Count Basie
Piano · born 21 August 1904 – died 26 April 1984
▸ Click for Richard Cook Bio
William Basie was almost the same age as Fats Waller, and when a teenager he took advice from his fellow pianist. As a result, his early intrigues established him as a performer in the stride style, which he took with him into New York and New Jersey clubs at the beginning of the 20s. Then he toured on the vaudeville circuit, accompanying singers, before settling in Kansas City in 1927, having acquired his aristocratic nickname (his business cards offered the legend, 'Beware the Count is here'). He joined the highly rated Walter Page's Blue Devils the following year, and eventually switched to the Bennie Moten band (along with several other Devils, including Page himself), staying through the early 30s.
Moten's band had by this time grown into one of the strongest outfits in its territory, and the records make space for Basie's stride playing; when Moten died during surgery in 1935, Basie reorganized a new nine-piece band, The Barons Of Rhythm, which took up a residency in KC and began broadcasting, a move that led to a signing to Decca. Lester Young and Jo Jones were already with him; when Basie expanded to a 13-piece, Buck Clayton and Jimmy Rushing joined too. At the end of 1936, the band went to New York on tour, and while it was an institution which was destined to be almost permanently on the road, they never returned home to Kansas and remained based in New York. By the middle of 1938, Basie had recruited Harry Edison, Freddie Green, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells and Helen Humes, and the band had entered the top divison of swing-era orchestras. Green's arrival had particularized Basie's rhythm section like no other. With Green, Walter Page and Jones behind him, Basie established a new standard: the old two-beat music of the 20s had already gone, but this group smoothed and settled four-beats-to-the-bar, abetted by Page's walking-bass buoyancy, Green's imperturbable chording (he scarcely took a single-string solo in 50 years with the band), Jones's lithe rhythms with the bass drum diminished and the hi-hat cymbal taking over much of the beat, and Basie's own Morse-code approach, small bluesy phrases dropped on to the beat, accenting and commenting and prodding. The band's material was grown out of their native fondness for riffs and head arrangements, which often developed out of rehearsal ideas: One O'Clock Jump, a vintage example, was reputedly titled thus when an announcer asked for its name and Basie looked at the clock and christened it then and there. This gave his peerless team of soloists – Clayton, Edison, Wells, Young, Herschel Evans, Morton – the simple ground they needed to give of their best. The band's blues performances were amplified by the presence of Rushing, perhaps the greatest big-band singer of that time.
For their freshness and swinging exuberance, the Basie records of 1937–9 are definitive. But eventually the band's book had to change, and commissioned arrangements (from Eddie Durham, Buster Harding and others) began to arrive. Basie lost some key soloists (Evans, Young), but new men came in too, including Buddy Tate, Don Byas and Tab Smith. By the middle 40s the band's style had begun to ossify a little, and by 1950 the touring situation had declined to the point where Basie was forced to disband, although his fondness for playing the horses didn't always help finances. He led a small group for a couple of years, but in 1952 Basie's big band came back, and thereafter stayed busy until its leader's demise. In the 50s he began touring Europe and Japan for the first time, and new contracts with Verve and Roulette gave rise to hit records such as April In Paris (1955) and The Atomic Basie (1958). By now, the band had matured into a sleek, luxurious, failsafe machine – lacking in feel and passion to its critics but delighting admirers with the purring power of its delivery, and still boasting top-drawer soloists such as Thad Jones, Frank Foster, Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis and Frank Wess. The band's book grew larger with smart commissioned pieces by the likes of Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Benny Carter and Ernie Wilkins. It rode out the 60s, a terrible period for this kind of jazz, with an almost careless aplomb: Basie recorded Green Onions and a couple of Beatles collections, but if it paid a few bills, he didn't seem to mind.
In the 70s, Norman Granz revitalized Basie's recording career by signing him to his new Pablo label, and a vast sequence of fresh recordings appeared, by both the big band and Basie in small-group contexts, or trading licks with Oscar Peterson. The touring never stopped: even when the leader had to come on stage in a motorized wheelchair, he quipped to the audience, 'How do you like my new limo?' After his death, Thad Jones, Frank Foster and Grover Mitchell in turn kept the Basie band alive, still touring under its old name and still working through what had evolved into a timeless book. Basie's orchestra had by this time became the blueprint for thousands of aspiring mainstream big bands, although matching the original in its deceptively effortless class and clout is something which has eluded most of them.
Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).
If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.
As leader
Count Basie – April in Paris
Count Basie – Basie in London
Count Basie & Duke Ellington – First Time! The Count Meets the Duke
Count Basie – And the Kansas City 7
Plays on
Oscar Peterson – Plays Count Basie
Jo Jones – Jo Jones Special
Mentioned in text
Dizzy Gillespie – Dizzier and Dizzier
Shorty Rogers – The Swinging Mr. Rogers
Oscar Pettiford – Basically Duke
Buck Clayton – Jumpin’ at the Woodside
Clark Terry – Clark Terry
Clifford Brown / Max Roach – Brown and Roach Incorporated
Buddy DeFranco / Oscar Peterson – Play George Gershwin
Stan Getz – At The Shrine
Modern Jazz Quartet – Concorde
Wardell Gray – Memorial, Volume One
Modern Jazz Quartet – Fontessa
Shorty Rogers – Martians Come Back!
Phineas Newborn Jr. – Here is Phineas
Jimmy Giuffre – The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet
Jay Jay Johnson – The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson, Volume One
Jay Jay Johnson – The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson, Volume Two
Thad Jones – Detroit-New York Junction
Jimmy Smith – A New Sound, A New Star, Volume Two
Jutta Hipp – At The Hickory House, Volume One
Zoot Sims – The Modern Art of Jazz
Paul Quinichette – The Kid from Denver
Lester Young and Harry Edison – Pres and Sweets
Lester Young – The President Plays With the Oscar Peterson Trio
Various Artists – The Jazz Giants ’56
Modern Jazz Sextet – The Modern Jazz Sextet
Chet Baker Quartet – Jazz at Ann Arbor
Chico Hamilton Quintet – In Hi-Fi
Wardell Gray – Memorial, Volume Two
Elmo Hope – Hope Meets Foster
Kai and Jay / Bennie Green – With Strings
Tadd Dameron – Fontainebleau
Bennie Green – Blows His Horn
Thelonious Monk – Monk
Hank Mobley – Mobley’s Message
Sonny Stitt – Sonny Stitt Plays
Joe Wilder – Wilder ‘n Wilder
Frank Wess – North, South, East … Wess
Lucky Thompson & Oscar Pettiford – Vol. 2
Jutta Hipp – At The Hickory House, Volume Two
Thad Jones – The Magnificent Thad Jones
Sonny Rollins – Sonny Rollins, Volume One
Jimmy Smith – A Date With Jimmy Smith, Volume Two
Art Blakey – Orgy in Rhythm, Volume One
Art Blakey – Orgy In Rhythm, Volume Two
Lee Morgan – Lee Morgan, Volume Three
Sonny Rollins – Sonny Rollins, Volume Two
Various Artists – Session at Riverside
Harry Edison and his Orchestra – Sweets
Al Cohn – The Al Cohn Quintet
Zoot Sims – Goes to Jazzville
The Quintet – Jazz at Massey Hall
Gerry Mulligan – Mainstream of Jazz
Marty Paich – Marty Paich Trio
Buddy Rich – This One’s for Basie
Bud Shank – Jazz at Cal-Tech
Gerry Mulligan Quartet – At Storyville
Bob Brookmeyer Quintet – Traditionalism Revisited
Hank Mobley / Al Cohn / John Coltrane / Zoot Sims – Tenor Conclave
Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus
Prestige All-Stars – All Day Long
Gene Ammons – Funky
Thad Jones / Frank Wess / Teddy Charles / Mal Waldron / Doug Watkins / Elvin Jones – Olio
Miles Davis Quintet – Cookin’
Paul Quinichette – On the Sunny Side
Webster Young – For Lady
Gene Ammons – Jammin’ In Hi Fi
Idrees Sulieman / Webster Young / John Coltrane / Bobby Jaspar – Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors
Prestige All-Stars – After Hours
Matthew Gee – Jazz by Gee
Trigger Alpert – Trigger Happy!
Coleman Hawkins – The Hawk Flies High
Thelonious Monk – Thelonious Himself
Clark Terry – Serenade to a Bus Seat
Thelonious Monk – Monk’s Music
Thelonious Monk – Mulligan Meets Monk
Cecil Payne – Cecil Payne
Buck Clayton – Buckin’ the Blues
Dizzy Gillespie – Dizzy In Greece
Art Tatum – Presenting The Art Tatum Trio
Tal Farlow – The Swinging Guitar of Tal Farlow
Shorty Rogers – Way Up There
Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – With Thelonious Monk
Hank Mobley – Hank Mobley
Bud Powell – Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume Four
Miles Davis – Milestones
Red Mitchell – Presenting Red Mitchell
Leroy Vinnegar Sextet – Leroy Walks!
Hampton Hawes Quartet – All Night Session! Vols. 1-3
Bill Holman – The Fabulous Bill Holman
George Wallington Quintet – The Prestidigitator
Jimmy Cleveland – Cleveland Style
Gil Evans – Gil Evans & Ten
Paul Quinichette – For Basie
Frank Wess – Wheelin’ & Dealin’
Gene Ammons – The Big Sound
Tiny Grimes with Coleman Hawkins – Blues Groove
Dorothy Ashby – Hip Harp
Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis – Cookbook
Shirley Scott – Great Scott!
Tiny Grimes & J.C. Higginbotham – Callin’ The Blues
Prestige Blues-Swingers – Outskirts of Town
Various Artists – Blues for Tomorrow
Pepper Adams – 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot
Clark Terry with Thelonious Monk – In Orbit
Lee Konitz – Very Cool
Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Edison – Tour De Force
Jimmy Smith – House Party
Jimmy Smith – The Sermon
Lou Donaldson with The Three Sounds – LD+3
Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
John Coltrane – Soultrane
Cannonball Adderley Quintet – In San Francisco
Lester Young – Pres and Teddy
Ornette Coleman – Change of the Century
Lou Donaldson – The Time is Right
Horace Parlan – Movin’ & Groovin’
Freddie Hubbard – Open Sesame
Tina Brooks – True Blue
Harold Land – The Fox
Wes Montgomery – The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
Paul Chambers – 1st Bassman
Max Roach – We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
Howard McGhee – Maggie’s Back in Town
Thelonious Monk – With John Coltrane
Cannonball Adderley – African Waltz
Art Blakey – Impulse / Art Blakey / Jazz Messengers
Kai Winding – The Incredible Kai Winding Trombones
Paul Gonsalves – Gettin’ Together
Ray Charles – Genius + Soul = Jazz
Benny Carter and His Orchestra – Further Definitions
Quincy Jones and his Orchestra – The Quintessence
Thelonious Monk Quartet – Monk’s Dream
Various Artists – The Definitive Jazz Scene, Vol. 1
Dexter Gordon – One Flight Up
Lawrence Brown & Johnny Hodges – Inspired Abandon
Miles Davis – Get Up With It
Woody Shaw – The Moontrane