Zoot Jazz Winner 1963 Best Performance by an Orchestra – For Dancing This Time By Basie! Hits of the 50's And 60's Pop Winner 1960 Best Performance by a Band For Dancing Dance With Basie Pop Winner 1958 Best Performance by a Dance Band Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Pop Winner 1958 Best Jazz Performance, Group Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Jazz Winner
Grammy Hall of Fame
By 2011, four recordings of Count Basie had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
Count Basie Grammy Hall of Fame Awards Year recorded Title genre Label Year inducted 1939 Lester Leaps In Jazz (Single) Vocalion 2005 1955 Everyday (I Have the Blues) Jazz (Single) Clef 1992 1955 April in Paris Jazz (Single) Clef 1985 1937 One O'Clock Jump Jazz (Single) Decca 1979
Honors and inductions
On May 23, 1985, William "Count" Basie was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by Aaron Woodward.
On September 11, 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp. Basie is a part of the Big Band Leaders issue, which, is in turn, part of the Legends of American Music series.
In 2009, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In May 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Memphis, TN, presented by The Blues Foundation.
Count Basie award history Year Category Result Notes 2019 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted 2007 Long Island Music Hall of Fame Inducted 2005 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted 2002 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 1983 NEA Jazz Masters Winner 1981 Grammy Trustees Award Winner 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Honoree 1982 Hollywood Walk of Fame Honoree at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. 1970 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Initiated Mu Nu Chapter 1958 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted
National Recording Registry
In 2005, Count Basie's song "One O'Clock Jump" (1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
See also
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William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 - April 26, 1983) was a jazz pianist, organist, and bandleader.
Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Harvey Lee Basie, worked as coachman for a wealthy family. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several area families. His mother, Lilly Ann Basie, 'took in laundry'. Basie learned how to play piano as a child.
Basie toured the vaudeville circuit starting in 1924 as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers. In 1928 he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the following year became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, Missouri. After Moten died in 1935, Basie became leader and started referring to himself as "Count Basie".
At the end of 1936 he moved his band to New York City where the Count Basie Orchestra remained until 1950. The big band era appeared to be at an end, but Basie reformed his as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952 and led it until his death. Basie remained faithful to the Kansas City jazz style and helped keep jazz alive with his distinctive piano playing. Basies music was characterized by his trademark jumping beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano.
Basie also showcased some of the best blues singers of the era: Billie Holliday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, and Joe Williams
Count Basie died in Hollywood, Florida April 26 1983 at age 79.
One O'Clock Jump and Jumpin' at the Woodside were among Count Basie's more popular numbers.
See also
Jazz royalty
Samples
Download sample of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" by Count Basie & His Orchestra, a popular swing song by a jazz legend
External links
Count Basie at the Duke Jazz Archives (http://www-music.duke.edu/jazz_archive/artists/basie.count/03/bio.html)
Count Basie at PageWise (http://de.essortment.com/biographywillia_rgyr.htm)da:Count Basie
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Biography – Count Basie
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Jazz icon, Count Basie, was born William James Basie August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey. Count Basie is considered one of the greatest bandleaders of all times. He was the arbiter of the big-band swing sound and his unique style of fusing blues and jazz established swing as a predominant music style. Basie changed the jazz landscape and shaped mid-20th century popular music, duly earning the title “King of Swing” because he made the world want to dance.
The Man
Both of Basie’s parents were hard workers. His father, Harvey Lee Basie, was a coachman and a groundskeeper, and his mother, Lillian Childs Basie, was a laundress. As a young boy, Basie hated to see his parents working so hard, and vowed to help them get ahead. The family had a piano, and Basie’s mother paid 25¢ a lesson for his piano lessons at an early age. He had an incredible ear, and could repeat any tune he heard. Dropping out of junior high school, Basie learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise piano accompaniment for silent films at the local movie theater in his hometown that would eventually become the Count Basie Theatre. He quickly made a name for himself playing the piano at local venues and parties around town until he moved to New York City in search of greater opportunities.
His Family
After a decade long courtship, Basie married dancer Catherine Morgan, his second wife, on his birthday in 1942. They had one daughter, Diane, in 1944. Count and Mrs. Basie were true socialites – often gathering with friends including celebrities Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Basie protégé Quincy Jones. They had direct lines to presidents, occasionally exchanging personal telegrams giving well wishes. In 1949, the Basie family moved one of the premier neighborhoods open to African American families – Addsleigh Park in St. Albans, Queens, New York. Their neighbors included Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Robinson and Milt Hinton. While Count Basie worked over 300 nights a year, Mrs. Basie was very active in charitable and civil rights organizations, and was recognized for her work by the major leaders of the day. In the early 1970s, the Basies moved to the warmer climate of Freeport, Bahamas.
His Music
Around 1924 Basie moved to Harlem, a hotbed for jazz, where his career started to quickly take off. Shortly after he got there, he got a gig replacing Fats Waller with a touring vaudeville act. When he came back to Harlem, Fats Waller showed him how to play the organ, and Willie “the Lion” Smith took him under his wing. He went out on tour with on the vaudeville and TOBA circuits again until his performance group disbanded in the mid-1920s, leaving him stuck in Kansas City. It was here that he was introduced to the big-band sound when he joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils in 1928. Basie now called Kansas City home.
Basie heard Bennie Moten’s band, and longed to play with them. But Moten was an expert piano player himself, and Basie fashioned a job for himself as the band’s staff arranger. He couldn’t write music at the time, but his ear was perfect. Eventually, Moten generously let Basie sit in on piano.
A year later, Basie joined Bennie_Moten’s band, and played with them until Moten’s death in 1935. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie’s name some style, so he called him “Count.” Little did Basie know this touch of royalty would give him proper status and position him with the likes of Duke Ellington and Earl Hines.
Famed record producer and journalist, John Hammond, heard the band’s broadcast and began writing about the Orchestra to gain their attention. He then traveled from New York to Kansas City just to hear the band and to meet Count Basie. He soon started booking the band and shopping them to agents and record companies – forging their big break. In 1937 Basie took his group, Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, to New York to record their first album with Decca Records under their new name, The Count Basie Orchestra.
The Count Basie Orchestra had a slew of hits that helped to define the big-band sound of the 1930s and ’40s. Some of their notable chart toppers included Jumpin’ at the Woodside, April in Paris, and Basie’s own composition, One O’Clock Jump, which became the orchestra’s signature piece.
Basie and his Orchestra appeared in five films, all released within a matter of months in 1943: Hit Parade, 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, Red Bank Blues, Rusty Dusty Blues, Jimmy’s Blues, and Blue Skies.
In 1950, financial restraints forced Basie to disband the orchestra. For the next two years he led small bands between six and nine pieces. Basie reorganized the Orchestra in 1952 and this new band was in high demand and toured extensively around the world. (This became known as the “New Testament Band”, while the first Orchestra was the “Old Testament Band.”) They played command performances for kings, queens and presidents, and issued a large number of recordings both under Basie’s name and as the backing band for various singers, most notably Frank Sinatra.
Some argue Basie made some of his best work during the 1960s and ’70s Shiny Stocking, L’il Darlin, Corner Pocket, and even a hit single, Everyday I Have the Blues, with Joe Williams. During this period he also recorded with music greats, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson.
Basie was a true innovator leading the band for almost 50 years and recording on over 480 albums. He is credited for creating the use of the two “split” tenor saxophone, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and beautifully layering masterful vocalists. Basie was often recognized for his understated yet captivating style of piano playing and his precise, impeccable musical leadership.
Basie earned nine Grammy Awardsand made history in 1958 by becoming the first African-American to receive the award. He has had an unprecedented four recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame – One O’Clock Jump (1979), April in Paris (1985), Everyday I Have the Blues (1992), and Lester Leaps In (2005), along with a slew of other awards and honors not only for his music, but for his humanitarianism and philanthropy around the world.
Basie died April 26, 1984 in Hollywood, FL but his legacy is still swinging strong.
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Count Basie | Jazz Pianist, Bandleader, Composer
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Count Basie was an 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
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Count Basie (born August 21, 1904, Red Bank, New Jersey, U.S.—died April 26, 1984, Hollywood, Florida) was an 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).
More From Britannica
jazz: Count Basie’s band and the composer-arrangers
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 stride pianist, 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.
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2014-04-02T09:22:32
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One of jazz music's all-time greats, bandleader-pianist Count Basie was a primary shaper of the big-band sound that characterized mid-20th century popular music.
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Biography
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https://www.biography.com/musicians/count-basie
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(1904-1984)
Who Was Count Basie?
A pianist, Count Basie played vaudeville before eventually forming his own big band and helping to define the era of swing with hits like "One O'Clock Jump" and "Blue Skies." In 1958, Basie became the first African American male recipient of a Grammy Award. One of jazz music's all-time greats, he won many other Grammys throughout his career and worked with a plethora of artists, including Joe Williams and Ella Fitzgerald.
Early Life
Basie was born William James Basie (with some sources listing his middle name as "Allen") on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father Harvey was a mellophonist and his mother Lillian was a pianist who gave her son his first lessons. After moving to New York, he was further influenced by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, with Waller teaching Basie organ-playing techniques.
Barons of Rhythm
Basie played the vaudevillian circuit for a time until he got stuck in Kansas City, Missouri in the mid-1920s after his performance group disbanded. He went on to join Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1928, which he would see as a pivotal moment in his career, being introduced to the big-band sound for the first time.
He later worked for a few years with a band led by Bennie Moten, who died in 1935. Basie then formed the Barons of Rhythm with some of his bandmates from Moten's group, including saxophonist Lester Young. With vocals by Jimmy Rushing, the band set up shop to perform at Kansas City's Reno Club.
Becomes 'Count'
During a radio broadcast of the band's performance, the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some pizazz, keeping in mind the existence of other bandleaders like Duke Ellington and Earl Hines. So he called the pianist "Count," with Basie not realizing just how much the name would catch on as a form of recognition and respect in the music world.
Hits That Swing
Producer John Hammond heard the band's sound and helped secure further bookings. After some challenges, the Count Basie Orchestra had a slew of hits that helped to define the big-band sound of the 1930s and '40s. Some of their notable songs included "One O'Clock Jump"—the orchestra's signature tune which Basie composed himself — and "Jumpin' at the Woodside."
With the group becoming highly distinguished for its soloists, rhythm section and style of swing, Basie himself was noted for his understated yet captivating style of piano playing and precise, impeccable musical leadership. He was also helming one of the biggest, most renowned African American jazz groups of the day.
Band's Second Incarnation
Due to changing fortunes and an altered musical landscape, Basie was forced to scale down the size of his orchestra at the start of the 1950s, but he soon made a comeback and returned to his big-band structure in 1952, recording new hits with vocalist Joe Williams and becoming an international figure. Another milestone came with the 1956 album April in Paris, whose title track contained psyche-you-out endings that became a new band signature.
Collaborations, Awards and Death
During the 1960s and '70s, Basie recorded with luminaries like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. Basie ultimately earned nine Grammy Awards over the course of his career, but he made history when he won his first, in 1958, as the first African American man to receive a Grammy. A few of his songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as well, including "April in Paris" and "Everyday I Have the Blues."
Basie suffered from health issues in his later years, and died from cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984. He left the world an almost unparalleled legacy of musical greatness, having recorded or been affiliated with dozens upon dozens of albums during his lifetime.
QUICK FACTS
Name: Count Basie
Birth Year: 1904
Birth date: August 21, 1904
Birth State: New Jersey
Birth City: Red Bank
Birth Country: United States
Gender: Male
Best Known For: One of jazz music's all-time greats, bandleader-pianist Count Basie was a primary shaper of the big-band sound that characterized mid-20th century popular music.
Industries
Jazz
Astrological Sign: Leo
Interesting Facts
In 1958, Count Basie became the first African-American male recipient of a Grammy Award.
Death Year: 1984
Death date: April 26, 1984
Death State: Florida
Death City: Hollywood
Death Country: United States
Fact Check
We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us!
CITATION INFORMATION
Article Title: Count Basie Biography
Author: Biography.com Editors
Website Name: The Biography.com website
Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/count-basie
Access Date:
Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
Last Updated: April 14, 2021
Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
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Count Basie
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(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the…
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Britannica Kids
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https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Count-Basie/317082
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(1904–84). American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Count Basie was one of the outstanding organizers of big bands in jazz history. He transformed big-band jazz by the simplicity of his arrangements and secured his place in history with such classic numbers as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Basie Boogie.”
William Basie was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey. He studied music with his mother and was later influenced by the Harlem pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, receiving informal training on the organ from Waller. He began his professional career as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit. Basie eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and 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 short-wave radio station in Kansas City, the announcer dubbed him “Count” Basie to compete with such other bandleaders as Duke Ellington. The jazz critic John Hammond heard the broadcasts in New York, New York, and promptly launched the band on its career in Chicago, Illinois. Although rooted in the riff style of the 1930s swing-era bands, the Basie band included soloists who reflected the styles of their own periods. In this way the band was a springboard for such artists as tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, and trumpeter-composer Thad Jones. Many musicians considered Basie’s to be the major big band in jazz history, a model for ensemble rhythmic conception and tonal balance.
During the late 1930s the accompanying unit for the band (pianist Basie, rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones) was unique in its lightness, precision, and relaxation, becoming the precursor for modern jazz accompanying styles. Basie’s syncopated and spare but exquisitely timed chording, commonly termed comping, became the model for what was expected from combo pianists in their improvised accompaniments for the next 30 years of jazz. Despite its influence on modern piano styles, Basie’s solo technique had roots in the pre-swing-era style of Fats Waller, and Basie continued to display such a “stride style” in performances through the 1970s.
Basie’s autobiography, Good Morning Blues, written with Albert Murray, was published in 1985, one year after his death. Count Basie died on April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, Florida, leaving a grand legacy of song that would continue to influence jazz musicians for generations to come.
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William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was a prominent American jazz pianist and band leader. Like his contemporary Duke Ellington, Basie assembled a group of premiere musicians and through innovative use of rhythm and improvisation, and his spare yet suggestive piano work, Basie largely defined the distinctive Kansas City jazz style that would, in turn, influence the emergence of modern jazz. For his contribution to classic jazz and his anticipation of modern developments, Basie is regarded as one of jazz music’s all time greats.
Basie is known for his inimitable statements on the piano, but it has also been said that his real instrument was his band. Basie brought to perfection the union of opposites characteristic of much great art: His crisp, contrapuntal piano and the relaxed, even swing of the rest of his rhythm section; his incisive, minimalist piano and the powerful sound of his orchestra; and countless pairs of hard/soft soloists dialogging with each other. Combining soulful blues and upbeat, celebratory rhythms and solo performances, Basie's music possessed an emotional resonance that elevated Big Band jazz beyond the conventions of popular swing jazz.
Early life
Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, to Harvey Lee Basie, and Lillian Ann Childs and lived on Mechanic Street. Later, he would be referred to as the “Kid from Red Bank” (the title of a tune). Bill had a brother, LeRoy Basie. His father worked as coachman for a wealthy family. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a grounds keeper and handyman for several families in the area. His mother took in laundry, and was Basie's first piano teacher when he was a child. He was taught organ informally by Fats Waller. Along with Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Lucky Roberts, and other pianists of the Harlem stride tradition would be Basie’s prime influences.
Basie toured the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuit, starting in 1924, as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers. Sometimes, he would also provide musical accompaniment to silent movies. His touring took him to Kansas City, Missouri, where he met many jazz musicians in the area. Kansas City was then an important transit point and a musical scene connected to nightlife, similar to New Orleans’ Storyville, had begun to thrive there, giving birth to a distinctive Kansas City style. In 1928, Basie joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the following year became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City.
Moten’s ensemble was a good "territory band," a term signifying the rising popularity of jazz outside of urban scenes and of popular bands that would range far from home for engagements. Moten himself was a capable, but unremarkable, ragtime pianist who had the good sense to put to use the young pianist he had recruited: Basie. Except for Basie, the really outstanding musician of the band was trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. The band had had its successes (notably a 1928 version of "South") but it was still a few steps away from the swing era. Occasionally, one could hear an accordion in the ensembles, which gave it a pleasant but unsophisticated rural sound.
Within a mere two years, the band had absorbed many of the best elements of Walter Page’s Blue Devils, a competing band that had dissolved. These included Page himself, a formidable bassist who gave the band a powerful new swing. Basie’s piano had become gradually more present ("Moten Swing," "Prince of Wails") and he soon came to all but own the band. He started his own band in 1934, but shortly after returned to Moten's band. When Moten died in 1935, the band soon dissembled, and in 1936, Basie, along with several of Moten’s key alumni, resurrected it under a new name, Barons of Rhythm, soon to become the Count Basie Orchestra.
The classic band: Basie’s “First Testament”
In addition to touring, the band performed nightly radio broadcasts, and serendipitously, the young Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond—a music legend who had discovered the seventeen-year-old Billie Holiday in 1933, tracked down the forgotten Bessie Smith for a final recording session in 1937, and later launched the careers of Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen—picked up the Basie band on his car radio. Inspired by what he heard, Hammond set out for Kansas City to hear Basie in person, and in October 1936, the producer arranged a recording session in Chicago that he later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with."
Basie's band honed their repertoire at a long engagement at a Chicago club. It was at this time that he was first called "Count" Basie by a local disk jockey, a term of distinction for outstanding jazz greats that included Joe "King" Oliver, Edward "Duke" Ellington, and Bessie Smith, who was crowned the Empress of the Blues. Soon the Basie band was expanded to the full big band size (13 musicians), and by the end of 1936 Hammond brought the band to New York, where it opened at the Roseland Ballroom. By the next year Basie took up residence at the Famous Door, and the Count Basie Orchestra continued to perform in New York until 1950.
Basie’s music was characterized by his trademark "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. Basie also showcased some of the best blues singers of the era: Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, and later Big Joe Turner and Joe Williams. Most congenial to the band was Jimmy Rushing, called “Mr. Five by Five” (due to his short stature and large girth). Rushing epitomized the spirit of Basie’s orchestral blues, a blues that was more urbane and often humorous than traditional blues. Even more importantly, Count Basie was a highly successful band-leader who was able to hold onto some of the greatest jazz musicians of the 1930s and early 1940s, like Buck Clayton and Lester Young, and the band's brilliant rhythm section, Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones. He was also able to hire great arrangers that knew how to use the band's abilities, like Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
With his newly formed band, Basie quickly brought the Kansas City style of jazz to perfection. While not fundamentally different from the style played by other swing era bands in New York or Chicago, this way of playing was characterized by a supple, light beat and the astute use of riffs—short melodic patterns played repeatedly, especially towards the end of a piece, to heighten the atmosphere. The alternating playing of several riffs could go on indefinitely, until a climax was reached. Unfortunately, the recordings of that era were limited to about three minutes, so they cannot fully convey the equivalent of the band’s live performances.
Another Basie innovation was the introduction of two tenor saxophones “dueling” with each other. The first, historical pair consisted of Lester Young, with his detached, cool sound and Herschel Evans with his more traditional, intensely hot style. This was the starting point of a long history of saxophone duels within the Basie Band and beyond. On trumpet also, the elegant Buck Clayton and the powerful Harry “Sweets Edison” were a perfect complement to each other. On trombone too, there were usually two major voices at any given time, including Bennie Morton, Dickie Wells, and Vic Dickenson.
Basie the pianist
Most of the time, Basie played very few notes, but these were perfectly chosen to fill the silence he used with equal mastery. His unique, crisp style can immediately be recognized by knowledgable jazz fans(only Nat Pierce has been somewhat successful at imitating him). At times, his piano was reminiscent of Earl Hines’s jumpy and ethereal rhythmic playing ("Moten Swing," with Bennie Moten). Much of the time, the stable and powerful qualities of his stride piano heritage were obvious. His playing was often pure Fats Waller, with the stomping left hand the pearly flurries of the right hand (John’s Idea, 1937), except that it was also pure Basie. Over the years, Basie’s subtle sense of rhythm, combined with his powerful stride playing, would produce a unique synthesis that gradually evolved into his signature minimalist style. He would play next to nothing but fill the room with his few notes.
Many tunes also highlight Basie’s double role as soloist and accompanist of his key players (e.g., in Roseland Shuffle, 1937, in his dialogue with Lester Young). Occasionally, Basie would also produce piano solos ("How Long Blues," 1938) or contribute extended solos to his band’s performances ("Boogie Woogie").
The Basie rhythm section
Basie’s rhythm section has often been described as the best in jazz history. It was certainly the most cohesive of its time and has reached proverbial fame. Starting with Basie’s presence in the Moten band, it came into being over the years when, first, Walter Page’s bass gave real swing to the band. Later, Jo Jones on drums introduced the even 4 beats that contrasted with earlier drummers emphasizing 2 beats out of 4. Jones was also a formidable soloist. When finally Freddie Green added his guitar to the band, the section was complete. Over the next 50 years, Green would practically play nothing but a succession of chords that completed the even dynamism of the section. Interestingly, each time a new element of that section was added, the already existing members toned down their playing without changing it to reach the perfect balance that made the ensemble famous. Much of that subtle quality was lost once Jones and Page departed, but even the more muscular nature of drumming in the New Testament band maintained the essence of that quality thanks to the lasting presence of Freddie Green and Basie himself.
Basie’s “New Testament”
By the late 1940s the Big Band era appeared to be at an end, but (after downsizing to a septette and octette in 1950) Basie reformed his band as an even larger 16-piece orchestra in 1952, and led it until his death. Basie remained faithful to the Kansas City style and helped keep jazz alive with his distinctive piano playing. The new band gave its real meaning to the name big band. Its huge sound was brassier than that of the first band. It also relied on sophisticated arrangements, while the first band had mostly relied on star soloists and their ability to play "head arrangements." These were simple arrangements learned by heart by musicians who, for all their talent, were poor sight readers. In that sense, the new band was more professional and less dependent on particular key players. Any capable musician could fit in and replace a departing member of the band. What was gained in weight and in sophistication was perhaps compensated by a slight loss in originality over time. The new soloists of the band, while excellent, were not quite of the historical caliber of a Lester Young. The emotion-laden sound of the ensembles and Basie’s own input became all the more important.
Basie and modern jazz
With his New Testament band, Basie moved into the special realm of classic jazz being played in the era of bop and modern jazz—concurrently with developments that were of a totally different nature. While he and his musicians remained swing musicians in essence, they did evolve with the times, creating the big band music of after the swing era. The major soloists who passed through the new band through the years include Clark Terry on flugelhorn, Joe Newman on trumpet, Paul Gonsalves, Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Eddie “Lockjaw Davis" on tenor, Sonny Paine and Louis Bellson (a white musician) on drums, and many more. All of them could be considered transitional artists, mixing elements of classic jazz with the complexities and tone of modern jazz.
The vocalists
By the mid 1950s, the Count Basie Band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for the finest jazz vocalists of the time. Joe Williams was spectacularly featured on the 1957 album One o'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings. Ella Fitzgerald, the quintessential swing singer, recorded several times with the Count Basie Orchestra. These records are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald's 1963 album Ella and Basie! is remembered as one of Fitzgerald's greatest recordings. With the "New Testament" Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from the "Songbook" recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. She toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and a much tamer Basie band also met on the 1979 albums Digital III at Montreux, A Classy Pair, and A Perfect Match.
Frank Sinatra had an equally fruitful relationship with Basie; 1963's Sinatra-Basie and 1964's It Might As Well Be Swing (both arranged by Quincy Jones) are two of the highest points at the peak of Sinatra's artistry. Jones provided the punchy arrangements for the Basie band on Sinatra's biggest selling album, the live Sinatra at the Sands.
In the 60s, Basie was often compelled to compromise on the choice of his material to maintain his band. In 1960, he appeared as himself (along with his band) in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella. But by the 70s, his fame had reached a peak, including with the public at large, not unlike the popularity achieved by Louis Armstrong. He was named the greatest jazz musician on earth by the British publication Melody Maker and was invited to perform for Queen Elizabeth before even Duke Ellington earned that distinction. Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984 at the age of seventy-nine. The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey was named in his honor.
Legacy
“Basie's status as a great musician was not a matter of extension and elaboration of blues idiom basics as was the case of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington," says jazz critic Albert Murray. "Basie's claim to fame and prestige was based on his refinement of the fundamentals that make jazz music swing. The Basie hallmark was always simplicity, but it is a simplicity that is the result of a distillation that produced music that was as refined, subtle and elegant as it was earthy and robust. There is no better example of the un-gaudy in the work of any other American artist in any medium."
Basie's consummate artistry, like Ellington's, is a credit to his visionary understanding of the jazz idiom and his leadership as much as to his innovative keyboard work. Basie's band is often cited as the most important precursor of the emergence of modern jazz, and it is not coincidental that the leading innovator of forties, the saxophonist Charlie Parker, was a native of Kansas City. Basie gathered many of the premiere jazz artists of the era. Saxophonist Herschel Evans and his distinctive "Texas moan;" the blues-based "Hot Lips" Page, who had earlier performed with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith; jazz balladeers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Turner; and above all brilliant, boundary-breaking tenor sax improviser Lester Young (known affectionately as "Pres") established a style for the Basie band that drew from the excitement of traditional jazz and informed it with innovations in rhythm and phrasings that would lead jazz in radical new directions.
"Count Basie's music is not about protest," said Murray. "It is about celebration, and . . . what [Basie's music] generates is a sense of well-being that even becomes exhilaration."
References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Basie, Count. Count Basie Collection (Artist Transcriptions). Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004.
Basie, Count. The Piano Style of Count Basie: Some of Basie's Best of Advanced Piano. Alfred Publishing Company, 2001.
Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980.
Murray, Albert et al.Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002.
All links retrieved January 10, 2024.
|
||||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 49 |
https://www.sfltimes.com/obits/world-renown-miami-musician-charles-austin-jr-dies-at-93
|
en
|
World renown Miami musician Charles Austin Jr. dies at 93
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
CHARLES AUSTIN JR.: “Music has been my life,” he said. “When I found out I could do it and do it well, I worked at ...
|
en
|
https://www.sfltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/sftimes.org_.ico?x18240
|
South Florida Times
|
https://www.sfltimes.com/obits/world-renown-miami-musician-charles-austin-jr-dies-at-93
|
CHARLES AUSTIN JR.: “Music has been my life,” he said. “When I found out I could do it and do it well, I worked at it.” STOCK PHOTO
MIAMI – Miami musician Charles Austin Jr., a saxophonist who performed with legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King and Marvin Gaye, and taught generations of students, died at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood on Jan. 16 from natural causes, his daughter Sheila Austin said.
He was 93.
Austin, a Miami native, also performed with “Godfather of Soul” James Brown, Count Basie and Cannonball Adderley.
He blazed trails not only as a saxophonist but also as a multi-instrumentalist, educator and composer, while balancing his career and being a family man to his late wife, Judith, his six children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Music was his passion from an early age and the sounds of his horn echoed throughout the United States and Europe, as the jazz impresario was the epitome of a renaissance man.
Austin was the first African American musician to play in the orchestra at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach; was musical conductor of the Broadway hit “Purlie”; and winner of a 1954 edition of the “Ed Sullivan Show,” in which he simultaneously played two saxophones, holding one upside down.
Austin said one of his proudest moments came when he was handpicked by the Nixon administration to accompany George Crumb, a renowned classical composer, to play at an American library erected in Romania during a time when they weren’t so welcoming of Americans, and more particularly of Blacks.
“Many people had submitted their music to the State Department, but they chose mine," Austin told the South Florida Times in 2020. "I went and I was so scared. But I got out there and I played some of the pieces I’d written and some music by Romanian composers. The people loved it. It was one of the most important times in my life."
Austin made a bigger impact in his hometown when he was a regular performer at Miami’s historic Hampton House, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X stayed during their visits because Blacks weren’t allowed at white hotels in Miami Beach and Miami.
Austin also started a music program at Brownsville Middle School when it first opened, and co-founded the Performing and Visual Arts Center, also known as PAVAC, at Miami Northwest Senior High School in Liberty City.
Austin’s parents’ divorce and a brush with death when he suffered from pneumonia when was 13 years old led him to pick up the saxophone after he moved to Memphis, Tenn. to live with his uncle, Dr. W.A. Bisson.
Bisson, who was the top Black physician in the city, bought his nephew the instrument in hopes that playing it would help develop his lungs.
Austin fell in love with it and immediately began studying to hone his craft.
“Music has been my life. When I found out I could do it and do it well, I worked at it. I studied under some of the top teachers, including Howard Brubeck for jazz music theory,” Austin said.
Sheila Austin said her parents met while serving in the U.S. Navy and her father began his music career, first as a music teacher, after he was discharged.
She said her mother would accompany her father to his gigs and their marriage was the picture of bliss.
"In between gigs they had date nights," she said. "They were the talk of the town because of the love they had for each other."
Austin put his music career on hold to take care of his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer.
The couple had been married for 44 years when she died in 1997.
Sheila Austin said following her mother’s death, her father played at local scenes and collaborated with many artists performing at festivals and music workshops.
She said she and her siblings were required to pick up a musical instrument and learn to play.
"We all played … that was a must in our house," said Sheila Austin, who played the flute. "We all had to learn how to play instruments."
Her niece, Dawn Michelle Johnson, followed in her father’s footsteps. Johnson earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and is a member of The Strings Queens which is currently on tour and scheduled to perform at South Dade Cultural Arts Center this year.
Austin said Johnson started performing at 15 years old including performances with Miami Beach’s New World Sympathy conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
Johnson also has performed all over the globe including Russia. "My dad always wanted his students to go to Julliard but he did one better when his own granddaughter attended the school," Sheila Austin said. "My father was so proud of her."
Like her father, Sheila Austin made an impact on Miami’s cultural arts while serving 21 years at the MiamiDade Department of Cultural Affairs. "I was part of the Miami cultural development scene," she said.
Visitation for Charles Austin is set for Tuesday, Jan. 30 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Richardson Mortuary, 4500 N.W. 17th Ave. in Miami.
A memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 31 at 10 a.m. at Church of the Open Door, 6001 N.W. 8th Ave. in Miami.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
0
| 50 |
https://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/count-basie/
|
en
|
Count Basie
|
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[] |
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[
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[] | null |
Find the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, read a biography, see related stars and browse a map of important places in their career.
|
en
|
https://d1qqc1e9kvmdh8.cloudfront.net/img/favicon.ico
|
latimes.com
|
https://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/count-basie/
|
Bandleader | Jazz Musician Born William Basie on Aug. 21, 1904 in Red Bank, NJ
Mention the Count Basie Orchestra, and several aural images spring quickly to mind. The grooving, in-the-pocket swing of the rhythm section, its drive energized by Basie's brisk piano punctuations and the subtle understatement of Freddie Green's guitar; the crisp, utterly unified thrust of the ensemble, swinging as a single man; the instantly memorable compositions; the extraordinary soloists, from Lester Young and Harry Edison to Frank Foster and Thad Jones.
There was never just one Basie ensemble, and each installment, over the more than six decades of its existence, has had its own character. Initially a group whose personality was centered on its superb soloists, the Basie band was reduced to the small group sound of six- to nine-piece ensembles in the cost-cutting post-World War II years. The big Basie units that followed in the '50s and '60s were composer-arranger-oriented, with a series of vigorous charts provided by Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Frank Foster, Thad Jones and others.
Basie had formed his first band at 13 to play for school dances. One day his pianist failed to appear, so Basie took over on that instrument and turned the drums over to his friend, Sonny Greer, who later became a drummer for Duke Ellington.
In 1922, Basie went to New York City, eventually getting a job playing piano at a nightclub. He joined a road show called "Gonsell White and His Big Jamboree Review" only to get stranded in Kansas City when it folded.
But Kansas City was a lively spot for a jazz musician and by 1935 Basie had formed his own nine-piece group. For its trek out of Kansas City in October of 1936 to hoped for prominence in the music world, the band added four pieces — creating a remarkable rhythm section.
After a rough start, they had their first hit with "One O'Clock Jump" and the Basie band was made. Somewhere along the line a radio announcer decided William Basie should be "Count" because Ellington was "Duke" and Benny Goodman was "The King of Swing." "Count" stuck, although Basie allowed that he hated the name.
"I wanted to be called 'Buck' or 'Hoot' or even 'Arkansas Fats,' " he said.
|
||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 30 |
https://ballandchainmiami.com/history/
|
en
|
Ball & Chain
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
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[] |
2015-02-27T05:00:03+00:00
|
Ball & Chain bar and lounge, Miami FL. Live music, entertainment, and dancing, delicious lunch and dinner, and private events hosting.
|
en
|
Ball & Chain
|
https://ballandchainmiami.com/history/
|
Ball & Chain bar and lounge and the building it occupies offers a history as colorful and as fascinating as any structure on this portion of Calle Ocho, an area increasingly considered to be the center of Little Havana.
But before there was a Calle Ocho, and even a Tamiami Trail, the mid-1900s name for Southwest Eighth Street, there was a dirt road, over which carriages and motor vehicles brought produce to downtown Miami for sale and shipment. The Trail, as it was commonly known, was also important because it represented the southern terminus of a national road, Highway 41, which began in the Midwest. In the era preceding superhighways, Highway 41 was a major entry route, via the Everglades, into Miami. Eventually, Southwest Eighth Street was paved and lined with commercial businesses, a movie theater, churches, and eateries in a neighborhood offering an intriguing demographic mix: a growing Jewish population standing side by side with a Deep South constituency.
Ball & Chain Saloon opened in 1935. The business remained there through the end of the 1950s, although its name changed slightly from time to time. In 1949, for example, it was Himmel’s Ball & Chain; in 1953, it was called the Ball & Chain Tavern.
The fortunes of Ball & Chain changed significantly in the 1950s, following its purchase by Ray Miller, Henry Schechtman, and others. Ray Miller was a felon and a Teamsters Union, Local 320, organizer and Henry Schechtman was a Jewish entrepreneur who often operated outside of the law. In a period of less than two months in the fall of 1957, Schechtman was arrested for burglary and for “attempting to pry open the deck lid of a jewelry salesman’s car.” Schechtman bought additional nearby properties, including the Tower Hotel, a former hospital dating to the early 1920s. Miller’s problems with the law included an arrest for public drunkenness, which he branded a “grudge charge” and attributed it to a disgruntled employee of a neighboring business.
According to his two sons, Schechtman dealt in stolen liquor and bootleg cigarettes, was part of a Jewish mob and served prison time. It would seem Ball & Chain was an appropriate name for his club. Schechtman was an imaginative businessman who staged bare knuckle fights behind the Tower Apartments. The times along Southwest Eighth Street were changing in that expansive post World War II era as more businesses filled the thoroughfare. With its rounded contours and RKO tower, the Tower Theater, standing across the street from Ball & Chain, was a popular draw for moviegoers. Used car dealers, other restaurants, an ice cream parlor, hardware store, gasoline stations, and even a hobby shop stood nearby Ball & Chain bar and lounge.
Ball & Chain featured entertainers who performed in the commodious venue with its stage in center, a long bar off to the west side of the room, tables sprinkled throughout the venue, and an alternative entranceway on the east side of the building for those quick getaways. A haunting painting of a prisoner in traditional garb and tethered to a ball and chain announced that entry point. Today that wall represents the western edge of the wildly popular Azucar ice cream parlor.
Ball & Chain had more than one owner during its first twenty-five year run, and it achieved some notoriety during this time. Gambling was rampant in the 1930s and throughout the 1940s in Miami. And the era was also notable for the closing by local law authorities of nightspots for reasons of gambling and liquor law violations. Even the Ku Klux Klan, by then a diminished force in Miami, but still viewing itself as a morals’ arbiter, was responsible for trashing the notorious La Paloma Club in northwest Miami, because it viewed the nightspot as a den of iniquity. Bars and nightclubs farther west on Southwest Eighth Street were shut down by law authorities, as well.
Interestingly, D. C. Coleman, the Dade County sheriff throughout that era, lived just two blocks from Ball & Chain. Gambling was also a part of the offerings of Ball & Chain in the late 1930s-early 1940s, as noted in a scathing reference in the Miami Herald, c. 1941, which took the club to task for “brazenly” dismissing a guard who had stood at the door of the club and who was expected to warn employees inside that a police raid was coming. For the Herald, the elimination of this security figure meant that the Ball & Chain was now confident that there would be no gambling raids by the police.
Although it is not known when the Ball & Chain began to feature black entertainers, African Americans were already making their mark by the late 1940s early 1950s on Miami Beach and in nightclubs along Biscayne Boulevard. The Clover Club on the Boulevard, along with the Copa City club on Miami Beach’s Belle Isle offered entertainment by the Ink Spots and Josephine Baker, among others. The flamboyant singer and dancer who had wowed audiences in Paris in the 1920s, and, subsequently, many parts of the U.S., Baker insisted in her contract with Copa City that she would only perform before biracial audiences. Baker and her representatives recognized here the deeply segregated nature of Greater Miami, which differed little from other Deep South cities in terms of race.
Schechtman’s sons insisted that Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Louie Armstrong were among the stellar black performers who appeared at Ball & Chain, but prolonged research into their assertions has turned up only Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Chet Baker, a talented white musician, as entertainers who appeared on a somewhat consistent basis in the final half of the 1950s. Billie Holiday was a welcomed figure in the Schechtman household in the Tower Apartments, even babysitting for the family. On one occasion, after the 5 o’clock a.m. closing, Mr. Schechtman returned to the family quarters only to find the great black singer with a needle in her arm. Billie died a few years later. She had had a long standing heroin addiction.
Many black entertainers appearing in the Greater Miami area would retreat to clubs on the Miami mainland after performing downtown and would often jam before an enraptured audience, including those at Ball & Chain. The “Count” also performed before enthusiastic daytime audiences on weekends in what were billed as jam sessions. (One of the alluring features of Ball & Chain bar and lounge for black musicians was the understanding that they could reside after their appearances at the Tower Apartments.)
At jam sessions, members of the audience were invited to come up to the stage and “strut their stuff” musically while often accompanied by the great musician. Not everything was euphoric with the “Count” and the ownership of Ball & Chain, however. In January 1957, Count Basie was paid by Ball & Chain $5,100.00, which was what it grossed from his multi-day stint there. Yet Basie’s contract called for a payment of $13,000. The Count sued for the balance owed and won a judgement of $5,000 effectively putting the club out of business. In 1958, the Copa Lounge Tavern was occupying the space that for more than twenty-two years was Ball & Chain.
The Copa, as some called it, was a distant cry from Ball & Chain bar and lounge, for it lacked the color and live entertainment of its predecessor. Yet, those who worked at the Copa were aware of Ball & Chain bar and lounge and the caliber of its entertainment, often telling bar patrons that Nat King Cole or other black entertainers performed there.
By the end of the 1950s, a large influx of Cubans, fleeing, first, the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and, later, that of Fidel Castro, poured into a neighborhood, which was also experiencing a flight of long time residents to the new suburbs west of it. By 1967, the strong Cuban presence in the neighborhood, as well as among the businesses on Southwest Eighth Street, prompted many to refer to the area as Little Havana and to its main artery as Calle Ocho (as early as 1960, the Tower Theater was offering Spanish subtitles to first run American movies in recognition of the changing demographics).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
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American jazz musician and composer (1904–1984)
Musical artist
William James "Count" Basie ( ; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984)[1] was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, his minimalist piano style, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams. As a composer, Basie is known for writing such jazz standards as Blue and Sentimental, Jumpin' at the Woodside and One O'Clock Jump.
Biography[edit]
Early life and education[edit]
William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey.[2][3] His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area.[4] Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.[5][6]
The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school[7] but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.[8]
Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15.[5] Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation".[9] When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.[10]
Early career[edit]
Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band.[11] Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.
Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen.[12][13] His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong.[14] Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.[15]
Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements".[16] He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City).[1] As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.[17]
In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals.[18] A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).[19]
Kansas City years[edit]
The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson.[20] Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style.[21] In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music.[22] Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for,[23] was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform.[24] During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted.[25] The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band.[26] A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with Earl Hines, as well as Duke Ellington.
Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump".[27] According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.[28]
John Hammond and first recordings[edit]
At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the Grand Terrace Cafe.[29] Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of Herschel Evans' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the alto players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.[30]
In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with".[31] Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out.[32] He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on Vocalion Records under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44).[33] When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.[34]
By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone).[35] Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".[36]
Basie favored blues, and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, and Joe Williams. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as Eddie Durham and Jimmy Mundy.
New York City and the swing years[edit]
When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement).[37] Soon, they were booked at the Roseland Ballroom for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing".[38] Compared to the reigning band of Fletcher Henderson, Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.[39]
The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up.[40] His first official recordings for Decca followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "Pennies from Heaven" and "Honeysuckle Rose".[41]
Hammond introduced Basie to Billie Holiday, whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos).[42] The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and Jimmy Rushing getting the most attention.[43] Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.[44]
Next, Basie played at the Savoy, which was noted more for lindy-hopping, while the Roseland was a place for fox-trots and congas.[45] In early 1938, the Savoy was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with Chick Webb's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer Ella Fitzgerald. As Metronome magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:
Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.[46]
The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, Benny Goodman recorded their signature "One O'Clock Jump" with his band.[47]
A few months later, Holiday left for Artie Shaw's band. Hammond introduced Helen Humes, whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years.[48] When Eddie Durham left for Glenn Miller's orchestra, he was replaced by Dicky Wells. Basie's 14-man band began playing at the Famous Door, a mid-town nightspot with a CBS network feed and air conditioning, which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap.[49] Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from Jimmy Mundy (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and Earl Hines), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief".[50] In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first West Coast dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the William Morris Agency, who got them better fees.[51]
On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at Southland in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20.[52] On the West Coast, in 1942 the band did a spot in Reveille With Beverly, a musical film starring Ann Miller, and a "Command Performance" for Armed Forces Radio, with Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Jerry Colonna, and the singer Dinah Shore.[53] Other minor movie spots followed, including Choo Choo Swing, Crazy House, Top Man, Stage Door Canteen, and Hit Parade of 1943.[54] They also continued to record for OKeh Records and Columbia Records.[55] The war years caused a lot of members turn over, and the band worked many play dates with lower pay. Dance hall bookings were down sharply as swing began to fade, the effects of the musicians' strikes of 1942–44 and 1948 began to be felt, and the public's taste grew for singers.
Basie occasionally lost some key soloists. However, throughout the 1940s, he maintained a big band that possessed an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists.[56]
Los Angeles and the Cavalcade of Jazz concerts[edit]
Count Basie was the featured artist at the first Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field on September 23, 1945, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr.[57] Al Jarvis was the Emcee and other artists to appear on stage were Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam, Valaida Snow, and Big Joe Turner.[58] They played to a crowd of 15,000. Count Basie and his Orchestra played at the tenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field on June 20, 1954. He played along with The Flairs, Christine Kittrell, Lamp Lighters, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Ruth Brown, and Perez Prado and his Orchestra.[59]
Post-war and later years[edit]
The big band era appeared to have ended after the war, and Basie disbanded the group. For a while, he performed in combos, sometimes stretched to an orchestra. In 1950, he headlined the Universal-International short film "Sugar Chile" Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet. He reformed his group as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. This group was eventually called the New Testament band. Basie credited Billy Eckstine, a top male vocalist of the time, for prompting his return to Big Band. He said that Norman Granz got them into the Birdland club and promoted the new band through recordings on the Mercury, Clef, and Verve labels.[60] By 1956, Basie's recordings were also showcased by Ben Selvin within the RCA Thesaurus transcription library.[61] The jukebox era had begun, and Basie shared the exposure along with early rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues artists. Basie's new band was more of an ensemble group, with fewer solo turns, and relying less on "head" and more on written arrangements.
Basie added touches of bebop "so long as it made sense", and he required that "it all had to have feeling". Basie's band was sharing Birdland with such bebop musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Behind the occasional bebop solos, he always kept his strict rhythmic pulse, "so it doesn't matter what they do up front; the audience gets the beat".[62] Basie also added flute to some numbers, a novelty at the time that became widely copied.[63] Soon, his band was touring and recording again. The new band included: Paul Campbell, Tommy Turrentine, Johnny Letman, Idrees Sulieman, and Joe Newman (trumpet); Jimmy Wilkins, Benny Powell, Matthew Gee (trombone); Paul Quinichette and Floyd "Candy" Johnson (tenor sax); Frank Wess (tenor sax and flute); Marshal Royal and Ernie Wilkins (alto sax); and Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax).[64] DownBeat magazine reported: "(Basie) has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this."[65] In 1957, Basie sued the jazz venue Ball and Chain in Miami over outstanding fees, causing the closure of the venue.[66]
In 1958, the band made its first European tour. Jazz was especially appreciated in France, The Netherlands, and Germany in the 1950s; these countries were the stomping grounds for many expatriate American jazz stars who were either resurrecting their careers or sitting out the years of racial divide in the United States. Neal Hefti began to provide arrangements, including "Lil Darlin'". By the mid-1950s, Basie's band had become one of the preeminent backing big bands for some of the most prominent jazz vocalists of the time. They also toured with the "Birdland Stars of 1955", whose lineup included Sarah Vaughan, Erroll Garner, Lester Young, George Shearing, and Stan Getz.[67]
In 1957, Basie the live album Count Basie at Newport. "April in Paris" (arrangement by Wild Bill Davis) was a best-selling instrumental and the title song for the hit album.[68] The Basie band made two tours in the British Isles and on the second, they put on a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, along with Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, and Mario Lanza.[69] He was a guest on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue also opened to several other black entertainers. In 1959, Basie's band recorded a "greatest hits" double album The Count Basie Story (Frank Foster, arranger), and Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, an album featuring Billy Eckstine, Quincy Jones (as arranger) and the Count Basie Orchestra. It was released by Roulette Records, then later reissued by Capitol Records.
Later that year, Basie appeared on a television special with Fred Astaire, featuring a dance solo to "Sweet Georgia Brown", followed in January 1961 by Basie performing at one of the five John F. Kennedy Inaugural Balls.[70] That summer, Basie and Duke Ellington combined forces for the recording First Time! The Count Meets the Duke, each providing four numbers from their play books.[71]
During the balance of the 1960s, the band kept active with tours, recordings, television appearances, festivals, Las Vegas shows, and travel abroad, including cruises. Some time around 1964, Basie adopted his trademark yachting cap.[72]
Through steady changes in personnel, Basie led the band into the 1980s. Basie made a few more movie appearances, such as in the Jerry Lewis film Cinderfella (1960) and the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles (1974), playing a revised arrangement of "April in Paris". In 1982 Basie and his orchestra were the featured entertainment for the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the Pittsburgh Steelers at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.[1]
Basie was a Prince Hall Freemason as a member of Wisdom Lodge No. 102 in Chicago as well as a Shriner.[73]
Marriage, family and death[edit]
Basie was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. On July 21, 1930, Basie married Vivian Lee Winn, in Kansas City, Missouri. They were divorced sometime before 1935. Some time in or before 1935, the now single Basie returned to New York City, renting a house at 111 West 138th Street, Manhattan, as evidenced by the 1940 census. He married Catherine Morgan on July 13, 1940, in the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington. In 1942, they moved to Queens. Their only child, Diane, was born February 6, 1944. She was born with cerebral palsy and the doctors claimed she would never walk. The couple kept her and cared deeply for her, and especially through her mother's tutelage, Diane learned not only to walk but to swim.[74] The Basies bought a home in the new whites-only neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946 on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans, Queens.[75] On April 11, 1983, Catherine Basie died of heart disease at the couple's home in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. She was 67 years old.[76] Daughter Diane Basie died October 15, 2022, of a heart attack.[77]
Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, on April 26, 1984, at the age of 79.[1]
Singers[edit]
Basie hitched his star to some of the most famous vocalists of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped keep the Big Band sound alive and added greatly to his recording catalog. Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie in the late 1930s. Joe Williams toured with the band and was featured on the 1957 album One O'Clock Jump, and 1956's Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings, with "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" becoming a huge hit. With Billy Eckstine on the album Basie/Eckstine Incorporated, in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald made some memorable recordings with Basie, including the 1963 album Ella and Basie!. With the New Testament Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album proved a swinging respite from her Songbook recordings and constant touring she did during this period. She even toured with the Basie Orchestra in the mid-1970s, and Fitzgerald and Basie also met on the 1979 albums A Classy Pair, Digital III at Montreux, and A Perfect Match, the last two also recorded live at Montreux. In addition to Quincy Jones, Basie was using arrangers such as Benny Carter (Kansas City Suite), Neal Hefti (The Atomic Mr Basie), and Sammy Nestico (Basie-Straight Ahead).
Frank Sinatra recorded for the first time with Basie on 1962's Sinatra-Basie and for a second studio album on 1964's It Might as Well Be Swing, which was arranged by Quincy Jones. Jones also arranged and conducted 1966's live Sinatra at the Sands which featured Sinatra with Count Basie and his orchestra stayed at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas at Sinatra's request. In May 1970, Sinatra performed in London's Royal Festival Hall with the Basie orchestra, in a charity benefit for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Sinatra later said of this concert "I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting".[78]
Basie also recorded with Tony Bennett in the late 1950s. Their albums together included In Person and Strike Up the Band. Basie also toured with Bennett, including a date at Carnegie Hall. He also recorded with Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Sarah Vaughan. One of Basie's biggest regrets was never recording with Louis Armstrong, though they shared the same bill several times.[79] In 1968, Basie and his Band recorded an album with Jackie Wilson titled Manufacturers of Soul.[80][81]
Legacy and honors[edit]
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalog. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, dryly witty, and always enthusiastic about his music.[82] In his autobiography, he wrote, "I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter."[83]
In Red Bank, New Jersey, the Count Basie Theatre, a property on Monmouth Street redeveloped for live performances, and Count Basie Field were named in his honor.
Received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 1974.[84]
Mechanic Street, where he grew up with his family, has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
In 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmark where Count Basie had also lived.
In 2010, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
In October 2013, version 3.7 of WordPress was code-named Count Basie.[85]
In 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Asteroid 35394 Countbasie, discovered by astronomers at Caussols in 1997, was named after him.[86] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 118220).[87]
6508 Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, California is the location of Count Basie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Representation in other media[edit]
Jerry Lewis used "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy.
"Blues in Hoss' Flat," composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was used by the radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins as his theme song in San Francisco and New York.
In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard Basie in Carnegie Hall.
Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
Since 1963 "The Kid From Red Bank" has been the theme and signature music for the most popular Norwegian radio show, Reiseradioen, aired at NRK P1 every day during the summer.
In the 2016 movie The Matchbreaker, Emily Atkins (Christina Grimmie) recounts the story of how Count Basie met his wife three times without speaking to her, telling her he would marry her some day in their first conversation, and then marrying her seven years later.
The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance have a song titled "Count Bassy" that is included on their 2018 album Artificial Selection.
In his novel This Storm, James Ellroy makes Basie a character who is blackmailed by corrupt Los Angeles police to play a New Year's Eve concert in exchange for ignoring a marijuana charge.
Discography[edit]
Count Basie made most of his albums with his big band. See the Count Basie Orchestra Discography.
From 1929 to 1932, Basie was part of Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra:
Count Basie in Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930-1932 (RCA Victor, 1965)
Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932) (Bluebird/RCA, 1989)
The Swinging Count!, (Clef, 1952)
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1958)
The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette, 1958)
Memories Ad-Lib with Joe Williams (Roulette, 1958)
Basie/Eckstine Incorporated with Billy Eckstine ( Roulette 1959)
String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 (Impulse!, 1962)
Basie Swingin' Voices Singin' with the Alan Copeland Singers (ABC-Paramount, 1966)
Basie Meets Bond (United Artists, 1966)
Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve, 1966)
Basie on the Beatles (Happy Tiger, 1970)
Loose Walk with Roy Eldridge (Pablo, 1972)
Basie Jam (Pablo, 1973)
The Bosses with Big Joe Turner (1973)
For the First Time (Pablo, 1974)
Satch and Josh with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1974)
Basie & Zoot with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1975)
Count Basie Jam Session at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975 (Pablo, 1975)
For the Second Time (Pablo, 1975)
Basie Jam 2 (Pablo, 1976)
Basie Jam 3 (Pablo, 1976)
Kansas City 5 (Pablo, 1977)
The Gifted Ones with Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo, 1977)
Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Basie Jam: Montreux '77 (Pablo, 1977)
Satch and Josh...Again with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1977)
Night Rider with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Count Basie Meets Oscar Peterson – The Timekeepers (Pablo, 1978)
Yessir, That's My Baby with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1978)
Kansas City 8: Get Together (Pablo, 1979)
Kansas City 7 (Pablo, 1980)
On the Road (Pablo, 1980)
Kansas City 6 (Pablo, 1981)
Mostly Blues...and Some Others (Pablo, 1983)
88 Basie Street (Pablo, 1983)
As sideman[edit]
With Eddie Lockjaw Davis
Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman (Roulette, 1957)
With Harry Edison
Edison's Lights (Pablo, 1976)
With Benny Goodman
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, 1939)
Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1939)
With Jo Jones
Jo Jones Special (Vanguard, 1955)
With Joe Newman
Joe Newman and the Boys in the Band (Storyville, 1954)
With Paul Quinichette
The Vice Pres (Verve, 1952)
With Lester Young
The Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy, 1944)
Filmography[edit]
Policy Man (1938)[88]
Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) – as himself
Top Man (1943) – as himself
Sugar Chile Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet (1950) – as himself
Jamboree (1957)
Cinderfella (1960) – as himself
Sex and the Single Girl (1964) – as himself with his orchestra
Blazing Saddles (1974) – as himself with his orchestra
Last of the Blue Devils (1979) – interview and concert by the orchestra in documentary on Kansas City music
Awards[edit]
Grammy Awards[edit]
In 1958, Basie became the first African-American to win a Grammy Award.[89]
Count Basie Grammy Award history[90] Year Category Title Genre Results 1984 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band 88 Basie Street Jazz Winner 1982 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band Warm Breeze Jazz Winner 1980 Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band On The Road Jazz Winner 1977 Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band Prime Time Jazz Winner 1976 Best Jazz Performance by a Soloist (Instrumental) Basie And Zoot Jazz Winner 1963 Best Performance by an Orchestra – For Dancing This Time By Basie! Hits of the 50's And 60's Pop Winner 1960 Best Performance by a Band For Dancing Dance With Basie Pop Winner 1958 Best Performance by a Dance Band Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Pop Winner 1958 Best Jazz Performance, Group Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie) Jazz Winner
Grammy Hall of Fame[edit]
By 2011, four recordings of Count Basie had been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
Count Basie Grammy Hall of Fame Awards[91] Year recorded Title genre Label Year inducted 1939 Lester Leaps In Jazz (Single) Vocalion 2005 1955 Everyday (I Have the Blues) Jazz (Single) Clef 1992 1955 April in Paris Jazz (Single) Clef 1985 1937 One O'Clock Jump Jazz (Single) Decca 1979
Honors and inductions[edit]
On May 23, 1985, William "Count" Basie was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by Aaron Woodward.
On September 11, 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a Count Basie 32 cents postage stamp. Basie is a part of the Big Band Leaders issue, which, is in turn, part of the Legends of American Music series.
In 2009, Basie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[92]
In May 2019, Basie was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Memphis, TN, presented by The Blues Foundation.
Count Basie award history Year Category Result Notes 2019 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted 2007 Long Island Music Hall of Fame Inducted 2005 Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted 2002 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 1983 NEA Jazz Masters Winner 1981 Grammy Trustees Award Winner 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Honoree 1982 Hollywood Walk of Fame Honoree at 6508 Hollywood Blvd. 1970 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Initiated Mu Nu Chapter 1958 Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Inducted
National Recording Registry[edit]
In 2005, Count Basie's song "One O'Clock Jump" (1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.[93] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Jazz portal
References[edit]
[edit]
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correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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0
| 93 |
https://www.broadwayworld.com/new-jersey/regional/The-Prom-4080676
|
en
|
The Prom at Phoenix Productions (at the Count Basie Center for the Arts) New Jersey 2024
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Complete Information About The Prom in New Jersey at Phoenix Productions (at the Count Basie Center for the Arts). FRIDAY, MAY 3 • DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM SATURDAY, MAY 4 • DOORS 1PM • SHOWTIME 2PM | DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre • Basi...
|
en
|
BroadwayWorld.com
|
https://www.broadwayworld.com/new-jersey/regional/The-Prom-4080676
|
View All New Jersey Shows
>
The Prom
FRIDAY, MAY 3 • DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MAY 4 • DOORS 1PM • SHOWTIME 2PM | DOORS 6:30PM • SHOWTIME 7:30PM
Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre • Basie Center Campus • 99 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ
A delightful musical about an end of the year high-school dance. Four eccentric Broadway stars are in desperate need of a new stage. So, when they hear that trouble is brewing around a small-town prom, they know that it’s time to put a spotlight on the issue…and themselves. The town’s parents want to keep the high school dance on the straight and narrow—but when one student just wants to bring her girlfriend to prom, the entire town has a date with destiny. On a mission to transform lives, Broadway’s brassiest join forces with a courageous girl and the town’s citizens and the result is love that brings them all together. Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, this show expertly captures all the humor and heart of a classic musical comedy with a message that resonates with audiences now more than ever.
Authors
Bob Martin
Chad Beguelin
Jack Viertel
Matthew Sklar
Tony Awards and Nominations for The Prom
|
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correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
3
| 91 |
https://www.newjerseystage.com/articles/getarticle2.php%3Ftitlelink%3Dcount-basie-center-for-the-arts-presents-new-found-glory-make-the-most-of-it-acoustic-tour-2023
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en
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New Jersey Stage
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About Us page at NewJerseyStage.com
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en
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/sides/favicon.ico
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NewJerseyStage.com
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https://www.newjerseystage.com/sections/aboutus.php
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Click here to return to the main page.
Advertise with New Jersey Stage for $50-$100 per month,
click here for info
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||||
correct_death_00034
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FactBench
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1
| 67 |
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-jazz-pianists/
|
en
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The 50 Best Jazz Pianists Of All Time
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Charles Waring"
] |
2024-02-16T05:11:42+00:00
|
From iconic bandleaders to unique talents, the best jazz pianists both shaped the genre and revolutionized the role of the piano in music.
|
en
|
uDiscover Music
|
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-jazz-pianists/
|
From the smoky jazz clubs of New Orleans to the grand concert halls of New York City, the sound of the piano has always been a cornerstone of jazz music. And there have been some truly legendary jazz pianists who have taken the art form to new heights with their technical skills, innovative improvisation, and sheer passion for the music. In this article, we’ll be celebrating the best of the best, the jazz pianists who have left an indelible mark on the genre and continue to inspire new generations of musicians.
While you’re reading, listen to our Jazz Piano Classics playlist here.
The piano’s importance in jazz stretches back to the time of Scott Joplin, at the turn of the 20th Century, when ragtime – with its jaunty, percussive rhythms – proved an important early building block in the evolution of jazz music.
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From ragtime piano came the more sophisticated and virtuosic “stride” style of James P Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith – with its locomotive, two-step, left-hand accompaniment – in the 20s and 30s, which in turn led to Fats Waller and ultimately culminated with Art Tatum. Hands down one of the best jazz pianists in history, Tatum was a blind genius who arguably created the most densely polyphonic and sophisticated pre-bebop piano style of all, fusing stride with swing.
In the mid-40s, the bebop revolution, instigated by horn players Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, resulted in a generation of artists (led by Bud Powell) who would enter the ranks of the best jazz pianists with an approach that treated the instrument like a trumpet or saxophone, picking out syncopated right-hand melodies with horn-style phrasing. When the 50s arrived, there were others, such as Bill Evans, who fused the bop aesthetic with a sensibility nurtured on classical and romantic music, producing a densely-harmonized piano style that was supremely lyrical and richly expressive. Evans’ influence – like Bud Powell’s before him – was pervasive, and many future jazz piano stars (from Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to Keith Jarrett and, more recently, Brad Mehldau) are indebted to him.
The jazz world has produced an abundance of super-talented piano players – many more than can be accommodated in this list of the 50 best jazz pianists of all time. Indeed, whittling it down was not an easy task, but we’ve persevered and come up with a list of names that we believe represent the most important ivory-ticklers of the genre.
In our estimation, here are the 50 best jazz pianists of all time.
50: Lennie Tristano (1919-1978)
Opinions differ on the significance of this blind, Chicago-born pianist who played with Charlie Parker in the late 40s and went on to establish himself as a musician with a unique sound and style. What is certain is that Tristano was an uncompromising innovator whose unorthodox conception of melody and harmony presaged the birth of free jazz. He also experimented with multi-tracking recording in the early 50s – which most jazz musicians considered anathema – by overdubbing improvised piano parts. Tristano was also a noted jazz teacher and it is claimed that his influence affected Miles Davis (on Birth Of The Cool) as well as Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan.
49: Kenny Kirkland (1954-1998)
From Brooklyn, New York, Kirkland had a fruitful association with the Marsalis brothers, Wynton and Branford, in the 80s and 90s, appearing as a sideman on many of their albums. Kirkland also played with jazz greats, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Elvin Jones, in the 80s, and appeared on five albums by ex-Police frontman, Sting. His own discography contains just one solo album, 1991’s Kenny Kirkland, for GRP, though it’s likely that, had he not died prematurely, aged 43, from congestive heart failure, Kirkland would have recorded many more solo albums.
48: Dave Grusin (born 1934)
A founding father of an accessible, R&B-inflected form of instrumental music called smooth jazz, Grusin is rare among the best jazz pianists for having also set up his own record label, GRP, in 1978. Originally from Colorado, Grusin began releasing piano-led albums under his own name in the early 60s, a decade that also saw him break into the world of television music, where he wrote themes for numerous US TV shows. Grusin went on to become a prolific composer of movie scores (among them On Golden Pond and The Fabulous Baker Boys) and has also released a raft of keyboard-oriented studio albums.
47: Duke Pearson (1932-1980)
Born Columbus Calvin Pearson in Atlanta, Georgia, Pearson’s career took off when he moved to New York City in 1959. That was the year he recorded his debut album for Blue Note, and he went onto become one of the best jazz pianists the iconic label signed. Enjoying a long association with Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff’s outfit, he not only recorded his own music, but worked as an in-house arranger and A&R man. A capable and versatile pianist, Pearson’s own records veered more towards the soul jazz style.
46: Elmo Hope (1923-1967)
A sideman for noted saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and Harold Land in the 50s, New Yorker Hope (real name St Elmo Sylvester Hope) was a bebop pianist with a bright sound, dynamic touch, and, like Thelonious Monk, had a penchant for dissonance. He recorded for Blue Note, Prestige, and Pacific Jazz in the 50s. Sadly, his life was blighted by drug addiction, which hastened his premature death at the age of 43.
45: Kenny Barron (born 1943)
As a teacher, this capable Philadelphia pianist can count Maynard Ferguson pianist Earl MacDonald, and recent Blue Note signing Aaron Parks, as his star pupils. Barron’s own career began with sideman stints with Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. A nine-time Grammy nominee, Barron has been recording since the late 60s and his many collaborators include fellow pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris. A master who is fluent in both the bebop and post-bop styles, Barron is one of the best jazz pianists alive today.
44: John Lewis (1920-2001)
As one of the charter members of The Modern Jazz Quartet, a pioneering group that fused bebop with classical music aesthetics, Lewis was an influential musician whose gleaming, staccato piano style was indebted to Count Basie and saxophonist Lester Young. Prior to the MJQ, he was a sideman for Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Outside of his band, Lewis made many albums under his own name, the earliest in 1955.
43: Harold Mabern (1936-2019)
Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Mabern is unique among the best jazz pianists for having begun as a drummer before switching to piano. Moving to Chicago, and then New York, he was regarded as a go-to sideman in the late 50s and early 60s (playing with the likes of Cannonball Adderley, Jackie McLean, Roland Kirk, and Wes Montgomery) before beginning his own recording career, which started at Prestige Records in 1968. A virtuoso who is fully fluent in bebop, modal, and post-bop jazz styles, Mabern is still actively recording and performing today at the age of 81.
42: Kenny Drew (1928-1993)
New York City-born Drew – who served his musical apprenticeship as a sideman for Buddy DeFranco, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker – was a highly-regarded bebop pianist and composer who enjoyed a long and fruitful association with tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, when both musicians lived in Denmark during the 60s and 70s. Cutting his first solo LP in 1953, Drew recorded regularly for a variety of different labels up until his death. He died and was buried in Copenhagen.
41: Jaki Byard (1922-1999)
An eclectic, versatile pianist who also played saxophone, Massachusetts-born Byard’s own music drew on everything from ragtime to free jazz and also covered all styles in between. He played with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson in the late 50s, but his career really took off when he moved to New York City in the 60s. He spent two years with Charles Mingus, as well as working with Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk. Though revered by the critics, Byard’s unique sound was less well-received by the public, but he remains one of the best jazz pianists in history, not only because of his impact on jazz in general, but also in relation to his role in the evolution of the piano itself.
40: Cedar Walton (1934-2013)
From Dallas, Texas, as a child this hard bop piano giant was raised on a diet of Art Tatum, Nat “King” Cole, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. Though their music infused Walton’s own style, he found his own voice on the piano and, after a stint with Kenny Dorham, John Coltrane, and The Jazztet, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1961, going on to cut nine albums with the group. Walton’s own career as a leader began in 1967 and, in the 70s, he dabbled with jazz-funk and fusion. In addition to being a gifted pianist, Walton was also a noted composer, contributing “Bolivia” and “Mode For Joe” to the jazz standards repertoire.
39: Barry Harris (1929-2021)
Born and raised in Detroit, Harris, whose mother played piano in church, was an early starter, taking up his chosen instrument at the age of four. When he was older, he was smitten by jazz and fell under the spell of modernists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. By the 50s, Harris was a jobbing pianist and worked with Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Gene Ammons; in the 60s he gigged with Cannonball Adderley. Stylistically, Harris is a staunch disciple of hard bop, which is reflected in the horn-like phrasing of his right-hand melodies, complex rhythmic syncopations, and dense harmonization. One of the best jazz pianists still with us from the bebop era.
38: Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)
Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh, Williams was a self-taught pianist who rose to fame as a teenage prodigy in the 20s. By the 30s, she was working as a freelance arranger, writing charts for Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and, later, Duke Ellington. When bebop arrived, in the mid-40s, she had an affinity for the revolutionary new style, and was a mentor to Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. A prodigiously talented musician, Williams was an inspirational figure and paved the way for noted contemporary female pianists such as Tania Maria, the late Geri Allen, Eliane Elias, and Diana Krall.
37: Bobby Timmons (1935-1974)
One of a multitude of musicians who came through Art Blakey’s “Hard Bop Academy,” The Jazz Messengers, this Philadelphia musician was the son of a preacher and grew up playing in church. Gospel music left an indelible mark on Timmons and its DNA can be detected in his playing and much of the music he wrote, which included the classic tunes “Moanin’,” “This Here,” and “Dat Dere,” which earned him his place among the best jazz pianists for laying the blueprint for what became known as soul jazz in the late 50s and early 60s. Sadly, Timmons’ career was cut short, at 38, by his chronic alcoholism.
36: Andrew Hill (1931-2007)
Hailing from Chicago, as a boy Hill earned small change playing accordion on the Windy City’s streets. He worked mainly as a sideman in the 50s, but in 1963, after a move to New York, Hill began a long association with Blue Note Records that resulted in 16 albums. Though influenced by Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum, Hill forged his own distinctive and complex style, both as a pianist and composer. His music tended to be chromatic and angular, and while it pushed the barriers, it also remained rooted in jazz tradition.
35: Brad Mehldau (born 1970)
From Jacksonville, Florida, Mehldau is undoubtedly one of the leading pianists in contemporary jazz. Though, compared to many of the best jazz pianists, his influences are wide and varied – ranging from pop, rock, folk, and classical music, to bebop, country, and even electronic music – he has distilled them all into a unique style which is inspired by the lyricism of Bill Evans and spellbinding virtuosic improvisation of Keith Jarrett. Mehldau’s long-running piano trio has also continually broken new ground with its near-telepathic collective improvisation and eclectic repertoire.
34: Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
A poet as well as a pianist/composer, this New Yorker was a leading light of the avant-garde movement in the late 50s and early 60s. Not for the faint-hearted, Taylor’s energetic style is often fiercely atonal, employing jarring cluster chords and a dense, polyrhythmic complexity. He released his debut LP in 1956 and recorded regularly for a raft of different labels up until 2009.
33: Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965)
Given his fame in the 50s as a pop singer with a silky croon, it’s perhaps not surprising that many often forget that Alabama-born Cole was also one of the best jazz pianists of his time. Starting out playing gospel music on the organ before being formally tutored in piano, Cole was schooled in classical music but quickly gravitated to jazz. He was especially influenced by Earl Hines, whose ornate, heavily embellished approach was the foundation for Cole’s own style, which developed within the confines of his own trio in the 30s and 40s. From 1943 onwards, it was Cole’s voice that drew more acclaim, however, and his success as a singer went on to eclipse his piano playing.
32: Sonny Clark (1931-1963)
Born Conrad Clark, this piano-playing exponent of hard bop from Herminie, Pennsylvania, enjoyed a brief period under the jazz spotlight between 1955 and 1961. Influenced by Bud Powell and noted for his horn-like right-hand melodies, Clark was a sideman for Dinah Washington, Sonny Rollins, and Charles Mingus, and also enjoyed a fecund five-year spell at Blue Note Records, where he served up nine albums, including the classic hard bop manifesto Cool Struttin’. Sadly, Clark was a heroin addict and died, aged 31, from a suspected (but never proven) overdose.
31: Michel Petrucciani (1962-1999)
Despite suffering from a genetic disease that stunted his growth, resulted in brittle bones, and gave him perpetual arm pain, France-born Petrucciani defied the odds to become one of the world’s best jazz pianists, and was inspired to take up the instrument after seeing Duke Ellington on TV. By 13, he was playing professionally, and at 18 recorded the first of many LPs. Though his lyrical approach to the piano was undoubtedly indebted to Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, Petrucciani, who died at 36, nevertheless had an individual sound and style.
30: Hank Jones (1918-2010)
The elder sibling of trumpeter Thad, and drummer Elvin, Jones, this Mississippi-born/Michigan-raised pianist was initially influenced by Earl Hines and Fats Waller, but later fell under bebop’s spell. He recorded with Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker before embarking on a stellar solo career that blossomed in the 50s. Hired for his impeccable musical taste and sonic eloquence, Jones’ myriad sideman credits ranged from Dizzy Gillespie and Dexter Gordon to Anita O’Day and Marilyn Monroe.
29: Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
This Texas pianist’s music was largely forgotten until his tune, “The Entertainer” – which was used on the soundtrack to the 1973 blockbuster film The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman – revived interest in his work. In his heyday, in the early years of the 20th Century, Joplin was crowned King Of Ragtime, a jaunty, syncopated style of music that was an amalgam of African-American and Western European music. Though no recordings of Joplin exist, his status as one of history’s best jazz pianists is assured, thanks in part to piano rolls and sheet music from the time, illustrating his unique style, which went on to influence James P Johnson.
28: Ramsey Lewis (1935-2022)
Emerging on Chess Records in the 50s fronting a piano trio, Chicago-born Lewis racked up a trio of finger-clicking crossover pop hits in the mid-60s (the biggest was 1965’s “The In Crowd”) before plugging his piano into the mains socket and going the way of funk and fusion in the 70s. A classically-trained pianist, Lewis fused jazz with rhythm’n’blues and gospel music to forge a distinctive soul jazz style that spawned a host of imitators.
27: Wynton Kelly (1931-1977)
Influenced by Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell, Brooklyn-born Kelly is best remembered for his association with Miles Davis between 1959 and 1961 (he played on the iconic 1959 LP Kind Of Blue). He also recorded a slew of solo albums, all of which highlighted his glistening, horn-like right-hand melodies and penchant for block chordal accompaniment. Contemporary pianists who claim to have been influenced by him include Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau.
26: Willie “The Lion” Smith (1897-1973)
Together with James P Johnson and Fats Waller, William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff Smith (to give him his full name) was a noted practitioner of the stride style of playing. Born in New York, he rose to fame in the 20s as an accompanist of blues singers. His propulsive, dynamic style, with its dazzling finger-work, exerted a profound influence on both Duke Ellington’s and George Gershwin’s approach to the piano.
25: James P. Johnson (1894-1955)
This New Jersey pianist helped bridge the transition from ragtime to jazz with his stride piano technique, which built on ragtime’s locomotive, see-saw jauntiness but added more sophisticated harmonies and a stronger blues element. Though his music is mostly forgotten now, Johnson – who was also a noted accompanist for singers Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters – was a pioneer who earns his place among the best jazz singers in part because of his powerful influence over Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Art Tatum.
24: Bob James (born 1939)
Though Missouri-born James is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of smooth jazz, ironically, he began his career in the vanguard of the early 60s avant-garde scene. By the 70s, though, James’ star was on the rise thanks to his being the in-house arranger at producer Creed Taylor’s influential CTI label. He made four hugely popular, radio-friendly albums for CTI, where he established himself as the doyen of a lighter, more accessible version of jazz-fusion. Though he’s an undoubted master of the electric Fender Rhodes keyboard (which dominated his classic 70s records), in recent years James has returned to the acoustic piano.
23: George Shearing (1919-2011)
Blind from birth, the much-honored London-born George Shearing (who, uniquely among the best jazz pianists, was a Sir, having been knighted in 2007) displayed an aptitude for the piano and accordion at an early age. He eked a living as a jobbing pianist for hire until emigrating to the US in 1947, where he quickly made a name for himself with his synthesis of swing, bebop, and elements drawn from classical music. A pioneer of block chords, Shearing’s group – which including the distinctive sound of the vibraphone – became hugely popular and influential in the 50s.
22: Joe Zawinul (1932-2007)
Inspired to take up jazz after hearing Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose,” Austrian-born Zawinul ventured to the US in 1959, where he immediately made his mark as a pianist and composer in Cannonball Adderley’s band. Though Miles Davis tried to poach him (Zawinul worked on Miles’ groundbreaking In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew albums at the end of the 60s), the pianist stayed with Cannonball until 1970 and then co-founded famed fusion pioneers Weather Report.
21: Teddy Wilson (1912-1986)
Dubbed The Marxist Mozart for his espousal of left-wing political causes, Texas-born Theodore Wilson was a virtuosic pianist who gained prominence in the swing era and worked as a sideman with some of the biggest names in jazz, ranging from Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. He also made many recordings under his own name, but today is mostly remembered as Billie Holiday’s accompanist.
20: Horace Silver (1928-2014)
Born in Connecticut with Cape Verdean ancestry, Horace Silver was an archetypal hard bop pianist whose rise to fame began when he co-founded The Jazz Messengers (which Art Blakey later took over) in 1954. As well as a dexterous pianist who enjoyed a long and fruitful stretch at Blue Note between 1952 and 1980, Silver was a prolific tunesmith (among his most famous compositions is “Song For My Father”).
19: Red Garland (1923-1984)
For a jazz pianist who started out in life as a welterweight boxer, Texas-born William “Red” Garland had a decidedly delicate touch. He played as a sideman for Billy Eckstine and Charlie Parker, and was in bluesman Eddie Vinson’s band alongside a young John Coltrane. His path would cross with Coltrane’s again in the 50s, when both joined Miles Davis’ quintet and made several groundbreaking albums for Prestige and Columbia (among them Workin’ and ’Round About Midnight). Davis liked Garland for his Ahmad Jamal-like lightness of touch and use of space. Another hallmark of the Texan’s singular style was his use of two-handed block chords.
18: Tommy Flanagan (1930-2001)
For many, Detroiter Thomas Lee Flanagan’s name is synonymous with saxophone giant John Coltrane. He played on Trane’s totemic 1960 masterpiece, Giant Steps, and as a sideman also featured on significant LPs by Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus) and guitarist Wes Montgomery (The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery). Describing his approach to piano, Flanagan once said, “I like to play like a horn player, like I’m blowing into the piano.” Though he was a valued sideman, he also made a slew of albums under his own name for a raft of different labels between 1957 and 1997.
17: Erroll Garner (1923-1977)
With his predilection for performing in an ornate style that comprised lush chords, liquid runs and complex syncopations, this Pennsylvanian from Pittsburgh was a child piano prodigy who first recorded in the 40s but blossomed spectacularly in the 50s. He would arguably earn his place among the best jazz pianists solely for giving the jazz world the perennially popular standard “Misty,” which he composed in 1954 and recorded many times thereafter. Arguably the most compelling album he made was 1955’s classic Concert By The Sea, which captures Garner in all his glory.
16: Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)
One of an elite handful of jazz artists to score a big crossover pop hit in the 60s (“Take Five”), California-born Brubeck, who grew up on a ranch, studied to be a vet but switched to music during college. A near-fatal diving accident in 1951 caused nerve damage to Brubeck’s hands and changed the way he played piano, where fleet-of-finger lines were replaced by dense block chords. Even so, Brubeck could still play with imagination and elegance, and often composed music using unusual and asymmetrical time signatures.
15: Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941)
Given that he once claimed to have singlehandedly invented jazz, modesty was most certainly not a recognizable trait in the character of this New Orleans pianist born Ferdinand LeMothe – though he wholly deserves recognition among the best jazz pianists. As both a composer and arranger, Morton was a seminal figure in the development of early jazz – among his most famous recordings is “Black Bottom Stomp” – and he was also a noted pianist whose propulsive, jaunty style grew out of ragtime and anticipated the stride development.
14: Earl Hines (1903-1983)
From Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Earl “Fatha” Hines was a key figure in the evolution of jazz piano-playing. He started as an orthodox stride-style player but soon introduced innovations. In a bid to be heard in a big band ensemble, Hines began articulating melodies with octaves (or what he called “trumpet notes”), as well as using a tremolo effect (a rapid alternation of two notes). Though he began his recording career in 1923, he was able to adapt to changing styles in jazz and kept recording until 1981. A jazz piano colossus.
13: Count Basie (1904-1984)
Like fellow jazz aristocrat Duke Ellington, Count Basie’s prowess at the piano was often eclipsed by his role as a successful bandleader. Originally from Red Bank, New Jersey, Bill Basie rose to fame during the big-band swing epoch with popular tunes such as “One O’clock Jump.” He usually led from the piano, adhering to a minimalistic less-is-more aesthetic and employing forceful percussive accenting and octaves so that his bluesy notes cut through the full band sound.
12: Fats Waller (1904-1943)
Native New Yorker Thomas “Fats” Waller didn’t live to see his 40th birthday (he succumbed to pneumonia at 39), but nevertheless proved to be an influential pianist, particularly for his contribution to the evolution of the highly rhythmic stride style, an important foundation stone in jazz piano. Waller was also an organist and composer whose repertoire included the immortal tunes “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”
11: Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
It’s often overlooked that Washington, DC-born Edward Kennedy Ellington was a tremendous jazz pianist with his own inimitable style. That’s because Ellington earned greater fame as a popular bandleader and composer during the big band swing era of the 30s. There are a few solo piano entries in the jazz aristocrat’s extensive discography (most notably, perhaps, 1953’s The Duke Plays Ellington) that reveal the full extent of Ellington’s skills.
10: Ahmad Jamal (born 1930)
Pittsburgh-born Ahmad Jamal possesses a delicate, nimble touch and intuitively knows how to use space to good effect. It was the latter quality that made Miles Davis such a big fan of his music in the 50s, attempting to replicate Jamal’s light piano style in his groups of that era. Jamal first recorded for OKeh in 1951, but it was later in the same decade when took his position among the best jazz pianists of all time, with the best-selling live album At The Pershing, which took his music to a larger audience. A master of musical understatement.
9: Chick Corea (1941-2021)
Like Keith Jarrett, Armando “Chick” Corea, from Chelsea, Massachusetts, was an early starter – he began playing piano aged four – and later rose to fame as a sideman with the great Miles Davis (replacing Herbie Hancock). Though influenced by the romanticism of Bill Evans, there’s always been a palpable Latin inflection to Corea’s music, which has ranged from straight-ahead jazz to electric fusion (he led the jazz-rock behemoth Return To Forever in the 70s).
8: Keith Jarrett (born 1945)
From Allentown, Pennsylvania, Keith Jarrett started playing piano at the age of two and rapidly blossomed into a precociously gifted child prodigy steeped in classical music. As a teenager, Jarrett was seduced by jazz and quickly became fluent in its idiom. He played with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the mid-60s before joining the groups of Charles Lloyd and, later, Miles Davis. In the 70s, at ECM Records, Jarrett – eschewing electric instruments – patented a lyrical style and, in the same decade, released an improvised solo recital called The Köln Concert, which set a new benchmark for unaccompanied jazz piano. An intrepid improviser whose imagination knows no bounds.
7: Bud Powell (1924-1966)
This Harlem-born musician was the first pianist to approach the piano as if it were a horn instrument. Though he gleaned much from the left-hand stride-style of Art Tatum, alto saxophonist and bebop architect Charlie Parker was Bud Powell’s main inspiration. As a result, Powell proved highly influential, even though his career was short (he died aged 41, after years of mental health problems). The missing link between Art Tatum and bebop, his status as one of the best jazz pianists of all time is forever assured.
6: McCoy Tyner (1938-2020)
From Philadelphia, McCoy Tyner rose to fame as a member of John Coltrane’s groundbreaking quartet between 1960 and 1965, playing on the saxophonist’s iconic 1965 album, A Love Supreme. An exponent of modal jazz with a passion for blues, Tyner’s main hallmark is using chords with prominent fourths. He also often attacks the piano with brute force, though he can also play with extreme delicacy, employing staccato right-hand runs. After Coltrane, Tyner established himself as one of contemporary jazz’s pre-eminent pianists with a series of astounding albums for Blue Note and, later, Milestone.
5: Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)
Originally from Quebec, Canada, Peterson was a classically-trained child prodigy who fell under the influence of Art Tatum and Nat “King” Cole. He made his first recording in 1945, but it was in the 50s, after he joined jazz impresario Norman Granz’s Verve label and led a piano trio, that he became a household name. Renowned for ornate filigrees and a hard-swinging style, Peterson was a dextrous improviser.
4: Herbie Hancock (born 1940)
Though he’s flirted with funk, dabbled with disco, and even dallied with electro and hip-hop (exemplified by his 1983 global hit, “Rockit”), at heart this Chicago-born musical chameleon is a committed jazz pianist. Though influenced by Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock forged his own style in the 60s, both as a solo artist and as a member of Miles Davis’ pathfinding post-bop quintet. Though he’s almost 80, Hancock still has the musical inquisitiveness of a teenager.
3: Bill Evans (1929-1980)
A troubled soul, this New Jersey pianist was plagued with drug addiction problems throughout his adult life and professional career, but it didn’t stop him producing a remarkably beautiful and consistent body of work. Reflective romantic ballads with lush chords were his undoubted forte, but Evans – who drew on both bebop and classical music for inspiration – could also swing with verve, especially in a live setting. (Start with his legendary trio recordings with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, like Sunday at the Village Vanguard or Waltz for Debby for evidence of both.) Myriad pianists have fallen under Evans’ spell, including Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, and, more recently, Brad Mehldau.
2: Thelonious Monk (1917-1982)
Misunderstood by many, this North Carolina-born maverick (who was rarely seen without a hat) is one of the most idiosyncratic of the world’s best jazz pianists. Emerging in the bebop dawn of the mid-to-late 40s, he pursued his own idiosyncratic path, creating a unique musical universe where angular but hummable melodies, dissonant cluster chords, and a lightly-swinging rhythmic pulse ruled. As a composer, Monk contributed several standards to the jazz songbook – including “’Round Midnight” and “Straight, No Chaser” – and, as a keyboardist, recorded several albums of unaccompanied piano, including the classic Thelonious Alone In San Francisco.
1: Art Tatum (1909-1956)
At the pinnacle of our list of the 50 best jazz pianists of all time is the man regarded as a keyboard deity. Visually impaired from infancy, Ohio-born Art Tatum learned to play the piano by ear as a child and, blessed with perfect pitch, quickly excelled at the instrument. He patented a technically advanced, uniquely florid style from an early age that melded elements from stride, swing and classical music. Though hugely influential – Oscar Peterson was one of his prime disciples – Tatum’s life came to an end shortly after his 47th birthday.
Looking for more? Discover the 50 best jazz trumpeters here.
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The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World
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2024-01-01T00:00:00
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Not just another “greatest jazz albums” list of favourite recordings and biggest sellers but a fully annotated look at the albums that actually changed jazz and changed lives
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en
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Jazzwise
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https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-100-jazz-albums-that-shook-the-world
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The list featured below was originally published in the August 2006 issue of Jazzwise magazine and quickly established itself as a key reference for anyone interested in exploring the rich history of jazz on record.
We have now taken the concept much further with a new publication – The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World – a 100-page definitive guide to the most important and influential jazz albums that have gone on to change and shape the course of the music from the 1920s to the present day.
The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World is exclusively available in print and includes new in-depth editorial on each album from Jazzwise's acclaimed team of writers, plus in-depth features on the making of the top three albums, a look at the albums that almost made the cut and a guide to buying the featured titles on LP and CD.
Order your copy today at: www.magsubscriptions.com
2006 List
100
Polar Bear: Held On The Tips of Fingers (Babel)
Sebastian Rochford (d), Pete Wareham, Mark Lockheart (ts), Tom Herbert (b), Leafcutter John (programming) plus Jonny Philips (g), Ingrid Laubrock (ts), Joe Bentley (tb), Emma Smith (v) and Hannah Marshall (c). Rec. 2004-2005
Such was the brilliance of Polar Bear’s Held On The Tips Of Fingers, the band’s second release, it almost won the 2005 Mercury Music Prize. Not only the most gifted jazz drummer of his generation, bandleader Sebastian Rochford crafted sublimely original chamber music. A stylistic crossroads where folk, avant-jazz, electronica and raw punk co-existed, Rochford’s music was aptly called “the sound of the future” even though it betrayed a love of Ellington, Monk and, yes, Napalm Death. Held On The Tips Of Fingers twisted in digital trickery to a frontline of heavyweight tenor saxophonists, dazzling with folksy anthems such as ‘Bear Town’ or the drum ’n’ bass drenched ‘Fluffy’. Groundbreaking, it gave young British jazz bands the guts to label themselves like rock bands and to stretch beyond their comfort zones. (TB)
99
The Bad Plus: These Are The Vistas (Columbia)
Ethan Iverson (p), Reid Anderson (b) and Dave King (d). Rec. 2003
Very few jazz groups today set out to mess with your head. You know, get inside there, push the furniture over, chuck things out of the window and generally make a nuisance of themselves. That’s what’s so refreshing about the Bad Plus. They barge in, do things a jazz piano trio isn’t supposed to do, such as play Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ or Kurt Cobain’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ To get inside these songs, and their own well thought-out originals, they may inflict a bit of grievous bodily harm on the musical structures, but at least they give you a musical experience you won’t forget easily. (SN)
98
Courtney Pine: Journey To The Urge Within (Antilles)
Courtney Pine (ts, ss, b-cl), Kevin Robinson (t), Ray Carless (bar s), Orphy Robinson (vb), Julian Joseph (p), Roy Carter (ky), Gary Crosby (b), Mark Mondesir (d), Cleveland Watkiss and Susaye Greene (v). Rec. 1986
Journey to the Urge Within heralded the arrival of Courtney Pine at the head of a new generation of British jazz musicians. A pied piper who led British jazz out of the trough of despond after its brilliant flowering in the 1960s, he was compared to the charismatic Wynton Marsalis in the USA as a spokesman for a new breed of technically accomplished young jazzers. Pine’s music was powerful, intense and in the tradition of the great tenor saxophonists such as Coltrane and Rollins. Figuring in the Top 40, an unprecedented achievement for a British jazz album, it went silver, helping to trigger the 1980s jazz boom. (SN)
97
Tomasz Stanko: Soul Of Things (ECM)
Tomasz Stanko (t), Marcin Wasilewski (p), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (b) and Michal Miskiewicz (d). Rec. 20I01
It could have been Stanko masterpieces Litania or Leosia that made this list, but Soul of Things, with a trio of young Polish musicians he mentored since their early teens, is his best selling album for ECM and more than any other brought him to the attention of international audiences. It also contributed to the growing awareness outside Europe, particularly in the United States, that important music was coming out of the old world. An album of precisely focused moods, fragments of melody are crafted into masterful compositions shaped by the timeless elegance of Stanko’s trumpet and the copacetic playing of his young protégés. (SN)
Buy album from Presto Music
96
Medeski, Martin and Wood: Combustication (Blue Note)
John Medeski (ky), Chris Wood (b), Billy Martin (d) and DJ Logic. Rec. 1998
Since the group’s formation in 1992, many welcomed Medeski Martin and Wood as a flight from a largely conservative jazz mainstream while others believed they’d flown the coop entirely. In their own way this Hammond B-3 organ trio of the sort that has been around in jazz for at least 50 years pushed at the boundaries of jazz with rollicking grooves and extended keyboard improvisations. This might be edgy music, but it is body music just the same, try ‘Coconut Boogaloo’ or ‘Sugar Craft’ then see if you can stop popping your fingers. As they reveal here, they delight shaking up mainstream values by going back to the chicken shack, 21st century style. (SN)
95
Wynton Marsalis: Black Codes From The Underground (Columbia)
Wynton Marsalis (t), Branford Marsalis (ss, ts), Kenny Kirkland (p), Charnett Moffett (b) and Jeff Watts (d). Rec. 1985
Black Codes marks the time in young Wynton’s career when he moved from being a Blakey/Hancock prodigy and started to stake out his own ground. This first batch of musical territory had already been trampled underfoot by various members of the Miles Davis and John Coltrane ascendancy, including both leaders, but Marsalis brings his own considerable musical personality to bear on the situation and plays with great invention throughout. He would shift from this base in future but this sets out his aesthetic stall nicely. (KS)
94
Cassandra Wilson: Blue Light ’Til Dawn (Blue Note)
Cassandra Wilson (v), Charlie Burham (vn), Brandon Ross, Gib Walton, Chris Whitley (g), Kenny Davis, Lonnie Plaxico (b), Kevin Johnson, Lance Carter, Cyro Baptista and Bill McClellan (d, perc) plus others. Rec. 1993
Female jazz vocals had gone through many false dawns between the late 1960s and the arrival of Cassandra Wilson’s blue light in 1993. Jazz and blues roots have often been vocal starting points for revivals of every type, so it’s appropriate that Wilson, with her burnished alto voice, should reach in that direction to find not only a crossover audience but establish a new consensus alongside the Great American Songbook to underpin her artistic credibility. That she has more or less continued on that path suggests it works for her on every level. It also points the way for those who follow. (KS)
93
Jan Johanssen: Jazz Pa Svenska (Megafon)
Jan Johansson (p) and Georg Riedel (b). Rec. 1962-64
A key recording that more than any other defined the Nordic Tone in jazz, a Scandinavian kind of blues that places intensity, tone, space and meaning ahead of virtuosic athleticism. Taking ages old Swedish folk melodies from Svenska Låtar and then interpreting them from a jazz perspective, Johansson’s carefully nuanced sound, the gradation of his touch, the exquisite detail of every note revealed by the meticulous recording quality captured a unique approach to jazz that has become widely influential. Players such as Mike Brecker, Tommy Smith, Jan Garbarek, Esbjörn Svensson, Tord Gustavsen all were to come under the spell of the Nordic Tone. (SN)
92
Sarah Vaughan: Sarah Vaughan (EmArcy)
Sarah Vaughan (v), Clifford Brown (t), Herbie Mann (f), Paul Quinichette (ts), Jimmy Jones (p), Joe Benjamin (b) and Roy Haynes (d). Rec. 1954
Vaughan was a by-word for vocal worship among her peers and musical associates by the late 1940s, but little she recorded before this album consistently showed her true worth to jazz. Nestled in a sympathetic small-group setting, Sassy simply blossoms into an overwhelmingly seductive artist whose complete abandonment to her own idea of line and sound gives the listener a level of ecstatic pleasure delivered only by – well, by Sassy, Ella and Billie, truth be told. She may later have equalled this in other settings, but here the gauntlet was well and truly thrown down. (KS)
91
Music Improvisation Company: Music Improvisation Company (ECM)
Jamie Muir (perc), Hugh Davies (elec), Evan Parker (ss), Derek Bailey (el g) and Christine Jeffrey (v). Rec. Aug 1970
MIC represents the point of separation between free jazz and free improv. From their perspective, a whole series of trajectories are visible – in Evan Parker’s case the use of live electronics and increasing reliance on soprano leading eventually to the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. It marks a shift away from the creation of powerful, huge sonic edifices or of nature-imitating shapes and textures for a journey, with only a little exaggeration, into the DNA of sound itself. Less concerned with the global or cosmic, MIC explored the micro-universe through the concept of non-idiomatic improvisation. Strange, disturbing yet oddly attractive.(DH)
90
Charlie Haden: Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse!)
Haden (b), Don Cherry, Michael Mantler (t), Roswell Rudd (tb), Bob Northern (Fr hn), Howard Johnson (tba), Perry Robinson (cl), Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman (ts), Sam Brown (g), Carla Bley (p, arr), Paul Motian and Andrew Cyrille (d). Rec. 1969
Jazz and politics have always been entwined, but rarely in the music’s history have the links spelt out on record. The 1960s was a decade when that orthodoxy was reversed, with Charlie Haden’s debut album at the decade’s end being one of the most explicit endorsements of leftist sentiments to be found in the entire jazz world. Sentiments of any persuasion are no proof of quality, but the compositions – from Haden, Bley and Ornette Coleman, among others – are uniformly strong and the supporting cast fiercely inspired. For 40 minutes you could believe, if you wanted to. (KS)
Buy album from Presto Music
89
Jackie McLean: Let Freedom Ring (Blue Note)
Jackie McLean (as), Walter Davis (p), Herbie Lewis (b) and Billy Higgins (d). Rec. 1962
McLean had made by turns excellent and ambitious albums prior to this disc, but for one reason or another none of them had managed a completeness of conception that pushed him into the forefront of the music. This one made it through a combination of memorable compositions (‘Melody For Melonae’) an attitude towards musical freedom fed by the new politics of the day and a consistent commitment to all-out emotionalism that is so forceful it frankly leaves the rest of his group in the shade. He went on to make more completely satisfying albums but this one broke the mould. (KS)
Buy album from Presto Music
88
Joe Harriott-John Mayer Double Quintet: Indo-Jazz Suite (EMI Columbia)
Joe Harriott (as), Kenny Wheeler (t), Pat Smythe (p), Coleridge Goode (b), Allan Ganley (d), John Mayer (vn, harpsichord), Chris Taylor (f), Diwan Motihar (sitar), Chandrahas Paiganka (tambura) and Keshan Sathe (tabla). Rec. 1965
Ravi Shankar’s 1962 Improvisations, with Bud Shank, and Don Ellis’ unrecorded Hindustani Jazz Sextet from 1965 briefly pointed the way but nothing prepared you for Indo-Jazz Suite, the first full collaboration between jazz and Indian musicians that was so hip it hurt in 1966. Hailed by Melody Maker upon release as “highly provocative” it was conceived by Calcutta-born Mayer who based the pieces on the ascending and descending order of ragas with Harriott’s quintet improvising around the Indian musicians to spellbinding effect. Not as successfully integrated as their subsequent Indo-Jazz Fusions I and II, this however first put the fat in the pan for Gabor Szabo, Shakti, Trilok Gurtu, Mukta, Nitin Sawhney and the feast of Indo-Jazz that followed. (JN)
87
Django Reinhardt: Rétrospective 1934-53 (Saga)
Django Reinhardt (g), the Quintette du Hot Club de France, Loulou Gasté, Joseph Reinhardt, Emmanuel Vées (g), Louis Vola, Coleridge Goode (b), Hubert Rostaing, André Ekyan (cl), Alix Combelle (ts), Gianni Safrred (p), Aurelia de Carolis (d) and many others. Rec. 1934-1953
The great gypsy did pretty much all his recording during the pre-album age, and while he was justly honoured by the French soon after his death, most early UK vinyl releases were haphazard collations in indifferent sound. By contrast, this compact little high-quality cardsleeve box of three CDs, accompanied by a magnificent 75-page booklet in French and English which contains lavish photographs and discographical details, is by some distance the best one-step intro Django’s staggering genius. Transfers from the original 78rpm singles are magnificent and the selection of titles is absolutely on the money, from earliest Hot Club sides to his post-war experiments with shifting personnel and electrified guitars. (KS)
86
Steps Ahead: Steps Ahead (Elektra/Musician)
Michael Brecker (ts), Eliane Elias (p), Mike Mainieri (vb), Eddie Gomez (b) and Peter Erskine (d). Rec. 1983
A star-studded line-up this might have been, however, by the time they came to make their debut on an American label, Steps Ahead had forged a powerful group identity that critics were dubbing “the new acoustic fusion.” Much of this was down to a repertoire comprising original, ad hoc song forms that seldom employed straight ahead rhythms. Take ‘Both Sides of the Coin’ that uses a latin rhythm and a rondo form, whereas ‘Loxodrome’ presented an advanced contemporary vehicle for improvisation. Yet promoters would still say why not just play a 12-bar blues? Staggering really for such a perfectly poised jazz chamber group, that can take your breath away. (SN)
85
Krzysztof Komeda: Astigmatic (Polskie - Nagrania Muza)
Krzysztof Komeda (p), Tomasz Stanko (t), Zbigniew Namyslowski (as), Gunter Lenz (b) and Rune Carlson (d). Rec. 1965
Astigmatic is one of the most important contributions to the shaping of a European aesthetic in jazz composition. Stanko himself has said that this is an album that could “never have been made in America”, pointing to Komeda’s day job as a composer for more than 40 films. “Film dictates untypical construction,” Stanko has recalled. Indeed, the quintet responds to Komeda’s compositions with audible glee – there is measured intensity here but also the unmistakable glow of inspiration. (SN)
84
Anthony Braxton: For Alto (Delmark)
Anthony Braxton (as). Rec. 1969
While the song titles – dedications to innovative musicians such as John Cage, Cecil Taylor and Leroy Jenkins – gave a clear indication of where the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians iconoclast was coming from, few could have seen where, or rather how far, he was going on this landmark solo recital. Braxton’s alto saxophone is like the sound of acid dripped from the beating wings of hummingbirds, a charmingly corrosive caress. Through brilliant dynamics, lyricism, harmonic invention and pure sound trickery, Braxton showed a single horn could be a complete orchestra, paving the way for similar undertakings by Sonny Rollins among others years later. Downbeat awarded For Alto five stars and called it “revolutionary.” They were right. (KLG)
83
Diana Krall: Love Scenes (Impulse!)
Diana Krall (v, p), Russell Malone (g) and Christian McBride (b).
Rec. 1997Where would female jazz vocals be today without Diana Krall? An imponderable, perhaps, especially when so many undistinguished vocalists currently populate the landscape. However, Krall is the genuine article on every level, whether you’re talking about texture, taste, integrity, inventiveness or musicianship. Whatever setting she’s chosen for herself in the past decade, it’s been apposite. Love Scenes was a trio album and presaged her massive with-orchestra crossover, but it contains all the essential Krall ingredients and is a thorough convincing artistic manifesto. No wonder people listened. (KS)
Buy album from Presto Music
82
Steve Coleman And Five Elements: The Tao Of Mad Phat: Fringe Zones (RCA/Novus)
Steve Coleman (as), Andy Milne (p, ky) David Gilmore (g), Reggie Washington (el b), Roy Hargrove (t), Josh Roseman (tb), Kenny Davis (b) and Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn (perc). Rec. 1993
Jazz as funk, funk as jazz: the two lexicons entwine and merge so as to lose meaning in one of the great live records of the 1990s. Coleman had already made a splash with his JMT label output yet his playing and writing are more penetrating and focused here. Snappy, stabbing, staccato rhythmic and melodic lines are repeated to trance giving the impression of a giant musical pinball machine on a rotating floor. As well as exerting a decisive influence on anyone from the F-IRE collective to Omar Sosa, Coleman has always managed to reflect something of his times. Here he captured the hyperactivity of the burgeoning Internet age and the brash self-assertion of the hip-hop generation. (KLG)
81
Eberhard Weber: The Colours of Chloë (ECM)
Weber (b, cello, ocarina), Rainer Bruninghaus (p, syn), Ack van Rooyen (flhn), Peter Giger, Ralf Hübner (d, perc), and the cellos of the Südfunk Orchestra Stuttgart. Rec. 1973
Eberhard Weber’s debut album was one of the most significant opening volleys of ECM’s arrival in the jazz world as an arbiter of modern taste. Completely devoid of any of the fashionable Americanisms of the day, its music was full of light and colour derived from European modernist classical and film traditions. As such, it offered a completely fresh pool of delights to fish in. Using his sinuous bass technique to articulate melody as no-one else had before, Weber alternated a sumptuously severe string backing with little keyboard and percussion patterns to huge atmospheric effect. Entrancing. (KS)
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80
John Surman: Tales Of The Algonquin (Deram)
John Surman (bs, ss), John Warren (bs, f), Mike Osborne (as, cl), Alan Skidmore (ts, fl), Kenny Wheeler, Harry Beckett (t, flhn), John Taylor (p), Barre Phillips, Harry Miller (b), Alan Jackson and Stu Martin (d). Rec. 1971
As much Canadian John Warren’s album as fellow baritone player John Surman’s, this record said that Surman was a star in the ascendant. So many UK jazz albums could fill this slot but this gets the vote for its ecstatic, exuberant playing from Surman and company and amazing, challenging writing from Warren. This was a glorious testament to the new-found confidence of British jazz. Warren’s success lies in the way he remains within the big band tradition but extends it by incorporating elements of free playing, driving powerful polyrhythms and complex layering of his instrumental resources. An absolute and indisputable joy. (DH)
79
Oliver Nelson: The Blues And The Abstract Truth (Impulse!)
Oliver Nelson (as, ts), Freddie Hubbard (t), Eric Dolphy (f, as, bcl), George Barrow (bar s), Bill Evans (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Roy Haynes (d). Rec. 1961
For almost all his career Nelson was a hugely talented journeyman musician who did everything well and not a great deal memorably. This is the exception. Helped by a cast that included Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy and Bill Evans, Nelson delivered a set of profound meditations on the blues (including ‘Stolen Moments’) and then backed that up by playing the tenor saxophone with such force and inventiveness that he stood as an equal with the heavyweights listed above. In managing it even once he at least gave us a stone classic modern jazz blues and roots album that is free of all hard bop cliché. (KS)
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78
Betty Carter: The Audience With Betty Carter (Betcar)
Betty Carter (v), John Hicks (p), Curtis Lundy (b) and Kenny Washington (d). Rec. 1979
Listening to this album is a cathartic experience. ‘Sounds’ is a tour de force of scat through shifting tempos and meters that lasts 25 minutes where at one point, Carter, Hicks, Lundy and Washington each play in a different meter. The album highlight is ‘My Favorite Things’ taken at a brisk tempo with Hicks at his most explosive as his accompaniment blossoms into a counterline to Carter’s singing and by the coda who can say whether voice or piano predominates? To say this is one of the finest jazz vocal albums ever made is limiting; it numbers among the great contemporary jazz albums. (SN)
77
Art Tatum: The Genius of Art Tatum No.1 (Clef 1953)
Art Tatum (p). Rec. 1953
For decades Tatum was every jazz pianist’s first choice as the greatest piano of all but by the early 1950s his public profile was still minute compared with some of his contemporaries. Norman Granz decided to fix that: between 1953 and Tatum’s death in 1956 Granz recorded well over 200 selections and issued them on Clef and Verve. Tatum’s popular and critical reputation has been secure ever since, his baroque creations simultaneously exciting and terrifying the listener. This first of the series is a solo recital. All the Tatum Clefs and Verves are now available on Granz’s last-owned label, Pablo. (KS)
76
Charles Lloyd: Dream Weaver (Atlantic)
Charles Lloyd (ts, f), Keith Jarrett (p), Cecil McBee (b) and Jack DeJohnette (d). Rec. 1966
Voted “new star” by Downbeat in 1965, the emergence of the Charles Lloyd Quartet took jazz by storm in 1966, expanding musical horizons with a challenging eclectic amalgam of modal and free jazz with Eastern textures and Spanish soul. Dream Weaver also introduced Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette to the world before Lloyd’s subsequent LPs Forest Flower and Love-In became two of jazz’s biggest sellers. However, this was the album that first got tongues wagging, echoing the free spirit of the psychedelic 1960s and landing them an early slot at The Fillmore. Miles noticed too, quickly snatching Jarrett and DeJohnette for his own jazz-rock experiments that ushered in the dawn of a new era. (JN)
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75
Oscar Peterson: Night Train (Verve)
Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown b) and Ed Thigpen (d). Rec. 1962
By 1962 Peterson’s trio was one of the top draws in jazz worldwide and Peterson himself habitually won every jazz piano popularity poll going. Why? Well, the change in 1958 from piano-bass-guitar to piano-bass-drums had allowed him room to develop the group’s leaner, grittier side and emphasise melody rather than bullish pyrotechnics. Night Train is the epitome of this approach: cool, funky, incredibly concentrated and well thought-through, it hangs together as a perfect modernist tribute to the funky roots of jazz, covering tracks from ‘C Jam Blues’ to ‘Moten Swing’ and ‘The Hucklebuck’. Canadiana Suite may be Peterson’s creative high water point, but Night Train defines him. (KS)
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74
Herbie Hancock: The New Standard (Verve)
Herbie Hancock (p), Michael Brecker (ts), John Scofield (g), Dave Holland (b), Jack DeJohnette (d) and Don Alias (perc). Rec. 1996
From the opening ‘New York Minute’ this album bursts with energy and creativity. Hancock soars and Brecker burns. Yet while the playing is exemplary, the choice of repertoire makes this album stand apart. ‘New York Minute’ is from the Don Henley album The End of The Innocence and songs by the likes of Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and Prince make this one of the first albums after 1990 to return to songs from popular culture once more as a basis for jazz improvisation. Yet they all end up as impeccable, burning New York-style jazz of the highest order and press the green light for other artists to follow suit. (SN)
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73
Roland Kirk: Rip, Rig & Panic (Limelight)
Roland Kirk (f, mzo, stritch, ts), Jaki Byard (p), Richard Davis (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1965
Many maintain that Kirk never made the perfect album: if so, this one comes closer than any other, mostly because Elvin Jones is consistently lighting a fire under the quartet generally and Kirk in particular. The multi-reed man is also self-evidently inspired by pianist Jaki Byard’s playing and is consistently taking risks in everything he’s doing. I Talk With The Spirits, his flute album, came next and gave the world ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’, while 1968’s Volunteered Slavery allowed Kirk to assault Burt Bacharach among others while giving him a new audience, but this one is the stone jazzer’s delight. (KS)
72
Thelonious Monk: The Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 1 (Blue Note)
Thelonious Monk (p), Idrees Sulieman/George Taitt (t), Danny Quebec West/Sahib Shihab (as), Billy Smith (ts), Gene Ramey/Bob Paige (b) and Art Blakey (d). Rec. 1947
These early Monk sides almost sank without trace when first issued as 78rpm singles, and it was only because of a LP selection under this title in the mid-1950s that more than a handful of punters took any notice. Blue Note, though, were so into Monk that they’d done these three sessions in little more than a month, just to get the first small-group versions of ‘Round Midnight’, ‘Ruby My Dear’, ‘Thelonious’ and ‘In Walked Bud’ among others. With the possible exception of Idrees, the soloists weren’t up to the pianist’s level. Yet the miraculous Blakey is at his early best. (BP)
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71
Wayne Shorter: Speak No Evil (Blue Note)
Wayne Shorter (ts), Freddie Hubbard (t), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1964
Recorded a few months into his stint with Miles, this date finds Shorter on the cusp of his mature compositional and improvisatory styles and in the congenial company of Hancock and Carter, with Elvin Jones keeping it honest at the back and Hubbard providing his usual perfect foil at the front. In a sense this is Shorter’s essay on groove, but his angularity never makes it likely that the whole album would attain that ineffable level, or that he’d even want that. Herbie, of course, would do it without him a few months later on Maiden Voyage. So? Vive le difference, we say… (KS)
Feature: Wayne Shorter – Music of the Spheres
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70
Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim): African Marketplace (Elektra/Musician)
Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) (ss, kys, p), Gary Chandler (t), Malindi Blyth Mbityana, Craig Harris (tb), Carlos Ward (as), Jeff Jaywarrah King, Dwayne Armstrong (ts), Kenny Rogers (bs), Lawrence Lucie (bjo), Cecil McBee (b), Miguel Pomier and Andre Strobert (d, perc). Rec. 1980
Duke Ellington discovered and recorded pianist-composer Dollar Brand aka Abdullah Ibrahim in 1963 playing in a more or less conventional jazz manner, but it took a long time for the South African township music he evolved in the 1970s to be accepted outside of Africa. This album was one of the very first to be made in America and its impact was immense, its melodicism, warmth and simplicity brought something new and refreshing to the often overheated, testosterone-filled gladiatorial pit of small group improvising to established harmonic patterns. As Jelly Roll Morton had shown 50 years earlier, sometimes the best comes from a truly group effort. (KS)
69
Stan Tracey: Jazz Suite Inspired By Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood (EMI/Columbia)
Stan Tracey (p), Bobby Wellins (ts), Jeff Clyne (b) and Jackie Dougan (d). Rec. 8 May 1965
Tracey is indispensable, a one-man mission statement. Here he showed how much could be achieved within the basic jazz quartet format. Reaction at the time seems to have been along the lines of where on earth did this come from? Coherent, vital and mind-stretching, Tracey’s eight pieces provide a remarkable insight into Thomas’ great work but also into the creative process itself and the myriad sources jazz could explore for inspiration. With its jaunty, picaresque tunes and assured playing that reflected Thomas’ saucy, roguish book, the album is a wonderfully humorous work that extended the boundaries in a hugely subtle way. After this, there would always be more to jazz than just blowing. (DH)
68
Esbjörn Svensson Trio: From Gagarin’s Point Of View (ACT)
Esbjörn Svensson (p), Dan Berglund (b) and Magnus Öström (d). Rec. 1999
It was not as if the Esbjörn Svensson Trio came out of nowhere. They’ve been around since 1991 refining a distinctive collective voice that prompted a name change to EST. It took the UK, who habitually look to the USA for its jazz heroes, longer than most European countries to come under their spell, but this is the album that did it. Their attachment to deeply felt melody, unhurried intensity, framed with the Nordic Tone, and the comparatively unconventional, pop-like structures of their compositions endeared them to jazz and non-jazz fans alike, in the honest humanity of their playing. (SN)
Feature EST – Three Falling Three
67
John Handy: Live At Monterey Jazz Festival (Columbia)
John Handy (as), Mike White (el vn), Jerry Hahn (g), Don Thompson (b) and Terry Clarke (d). Rec. 1965
Fresh from the Charles Mingus band, Handy tore Monterey apart in September 1965 with this startling hypnotic modal performance that got him signed to Columbia, sending shock waves out to Charles Lloyd, Gabor Szabo, Miles Davis and John McLaughlin. Rooted in the free flow of Coltrane’s classic quintet with Eric Dolphy, the two side-long pieces open with Handy’s mesmerising unaccompanied alto statement that, four decades later still sends shivers, before Hahn and White erupt into fiery flamenco, middle eastern and rock-tinged directions unheard of at the time. Little wonder that in December 1965 they were the first jazz act ever to play San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore Auditorium paving the way for The Fourth Way and the sonic zeitgeist that followed. (JN)
66
Gil Evans: The Individualism of Gil Evans (Verve)
Gil Evans (p, arr, comp) with, among others, Johnny Coles, Ernie Royal, Thad Jones, Bernie Glow (t), Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland (tb), Julius Watkins, Bob Northern (Fr h), Bill Barber (tba), Steve Lacy (ss), Eric Dolphy (f, as, bcl), Wayne Shorter (ts), Garvin Bushell, Jerome Richardson (reeds), Kenny Burrell (g), Milt Hinton, Paul Chambers, Gary Peacock, Ron Carter (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1963-4
A diffident self-promoter, Evans was only rarely coaxed into the recording studios to deliver albums that reflected fully his own musical visions away from the stars he wrapped in his sonic delights. This album is his most ambitious and deeply satisfying, covering his love of Kurt Weill, the blues, Spanish music and swaggering self-penned pieces, all of them dripping in the translucent arrangements that make you feel you’ve entered a uniquely magical musical land the moment the orchestra makes a sound. Seamlessly featuring soloists like Wayne Shorter, Johnny Coles and Phil Woods, this album is pure musical alchemy from a total original. The CD is a happily expanded version of the original vinyl, adding 27 minutes of excellent previously unreleased new music. (KS)
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65
Gerry Mulligan: Gerry Mulligan Quartet (Pacific Jazz)
Gerry Milligan (bar s), Chet Baker (t), Bobby Whitlock (b) and Chico Hamilton (d). Rec. 1952
Mulligan first made a significant contribution to recorded jazz through his arrangements for Miles’ so-called Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol, but it was the 1952 pianoless quartet that hit the headlines and made him (as well as trumpeter sidekick Chet Baker) virtually overnight jazz celebrities. This album covers the initial (and best) sides the Mulligan Quartet cut, for Pacific Jazz, including ‘Bernie’s Tune’, ‘Freeway’ and ‘Walkin’ Shoes’, where the uncanny empathy between Mulligan and Baker is constantly underlined by the firmly resilient beat of Chico Hamilton. West coast jazz in its infancy and at its most joyously infectious. This is a Japanese CD reissue which more than doubles the original vinyl playing time. (KS)
64
Brad Mehldau: Art Of The Trio Vol.3 (Warner)
Brad Mehldau (p), Larry Grenadier (b) and Jorge Rossy (d). Rec. 1998
Voted best jazz album of 1998 by The Guardian and part three of a musical odyssey that comprises five volumes stretching from 1996-2000. More so than his previous albums, this was the one that put him on the map, as much for a version of ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ that turned Radiohead into Beethoven as his deeply haunting version of Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’ that hipped a legion of young jazzers to two fresh new sources of repertoire. Here Mehldau’s improvisations appear as variations upon variations upon variations, remote from their source maybe but entirely personal. In the process they lay to rest Bill Evans soundalike comparisons once and for all. (SN)
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63
Archie Shepp: Four For Trane (Impulse!)
Archie Shepp (ts, arr), Alan Shorter (flhn), Roswell Rudd (tb), John Tchicai (as), Reggie Workman (b) and Charles Moffett (d). Rec. 1964
Shepp was a member of Cecil Taylor’s 1960/1 unit that cut sides for Candid and Impulse!, but his first mature playing on disc is on the virtually unobtainable 1962 Archie Shepp – Bill Dixon Quartet album released on Savoy. Four For Trane demonstrates not only a shift in allegiance to Coltrane but a real gift for arrangement and a thoroughly original approach to his own playing at a time when everyone was copying Trane or Rollins. He may have got more radical later, but this was a 100 per cent proof shot of the new on its initial release. (KS)
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62
Count Basie: The Atomic Mr Basie (Roulette)
Count Basie (p), Thad Jones, Joe Newman, Wendell Culley, Snooky Young (t), Benny Powell, Henry Coker, Al Grey (tb), Marshall Royal (as, cl), Frank Wess (as, ts), Frank Foster, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (ts), Charlie Fowlkes (bar s), Freddie Green (g), Eddie Jones (b), Sonny Payne (d) and Neal Hefti (arr). Rec. 1957
First issued simply as Basie and illustrated with “a tasteful” mushroom cloud it certainly had an explosive enough impact as it was his first album to capture the rich ensemble sound as well as the beat. Some of the charts wear better than others, but the overall feel is timeless. ‘Kid From Red Bank’ featuring stride piano from the leader and ‘Whirly-Bird’’s shouting tenor saxophone by Lockjaw epitomise the uptempos, while ‘Splanky’ and Newman-and-Thad’s ‘Duet’ do it for the blues. And ‘Li’l Darlin‚’ proves emphatically that smoochy doesn’t have to mean smoo-ooth. (BP)
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61
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Capitol)
Miles Davis (t), Lee Konitz (as), Gerry Mulligan (bar s), JJ Johnson (tb), Kai Winding (tb), Junior Collins (Fr hn), Gunther Schuller (Fr hn), Sandy Siegelstein (Fr hn), Billy Barber (tba), John Barber (tba), Nelson Boyd (b), Joe Shulman (b), Al McKibbon (b), Al Haig (p), John Lewis (p), Kenny Clarke (d), Max Roach (d), Gil Evans (arr), Johnny Carisi (arr) and Kenny Hagood (v). Rec. 1949-50
The wonder of Miles’ career is the sheer amount of times he seized the moment, grabbed the right people, and got them to deliver their best creative thoughts for him. The first time was with Charlie Parker, but by the time he landed a contract with Capitol for some modern jazz sides with an augmented group, he was able to operate freely, pulling in the restless writing talents of Gil Evans, John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan and John Carisi to create a unified and superbly subtle backdrop for his emergent lyricism. The world is changed, part one. (KS)
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60
Peter Brötzmann Octet: Machine Gun (FMP)
Peter Brötzmann (ts, bar s), Evan Parker, Willem Breuker (ts), Fred Van Hove (p), Peter Kowald, Buschi Niebergall (b), Han Bennink and Sven Johansson (d). Rec. May 1968
Political statement, samizdat reflection on events or Janovian primal scream? Surely one of the most extreme albums ever recorded it’s a musical manifesto from the European free jazz underground, an answering call to like-minds across the Atlantic and rallying cry for those at home. The title track features “solos” by the three horn players and pianist Van Hove, each as ferocious as the other. ‘Responsible’, for all its atonal howling, ends with a fabulous latin vamp while ‘Music For Han Bennink’ squeals and yelps with joy. Machine Gun leaves you shaken to the core. (DH)
59
Coleman Hawkins: Body And Soul (RCA Bluebird)
Hawkins (ts) and many others. Rec. 1939-56
The trouble with Hawk is the same one faced by someone looking for an ideal single-set introduction to maverick genius Sidney Bechet – in such a long and protean career, how do you get all the best bits on one label? With Bechet it’s still impossible. With Hawk, you can just about do it. The great man’s original ‘Body And Soul’ masterpiece from 1939 is here, plus a telling number of tracks showing how he paced all the changes in jazz with ease and continued to grow artistically through the decades. The best of the later Hawk is on Verve, but this intro is nicely rounded. (KS)
58
Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet: Clifford Brown and Max Roach (EmArcy)
Brown (t), Harold Land (ts), Richie Powell (p), George Morrow (b) and Max Roach (d). Rec. 1954
Timing is everything. For two years this group was the cutting edge of modern jazz: by spring 1956 they had Sonny Rollins as the resident tenor alongside Clifford Brown’s dazzlingly innovative trumpet: Miles and Coltrane were still playing catch-up in their quintet. Then, a car crash claimed Brown and pianist Richie Powell and it was all over. This powerful set, containing classic interpretations of post-bop standards such as ‘Daahaud’, ‘Joy Spring’ and ‘Parisienne Thoroughfare’ is still the starting-point for post-Parker bop and mandatory listening for any subsequent trumpeter. The CD contains two alternative takes adding 10 more minutes of music. (KS)
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57
Horace Silver: Song For My Father (Blue Note)
Silver (p), Blue Mitchell, Carmell Jones (t), Junior Cook, Joe Henderson (ts), Gene Taylor, Teddy Smith (b), Roy Brooks and Roger Humphries (d). Rec. 1963-64
For the five years he held his Junior Cook-Blue Mitchell quintet together, Silver had the perfect combination of his high-quality tunes and a band that had a magic interpretative touch. They all played for each other to such an extent that the group became one of the true 1960s greats. Song For My Father features this group on two tracks, but not on the famous title tune, which instead ushers in the brilliant but short-lived quintet featuring Joe Henderson and Carmell Jones. No cause to fear: all remains in place for a classic that still casts its spell. (KS)
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56
Art Ensemble of Chicago: A Jackson in Your House (BYG/Actuel)
Lester Bowie (t, flhn, perc), Roscoe Mitchell (ss, as, bs, cl, fl, whistles, steel drum, perc), Joseph Jarman (ss, as, cl, oboe, mba, siren, g) and Malachi Favors (b, el b, banjo, log drum and perc). Rec. 1969
A spin on a fairground carousel that nevertheless stays on the side of art rather than entertainment. This was the record that showed that the sonic riot of the avant-garde wasn’t incompatible with riotous humour. Using anything from Dixieland riffs to bluesy drawls to classical intermezzi, AEoC create a mix-tape in which tempo, mood and idiom become shifting sands on a strange and beautiful landscape. Imagine William Burroughs cutting up sheet music instead of text and having skilled players somehow make the fragments sound coherent. A deeply subversive but sophisticated work that must have been highly informative to anyone from Zappa to Zorn. (KLG)
55
John Coltrane: Ascension (Impulse!)
Coltrane (ts), Freddie Hubbard, Dewey Johnson (t), John Tchicai, Marion Brown (as), Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders (ts), McCoy Tyner (p), Jimmy Garrison (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1965
Still an unruly, flawed, controversial, and deeply divisive album 40 years after its initial release, Ascension set the pace and the tone of the avant-garde music debate right through the back of the 1960s, quickly becoming a cutting-edge touchstone across the arts – even John Lennon told interviewers “of course I’ve heard Ascension” when asserting his late 1960s intellectual credentials alongside Yoko. Today, the music remains testingly difficult, the hell-hot fire and chaos from Trane’s supporting musicians a clear indication of the times it was made in, yet it’s a titanic date that changed jazz forever. (KS)
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54
Lester Young: Lester Young/Buddy Rich Trio (Verve)
Young (ts), Nat King Cole (p) and Buddy Rich (d). Rec. 1946
Young was past his creative peak by the time vinyl LPs became the norm for recording purposes, but luckily a young Norman Granz snuck this session in during 1946 while Young was signed elsewhere, then sat on it until he signed Young himself in 1952. It catches Young in absolute peak mid-career form, accompanied by Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums. With the spotlight for once firmly on Young himself, the intimate date exhibits all Young’s soul, elusive melodic and rhythmic invention, down-home drive and unearthly delicacy and shows just why he was Charlie Parker’s early idol. (KS)
53
Pharoah Sanders: Karma (Impulse!)
Sanders (ts) Leon Thomas (v, perc), James Spaulding (fl), Julius Watkins (Fr hn), Lonnie Liston Smith (p), Richard Davis, Reggie Workman, Ron Carter (b), Freddie Waits, William Hart (d) and Nathaniel Betis (perc). Rec. 1969
What a sleeve! The saxophonist’s meditative pose against a hazy burnt orange sun posits Karma as a healing sound for love children alarmed by the bomb, the bullet and the ballot. Coming out of the universal consciousness of mentor John Coltrane and borrowing some of the celestial majesty of his widow Alice, Sanders gets modal-hymnal on the enduring ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’ and dazzlingly abstract on ‘Colors’. These heady cosmic grooves fed the creative fire of anyone from Roy Ayers to Lonnie Liston Smith in the 1970s and inspired the more discerning purveyors of pro-tools instrumental music such as The Cinematic Orchestra in the millennium. (KLG)
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52
John McLaughlin: Extrapolation (Marmalade)
John McLaughlin (g), John Surman (bs, ss), Brian Odges (b) and Tony Oxley (d). Rec. 1969
The 1960s was a decade when British jazz emerged with a strong identity with classic albums from the likes of Mike Westbrook, Michael Garrick, Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet and Mike Gibbs to name but a few. But Extrapolation is the most prophetic, not only as a stepping stone in McLaughlin’s career – from Extrapolation to Tony Williams’ Lifetime to Bitches Brew to the Mahavishnu Orchestra are indeed surprisingly small strides – but for how change in jazz in the late 1960s and early 1970s would shape up. This mixture of freedom (often “time, no changes”) and structure as well as the increasing sense of identity in McLaughlin’s playing framed by Surman and Oxley make for compelling listening. (SN)
51
John Zorn: Naked City (Elektra/Nonesuch)
John Zorn (as), Bill Frisell (g), Wayne Horvitz (ky), Fred Frith (b) and Joey Baron (d). Rec. 1989
This is a superb example of post modern jazz. Zorn, the arch post modernist, expropriated practices, fragments and signifiers of different, sometimes alien music and relocated them within his own brash expressionism. Thus there’s fleeting references to jazz, blues, surf guitars, film noir moods, country music plus short, sharp noise shocks all made possible by Bill Frisell’s versatile guitar. Using segue-like channel zapping on TV, one mood is thrust in harsh disjunction with another. The only thing certain about postmodernism is uncertainty, so we should pay attention to this music, because uncertainty in an uncertain world is shaping all of us. (SN)
50
Lennie Tristano: Tristano (Atlantic)
Tristano (p), Lee Konitz (as), Peter Ind, Gene Ramey (b), Jeff Morton and Art Taylor (d). Rec. 1955
Theorist, teacher, creative thinker and virtuoso pianist, Tristano had advanced and very firmly held views about what constituted good playing practice. He expected his musicians to adhere to such views and accept whatever discipline he imposed. That it worked for others can be heard in Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, and that it was influential can be discerned through Bill Evans’s absorption of Tristano’s methods. But Tristano’s own audience remained tiny, this Atlantic album containing his moving elegy to Charlie Parker, ‘Requiem’, and his controversial multi-tracking of his own piano lines, ‘Line Up’, providing a brief moment when everyone sat up and took notice. (KS)
49
Dizzy Gillespie: Shaw ’Nuff (Musicraft)
Gillespie (t), Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt (as), Dexter Gordon (ts), Clyde Hart, John Lewis, Frank Paparelli (p), Milt Jackson (vb), Chuck Wayne (g), Ray Brown, Curly Russell, Slam Stewart (b), Sid Catlett, Kenny Clarke, Cozy Cole, Shelly Manne (d) and Sarah Vaughan (v) plus many others. Rec. 1945-6
Those who only know Gillespie from his 1950s efforts onwards can have no conception as to the veritable force of nature his trumpet playing was in the 1940s. This CD collation of the earliest sides under his leadership, made for tiny labels such as Guild and Musicraft, will have your jaw sagging in amazement as he consistently delivers ideas that top even those of Parker. Just to keep it interesting, Gillespie also wrote some of the most enduring bop anthems, and many of them get their first outings here. These sessions, like the Parker Savoys, are the holy tablets of bop. (KS)
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48
Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Volume 1 (ESP-Disk)
Sun Ra (p, mba, cel, perc), Chris Capers (t), Teddy Nance (tb), Bernard Pettaway (b tb), Danny Davis (f, as), Marshall Allen (picc, as, perc), Robert Cummings (bcl, perc), John Gilmore (ts, perc), Pat Patrick (bs, perc), Ronnie Boykins (b) and Jimhmi Johnson (perc). Rec. 1965
Ra had been making albums for his own label Saturn for a decade by the time this one slipped out via ESP-Disk, but this was the first to make a wide impact due not only to the unprecedented nature of the music (some tracks sound closer to Tibetan Buddhist music than anything being played in the America at the time) but also to the fact that ESP-Disk, a tiny label making a big noise at the time, actually got distributed outside of Chicago and New York and even made a splash internationally. Ra was on the vinyl map and never looked back. Next stop, Jupiter. (KS)
47
Sonny Rollins: The Bridge (RCA Victor)
Rollins (ts), Jim Hall (g), Bob Cranshaw (b), Ben Riley and Harry Saunders (d). Rec. 1962
There is a curious reluctance for some to acknowledge that Rollins came back from his 1959-61 voluntary exile a more complete and fascinatingly complex musician. The Bridge is enduring testimony to that fact: he has shed all stylistic baggage, leads from the front, plays with a new poise and freshness and with a unique identity that has stayed intact up to the present day. Although late-50s Rollins may be the stuff to get the critics panting, this was the template for all future Rollins creative ventures, whether they be avant-garde or retro or just plain Sonny. Unbeatable music. (KS)
Feature Sonny Rollins: Albums That Shook The World
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46
Andrew Hill: Point of Departure (Blue Note)
Hill (p), Kenny Dorham (t), Eric Dolphy (f, as, bcl), Joe Henderson (ts, f), Richard Davis (b) and Tony Williams (d). Rec. 1964
Hill’s is of course a multi-faced talent – a brilliant pianist and improviser, he is also one of jazz’s outstanding composer-arrangers. This album emphasises the latter talents: he uses his highly personal sense of composition and instrumental colour much as Jelly Roll Morton did back in the late 1920s, bringing out sensational new sonorities and ideas between the select group of musicians he is using here and goading them to some of their most eloquent playing, individually and collectively. When those musicians include the front line we have here, that makes for some very special music indeed. Depending on which CD version you come across this can be a straight version of the vinyl original or contain two extra alternative takes. (KS)
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45
John Coltrane: Impressions (Impulse!)
Coltrane (ss, ts), Eric Dolphy (bcl, as), McCoy Tyner (p), Reggie Workman, Art Davis, Jimmy Garrison (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1961 and 1963
This was Coltrane’s second scoop into the Aladdin’s cave of music he’d made at the Village Vanguard in November 1961. The first, released as At The Village Vanguard in 1962, had whipped up a storm of criticism and, through the blues ‘Chasin’ The Trane’, served notice to a new generation about the music to come. This one went even further – India threw open the floodgates to the east in jazz, while ‘Impressions’ is 14 minutes of solid gold inspiration from Trane and Elvin. The 1963 studio fillers, ‘Up Against The Wall’ and ‘After The Rain’, are two exquisite musical punctuation points. (KS)
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44
George Russell: The Jazz Workshop (RCA Victor)
George Russell (comp, arr, boombams), Art Farmer (t), Hal McKusick (as, f), Barry Galbraith (g), Bill Evans (p), Milt Hinton, Teddy Kotick (b), Joe Harris, Paul Motian and Osie Johnson (d). Rec. 1956
One of the most important jazz albums ever. Using just six players, Russell achieves wonderful orchestral textures within these 12 compositions, thanks partly to guitarist Galbraith, and introduces the world to modal jazz (and Bill Evans) en route. Strange new harmonies, polyrhythms, pantonality and extended composition – with Russell and Gil Evans, jazz just became a complete new zone of potentialities. More influential on the jazz community directly, on Miles, Coltrane and Oliver Nelson, than through its sales, this is the one that so many musicians still check out. A masterpiece of small group playing and a masterclass on the role of composition in the music. (DH)
43
Miles Davis: Sketches Of Spain (Columbia)
Davis (t, flhn), orchestra and Gil Evans (cond, arr). Rec. 1960
Miles already had two bona-fide large-group masterpieces for Columbia down in the plus column with Miles Ahead and Porgy & Bess by the time he and Gil Evans assembled this finely-drawn re-workings of classical pieces of music generally associated with Spain. At its core is the brooding central movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, but the poignant lyricism and incandescent colours Miles and Gil invest the other pieces, including a rare Evans original, with a singularity of vision and intent that makes this a burningly bright and unified achievement. Once more they’d broken the mould, for themselves and everyone else. (KS)
Review Miles Davis – Sketches Of Spain (50th Anniversary Edition) ★★★★★
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42
Stan Getz: Focus (Verve)
Getz (ts), Roy Haynes (d), chamber string group and Hershey Kay (cond). Rec. 1961
Nothing in the history of jazz soloist-plus-strings recordings could prepare the uninitiated listener for what this album delivers. Getz’s commission to his favourite arranger/composer Eddie Sauter was completely open-ended. What Sauter delivered was a suite that stood up as music independently of anything Getz might add melodically but that left him plenty of room to create the most gorgeous tapestry of sound and emotion, interweaving between all the richness of Sauter’s lean, expressive scores. Focus stands in glorious isolation even within the jazz tradition but is a certifiable classic within the genre that others still cite in awe. (KS)
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41
Chick Corea: Return To Forever (ECM)
Corea (el p), Joe Farrell (f, ss), Stanley Clarke (el b), Airto Moreira (d, perc) and Flora Purim (v). Rec. 1972
By the time he made this date, Corea had worked his way through a heavy avant-garde phase and out onto the sunlit plains of his own latin-based musical imagination. It had always been there in his music, but now, marrying the élan and high spirits of Flora Purim and Airto with his own naturally ebullient and melodically uplifting inclinations, Corea suddenly not only stepped forward himself past the stentorian gloom and machismo of the other fusioneers of the day, but redefined exactly what latin jazz should be about. Intoxicating music played by masters makes this an era-defining milestone. (KS)
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40
Billie Holiday: At JATP (Clef/Verve)
Holiday (v), Howard McGhee, Buck Clayton (t), Trummy Young (tb),Willie Smith (as), Illinois Jacquet, Wardell Gray, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young (ts), Milt Raskin, Ken Kersey, Tommy Tucker (p), Charles Mingus, Al McKibbon (b), J.C. Heard and Jackie Mills (d). Rec. 1945-47
People call Billie Holiday THE voice of jazz. However, her discography on vinyl is convoluted: her 1930s 78rpm output, where she was normally a featured singer rather than the star, had to wait until the 1960s to appear in any ordered way and the 1990s to appear substantially on CD. Ditto her 1940s Deccas. By the time she settled with Verve in 1952 her voice had darkened and lost its suppleness. This set of live performances from the mid-40s, however, finds her in good musicianly company, vocally at a peak and expressively in the mood to sweep all before her across a classic selection of material, including ‘Strange Fruit’ and ‘Billie’s Blues’. The CD configuration more than doubles the amount of material originally available on vinyl, though the sound quality on some of the “new” tracks is not exactly brilliant. (KS)
39
Tony Williams Lifetime: Emergency! (Polydor)
Tony Williams (d), Larry Young (org) and John McLaughlin (g). Rec. 1969.
This bold attempt to expand the boundaries of jazz in a dramatic jazz, blues, rock, Hendrix, MC5 amalgam left temperate listeners shell shocked and critics speechless. Today, the mere mention of jazz-rock prompts cries from establishment critics of “sell-out,” but if this is selling-out, then maybe they should consider another line of work. This is jazz, rhythm and electricity writ large in a tumbling roller coaster of ideas. No wonder the album was called Emergency, with every member of the band having so much to say but so little time to say it. (SN)
38
Cannonball Adderley: Somethin’ Else (Blue Note)
Adderley (as), Miles Davis (t), Hank Jones (p), Sam Jones (b) and Art Blakey (d). Rec. 1959
Adderley was about to push into the soul-jazz era when he made this one-off for Blue Note. In a sense it was a vale to what had passed between the altoist and Miles Davis during the time they shared the bandstand in the Miles Davis Sextet, complete with Miles’ compulsive borrowings from Ahmad Jamal and the delicate balance struck between the beautiful simplicity of the emerging modernist simplicity and Cannon’s natural ebullience. Miles got the altoist to shine through ballads and burnished blowing throughout, complementing in fine style while the rest of the crew kept a discreet distance. The Blue Note RVG version contain an extra track from this session. (KS)
Review Cannonball Adderley – Somethin' Else
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37
Charles Mingus: The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (Impulse!)
Rolf Ericson, Richard Williams (t), Quentin Jackson (tb), Don Butterfield (tba), Jerome Richardson (fl, ss, bar s), Dick Hafer (fl, ts), Charlie Mariano (as), Jaki Byard (p), Jay Berliner (g), Charles Mingus (b, p) and Dannie Richmond (d). Rec. 1963
Maybe you have to acquire a taste for Mingus before getting to this, but I’ve known people with significant non-Mingus backgrounds fall headlong for it at first hearing. Whether you come from Ellington or from Coltrane or from blues-bands, there’s stuff from this almost continuous suite to captivate you. Even techno fans – no sampling as such – will find early creative use of editing, recycling and overdubbing. Even more creative is the work of soloists such as Jackson, Byard and the amazing Mariano (later of ECM and all points east), and the unaccompanied flamenco guitar part apparently written note-for-note by Mingus himself. (BP)
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36
Ella Fitzgerald: Sings The Cole Porter Songbook (Verve)
Fitzgerald (v) and the Buddy Bregman Orchestra. Rec. 1956
Norman Granz had long cherished the ambition to have Ella recording for his label but had to wait until 1956 to make the signing. His first project for her was to record as many Cole Porter songs as they could lay their hands on in large ensemble style and release them (initially as volumes one and two) on an unsuspecting but quickly enraptured public. The idea caught on and Ella kept doing composer songbooks well into the 1960s. Nobody did it better, even though it could be said that Sinatra’s studious avoidance of such anthologies produced the greater individual legacy. (KS)
Feature Ella Fitzgerald: essential recordings
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35
Duke Ellington: Ellington At Newport (Columbia)
Ellington (p), Willie Cook, Ray Nance, Clark Terry, Cat Anderson (t), Britt Woodman, Quentin Jackson, John Sanders (tb), Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope (as), Jimmy Hamilton (cl, ts), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Harry Carney (bar s), Jimmy Woode (b) and Sam Woodyard (d). Rec. 1956
Ellington often acknowledged that the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival offered him a virtual rebirth in terms of his in-person and recording career but there is little doubt as to why. Apart from the on-site near-riot after the conclusion of ‘Diminuendo And Crescendo in Blue’, this is a well-paced record for a lounge-chair audience wanting to know what the excitement was all about. The fact that 60 per cent of the original (including just about all of The Festival Suite) was recorded in the studio in the following days due to onstage microphone problems was only confirmed decades later. The original vinyl had just three tracks: this was also the original CD configuration. A later two-CD version combines much improved sound with the complete festival appearance, plus studio extras. (KS)
Feature: Such Sweet Thunder: inside Duke Ellington's literary world
34
Woody Herman: The Thundering Herds (Columbia)
Herman (cl, as, v) Sonny Berman, Pete Candoli, Conte Candoli, Shorty Rogers, Conrad Gozzo, Ernie Royal (t), Bill Harris (tb), Sam Marowitz, John LaPorta, Flip Phillips, Pete Mondello, Herbie Steward, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Serge Chaloff (reeds), Margie Hyams, Red Norvo (vb), Ralph Burns, Jimmy Rowles (p), Billy Bauer, Chuck Wayne (g), Chubby Jackson (b), Dave Tough and Don Lamond (d). Rec. 1945-47
The 1945-47 Herman bands – they came to be known as the First and Second Herds – were 1940s big band punk, high on their own adrenalin, testing all the boundaries and playing stampeding music that remains some of the most exciting of the last fifty years, whatever the genre: these guys took the sophistication of Ellington, grafted it on to the bone-chilling excitement of the Gillespie big band soloists and anchored it with the insanely swinging rhythm section of bassist Chubby Jackson and drummer Dave Tough. This set, first pulled together on vinyl in the 1960s and re-jigged many times on LP and CD since, preserves the best of a truly great big band and its leader. (KS)
33
Jan Garbarek: Afric Pepperbird (ECM)
Jan Garbarek (ts, fl), Terje Rypdal (g), Arild Andersen (b) and Jon Christensen (d). Rec. 1970
From the opening track ‘Scarabee’, the jazz world outside Scandinavia was introduced to a Nordic sensibility in jazz, the Nordic Tone. Intensity, meaning and space are essential to understanding what is probably the most misunderstood approach to jazz improvisation. Garbarek combines the intensity of Albert Ayler and the economy of Dexter Gordon but reinscribes them with Nordic folkloric allusions, to produce, in producer Manfred Eicher’s words “an alternative to the American approach to jazz,” an approach he champions to this day. (SN)
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32
Jimmy Smith: A New Sound, A New Star (Blue Note)
Smith (org), Thornel Schwartz (g), Bay Perry and Donald Bailey (d). Rec. 1956
It’s that simple: Jimmy Smith invented modern jazz organ and this is the album (in fact, volume one of two quickly-released volumes recorded at the same February 1956 sessions) where he announced his arrival. From the off, Blue Note was looking for commercial success and his version of ‘The Champ’, though not the first Jimmy Smith Blue Note single (on Volume two rather than Volume one), delivered big time. By then the first album had delivered a blues-plus-bebop blueprint for the jazz organ trio that Smith would subsequently develop, refine and occasionally revise, but that stayed remarkably consistent in content and quality over the next decade. (KS)
31
Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life (ECM)
Pat Metheny (g), Jaco Pastorius (b) and Bob Moses (d). Rec. 1975
The first blooming of Metheny’s great talent as a recording artist in his own right came with this stunning trio which he led while teaching at Berklee School of Music and a member of Gary Burton’s group of the day. At this stage of career (he was 21) Metheny indulged Pastorius somersaulting on to the stage and doing back flips off his speaker cabinet, and this mixture of Pastorius’ exuberance and Metheny’s intensity, moderated by the impeccable taste of Bob Moses lends a freshness to this album that makes it seem as if it were recorded yesterday. (SN)
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30
Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto: Getz/Gilberto (Verve)
Getz (ts), Joao Gilberto (v, g), Antonio Carlos Jobim (p), Tommy Williams (b), Milton Banana (perc) and Astrud Gilberto (v). Rec. 1963
Funnily enough, this spring 1963 session was close to Getz’s last serious stab at bossa nova – he’d already had massive success with Jazz Samba and Jazz Samba Encore – but it turned out to be the musical perfection perhaps no-one had actually been looking for but everyone instantly recognised on the album’s release. This is perhaps the coolest, most definitively etched marriage of melody and latin rhythm ever achieved, and it was achieved by the towering genius of Tom Jobim’s tunes and spare piano accompaniment, Gilberto’s uniquely intimate voice and guitar, a rhythm section that breathes life and colour, all of it topped by the supreme melodist, Stan Getz. All that plus Joao’s wife Astrud as a last minute show stealer and you have a classic on your hands. (KS)
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29
Herbie Hancock: Maiden Voyage (Blue Note)
Freddie Hubbard (t), George Coleman (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b) and Tony Williams (d). Rec. 1965
A classic jazz album produced at a time when such albums seemed to be coming out every other day. Essentially the Miles Davis Quintet of the day with Hubbard pinch hitting for Davis (and playing as well as he would at any point of career) it contained two Hancock originals that would assume quickly the status of jazz standards. The binary 34-bar ‘Dolphin Dance’ and the modal 32-bar ‘Maiden Voyage’, with its pre-arranged rhythmic structure that is maintained throughout, will probably be played as long as jazz itself. Add to that ‘Little One’, previously recorded by Davis on ESP, and you have the concept album to end all concept albums. (SN)
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28
Art Blakey: Moanin’ (Blue Note)
Blakey (d), Lee Morgan (t), Benny Golson (ts), Bobby Timmons (p) and Jymie Merritt (b). Rec. 1958
Blakey was in on the ground floor when it came to the evolution of hard bop into soul jazz, having co-led the first Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver back in 1956. By 1958 he’d gone through a number of versions of the band, with this becoming the blueprint version for the next half a decade. With Benny Golson and Bobby Timmons supplying hard bop anthems such as the title tune, ‘Along Came Betty’ and ‘Blues March’, and the front line soloists refining their long, elaborate post-bop lines into the shorter and more pithy soul-based hard bop lines of the late 1950s, this Blakey band, and this Blakey album, defined soul jazz. (KS)
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27
Cecil Taylor: At The Café Montmartre (Debut)
Taylor (p), Jimmy Lyons (as) and Sunny Murray (d). Rec. 1962
Taylor had been a thorn in the modern US jazz world’s side since the mid 1950s with his uncompromising approach to music-making, but up until this live date recorded in Copenhagen by the Danish Debut label he’d not made the decisive steps into free playing that would revolutionise the very basis of jazz rhythm. Here, Taylor, Lyons and Murray race pell-mell into music without metric boundaries, throwing open a Pandora’s box of possibilities that would be investigated intensely by every jazz avant-gardist worldwide for the next 20 years. Additionally, Taylor’s supercharged playing on this date was the first glimpse on record of his ability to sustain such white heat over Coltrane-like stretches of playing time. (KS)
26
Bud Powell: The Genius of Bud Powell (Clef/Verve)
Powell (p), Ray Brown (b) and Buddy Rich (d).
Rec. 1950-51Two Herculean trio tunes – ‘Tea For Two’ and ‘Hallelujah’, both taken at breakneck speeds – make up the 1950 contribution here. With the benefit of extra CD space we get treated to two extra takes of ‘Tea For Two’, giving us an object lesson in how Powell developed his material as well as maintaining his incredible improvisational creativity. But the real jewels on this album are the eight solo selections recorded in February 1951. The level of invention Powell achieves puts this recital on equal par with anything in the recorded annals of jazz piano and makes it basic required jazz listening. (KS)
25
Modern Jazz Quartet: Fontessa (Atlantic)
John Lewis (p), Milt Jackson (vb), Percy Heath (b) and Connie Kay (d). Rec. 1956
It’s difficult at this distance, with so much noise and fury intervening, to credit the radicalism of John Lewis’ brief for the Modern Jazz Quartet, but back in 1956 they were doing stunningly new things in jazz in just about every musical area – form, content, arrangement, interplay and theory. They also had a secret weapon in that all four musicians were steeped in the blues and could wail whenever they needed to, thus obviating any tendency to effete noodling when things got a little formal. Fontessa was their first for Atlantic with the fully integrated line-up including Connie Kay: it delivered a perfect blueprint for the many MJQ advances of the next decade. (KS)
24
Wes Montgomery: The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (Riverside)
Wes Montgomery (g), Tommy Flanagan (p), Percy Heath (b) and Albert Heath (d). Rec. 1960
Wes Montgomery simply played differently from all the others. He picked the strings with his thumb instead of a plectrum, creating a fresh, warm sound – sensitive on ballads but incisive on fast tempos. His solos would move through three stages, beginning with single-line improvisation, then shifting up a gear with passages in unison octaves, before building to a climax with lines stated in block chords. The effect was stunning and like Charlie Christian two decades earlier, his innovations were to open up new possibilities for the guitar and be the inspiration for a new generation of guitar players, including George Benson, Pat Martino and Larry Coryell, who once played Wes’ own solo on ‘D Natural Blues’ to a surprised Wes. Every track on this album is a classic and his songs ‘West Coast Blues’ and ‘Four on Six’ have become part of the jazz canon. (CA)
Review Wes Montgomery – The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery ★★★★★
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23
Frank Sinatra: Songs For Swingin’ Lovers (Capitol)
Frank Sinatra (v), Nelson Riddle (arr, cond) and big band. Rec. 1955-56
Sinatra the jazz singer? There are vast swathes of Sinatra recordings that could never be remotely described as jazz, but the man himself credits Tommy Dorsey and Billie Holiday as his musical mentors and, when he put his mind to it, he could phrase and swing with the best. Additionally – and crucially – he influenced just about every jazz singer and musician worthy of the name between the 1940s and today, including such people as Lester Young, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, all of whom had listened very closely indeed to Sinatra’s balladry. This classic mid-50s session puts Frankie’s jazz credentials perfectly in order and throws down the gauntlet for everyone else. (KS)
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22
Jelly Roll Morton: Volume 1 (JSP)
Morton (p, comp, arr), George Mitchell (c), Edward Kid Ory (tb), Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Darnell Howard, Johnny Dodds (cl), Stump Evans (as), Johnny St Cyr (bj), John Lindsay (b), Andrew Hilaire, Baby Dodds (d) and others. Rec. 1926-28
As with Sidney Bechet, it’s devilishly hard to find a single compilation of Morton that covers all the essentials. This one doesn’t quite, but does it better than most, and also does it under the auspices of remastering from original 78s by John R.T. Davies, whose expertise in this area is legendary. Morton’s miraculous flowering in this period has to be heard to be believed, with his arrangements of his own and others’ tunes so multi-faceted, so imaginative and full of incredible creative drive as to be a collective body of genius to place alongside that of Ellington and – much later – Mingus or Gil Evans. Except he did it first. (KS)
21
Ahmad Jamal: But Not For Me - At The Pershing (Argo)
Jamal (p), Israel Crosby (b), Vernell Fournier (d). Rec. 1958
Jamal’s ideas about integrated and disciplined trio interplay had already deeply influenced jazz’s inner circle of musicians while his piano-guitar-bass trio was around throughout the early 1950s. However, things went supernova-ish when this incredible unit made and released this jazz best-seller in 1958. Nobody remained untouched by his light-but-tight approach, his winningly imaginative arrangements and his incredible attention to dynamics. The highlight may have been ‘Poinciana’, but every track is an object lesson in how to draw the best from a tune. That it was no flash in the pan is shown by the music’s drawing power and continuing fascination today, as well as its ability to influence every new generation of pianists. (KS)
20
Weather Report: Heavy Weather (Columbia)
Joe Zawinul (ky), Wayne Shorter (ts, ss), Jaco Pastorius (b), Alex Acuña (d) and Manolo Badrena (perc). Rec. 1976
Sometimes, when listening to Weather Report at their best and this is one of their very best, it’s worth pinching yourself as a reminder that at their heart, this band comprised one of jazz’s most basic jazz configurations. It’s simply, saxophone, piano, bass, drums and percussion. Then, listen to ‘Birdland’, later covered by Manhattan Transfer and Maynard Ferguson, and wonder. Listen to the boost Pastorius gives the band, especially on his own compositions ‘Havona’ and ‘Teen Town.’ Reaching number 30 on the Billboard album chart, even today Heavy Weather remains as stunning in its overall effect as the day it was made. (SN)
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19
Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz (Atlantic)
Ornette Coleman (as), Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry (t), Eric Dolphy (b cl), Scott LaFaro, Charlie Haden (b), Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins (d). Rec. 1960
This one turned everyone around. Ornette set the musicians up in two parallel quartets, arranged some loose themes and collective playing to book end the entire performance as well as section off each solo, then let the musicians loose for a collective bout of improvisation that lasts well over half an hour reinventing the possibilities of jazz as it does so. The overall marvel of this record is that, while it proved to be so pregnant with ideas for those who followed in the next decades, the music grips the listener as excitingly as ever today. Some CD issues of this album contain the 17-minute rehearsal version of ‘Free Jazz’, called ‘First Take’, as a bonus. (KS)
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18
Dave Brubeck: Time Out (Columbia)
Brubeck (p), Paul Desmond (as), Eugene Wright (b) and Joe Morello (d). Rec. 1959
Brubeck rarely gets his due. A shame, because his good qualities are pretty special. For starters, he knew exactly the way to get the best from Paul Desmond, and for that we should all be down on our knees in thanks. Secondly, he’s a distinctive composer with a knack for melody, as this fine album demonstrates, even if the defining tune, ‘Take Five’, is a Desmond composition. It’s also important to stress Brubeck’s commitment to collective invention within his group: still an unusual thing in jazz in 1959. Put that all together and the unusual time signatures that mark this album out tend to pale in significance while the music remains convincing. (KS)
Review The Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out (50th Anniversary Legacy Edition) ★★★★★
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17
Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters (Columbia)
Herbie Hancock (ky), Bennie Maupin (saxes, fl, b cl), Paul Jackson (b), Harvey Mason (d) and Bill Summers (perc). Rec. 1973
It may have been jazz-rock after Bitches Brew, but after Head Hunters jazz-funk was the flavour de jour. Inspired by Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’ there’s even a tribute track on it called ‘Sly’. The release represented a u-turn of spectacular proportions from the more esoteric direction mapped out on Crossings and Sextant to an album aimed squarely at the dance floor which is where it scored. ‘Chameleon’, the single taken from the album (also a biggie for Maynard Ferguson), sped up the Billboard chart to number 13 and made this one of the biggest selling jazz albums of all time. (SN)
Review Herbie Hancock – Head Hunters
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16
Albert Ayler Trio: Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk)
Ayler (ts), Gary Peacock (b) and Sunny Murray (d). Rec. 1964
Ayler made a couple of revolutionary records in Europe two years prior to this but the first ESP-Disk was the one that made the breakthrough in terms of reaching out and changing absolutely everything. The sheer wildness of Ayler’s sound, execution and ideas (hysterical trilling way above the normal range of the saxophone combined with body-blow honks and sonic booms from its very depths) was unprecedented, as was the frenetic free-rhythm accompaniment from Peacock and Murray. It was only later that his musical forms were grasped and understood. On release, the record changed every conception of what constituted cutting-edge jazz overnight and unleashed generations of imitators. But Albert did it first, and did it best. (KS)
15
Mahavishnu Orchestra: Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia)
John McLaughlin (g), Jerry Goodman (vln), Jan Hammer (key), Rick Laird (b) and Billy Cobham (d). Rec. 1972
Formed in 1971, the original Mahavishnu Orchestra remains guitarist John McLaughlin’s greatest achievement. It lit up the night sky for almost two years, everything was played at 500mph with the Marshall stacks turned up to eleven. It left audiences in awe, then suddenly was gone. McLaughlin redefined the role of guitar in jazz, Cobham the drums and the band set new standards in ensemble cohesion. They did it without sounding glib, a trick their legion of followers never fathomed. They also sold albums in pop numbers and played arena rock stadiums. Even they didn’t realise how great they were until it was all over. (SN)
MusicBuy album from Presto Music
14
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA Bluebird)
Ellington (p), Wallace Jones, Cootie Williams, Ray Nance (t), Rex Stewart (ct), Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown (tb), Juan Tizol (v tb), Barney Bigard (cl), Johnny Hodges, Otto Hardwick (as), Ben Webster (ts), Harry Carney (bs, bcl) Fred Guy (g), Billy Strayhorn (p), Jimmy Blanton (b), Sonny Greer (d), Ivie Anderson, Herb Jeffries (v) and others. Rec. 1940-1942
This 3-CD pack was first issued in the mid-1980s spotlighting Ellington’s most fertile and ground-breaking music. During the three years covered by this set Ellington and his musical doppelgänger Billy Strayhorn turned jazz composition and arranging inside out, often using the simplest of ideas and materials, as only genius can, but also presenting immensely sophisticated ideas in a guise instantly grasped by their legions of fans. That they had the assistance of such stars as Hodges, Williams, Bigard, Webster and Blanton only added to the music’s lustre: it remains an imperishable treasure. The slimline 3-CD 2003 RCA reissue titled Never No Lament: The Blanton Webster Band benefits from the latest remastering and research and is the version to get. (KS)
13
Louis Armstrong: Complete Hot Fives and Sevens (Columbia)
Armstrong (ct, v), Honore Dutrey, Edward Kid Ory, J.C. Higginbotham, Jack Teagarden (tb), Johnny Dodds, Don Redman, Jimmie Noone (cl), Barney Bigard, Happy Caldwell (ts), Lonnie Johnson (g), Johnny St Cyr (bj), Lil Hardin, Earl Hines (p), Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton (d) and others. Rec. 1925-1930
If Jelly Roll Morton represents the high water of New Orleans polyphony through his Red Hot Peppers recordings of around this same time, Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens reach out into the music’s future by allowing the incredible improvisatory genius of Armstrong to reach its first outrageous flowering. This music is bursting at the seams with vitality, Armstrong’s every solo seeming to overflow with uncontrollable invention delivered with an urgency that is never manic, always confident, forever breathtaking in its conception. Within this admirably packaged 4-CD set from 2000 (easily the best collective incarnation of this music on disc) Armstrong’s accompanying groups expand to meet his conception as the years go by while Louis himself keeps making that big picture bigger. (KS)
Feature Ten of the best Louis Armstrong albums
12
Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch (Blue Note)
Dolphy (f, as, b cl), Freddie Hubbard (t), Bobby Hutcherson (vb), Richard Davis (b) and Tony Williams (d). Rec. 1964
Funnily enough, although Out To Lunch has the iconic cover and evolutionary reputation, the real breakthrough Dolphy disc, Conversations, was made the previous summer, 1963, for the tiny FM label. Among other wonders, it contained the revolutionary 14-minute Dolphy-Richard Davis duet on ‘Alone Together’. Be that as it may, Out To Lunch represents another side of the Dolphy genius, showing him as a musician-leader intent on involving his entire group in the improvisatory process at every level and at all times. Of course, he remains the group’s most gripping player (he wrote all the material too) and his imitation of a drunk on ‘Straight Up And Down’ remains unsurpassed except by himself. What would he have done next? (KS)
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11
John Coltrane: Giant Steps (Atlantic)
Coltrane (ts), Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b), Lex Humphries, Art Taylor and Jimmy Cobb (d). Rec. 1959|
It’s pretty difficult to overestimate the influence this single album – or even more narrowly, its title track – has had on the development of jazz since its release: certainly the saxophone-bearing members of the world’s jazz community have found it and endlessly renewing font of inspiration. More recently, pianists have delved into re-arrangements of Coltrane’s elegant and distinctive compositions. The great man himself knew that this album was a culmination rather than a new beginning, but that probably accounts for its consummate artistry as much as any other reason: Coltrane was the most thorough of players. Some CD versions have as many as eight bonus tracks. (KS)
Feature John Coltrane – Giant Steps
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10
Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert (ECM)
Keith Jarrett (p). Rec. 1975
Jarrett burst onto the international jazz scene as part of the ground-breaking Charles Lloyd Quartet of the latter 1960s, moved on to running his own trio, briefly joined in with the Miles Davis electronic voodoo soups of the early 1970s, then retreated to acoustic music and a re-examination of what he was attempting to achieve in his music. This led to something of a temporary eclipse in his profile in the first half of the 1970s, although his creativity continued to diversify and deepen. An adept at solo recitals (his Facing You for ECM in 1970 was a strong harbinger), he began a series of in-concert recitals for Manfred Eicher’s label that attracted acclaim and increasing public interest, but no-one was prepared for what happened to The Köln Concert when it appeared. A long series of intensely rhythmical improvisations that became hypnotic and endlessly repeatable on turntables throughout the world, the album became a runaway bestseller by word of mouth, rapidly escaping the confines of the jazz listeners’ community and spreading into the living rooms of people who never ever listened to, let alone owned, another jazz album. This remains the case with Jarrett and with the record, which is not only a jazz turning-point in its own right but one of the biggest-selling discs in the genre. (KS)
Buy album from Presto Music
9
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (Columbia)
Miles Davis (t), Wayne Shorter (ss), Bennie Maupin (b cl), Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea (el p), John McLaughlin (g), Dave Holland (b), Harvey Brooks (el b), Lenny White, Jack DeJohnette (d), Don Alias (perc) and Jumma Santos (shaker). Rec. 1969
From whatever perspective you choose to view the 1960s – from the Cuba Missile Crisis to the rise of the counter culture movement, the student riots in Paris in May 1968 to the growing anti-Vietnam protests across the USA, the advent of the pill to the rise of rock music – established values were being openly questioned, upturned and in general shaken up. So in a decade when the leitmotif was change, it’s arguable that Bitches Brew was the album that shook the music world up most. After all, combining jazz and rock? Yes, there had been albums before Bitches Brew that did just that, but Miles Davis’ position in the jazz world sanctioned the union between two seemingly opposed bedfellows. With Bitches Brew the jazz-rock message was handed down from the mount on tablets of stone. From the title track with Davis, Shorter and Maupin emerging from the matrix of the mix before being swallowed up by this swirling electrical brew, to ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’ with the trumpeter on the heels of Hendrix, the sound of jazz was changed forever. (SN)
Review Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) ★★★★★
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8
Charlie Parker: Bird: The Complete Original Master Takes. The Savoy Recordings (Savoy Jazz)
Parker (as, ts), Miles Davis (t), Dizzy Gillespie, Argonne Thornton, Clyde Hart, Bud Powell, John Lewis, Duke Jordan (p), Tiny Grimes (g, v), Curley Russell, Tommy Potter (b), Harold West and Max Roach (d) plus others. Rec. 1945-48
Parker, of course, made his most innovatory music on record prior to the invention of the LP, so every collection of his brilliant music from the 1940s is a latter-day compilation of the original 78rpm singles. Early vinyl attempts to collate his best material were haphazard at best, especially from the original Savoy company, so it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that things got in any way organised and proper chronological reissues were successfully brought to market. These days, you can buy the complete Parker Savoys and Dials in a lavish multiple CD set, but you get all the breakdown, alternative takes and other bits and pieces, making it a trial for all but the committed Parker enthusiast. For those who want to know and shiver to the thrills of encountering earth-moving genius for the first time, master takes only, then this 2-CD set from the 1980s is the best entry point: you get Parker’s own approved performance, you get just the Savoys and you get superior remastering across just two CDs rather than five or six. Undiluted precedent-breaking music from Parker, aided and abetted by the best and most sympathetic colleagues of the day. (KS)
Feature Charlie Parker – Bird Lives!
7
Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Mingus (b), Jimmy Knepper/Willie Dennis (tb), John Handy (as, ts), Shafi Hadi (as), Booker Ervin (ts), Horace Parlan (p) and Dannie Richmond (d). Rec. 1959
Just as with the Monk at number six, this classic album also represented a career breakthrough. Recorded not long after his Blues And Roots, but Atlantic deliberately held that back for over a year because the bassist had signed his first contract with Columbia, the major whose distribution, especially to the white audience, was much more powerful. Ah Um’s release came in the same year as his first evening appearance at the Newport Festival and the start of his record-breaking residency with Eric Dolphy.
The present album, however, was a studio venture with a specially constituted group familiar with Mingus’ working quintets. Ervin’s contributions, for instance, ‘Fables Of Faubus’‚ and the gospelised opener ‘Better Git It In Your Soul’, are a definition of “hot”, while Knepper on the deliberately old-fashioned ‘Jelly Roll’‚ makes it satirical and serious at the same time. Similar things apply to ‘Bird Calls’‚ and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, where Handy pays oblique homage to Parker and Lester Young respectively but don’t ignore the crucial reactions of the crisply recorded Richmond. Novice producer Teo Macero’s tight editing allowed for more tunes and more user-friendly presentation than on Blues And Roots. (BP)
Review: Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (50th Anniversary Edition) ★★★★★
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6
Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners (Riverside)
Monk (p, celeste), Ernie Henry (as), Sonny Rollins (ts), Oscar Pettiford/Paul Chambers (b), Max Roach (d) and Clark Terry (t). Rec. 1956
Recording of Brilliant Corners began 50 years ago next month, making an impact hard to imagine these days. The first new Monk album to receive more than a guarded welcome in the press, the praise was entirely justified. Unlike his first two Riverside releases, respectively of Ellington standards and a bunch of other jazz standards, this was nearly all Monk’s own tunes and three of the four were new, none more so than the extraordinary title-track which gave so much trouble to the all-star cast who’d never seen it before. Rollins and Roach, currently making a success of the newly Clifford Brown-less Roach quintet, had worked for Monk before but both were seriously challenged by his material here. The less well-known Ernie Henry was in the pianist’s regular quartet and a post-Parker deviant comparable to Jackie McLean, while Pettiford was a pioneer bopper beloved of Monk except when they disagreed. Using the bubbly Clark Terry and Paul Chambers on a subsequent session was a stroke of genius, as was the unaccompanied piano track. And the whole thing was released just as Monk began his historic group with Coltrane. (BP)
Feature Thelonious Monk: essential recordings
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5
Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (Prestige)
Rollins (ts), Tommy Flanagan (p), Doug Watkins (b) and Max Roach (d). Rec. 1956
Was Sonny Rollins ready in 1956? Was he ready! Apart from this masterpiece, he also lead from the front on Plus 4, an album featuring the Brown/Roach Quintet of the day in all but name, plus Tenor Madness (the title track featuring a head-on with Coltrane) and the exquisite Plays For Bird. But Saxophone Colossus towers above them all, not only because it concentrates on a quartet setting allowing undiluted access to the creative process of Sonny at his most inspired, but because it is one of those happy coincidences where all elements came off equally well, including the use of unusual repertoire and inspired originals. Rollins himself was clearly inspired enough by such material as ‘St Thomas’ and ‘The Moritat’ from Threepenny Opera to still be playing them in concert 50 years later. Nevertheless, it is tempting to call these original recordings definitive, if only because they do in fact define the essence of Rollins’ approach to improvisation, wringing every nuance and variation he can from the theme and its associated melodic and rhythmic patterns. The blues ‘Blue 7’ was famously dissected for such methodology by Gunther Schuller back at the time of Saxophone Colossus’ initial release but that failed to stop Rollins from another two years of super-human saxophone playing before his dramatic retirement in 1959. This is still the biggest-selling jazz album of all time in Japan. (KS)
Feature Sonny Rollins: Albums That Shook The World
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4
Bill Evans Trio: Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside)
Evans (p), Scott LaFaro (b) and Paul Motian (d). Rec. 1961
None of the three men that made this music one fine June day in 1961 had any inkling of the impact it would have down the years: on listening to the playbacks LaFaro did mention to Evans that he thought they’d got pretty close to optimum performance, but that was about it. Two weeks or so later LaFaro was dead and Evans left with the ashes of his first great group. This album became Evans’ own personal choice of what he thought best represented the trio through the spectrum of LaFaro’s prodigiously gifted bass playing. The pianist obviously had great discernment because thousands of people have concurred with him since, naming this not only their favourite Evans album but the one that changed their lives (and in some cases, their careers). Why? Not only were the three trio members individually at their peaks on that particular Village Vanguard Sunday, but they interacted with quietly fierce invention as never before, certainly not on record. Equal partners, they sustained a musical dialogue on selection after selection that has rarely been equalled within the earshot of a professional microphone, with the astonishingly inventive LaFaro perhaps meriting the sobriquet of senior partner at times, so dominant can he be. This is hardly to downgrade Evans’ own contributions, all of which retain their depth and freshness today. The various CD versions of this set come in all manner of configurations, many with as much as five bonus tracks. Original is best, however, and you will not be disappointed by a CD containing the bare LP track line-up. (KS)
Feature: Ten life-changing jazz piano trio recordings
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3
Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz To Come (Atlantic)
Coleman (as), Don Cherry (t), Charlie Haden (b), Billy Higgins (d). Rec. 1959
I don’t know what it was about Ornette that led record company executives to go for the overkill on the album names, but by the time Atlantic released this, the altoist’s debut on the label, he’d already had albums on Contemporary called Something Else!!!! and Tomorrow Is The Question. Anyway, few observers of the day were bothered by the hyperbole, more by the claim that Ornette had any musical worth whatsoever. Of course it was a complete red herring, because although Ornette did have a profound influence on subsequent jazz developments, it was an oblique one compared with that of Coltrane’s or Eric Dolphy’s or Miles Davis’. What this album did in fact contain and represent was a completely different and fresh set of musical signposts within the jazz vernacular, both in terms of the stunningly bright melodic patterns Ornette crystallised in his vibrant and beautiful compositions and in his off-the-wall improvisatory approach. He also brought back to jazz that rough, keening wail and constant pitch variations of the most basic blues and folk music. Later we all learned that he’d cut his musical teeth on tenor in Texas R&B bands and it all made sense: at the time it sounded as if Attila the Hun had been resurrected at the Five Spot and in Atlantic’s recording studios and was in no mood to do deals. Ornette never did, either, bless him. (KS)
Review: Ornette Coleman – Original Album Series ★★★★★
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2
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Impulse!)
Coltrane (ts, v), McCoy Tyner (p), Jimmy Garrison (b) and Elvin Jones (d). Rec. 1964
No matter how many times you approach this album it’s always greater than the sum of whatever parts you compile. Yes, it’s perfect, yes, it’s ambitious, yes it crosses over far from the usual jazz conceptions, yes it is couched as a suite of meditations-in-kind that give it a formal design way beyond 99 per cent of jazz albums. Yes, Coltrane plays like a man inspired by something more than the job immediately to hand, as do the other three musicians involved, and yes the themes are unremittingly sober. But that only scratches the surface of this album’s achievement. You can’t lay it at the door of Coltrane’s aspirations, because good intentions often lead to artistic disasters in music as well as every other aesthetic discipline, but it is possible that his own complete commitment to his testimony of spiritual re-birth happily coincided with a day in the studio where he was truly touched to open his soul through the medium of his saxophone, for his playing on this record is almost terrifyingly open, intense and soul-shattering, even when he is simply stating a theme.
This is a very powerful part of the album’s pull, as is the tautness of each selection’s form, and it must also account for the hold it has sustained magically over listeners who otherwise venture rarely into any form of jazz, including the progressive rock fans of the late 60s and onwards. Within jazz itself, the album ensured that the music could no longer be considered a social or cultural also-ran, the spiritual and humanistic concerns that made up its inspiration demanding that it be treated in the same way as the master creations of the art-music of any culture. Nothing could be the same again. It still isn’t.(KS)
Review: John Coltrane – A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters ★★★★
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1
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Columbia)
Miles Davis (t), John Coltrane (ts), Cannonball Adderley (as), Wynton Kelly (p), Bill Evans (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Jimmy Cobb (d). Rec. 1959
Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, explains why Kind of Blue tops the list:
How does one properly gauge impact? There’s no smouldering crater in the case of Kind of Blue, Miles’ melancholy, modal-jazz masterwork. The 1959 disc didn’t arrive with a thunderous clap, yet four decades later, at the end of the millennium, there it was at the top of any and all “best of” lists, nudging aside so many rock, pop and hip-hop recordings.
Today, there it is on Hollywood soundtracks, an incontestable signifier of hip. There it is near the sales till, still moving up to 5,000 copies a week worldwide, outselling most contemporary jazz recordings. And there it sits in at least five million CD collections. Often it’s the one jazz title owned by a metal head or a classical enthusiast, not just the jazz-focused.
But perhaps Kind of Blue is better measured by the sum of the constituent parts. Five tunes, exceedingly simple in construction, exceptionally deep in evocative power, played by seven post-bop masters, all in their prime. A once-in-a-lifetime line up that makes the term “all-star” seem inadequate: trumpeter Davis, plus sax men John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb.
Certainly, Kind of Blue must be measured by musical influence. Ask any number of influential music-makers who have been around, such as Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, and the like, they all agree. At a time when the music had “gotten thick” as Miles said, Kind of Blue distilled modern jazz into a cool and detached essence.
The motivation behind going “modal” in the 1950s jazz world was to break from established harmonic patterns (melodic, too) and make way for fresh, extended improvisation. Miles was remarkably successful in marrying musical opposites: 20th century classical concepts such as harmonic simplicity, exotic scales and African rhythms all in a relaxed, swinging groove.
Kind of Blue became the improviser’s bible upon its release in late 1959. For one of its joint creators – John Coltrane – it pointed the way forward: he led much of the jazz world into the 1960s after his modal lessons with Miles. At Coltrane’s side pianist McCoy Tyner adapted Bill Evans’ innovation of quartal harmony, the use of fourths on ‘So What’, to legendary results.
At the close of the 60s, the modal idea became the foundation of fusion jazz. It proved the same for a number of rock groups, such as the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead and Santana, that used the electric guitar as the solo instrument of choice, and set the standard for generations of jam-oriented bands to follow.
“I think the implications of Kind of Blue we now feel everywhere, but it wasn’t as deep as they became over time,” says saxophonist Dave Liebman. “Name me some music where you don’t hear echoes of it,” Herbie Hancock challenges.
“I hear it everywhere – it becomes hard to separate the modality that exists in rock ’n’ roll, some of it could be directly from Kind of Blue.”
Write a book with as narrow a focus as one jazz album (let’s say Kind of Blue) and, trust me, one ends up thinking and rethinking the subject years after publication. My theories on why that particular Miles album maintains its hold on the top of various charts never seem to settle comfortably on one explanation. I feel the ranking of a musical masterpiece is one that should be open to constant rethink, even if the status remains the same in the end. Yet, especially in the mainstream press, the music chosen for those “best this” and “most that” lists simply falls in line with a long-established view with no question and little explanation.
For this reason and for others, I’m not a fan of top 10 lists. Or of 20, 100, or any number that would place one recording before another. Musical value and appreciation is far too subjective a thing to be ordered neatly on a linear scale. One-dimensional exercises such as list-making seem especially un-hip and unrevealing when it comes to jazz, the most porous and democratic of musics, open to all influences, granting all styles equal value and importance. At least in my view.
Of the many ideas I gathered for my book on Kind of Blue, there is one quote in particular that comes to mind whenever the subject of relative value arises.
“If you like Kind of Blue, turn it over, look who plays on it,” says keyboardist Ben Sidran. “If you particularly like the piano, go buy a Bill Evans record, buy a Wynton Kelly record. If you like the alto playing, buy a Cannonball Adderley record. That one record – it’s not even six degrees of separation – is maybe two degrees of separation from every great jazz record.”
My own introduction to Kind of Blue took place in 1976, a time when my teenage ears were filled with post-Woodstock rock, and the first bursts of punk. Springsteen was a recent discovery as was Bob Marley. One day a mate whose musical taste I trusted implicitly yanked a worn copy of Miles’ LP out of my father’s collection – which I avoided as a matter of principle and teenage independence. Holding it out to me, he declared it a classic. I looked at it anew and came to enjoy its mood-setting atmosphere. I also came to realise how narrowly I had been casting for new sounds. I had been standing on the shore of a vast ocean of musical possibilities, yet fishing in one small inlet.
I didn’t fully realise it then, but Kind of Blue helped me see the vastness before me and rejoice in its expanse. I’ve been sailing the waters, listening and learning, ever since.
If those 5,000 per week sales figures are any indication, I’m not alone. As a measure of impact – I can think of nothing more significant than the music that first unmoors one from preconceptions and the need to stay in one place. For this alone, for serving for so many as a portal to an entire world of creative music, I agree that Kind of Blue continues to earn its status as a number one.
Feature: Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
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Count Basie Research Paper - 1501 Words
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On August 21st, 1904, one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians was born. This great musician was known as William Count Basie. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, where he became a pianist and a player of vaudeville based entertainment. Basie ultimately formed his own big band that had many hits, for example: “Blue Skies” and “One O’Clock Jump.” Basie’s band and music helped to define the ‘swing’ era. He became the first African American male to receive a Grammy Award. Throughout his years he’d worked with a variety of different artists and had won countless other Grammys. Unfortunately, his life came to an end in Florida on April 26th, 1984. To begin with, Count Basie was born to Harvey Lee, a mellophonist and Lillian Basie, a pianist …show more content…
It was titled "Blue Balls." The radio broadcaster inquired as to whether the band would play the tune yet said he couldn't utilize that title reporting in real time. He recommended, since it was nearing one a.m., "One O'clock Jump." “The title stuck, and not only did the now-forgotten announcer dream up the tune’s title, he was the first to call Basie “Count.””(Jazz Standards Songs and Instrumentals (One O'clock Jump), n.d.) This record was his statement piece, his announcement that Basie Band has arrived. “One O’clock Jump” was the band’s theme song. They utilized this song in every one of their concerts ending with it.
0:04: Basie begins on the piano, with the same beat being played with his left hand. These patterns are reminiscent of boogie-woogie piano. The other member slowly come in trying to get a feel of where the fall into the song.
0:11: With his right hand, Basie comes in with the blues chorus, as the leader of the melody. His rhythm section has now found their place and following Basie on the piano. Freddie Green on the acoustic guitar is following Basie’s left hand at this
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Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies...MY BROTHER
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2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/12 OBITUARIES Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies By BEN CRANDELL SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL | FEB 09, 2021 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - Sou
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2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel 1/12 OBITUARIES Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen, 98, dies By BEN CRANDELL SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL | FEB 09, 2021 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 2/12 Pauly Cohen arrives to lead his big band in a rehearsal at the Northwest Focal Point Senior Center in Margate in 2013. Cohen died on Monday, Feb. 8, at 98. (Amy Beth Bennett, Sun Sentinel) Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Pauly Cohen — a diminutive “force of nature” who shared the stage and offstage friendships with the likes of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Jackie Gleason, Quincy Jones, Ava Gardner and Judy Garland — died at his home in Tamarac Monday night. Cohen was 98. Paul Cohen and I, Fredric J. Cohen, MD were born in the same house, he on October 3, 2022 and I December 10, 1942 . We shared the same father, WWI distinguished dough boy Master Sergeant Louis Cohen who lost several fingers from artillery barrages and was awarded the Purple Heart. He was hiding under a truck during this barrage and the oil pan was leaking into his eyes. He used his combat knife to stop the leak.The next day he was cited by the Scranton, PA Company D Captain for a Bronze Star for "repairing a truck under shell fire, above and beyond the call of duty" what a stretch. At age 8 Paul picked up the trumpet, I at age 4...our first teacher was our dad who was the company bugler as well as a Sharpshooter sniper. Paul Graduated Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway Brooklyn in 1940. 3/12 Advertisement I graduated from the University of Louisville School of I had no idea that in 1970, after Medicine , on a trumpet and academic scholarship ,that as an intern rotating through Coney Island Hospital on Ocean Parkway, I was the third baseman in a softball game House staff vs. the Attending Staff. Well I had my greatest day in sports hitting two home runs over the hand ball courts, about 290 feet and made some lucky plays in the field. I drove in 9 runs and dedicated my MVP trophy to my Brother Paul. I never met Paul's mother because it was impossible! She died in 1941 and since the house was in two names, Dad had to have the deed changed. His lawyer was in the Empire State Building and the four lawyers shared one Legal Secretary, today called a paralegal. He dated this woman, Clara Ida Venetek and on the occasion of Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, he proposed to this 26 year old became his fiancee. He was 52 years old, like a deck of cards, 26 and 52. They were married February 1, 1942 at the Twin Cantor's Synagogue on Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, now a Crown Heights Church. Therefore we were brothers with the same father and a different mother, Paul was upset about this marraige due to the short mourning period and the young age of my mother. I bear no guilt because we can not choose our parents but dad tried to mend this estrangement between Paul and took me and my younger sister Francine Bauer (nee Cohen) as we attended dozens of Broadway Musicals where Paul was playing in the pit. He always took all four of us to Dinner at Sardi's We took a long time to bury the hatchet and eventually I got his hand me down trumpets and my dad got his old suits. Our dad was extremely proud of Paul's Musical pedigree as he matriculated at the Julliard School for the performing arts, then in Harlem and not at the present Lincoln Center locale. Paul joined the Count Basie band as the lead trumpet and arranged music for Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for many years. I believe the Harlem milieu gave Paul the skills to fraternize with his African American colleagues. Time to toot my own horn. In Brooklyn Technical High School I played first trumpet in the dance band, orchestra and sports marching bands. I did not have Paul's chops, nobody did his range was an octave above high C but I was still a "squeaker". Pauly Cohen with his swing band performing at the Margate Center in 1990. My wife Anna and his wife Paula Cohen and our children Lori, Carson and Mikey attended. I was practicing plastic surgery in Palm Beach at the time. When we asked Paula how they met she said, "My father was his agent, so instead of paying 10% he paid 50%" Paul tapped the lectern with his conductor baton and strolled over to a saxophonist, he said""I just wanted to make sure that we are playing the same music". A while later He returned ans asked in a sarcastic tone, "Is there any reqason you felt like getting up today and getting dressed and coming here For my music scholarship in medical school, I was required to perform in the Louisville Philharmonic, and I wore brown pants as I was third trumpet and still sucked. The Pep band traveled with the top ranked mens basketball team and one occasion we had a game vs. Syracuse at the Madison Square Garden in 1968. Dad was front row center and heard every note I played, he has that ear. Dating, cars and other personal items were earned by moonlighting. Above is my 'Chicago" style band doing a gig at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville on Broadway..still there. 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 8/12 “He felt a great responsibility in making sure he fit into the band, to carry on the spirit of that music,” Dr. Michael Petrie, a Chiropractor and friend recanted to me“There was such a history with the Basie band. You have to be aware of the history of that music.” I told Mike that when I was five years old I was placed in the Pride of Judea Children's Home that summered in Long Beach NY. There was a Cap Callaway benefit that I jumped up to the stage and told Cap that I was Pauly Cohen's Brother. He recognized the resemblance and I sat on the piano chair with him and had a snack with the band afterwards. In the midst of a USTA tennis tournament at Roosevelt Island in 1986, paul called me to get a urologist referral, itol him that, " he was not at my brith but I sure will be there for your prostatectomy". I can still hear him cracking up on the phone Cohen was not a jazz trumpet soloist on the order of Gillespie, Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, but his skills in setting the tone for the musicality of a band as a lead trumpet player was widely respected. “As the lead trumpet player, he was playing the really hard, high parts all night, every night. [In that role] he was very exposed. You couldn’t hide his mistakes,” said Mike Ragan, himself a friend and trumpet player. “Within the pantheon of trumpet players who know that, pretty much everyone knows Pauly.” Cohen’s storytelling prowess was a result of having so many stories to tell from a life embedded in a unique corner of mid-20th century pop culture. Memories came easily, rich in detail and a generous spirit. This photographic memory and 170+ IQ put all the males in our family in the one in seven million range...really nuts too. We were known as raconteurs, story tellers and perhaps BS artists as well. Despite my office hours Thursday February 18th and the snow, I will be at his internment at Sharon Gardens Cemetery 273 Lakeview Avenue Valhalla NY 10595. I will wear a kippa, say some words to celebrate his life and tearfully play taps on HIS TRUMPET He witnessed Billie Holiday walk onstage at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street in the ’60s with schoolboy awe: “She wouldn’t move a muscle until the audience kept quiet. No clinking of glasses. You could hear a pin drop. She waited for the pin to drop. Then she started with ‘Strange Fruit,’ and the place went [gasp] … She could command you.” When Artie Shaw was his boss, Shaw’s girlfriend, Ava Gardner “was so beautiful…She was a woman who could make a man feel more like a man. That’s a talent. And she had it like nobody had it.” Cohen had an eight-week run with Sinatra in the mid-’60s at the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach, and recalled late-night basement chats: “I respected him tremendously. Always giving the credit to the musicians and arrangers. That was my kind of man.” 2/16/2021 Pauly Cohen obituary: Jazz trumpeter, bandleader dies at 98 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/obituaries/fl-et-pauly-cohen-obituary-jazz-musician-covid-death-20210209-3pf7jyzqu5gg3fmihnzo53kgpy-story.html 9/12 He recalled leaping from the orchestra for an impromptu jitterbug with Judy Garland at the old Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood in 1966: “Every tune she did had a special meaning to her, that she wanted to give to the people. They did a lot of bad things to her out in Hollywood [Calif.] … I felt sorry for her. She was a great person.” When he turned 90, Cohen’s music and stories were captured by filmmaker Bret Primack in a documentary, “Taking Charge,” that would be shown the next year at the 2013 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The screening was part of a birthday celebration for Cohen that included a video message for “my brother Pauly” from Quincy Jones. “As Sinatra used to tell us every night, live every day like it’s your last and one day you’ll be right,” Jones said, with a small smile. “Happy birthday my brother. I’m gonna be right behind you. I love you.” The FLIFF screening included a performance by the Pauly Cohen Big Band before a packed house of 300 people at the Sunrise Civic Center Theater. Cohen introduced the concert with uncommon brevity: “I’m Pauly Cohen. I’m lucky to be here. Let’s play some music!” Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at [email protected].
|
|||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
2
| 24 |
https://thebasie.org/events/donna-the-buffalo/
|
en
|
Donna the Buffalo - Count Basie Center for the Arts
|
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2024-06-17T14:00:25+00:00
|
Donna the Buffalo performs live at The Vogel at the Count Basie Center in Red Bank on December 12. Tickets start at...
|
en
|
Count Basie Center for the Arts
|
https://thebasie.org/events/donna-the-buffalo/
|
Buy Tickets
Tickets: $20 - $69 + fees | Limit 8 tickets per mailing address
DOORS 7PM • SHOWTIME 8PM
The Vogel • Basie Center Campus • 99 Monmouth Street, Red Bank
Donna The Buffalo is not just a band, rather one might say that Donna The Buffalo has become a lifestyle for its members and audiences. Since 1989, the roots rockers have played thousands of shows and countless festivals including Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Festival, Telluride, Austin City Limits Festival, Merle Fest, and Philadelphia Folk Festival.
They’ve opened for The Dead and have toured with Peter Rowan, Del McCoury, Los Lobos, Little Feat, Jim Lauderdale, Rusted Root, and Railroad Earth to name a few. They also toured with Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen to help raise awareness about increased corporate spending in politics.
In 1991, the band started the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, NY. The four day festival has become an annual destination for over 15,000 music lovers every year and was started as an AIDS benefit. It continues as a benefit for arts and education. To date, the event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and is now one of three Grassroots Festivals; the Bi-annual Shakori Hills fest in North Carolina and Virginia Key festival in Florida. In 2016 GrassRoots Culture Camp was introduced in Trumansburg, New York as four days of music, art, dance and movement workshops, including nightly dinners and dances.
|
|||||
correct_death_00034
|
FactBench
|
1
| 26 |
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/entertainment/2016/09/22/make-count-talking-basie-barnhart/90839078/
|
en
|
Make it Count: Talking Basie with Barnhart
|
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"Mark Hinson, Tallahassee Democrat",
"Mark Hinson"
] |
2016-09-22T00:00:00
|
Recently appointed director Scotty Barnhart brings the Count Basie sound to the first Florida Jazz & Blues Festival
|
en
|
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/entertainment/2016/09/22/make-count-talking-basie-barnhart/90839078/
|
Florida State jazz professor and trumpet player Scotty Barnhart is one of the world’s leading experts when it comes to legendary pianist-songwriter-bandleader Count Basie (1904-1984).
There’s a good reason for it, too, because it’s his job.
Barnhart spent 20 years as a soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra before being tapped as the big band’s director three years ago. He’s played two concerts in Tallahassee as a member of the orchestra. On Saturday night, he will make his debut as director of the Basie Orchestra in front of the hometown crowd during the inaugural Florida Jazz & Blues Festival in Cascades Park.
“Coming here to do it is something hard to describe,” Barnhart, 51, said earlier this week. “It’s like it’s my first gig or something.”
To add a little extra pressure, Barnhart also is serving as the artistic director for the Florida Jazz & Blues Festival. He reached out to friends and colleagues such as pianist Marcus Roberts, singer-pianist Freddy Cole, blues guitarist Johnnie Marshall, vocalist Avis Berry, drummer Leon Anderson and Grammy Award-winner Brian Lynch to join the musical maiden voyage.
“People are going to have a lot of world-class talent in their backyard,” Barnhart said. “I’ve never seen a new festival with this level of talent. Especially for the first time.”
When the 17-piece Count Basie Orchestra takes the amphitheater stage as the evening’s closer on the second night of the three-day festival’s run, it will showcase a mixture of the old and the new.
“I try to make sure we have every decade, every period of the band covered from 1935 to today,” Barnhart said.
Expect the setlist to include such standards as “April in Paris,” a salute to Basie’s pal Frank Sinatra and, of course, “One O’Clock Jump,” the Basie Orchestra’s signature tune. Every member of the band will get a shot at taking a solo, including the new drummer Ray Nelson Jr., 23, who graduated from FAMU last year.
“Both his (Nelson’s) parents are musicians, his whole family is musicians, so he was born with music in his ears,” Barnhart said. “He’s part of the future of this orchestra.”
Basie was born in New Jersey and got his start playing the vaudeville circuit in New York when he was very young. The legendary Fats Waller gave him a few keyboard lessons. In the mid-’20s, Basie ended up in Kansas City, Mo., which was a hotbed for jazz during the Roaring Twenties. In the mid-’30s, Basie formed the Barons of Rhythm band, which eventually morphed into the Count Basie Orchestra after a return to New York City.
Starting in 1937, Basie’s big band scored smash hits with “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” If The Duke Ellington Orchestra was the sophisticated sound of the Big Band Era, the County Basie Orchestra was its swinging dance band.
“Those two orchestras set the standards for all the orchestras that followed,” Barnhart said.
Even though Big Band Era faded after the end of World War II, the Count Basie Orchestra defied the odds and returned to popularity starting in the ‘50s thanks to recordings with singers such as Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett and Sinatra. In 1958, Basie became the first black male artist to win a Grammy Award.
Racial barriers were harder to break down when Basie and his band toured the South during the Jim Crow days.
In December 1963, The Count Basie Orchestra played a concert at Florida State University. After the show, Basie and FSU sociologist James Geschwender went to The Mecca restaurant on campus, near the corner of Copeland Street and Park Avenue. They were refused service.
The next day, Basie joined protestors on the sidewalk who were picketing outside The Mecca. The world-famous bandleader held a sign that read: “All We Asked Was Equality and Justice.” The photo of Basie’s defiance was published in newspapers across the nation.
Despite the bad publicity, The Mecca remained segregated until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed.
“Man, can you imagine what all they had to put up with in those days?” Barnhart said. “We have it easy today. They paved the way. They did all the hard work.”
Not all racism was as blatant as The Mecca incident. Basie, who liked to wear a yachting captain’s cap in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, was often racially profiled in a more benign manner while out on the road. Barnhart retold a story he heard from saxophonist John Williams about Basie being mistaken as a bell hop while he was waiting for his tour bus outside an upscale hotel in Detroit.
“This cab pulls up and these two little old white ladies get out,” Barnhart said. “They looked like they had a little bit of money, had their furs on. So Basie just happened to be standing right there where they were, so they put their suitcases at his feet and said, ‘Sonny, will you follow us.’ Basie didn’t flinch. He picked up them up and said, ‘Yes, ma’m.’ He followed them to the elevator and waited there with them. The guys in the band couldn’t believe he was doing this. The elevator doors open and he got on with them. He gets to their room, drops the luggage down and they gave him a quarter. They had no idea who he was. That’s a true story, man.”
Drummer Harold Jones, in his memoir titled “The Singer’s Drummer,” corroborated Barnhart’s bell hop tale: “He (Basie) was often mistaken for being a porter. Women would approach him to ask for help with their baggage. Sometimes he would actually do it and take the tip. But usually he would refer the traveler to a real porter or to another band member, as a joke. When Paul Probes was the roadie, Basie would always refer these requests to him. Basie got a kick out of this since Probes was white.”
Basie’s sense of humor and playful nature helped attract musicians who were loyal to their boss.
“The thing about Basie is that we are the only band that’s still on the road 32 years now after the leader’s death with members in it that he hired,” Barnhart said. “Basie was always the guy with the slowest turnover rate. ... When you got someone like that as your leader, you want to play for someone like that, you’re not afraid to play for someone like that. You want to have a good time and that’s what he was all about. He wanted the guys in the band to be happy. And I try to understand that, too.”
Watch Count Basie Orchestra rehearse
The Count Basie Orchestra is holding an open rehearsal at 11 a.m. sharp Saturday in the FAMU Band Rehearsal Hall, 1660 Pinder Ave. It’s free and open to the public. Parking will be available on campus. Orchestra director Scotty Barnhart will also give a brief talk about the band and its legacy.
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